An interview with Alito Alessi

by Gaia Germanà

 

Vienna, 2 Agosto 2007.

1. The conversation has a central focus on the DanceAbility method in the context of contemporary dance. Can you introduce this method for us? Do you think that DA is a form of contemporary dance?

 

Well, DA is a method that builds an open community in dance. People, in DA, have many choices to accept: they can stay just moving to enjoy, they can stay moving to create a sense of community and work collaboratively; they can also leave from that: they can leave and become performers, choreographers, they can become educators or teachers. So the idea of having a method was a way to include people, but also a way to let them go: so you don‟t create another island, which is one the problem that still exists in DA, to some degree, and you don‟t create another community that appears to be a closed community, that is only for a certain kind of people, who are „very open‟. If you don‟t provide different forms of leaving, DA could become another traditional form of dance like “DA is for this kind of people, ballet is for them…”, so you get this “kind of people” idea; you must be really aware of how to turn the people free, to let them leave.

I started to do this project when I went to a community and I found local ballet teachers and tap teachers, and local modern dance teachers, aikido masters, and break-dancers and hip hop people and I brought them all together and I gave them a training and then I created this festival where there is a ballet class, a hip-hop class, a break-dancing class, aikido class …, and disabled people were accepted in those classes as well. So I‟ve tried from that to extend the problem that DA creates, that is the concept that a “unique kind of people” could come and take part in the dancing. So, I‟ve started working to get more integration inside of the traditional methods , because most of the traditional dance methods are not really closed off to opening their minds, but they just don‟t know how to. So I started to create this idea where I could give them some skills, so when a disabled person came to their classes they didn‟t feel so freaked-out or have to say: “oh, sorry you can‟t come to my class”.

That‟s one of the main ideas I‟ve been working on in the past few years: looking at DA as a way that helped me to open and to always keep that prospective as a foundation and not that this is the method, and this is what it will be, but this is a method that needs to keep growing. So it becomes the foundation so people feel safe and have confidence and are comfortable to begin it. But the method, it‟s not gonna stay like it is, hopefully. DA should change and grow as did contemporary dance in the last 20 years (from 70s), making steps forward. And now the step is to be inclusive for all people. 146

Many people tried to do that in the past. Expressive movement, for example, could be for everybody. But, when you look at who actually was doing it, it was generally white-middle-class. So, even though those people had great philosophies they didn‟t so much have practical experiences in it. And when they tried this they stayed in a small circle.

So DA is not a new thing: is a continuation of what many people have already tried to do. I‟ve just done 20 years of homework, accumulation of information; because the information is not new in DA. I have some of the same old recycled information that has been going on for 50 years, really.

And some other people like Anna Halprin, for example, were doing it, but not so much with people with disabilities I think, more with special groups of people like poor people, AIDS victims… she was really trying to see how it looked like. It was a really a new diverse community of dancers. And so the goal of DA is to make the diverse community of dancers not only to fulfil the desire to have a diverse community of dancers, but make a diverse community of dancers to create the pathway to let they continue, to let more people have experiences about what they wanted to do.

2. I think the „teacher training‟ is a good example to explain this openness and this idea of a method really in becoming, teaching and suggesting how to teach this kind of inclusive way to let all people dance together and giving them this experience. Isn‟t it?

 

Yes, it is. For me, it‟s really important that DA get out of the concept of being related to Alito Alessi, because my name is a trap for the work. And the teacher that I had from I learned that is Steve Paxton. He never held onto contact improvisation, he never said that it is what it is and that‟s exactly what you have to do in it. He let it be an open body of work, so it can keep going and growing way beyond him.

So DA, and the teacher training that we are talking about, is recognized in a bigger way, bigger than me; it‟s not about me. I‟m the steward, who takes care of the land. I don‟t kill it. That‟s way I take care of it, that‟s why I gave it a name. And that‟s why I do a training: because it needs to be taken care of it. Because, for example, people who don‟t know what they are doing and just trying things, they need help: I try just to take care of this work, this land, in this way the work can grow in a very positive way. So that‟s why the teacher training works in the way in which it works.

3. A question about the methodology: how did you arrive at your methodology/methodologies? And what did you take from other experiences of teaching dance and movement?

 

The motivator, in the very beginning, was for my own personal survival. It was just about: “How can I educate myself to get what I need in my life?”. No generous motivations of giving something or making something good, or to be in service, it was about: “what in the world do I need to figure out to live my 147

life in a way that can allow me to grow?” . So then that same perception becomes transferred to DA as a being: how can it survive, live and grow? What does it need?

So, for myself it was really a search about how to take care of myself . I lived in this world having really bad experiences, I knew that movement was a good concept to pursue for the things that I had to deal with emotionally and psychologically in my own life.

I also grew up in a family in which I was abandoned when I was really young, so community became really important for me to find. And also it was important for me to make a community and to find a community. So one of the earliest things for me was searching for what I needed.

I was really fortunate, in my search, to find really great teachers. One of my first teachers was a teacher of martial arts, so my first early training was in martial arts. And then I practised Tai Chi Chuan for like 20 years, and I still practice it.

When I was 20 I broke my back. So I needed to find somebody who could help me to be able to continue to move. And I was fortunate to meet on my way a fantastic woman named Elenora Meral who took me on as her student and as a client in her studio, and I studied with her until she died (it was like 25 years).

Then, I joined a group called Eugene Dance Collective. There were about 35 dancers, many of them professional dancers, who had been studying at the University of Oregon, on the traditional dance scene. It was 1974. It was a really radical time in the evolution of contemporary dance when a lot of movements were beginning, for example Contact Improvisation, Grand Union and the Judson Church Theatre. A lot of different and radical things happened at the same time; there was a sort of revolution at the university and many dancers in the University of Oregon danced also in the collective outside the university, doing more alternative contemporary dance. And I brought to that group my own sort of personal history in dance: street-dance.

I grew up in the street, I lived in the street and I danced in the street, and dance was a real part of the social community then. There was both partner dancing between the 50s and 60s, and there was also the real beginning of Elvis Presley, James Brown, and those social dance phenomena that were more individual. So the life-style and the kind of movement of that generation were very hot when I was a teenager. And that‟s was what we did: we made circles and one person came into the circle dancing and then came out, to let another guy go inside to try and to do a better move. That was my earliest introduction to dance world.

Then I brought these ideas into that collective idea. That was really about democracy, equality between all people, professionals and beginners as well. And at that time I was the beginner, working with a lot of professional people. Mostly my early technical training came from osmosis, came from just being with these great people who had a lot of training. So, really, I had very little technical training as in going to technical dance classes, but I have the alignment in my body from martial arts and from working with professional people. 148

Well, we were 35 people who believed in dance for everybody, but it was not a very wide spectrum of people at all. Then we thought: “wow! A non-technical dancer and a contact improvisation person with a modern dancer together? That‟s diversity”, that‟s what we believed. “There is a fat person in our collective, there is a woman lifting a man! Wow!”. Of course it was an evolution, a very important change in contemporary dance: it was a sign of the big change in the all culture and in the society too. A woman lifting a man on the stage, dancing.

My company was recognized to be the first company to really have taken contact improvisation into high level choreography. We had different experiences in that one piece in particular, the Hoop Dance (1984), was re-staged in an historical perspective of the XX century‟s duets in dance. It was really recognized as being one of the earliest pieces that signs the evolution of contemporary dance, because it used the contact improvisation principles put into a form of choreography (transition of gravity, weight and momentum put into a form of choreography). The quality of choreography started to change in that period, and of course from before: people like Merce Cunningham started to change it, for instance. And choreography started to be more improveography (between improvisation and choreography: you were improvising and working with set material simultaneously). That‟s what we do all the time now. So, from that collective of people came a lot of the values that are in DA, about democracy and equality and accessibility. But when DA started it was with a bit broader picture, that it was not so broad then even if we thought it was. From that experience I bring into the frame of DA the belief to support each person bringing their own history and their own interests and following the work in their own path, so they don‟t become me in the work, they became themselves.

That‟s what I‟ve learned from martial arts and a few contemporary dance techniques, from social activism in political equality in democracy and from the art-therapies - because I‟ve also been a physical therapist, a massage therapist, I‟ve studied shiatsu and acupuncture. All the information that comes from these experiences, about the ways in which the body works, underlining patterns of support for movement, and how can you take that information and then transform it into a physical practice in a movement mode; which is not a new idea, it‟s what Tai Chi is. The acupuncturist decides how to move the body to get the flow of energy in the body, to let the body have a healthy feeling. So self-regenerating experiences.

In the DA exercises, so, there isn‟t anything new: it‟s an old idea. It takes an old idea and transforms it in a more practical experience, for everyday people, and for those people who can‟t practice other disciplines like Tai Chi because maybe they don‟t have legs. So I took all the information that I‟ve studied and I asked to myself: “how can I get that information in any body?”. The exercises are designed in that way, to teach some of the philosophies that think about the flow of energy in the body – about what is that, how can I stimulate that, how can I wake it up? – that is also the beginning of the sensing work. And, when your senses are waking up, are awake in the body, there are some more specific exercises to train people. 149

One of the problems that, I think, is in most of the traditional forms, is that they made it for traditionally accepted bodies, and they have a set idea about what it should be, about what up and down, left and right are, related to this imaginative body. But, if you take a person all bended in the wheelchair, what is the concept of up for him? Alignment, for example, is not just balancing bones, not just aligning muscles, it‟s an energetic balance inside the body and around the body. And how can you teach somebody to find that? It‟s not a new thing, as well. “How can you generate that sort of holistic experience in the body that already exists in many forms, but how can it be transferred to any body?” So this is the reason why the exercises are designed how they are: each person has their own personal alignment, that it‟s not one aesthetical rule, and in DA you can look for that. For example: gravity has different effects in each person, so alignment is a different thing for each. The ground had a different effect for a person who stays always on the ground. Down is also a relative thing: if I touch the table with my elbow I can ground in my elbow, that is down.

4. Coming back to your path: what about the influence of contact improvisation experience and other experiences in movement that you had?

 

Well, following my development: after those experiences in contemporary dance there was the very important experience, for me and for history, in contact improvisation. Now I practice contact for 30 years and this is the longest study that I‟ve practiced in my life. And I‟ve been a psychologist and a therapist, as I told before. So in these fields there is the study of many bodies. I‟ve learned that we are looking on 7 different bodies, and recognised what is the information to teach to different people: some people you teach some physical or mental, emotional, psychological, sensual, oral and spiritual information. Every person has those 7 different bodies and intelligences. So, if you dance, mostly you have information for the physical body, only: so this is the reason why dance became traditional instructed in the way that it is, refer to a common body.

My interest is in looking at all the bodies that are in one body, and relating to all of them. And different times and different bodies need different things. And so: how to touch or not touch, different relationships to different bodies. The psychological component gives information about emotions in the body and how it changes as the form changes, and how to support different people in the psychological process without being their therapist: and what kind of movement structure do you build inside of your teaching classes, to support the obvious emotional transformation that will happen without be a therapist. So built in the structured method is also what are the exercises that will support emotions as they transform.

So you can‟t just teach people physical practices; the work of improvisation goes deeper people are gonna need different kinds of support. For example: the weighting work. Is a really strong support structure, in putting your weight on another person‟s body, compressing together, helps integrate the 150

information that you have learned until that moment, as well as giving you warmth and helping you to soften the tensions, open yourself. All these little things support the group and the emotional body of each one. weight is an important and necessary thing. Not only how to learn how to give weight, but what does that weight do to your body? Also touching the surface of the skin it does different things for your body. For this reason you don‟t touch the skin for long periods of time.

So: how to put together all this information that I took from many different experiences? I just tried to organize these.

5. So, as you told, contact improvisation is the central experience in dance that led you to think about the importance of touch, weight and gravity in relation to each body.

 

Yes, contact is really important in my dance experience and this information about touch and contact came also from my personal emotional evolution. There was a period in my life in which nobody could touch my skin, I really isolated myself. So I began to research touch as a way to heal myself. But all of that material gave a form of exploring that in contact improvisation: body is knowledge. So I didn‟t create some knowledge, but I did find a way to get it into different kinds of people, and I‟ve researched what kinds of communities of people, what kinds of populations these exercises work for or not work for. So these exercises always keep the concept of community inclusion inside the evolution of the work.

6. But what‟s your own definition of community? Is that conception pre-existent to the class or is totally connected to the time-space of the DA workshop? Do you think that the DA communities are new kinds of communities, related to contemporary times?

 

I think that the community that comes in DA work is an ancient concept. Because the kinds of communities that we are generating now existed previous to what you are talking about (those communities in the postmodern society). I‟m talking about ancient times, pre-verbal, in the evolution of humanity. I don‟t know anything about that, nobody knows. But I could imagine that there were disabled bodies in those times, that is not a new thing. Maybe is only my imagination but I believe that language evolved from the bodies, so movement creates language, and to have a language you need all kinds of bodies and movements. If you start to limit the qualities or kinds of bodies and movements you are gonna be creating a kind of contemporary society that you have now. I think that contemporary society has problems because it hasn‟t brought all of these people with it, it‟s advancing leaving people back (people that can‟t do something). So, I think that there was a time when all bodies existed and their movements were all part of what was happening in that world. And as that side of society evolves it‟s trying to turn everything into a mass culture, and certain things are left behind. And as we‟re 151

starting to eliminate movement and body structures, we‟re starting to eliminate diversity. So bringing together diverse communities of people, I think, I‟m bringing back the old, instead of creating a new community, and bringing back what is in the nature of the human being. In the nature all bodies exist and they are all equal. And all the human beings they are all precious, all special. Everybody desires to be alive. And that‟s what I believe. So I bring that from an old time that is in our DNA.

7. Do you think that the frame of the workshop, for example, could be that place for everybody to be really equal in movement and languages? Do you think that it could be read like a sort of ritual, an ancient ritual that also exist in our times?

 

Yes, I don‟t speak about ritual during a class, but it‟s a lot about ritual. But really we experience devotion, commitment, responsibility, the regeneration of a ritual in dance. What are the elements of a ritual? Could we isolate them in a DA class? You can find them. Different symbols and metaphors are in there. They are there (for example the circle) not for any reason, they are doing something, even if we don‟t know about that. So my idea was that to come back and awaken the elements that postmodern society has put to sleep. So that‟s not about generating anything new, just taking and using it to wake up our nature.

8. Maybe today we need this kind of different time to really be together. And in the time-space of the workshop and during a performance, or more during events like a parade - a sort of a party for all the people outside a theatre on the street - we can feel a state of unison, a sense of community really deep. It‟s like a new social ritual, it could be that thing that helps the society to grow and develop. What do you think about that?

 

It‟s also not a new idea, it belongs to the religious pilgrimages for example. In many cultures there is something very similar to the concept of the street parade. There is the same: a gathering of people, having a common direction of movement, staying really close to each other, like a community. And: if you take the beliefs away, what remains in common? Bodies and movement that go in the same direction, and here it is the basement of DA. Everybody has that in common: breath, blood, heart. Beliefs is one of the problems. We just take them away and consider and work on the common elements, moving together in the same direction.

9. So, we have arrived to the important concept of „common denominator‟ that‟s possible to recognize in each group of people who dance together in a workshop. This idea is the starting point to manage a DA class, and it underlines a difference between DA and contact improvisation. Isn‟t it?

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I absolutely agree. Even if the values are the same DA is different from contact improvisation. The idea of the common denominator is one of the main elements that underline this difference. In DA there are more things that are really for all and for different groups of people. Then, it depends on the teacher as well, but in contact improvisation it is difficult to find somebody who teaches how to improvise connecting with the whole group, cause it‟s mostly a duet form. And then the people that are really good in it, they usually study to become professionals, studying improvisation more, or performing more and then few people who come from contact improvisation continue to teach just in that context.

DA is a broader prospective than contact improvisation. Contact improvisation is part of the DA method, but is not all what DA is, because in some DA classes you will never touch another person.

To finish up with the line that we had about the evolution of the DA method: now DA is spreading all over the world, through workshops and teacher trainings, so it‟s continuing to grow and change, through each person who does it.

10. Well, DA is also performances on the stages, not just dance in workshops or on the street, in events that you call street parades. You started to work in duet with Emery Blackwell, a man with a physical disability, and you, as a choreographer, have created many different pieces for different groups (professionals mixed-abilities groups or not) all over the world. What about the last experience of DA and performance, is it different from the previous ones?

 

The pieces that I made with Emery would be a mixture of my own interest and perceiving him as an individual and then doing the process that helped him define „how he is‟ and „how he relates to me‟ and „how can we relate to each other‟ (the same process that happens during an improvisation and during a DA class); we thought: “how can we make structures, or contents or an expression that we want to make?”. For example I want to make a tango and so I go to that process to make a tango, or “how do you perceive a wheelchair in different perspective?” and so I started to do those things in the round of possibility.

The new work that I‟ve made tries to stay inside the container of the specific method that I‟ve already designed. So the work with Emery was the principles of the work manifesting into a performance, the present piece is manifesting the method, the specific exercises into a performance presentation on a high level. It means that I can put it on the stage in any performance venue I can find in the world, so it‟s completely different from a street parade, as well. I would not put a street parade on the stage of a festival, it‟s not appropriate. I don‟t put the same material that we practice in the workshop on the stage. I was interested in how I could take a mixed group of people – professional and non-professional and disables and not – and use primarily the method, turning it into a performance. It‟s not all about my own creative process, but using that material that depends from people. And then, adding esthetical elements and 153

live music. There you can recognize the narrative line, for example, the change work, there is the common language trio.

It‟s a group choreography, and I‟m the director who facilitates what we made. I asked myself: “how can I make a piece that then can be taken to another group of people to make the same piece, even they have different bodies?”. So the piece is a language that I can give to you and you can go somewhere and make a piece, in about 60 hours. It‟s a system and that‟s what my work is about: I‟m generating a language, and turning it into a system that I can give away. Most of that comes from my studies in other places. I don‟t really know what about it is unique to me as a person: what is Alito‟s in that work? Maybe my personal history let me feel comfortable in that work in this community. That‟s not mine. And I don‟t want DA to die with me.

The reason why I organized this kind of system is the limitation of our business and time. It‟s a way to make money to continue working, to build something that can go inside the big organizations like festivals and have more visibility, to act from inside of the big system. I‟ve done it in two different places, and it doesn‟t take so much time (60 hours to prepare it, with 15 people and the music written for it). The great thing is that you have the same piece changeable, depending on where you do it and with whom. I‟ve done it in Eugene, at the foundation level to make this project possible. I took that to Brazil, and in one month I organized all and performed that 4 times.

So, this performance-system is what I‟ve created in the last year, with the partnership of the Guggenheim foundation. I‟ve received the Guggenheim fellowship and I‟ve worked on this last project, at first in Eugene. The show is named Pillars of Illusion, in Eugene, when we presented it for the first time (in May 2007) and Joy Lab in Brazil.

The fellowship gave me the possibility to show to more people what‟s my work, to have greater visibility. It‟s a big support that you take with you for being a DA teacher: because that work is recognized at a very high level.

11. And what about the esthetical point of view in this kind of performance?

 

I think that aesthetic is experiential, that‟s what I believe. So, aesthetic is not about a line in space, of course it includes that, but I‟m interested in aesthetic, in the lines and design that it‟s possible to create but not those empty of experience. So I‟m interested in a broader perspective of aesthetic: I do certain things that looks certain ways, I can‟t always tell you why, but it‟s my experience.

When I see something I know something. The knowledge is not necessarily intellectual and I think that aesthetic is not only about intellectual analysis, so: how can I get that to be the experience of an audience? I know what an experience is when I like it and I want an audience have the same experience. And: how can I do that? The dancers have to be experiencing what they are doing and be concerned with certain other aesthetics that support that experience. So the line is an extension of the emotion of the moment, it‟s not devoid of it, but if you can‟t make that line you still can expend your emotions in the space. So for a body that can‟t make a line up to the sky, could look and 154

could be as powerful as if his arms were there. There is an aesthetic that can be interpreted intellectually and there is an aesthetic that extends beyond the expression of the physical form and can be felt even if it‟s not seen.

When the people give you feedback you can understand if it worked. People usually tell me that they felt on their bodies what happened; having an experience in your body when you are watching another body move: I think it‟s very important for understanding this perspective on aesthetic experience.

12. Do you think that people who watch at these mixed-abilities performances change their own attitude looking and judging it? Did some dance critics give you feedback about DA pieces related to contemporary dance pieces?

 

A few people wrote about the work talking about the wrong things. They had the experience and they tried to translate that into the language that they already knew: speaking about disabled persons that were „flying‟ on the stage. They were really touched, but they didn‟t know how to explain that. They use the words that they knew already: but an important goal for me is to change the language, as well, and this is the reason why we speak a lot, usually, after the shows.

But also a few people write great things about DA. One time in Austria a journalist wrote: “the work reveals the paralyzed minds of the able-body people who are watching it”.

I think, at the end, that the smartest critique that I‟ve ever read about DA is by Ann Cooper Albright: she really understood the work and she put that essay in her book Choreographing Difference.

13. Well, we spoke about performance and choreography - a set material or, at least, structured improvisations - but what about the concept of improvisation that has a very important role in the process of DA workshops? Have you got a definition for that? What it means for you, as a performer as well?

 

Improvising as a soloist is different than improvising in a group. As a soloist I‟m researching my ability to arrive in the present moment and not know what to do and see if I could be motivated by something that I don‟t know what it is. When I arrive at that point I might have the possibility of making a choice that comes not only from my past experience, because I‟m not interested in my past always generating and building my future. So I‟m interested to try to arrive in a moment and maybe, if I‟m listening to my past experience, it might be regenerated and re-create something that I‟m not interested in or something that can control me, more than me having the control and making the choices for my own life about the direction that I‟m going in. So, I improvise so that I can allow myself in both these positive and negative ways, to manifest in my experience so that I can define it and then make a choice about where I want to go in the next moment, and then my practice helps me in that system. 155

It is all the things that you‟ve learned; as a soloist: I‟m sensing my body and sending my attention to travel in different ways inside of my body, because the underlining support mechanism (system) from the sensing work is there to not push me in the same direction my emotions are taking me. That system provides me with an opportunity to change the way I‟m doing something. So actually I study improvisation so that I can have the opportunity to choose how I want to change.

As a soloist I ask myself: “Can I create a way to, at least, experience who I really am?” Then I can decide: “Ok, I made the right decision” related to my feelings. Because I‟m interested to figure out how I can continue to allow my real feelings to emerge and then choose to make decisions about them, rather than a feeling is coming and I don‟t want to have it and the energy that it takes to hold the feeling down takes away the energy to moving forward in my life. So I improvise to reveal my nature to myself. It‟s really that simple.

In a group in community it becomes another thing: not only “who am I?” in my own feelings, but: “how do I use them in a social context?” to obtain what I want and to give what I want; and to create a kind of relationship that arrives from the internal sense of our nature, feeling our body into forms.

So: why do you enter in a group, in an ensemble as an improviser? You have to consider the other people: where are they? How do I know where they are and what they are doing? Are they related to me, or not? If I do something, does it affect them? So: how you can create a consciousness of the web.

The ensemble work is about weaving the web of consciousness, so that consciousness exists not only inside your brain but it‟s alive in the space. So I‟m just trying to take from Einstein that great philosophy that he explained and I put that into a practical experience. To do that you use your senses to connect to what you notice around you, how you feel it, what do you want to put in and express in that context. So: once you make a community like we are and everybody makes different decisions and choices; it‟s a sort of generating, more than energy in space, in consciousness. It‟s the case with the run in a circle, for example, that takes energy from the space and creates a container to hold it. If you are an improviser and start to run around in the space you create a central point, and you create the wind, a centrifugal force, from nature. In movement and ensemble work I‟m interested a lot in nature and in defining the environment (circle, down in relation to gravity).

So you have the common denominator in movement practice and you have also an energetic common denominator, about the space: you can affect it by training the consciousness of every person in your group to be paying attention (who can) and the others who cannot will be in the container. And then you create consciousness and you create a mass consciousness. That could be a very positive thing (and not: mass consciousness it‟s not always positive). It‟s depends on the roots of the person who generated it.

Finally, in ensemble I want to create the weaving of the web, I want to create a container, and inside that we decide what we want to do, to create a sensation can be transmitted to the nature, that is harmony, for example. 156

 

14. Do you put improvisation on the stage? And if you do it: why do you do it, what does it mean for you, in your path like a performer and in DA experience?

 

So, putting improvisation on the stage, at first, was a sort of political thing about: “we could do it!”, because we wanted to. Because we thought: “who are you to tell us that we can‟t?” It was a little bit about to enter and change institutional things. It came in a period in which all those movements were growing to challenge the contemporary ideas on what should be on the stage. So improvising was another of one of those things that people who were moving, like what happens in jazz music, could be watched improvising on the stage. So earlier we just did it and then we set it up in sort of structures, they were not so formal, but they helped us to move. And I‟ve improvised on so many different stages, with a lot of different people, like Julian Hamilton for example, a great performer, and someone wrote a chapter in a book about that piece.

So, I think that there is certain quality of putting improvisation on the stage, which is about revealing the possibilities of life manifesting itself before your eyes, and there‟s the value of taking risks and also in the round of understanding your limits and your boundaries and working in a context of exploration that inspires you and the others the possibility to do the same. So a part of the same challenge about: “who am I?”, but when I go on the stage it‟s not like improvising in a studio, because you are under pressure and so you get another perspective about who you are, under pressure. Performing you can learn what do you do relating to your ego. Asking me: “why am I performing?”. And there you really put yourself in alignment to what you deeply believe. So it‟s a balance between what you get and what you give.

Sometimes it happens that people can‟t distinguish if you are improvising or not. I‟m interested in turning my improvisations into a very clean work. I‟d like to create a show totally improvised with a lot of people, but it needs also a different audience, ready for that.

In terms of DA work I decided to not put improvisation on the stage, because I think that it‟s too early in the evolution of the work; I put that in other places, but on a contemporary dance stage people don‟t know how to look at that. And the reality is that our community has not been trained well enough to really understand improvising, to put improvisation on the stage. So, I mix some set material with a few structured improvisations to let the people who are performing understand the language that they are working with, going in and out of improvisation and choreography, holding the aesthetic of sensation and experience.

The form helps people doing it and watching it: the form gives the possibility to transmit experience to the audience and gives the audience the structures to understand what they are watching. So I don‟t put improvisation on the stage for DA work because the goal is also to create a new vision about what disability is. And I think that sometimes when you just put things up there people come to see and they think: “oh yea, that‟s disabled people”. So I put on the stage things that take you to another place, a new and open concept of what disability is. 157

I have another context that is my company, the Joint Forces Dance Company, where I experiment with improvisation stuff. I‟m really interested in the evolution of contemporary improvisation so I produce a festival, Breitenbush festival, in Breitenbush, every year to let this form evolve.

15. Do you think that we can read improvisation like the practice of an utopia?

 

I think that to improvise keeps the sensation of possibility alive. And it almost generates hope, or this possibility, to create the sensation of possibility, because if you just keep the possibility alive in itself than you‟re regenerating a language: so, different movements. Possibly improvising regenerates a new consciousness, a new body language and that regeneration possibly could keep us evolving in a good direction, moving forward as a culture, as a society in a positive direction. Because we need more languages, not less. But, nowadays, we‟re starting to eliminate languages: animals are going away, groups of people are disappearing. So we need to keep continuing to generating them.

It has a bit of an utopia sound, but it‟s real for each of us: it‟s not an illusion, because when we finish our workshops and we come back home we effect people close to us. It effects nature and changes the world a little bit, because now if you find different people around you have a different attitude, giving them a kind of comfort, even if you don‟t teach a class.

16. So: does your methodology reflect your view of the world, dance, and the people you work with?

 

Yes, the DA methodology is a reflection of the bodies of the people that have come to the classes. That‟s why I have so much faith in it. I didn‟t invent anything; the methodology is really a mirror: if you look at the exercises you can see the bodies that were there, because the method came from a body. A personal example: when I broke my back, it was a reflection of my suffering (I really needed something) and for me it was like my childhood, broken, and so trying to find what this body really needed to stop suffering I moved in the next moment of my life, in relationships to other people in a community, so then the exercises came for other persons: “what do they need to move more freely into the next moment?”. So I believed in that process, cause it worked for me, and then I just started doing it for all persons, thinking about the larger common denominator and practice that with so many different people, arriving to the exercises. At the very end it is: “how do you take every individual in his own experience, into relationships, into a community and back to the nature that where they are born into”.

That‟s all

Thank you so much