With my recent work, I have been counteracting the tradition of “pure dance”. The word “pure" evokes a certain essentialist conception that when allied to dance, corresponds to late modernism necessity to legitimate choreography as a separated discipline. I certainly believe that choreography can stand by itself and that this can be a frontrunner within the arts.  However, I question if “pure" dance exists, since the body is always inscribed by an outside. With my work, I do not wish to reduce choreography to the display of physical expression, because the body does not move isolated from a cultural and social surrounding. I am more interested in producing awareness of how choreography relates/operates within a wide context.

Creating is a process that unfolds into the unknown and that is where I wish to focus. I wish to move away from stereotypical notions and habits, the ones inscribed by the surroundings and by myself. I am rather interested in the process of making a work that it is self-reflected/self-referential. That engages with multiple aesthetical and theoretical perspectives, questions notions of fixed identity and reconfigures subjectivity and generates perceptual dislocation by juxtaposing contradictory signs. I am not interested in confirming an existing notion of what choreography is. Such notion would only help choreography to remain marketable, but would not authentically help its development.

Choreography cannot be defined. Its definition is in continuous displacement. With my work, I rather celebrate the impossibility in coming to terms with a definitive ontology of dance. I want to stage the friction between representation and presence, the precariousness of communication and call attention to the position of choreography within the economy of the spectacle. I wish to produce a friction that generates difference and agenciates change within the dance field. I aspire to affirm within the present the effort of the new in correlation with past artistic developments. For that, I try to remain critical not only to my work (although essential), but to the context in which this is produced (its cultural landscape), I visit performances and other cultural events, and I consciously react, sometimes making direct references to it through the work I make. 

Responsibility towards the public

Regarding my attitude towards public. I do not feel that it is my responsibility to confirm aesthetic expectations. I rather wish to agitate certainties and challenge any attempts at compartmentalization of ideas. However, I do not think I demand more from to the audience than I ask from Disjointed Arts associated artists (performers and other artistic collaborators). The only thing I expect from to the audience is that this remains participative, in their own sovereignty, just as I expect from the performers as well. The spectators should feel free to choose how to position themselves in relation to what they see and hear. These can disbelieve and dislike it, find it disappointing or even futile. However, they should not be forced to experience and believe what they witness and be bewildered in admiration. If someone that witnesses a presentation of mine and concludes that this is not choreography that means that the notion of choreography is somehow being questioned and challenged. Such observation is also indicative that the spectator is present, autonomous, participative and critical, not subjugated to the maker, witnessing the work in a state of wonder, with the disbelief suspended.

Following the post-modern perspective that the “author is dead”, choreography started to be seen as a “writing” from the spectator (that “writes” the script in the exercise of “reading” the choreography), but lets not forget that this is also a “writing” by the makers, these are the ones who voice the ideology louder through the way they choose to present the body, even if these are unconscious of the ideology they proclaim. Choreographing it is an exercise of political power, because all aesthetical choices the makers do represent ideologies, consequently choreographing demands certain ethics.

Bruno Listopad 2010 ©