In Japan there exists an art form called The Way of the Zen Brush. Those who practice this art employ calligraphy as a means of expressing their inner state within a continuing dynamic relation between the mind, the body and the universe. This art is also considered a means of attaining a glimpse of one’s true self by way of focusing the mind within the here and the now.
A single brush stroke upon the delicate rice paper must exude a vigorous life force, requiring of its practitioner a concentration that paradoxically must also entail the emptying of the mind.
       
One moment’s pause may cause the energy to be expended in an uncontrolled fashion, resulting in a stroke that is lifeless and meaningless; or worse yet a bleeding of the black ink upon the spotless paper causing a rupture of its surface.
              
Why speak of exotic oriental practices in an article that should be devoted to dance?       
               
After following for almost more than a decade the development of one of the most talented and misunderstood young choreographers in Netherlands; I have come to the conclusion that the work of Bruno Listopad (1976) and Oriental aesthetics have a close association.
                
Recently Listopad described to me his youthful experience of seeing archival footage of the aged Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno. The word jouissance immediately sprung to mind; the exceptional state of bliss, the impression of having witnessed (even by the medium of video) an expression of vital life force and the rapture of recognition. This brief epiphany was to invigorate years of fascination with Butoh and Oriental aesthetics. In fact many years later Listopad travelled to Japan to follow workshops under the guidance of Kazuo Ohno; a meeting of souls that was to leave a deep impression on Listopad’s physical language.       
               
However one must certainly not draw the conclusion that Listopad is merely a Butoh disciple or an occidental Westerner. His choreographic inventions are the result of a process of distillation and intense research. Akin to the Way of the Zen Brush, Listopad is greatly concerned with the concept of time and its psychological implications.        
        
Whilst the Western world has desperately attempted to measure and grasp the concept of time, the East accepts its dynamic continuum. Listopad is strongly allied to this idea of flux; the flow of a river that has neither beginning nor an end. The concept of time as traditionally applied to the performing arts; the momentary suspension of disbelief that is engaged in by an audience – as if it were an unspoken agreement between artist and viewer- is unsettling to him.        
               
For the past several years he has striven to erode the dictatorship of temporality, attempting to project his works into an experiential space that is without time but which perhaps paradoxically demands of its viewer to be fully present in the moment.
Just as a Zen monk meditates before he makes his stroke upon rice paper, emptying his mind and placing himself both within the now whilst also engaging with the infinity of the blank rice paper, so too do Listopad’s creations make us acutely aware of the present moment and of the infinite possibility of the stage that is his artistic surface.
                
Listopad often speaks of the ‘intensity of living’ and its accompanying joy, with which he perfumes his choreographies. Life as we experience it in the moment is essential to him: “Performance can only be alive when it enhances life, extracts from life and gives it power.”
He recalls once again Ohno’s ‘eroded’ face, exuding the ravages of time and how this appeared to him sublimely beautiful.
“Choreography for me is the creation of concepts”; this is clearly observed within an oeuvre spanning more than a decade and compromising a little over twenty works for dance companies such as the Nationale Ballet, Dance Works Rotterdam and as a freelance choreographer for Korzo Producties; receiving several prizes along the way.        
       
Listopad positions the act of ‘translation’ as a central complication in dance; in other words: the development via words or images of a concept which is then transferred to the medium of dance.
Undoubtedly Listopad does formulate concepts and engages in an almost exhaustive research on subject matters ranging from Artaud to post-modern philosophy. However he always seeks to internalize this material, make it a part of his consciousness so that he can engage in what he calls ‘spontaneous invention’. Listopad’s work is a process, a continual striving towards displacement. Language for him is restrictive, it always seems to point towards the idea of an imposed reality; words are an abstraction he seems to say.
His most important works to date from the point of view of development and originality are Cauda Pavonis (2004) and Fairy-Tales Reconfigured (2006). Listopad himself states that these two choreographies are ‘developmental’; one prefigures the other but at the same time they are indivisible.       
               
Cauda Pavonis evokes the spirit of Antonin Artaud, the great French writer and philosopher best known for his work The Theatre of Cruelty. Artaud is a complex figure and an unlikely subject for dance; his life was spent mostly within the enclosure of psychiatric institutions. Admired as much as reviled, many post war French intellectuals gravitated towards him and his unique cosmology of madness, cruelty and sacrilege.
In his choreography Listopad enforces the irrationality of Artaud upon his dancers via at times dysfunctional movements, unsettling tableaux vivant and dismembered speech.  The discomfort of the dancers –who are to an extent forced to engage and act out the alien cosmology of Artaud- becomes an integral part of the performative element. The result is a fascinating commentary on reason, wherein madness takes on a multiple nature: that of being enacted, rejected and evoked. The idea of identity begins to crumble as Listopad shifts from asking ‘who are we’ to ‘who can we become’?                
       
Cauda Pavonis represents Listopad’s movement into a choreographic world steeped in displacement and representation, concepts developed further in Fairy-Tales Reconfigured.
He describes the process of creating this piece as ‘intricate’, finding himself in my opinion more and more within the realms of being a psychological catalyst; demanding of his dancers a specific type of ego fluidity and multiplicity.
The result is a moving and at times disturbing piece, which shifts from the banal to the profound. Evocative and at times kitschy props, such as devil horns and fairy wands, provide the dancers with physical stimuli which in turn shift their personae from the anecdotal to the archetypical, continually collapsing in upon themselves in a maddening chaos of identity.
Representation in all its facets becomes a target for Listopad’s investigation, leaving the audience captivated and simultaneously mentally adrift due to the unnerving incision that has been made in our perception of self.
Where to from here? I asked Listopad.
His answer was daring: “To search for a new language of becoming, to escape representation by means of representation, heightening the tension between the two; to create an immediacy of dance that is alive and self conscious…  I am not afraid”
Listopad’s questioning mind ventures forth into a metaphoric ‘heart of darkness’ out of which undoubtedly will emerge choreographic art that will enthral those who witness it.

Michael A. Kroes © (freelance jounalist Ballettanz)