Why 'I Live'?
Daniel AlmgrenRecén (Amsterdam)
I Live from Daniel AlmgrenRecén on Vimeo.
das Video ist für eingeloggte Vimeo-Nutzer sichtbar:
https://vimeo.com/7514162
In 2009 I created a performance called 'I Live' that had this program text:
This performance is based on the historically important neo-classical ballet LIVE from 1979 choreographed by Hans van Manen.
And what did I do?
I tried to see what would be the points of interaction between the performance I was creating and LIVE.
In a great conversation with Martin Nachbar we came across the terms “Flirting with” and “Gender swaps” as metaphors for my intuitive and instrumental desiccation of LIVE.
The term “Flirting with”, reefers to the original LIVEs internal and external relational aspects, here enumerated like ingredients.
What is Hans van Manen/LIVE flirting with?
new media
ballet
Coleen Davis as dancer/person
life
art
presence
absence
past
present
future
the audience
the following is an enumeration of what I’m “Flirting with” in I Live.
ballet
history
Coleen Davis
Hans van Manen
the audience
new media
old media
presence
absence
past
present
future
The term “Gender swaps” symbolizes the constructed relational aspects between LIVE and I Live. I tried to create a practical relation between Hans van Manen and my work to see it clearer for my self.
In the list below I try to write the “Gender swaps” in the form of (I Live) swapping with (LIVE).
Me swapping with Coleen Davis as dancer.
TV monitor swapping with original projection.
Live recording video camera swapping with live projected image.
Life swapping with art.
Art swapping with life.
Female ballet dancer and male choreographer swapping with male contemporary dancer/Choreographer.
Bojana Mladenovic swapping with Henk van Dijk as camera wo/man.
Objectification swapping with subjectification
Person swapping with dance technique.
Me messing with the history swapping with history messing with me.
History lending itself to me swapping with me lending myself to history.
Mediator swapping with mediated.
Layering swapping with simplifying.
The four (4) last “swaps” can be reversed or read as observations on the process of trying to relate.
I decided to apply the original choreography to my own body by over and over again watch the video recording of LIVE performed by the original dancer Coleen Davis. Learning every step by the method of trial and error.
I also met with Hans van Manen who kindly gave me the permission to use LIVE in the way I chose and he recommended me to interview Rachel Beaujean who was the understudy of the original performance in 1979 and today is the “Head of artistic staff” at the Dutch national ballet. A part of this conversation is the soundscape of the first part in I Live. In this conversation we are together trying to figure out and remember the original stage setting for LIVE when it was first performed in Theater Carré, Amsterdam.
During the process of creation I made the decision to only relate to the first part of LIVE, before the second dancer Henny Jurriëns enters, but to keep the original over all time frame of 26 minutes for I Live.
For the filming section I chose to use a small hand held camera in I Live as a reference to the personalized media culture of today in contrast to the original professional high-end equipment. This was for me to better own the media and impose the self-organizational atmosphere that comes with the small hand held camera. "If no one ask you, do it your self." Which has become a common structure in publishing music and literature (now more on the Internet and in the form of communities.) Another displacement of time in I Live is the choice of recording video live but only project it in the end of the performance. When I’m projecting the color recording of my self on the backdrop of the theatre and try to synchronize the original recording of LIVE together with the projection. The original recording of LIVE is being displayed on a 20 inch, black and white TV-monitor, to frame it as history coming to us through the televised media.
My collaborator Bojana Mladenovic recently said something like this (sorry for my clumsy interpretation of your words):
I see I Live as an attempt and proposition to view the relation of time and history as a constantly negotiated “partnership in crime”.
Foto: Nellie de Boer
Daniel AlmgrenRecén is a Swedish Choreographer graduated from SNDO, Amsterdam who except creating his own work, has been performing in among other Keren Cytter, Steve Paxton and Ivana Müllers work.
For more info about him and his work please visit:
www.daar.se and www.grossundstark.com