Dive into the dramaturgy of choreography and text in contemporary performance with a panel comprising playwright-in-residence Jonathon Young and dancer Renée Sigouin from Kidd Pivot, as well as performing arts critic Pawit Mahasarinand and researcher and dramaturg Corrie Tan, moderated by theatre-maker Edith Podesta.
This dialogue was presented by Centre 42, in collaboration with Esplanade Theatres on the Bay
[00:00:00]
Edith Podesta
Good morning everyone. My name is Edith Podesta and I'll be your moderator for today's roundtable dialogue body language presented by Centre 42 in collaboration with Esplanade - Theatres on the Bay. So today our da:ns focus will be the interplay between dance and text, the dramaturgy of choreography and contemporary performance. I'd like to start off by asking the panel members to introduce themselves, give you an idea of their practice and their areas of research. So Jonathan, if you'd like to begin.
[00:00:33]
Jonathan Young
Hello, my name is Jonathan Young and I'm an actor and playwright. And I work with Kidd Pivot as a writer and co-creator of these dance theater works that we've been making for the past few years.
[00:00:48]
Pawit Mahasarinand
Good morning. I'm Pawit Mahasarinand; I'm teaching in graduate programs in transdisciplinary approach in performing arts and cultural management at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. And also I'm writing for The Nation Newspaper, which is the second oldest English language newspaper in Thailand. And occasionally, I perform on stage as well. I'm currently in the production of "Art", the comedy by Yasmina Reza. And we have been like touring to provinces in Thailand for the past seven months and the tour will continue until the end of next year, like on and off, but it's it's nice to be on stage. Thank you and nice to meet you. And Singapore is my second home. I usually come here two or three times a year. Even before COVID, I even had a Singaporean mobile phone number on SingTel, but it expired of course like doing the lockdown. Thank you.
[00:02:06]
Renee Sigouin
I'm Renee Sigouin. I'm here in Singapore with Kidd Pivot performing in Revisor. I'm a dancer-performer, based in Vancouver, and I work with Kidd Pivot and few other companies.
[00:02:20]
Corrie Tan
Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us this morning. I'm Corrie I started out as a critic, writing about performance, including theater and dance for about 10-15 years. So I started with the Straits Times, and I've also written for The Guardian and ArtsEquator. Currently, I'm doing my PhD in theater and performance. Hopefully finishing up soon. I also have started doing work particularly in dance dramaturgy, which you probably hear a little bit about later. Yeah, that's me at the moment.
[00:02:52]
Edith Podesta
Well, welcome very early in the morning. We're so happy to have you here. So I thought we might start with the use of pre-existing narratives or narrative structures, or text as a source material for creation, dance creation or movement creation. So Jonathan, can you start with the Government Inspector and Revisor?
[00:03:12]
Jonathan Young
Have any of you seen the show, Revisor, that we're performing here? Yeah. Okay. So you'll know what I'm talking about. Yeah, so it's a dance theater piece and Crystal Pite, the choreographer and I had made another show called “Betroffenheit”, and then a short work called The Statement. So we had begun this process of working together and combining theatre and dance. And when we knew we were going to make a new piece, we began with this idea of maybe exploring farce as a genre. That came from our work on “Betroffenheit”, there was a show within a show in that piece. We started talking about that particular brand of physical theater or physical comedy, and that it relies on a kind of cruelty or like an extreme form of behavior, and we thought that that would lend itself well to dance. And I sort of set about looking for a farce that I could adapt and came upon Nikolai Gogol's play "The Government Inspector". I wasn't particularly familiar with that piece, but it seemed like the premise was something that was recognizable enough that we could play with it. We knew from the beginning that if we were going to use this, this text, it would be also be subverted, and turned inside out. And we would want the audience to recognize fairly quickly what was going to happen and maybe even have some familiarity with the premise. That's how we came upon that particular play. It wasn't because we knew it or liked it, it was just that if it felt like a premise we could play with.
And then the process was really me taking that play and seeing how I could reduce it and and I guess, make it somehow make the text speak to what was happening on stage, the fact that we have these performers who aren't actually speaking, but are being moved by the speech. So there's some relationship between the play and the performers. They are working inside it or they are driven by it, or they are controlled by it and that there's also some freedom within that like their individual selves as dancers, their physical selves are in some kind of conflict with the play itself. So we often saw the play as a kind of obstacle, or a regime, a structure that we would try to overthrow, perhaps. Something along those lines.
[00:05:58]
Edith Podesta
And can I ask, when you're reading the play, or the original text, are you pulling bits verbatim? Or are you adapting? Are you writing original work? How are you working with the text?
[00:06:12]
Jonathan Young
I was listening to the show last night. And there are only a few lines that were actually taken from the translation, like a handful of lines. So it really was trying to- I think I just read the play and enough times that I really had a good sense of the structure. And then it was just thinking, how could that shape be preserved while getting rid of all the rest, and then only relying on on lines when I couldn't, you know, and I just needed something to sort of plug a hole almost. We went through a long process where the play was only going to be sort of one aspect of like, a more polyphonic thing. And then gradually, it was a process of reduction to get rid of these other aspects. And it just became this complex. You know, in Gogol's Play, it's a small town. And we chose complex so that it has a kind of, like a psychological presence as well. And we embedded our inspector — in Gogol's Play, the inspector is always sort of about to arrive. And then someone shows up at the end and announces, by the way, the inspector is here. And we and so there's this kind of mystery: is the inspector there the whole time inspecting in disguise? And we thought, well, maybe the inspector is somehow inside it, or maybe the play is the kind of disguise for this sort of internal inspection.
[00:07:44]
Edith Podesta
Did you pay particular attention to physical direction in the play or stage direction? And then did you pay particular attention also to words that were very physical in the text?
[00:07:59]
Jonathan Young
Certainly. I constantly think of words that that are about physicality. And in Gogol's Play, it ends in this tableau, like there's a stage direction, which indicates that these these officials who have been caught are frozen at the end for- I can't remember how long he says, but it's like a very specific amount of time. And they're sort of locked in these positions of anticipation and questioning and they hold this pose as the curtain comes down in anticipation of justice finally arriving or change finally occurring. That was something that we kept. Other than that I don't think so. But for me, it's always interesting if the language is always talking about the physicality that's happening. So it is like a process of thinking of what will have like a rhythmic feel to it. So that it will be fun to move to or it suggests a kind of percussion or rhythm. And Crystal as kind of my co-writer, editor, dramaturg is always attentive to that as well.
[00:09:14]
Edith Podesta
Yeah. And in working with Crystal, we were talking last night in the post-show dialogue, you said that you left a hole in the middle of the structure. Can you talk about that hole? And is that hole in the text? Or, you know, first act, second act, hole? You know, was that something that you intended to have as an opening for for choreography? Or was that something that you wanted to play with as a writer, using movement as language.
[00:09:42]
Jonathan Young
A bit of both, but when we began rehearsals, there was no writing there. The play got to a certain point, and then it picked up again. And that yeah, that that was really because at some point, it feels like my job as the writer has to follow the dance. So that its expressive power is as essential as the text. So then it was my job as kind of the writer-inspector to sort of watch what they were doing in rehearsal and in a way, try to inspect it or to describe it as though I was watching evidence flying by. I'm trying to capture as it was going by what I could as I was watching it. So that part of the rehearsal process, it was just like, reams and reams and reams of writing that we just sort of sifted through and well that kind of described, that's the most succinct description of that piece of movement. We were trying to identify little words that that had resonance. It was that that kind of thing. And the hole was really left. I mean, what I love about the play is that this guy who shows up in this town, and he gets just absolutely wasted, they give him all this vodka to make him tell the truth and say who he is, but it doesn't work. And he passes out. When he wakes up in the morning, he has this decision of what he's going to do, and he's going to expose these people for who they really are. He's going to take this corrupt, cruel system, and he's going to sort of show it to the world. So he almost becomes like a kind of whistleblower like he infiltrates this situation. He then describes it to the outer world, where word gets out about what's going on here. It just seemed like that was kind of a good point to maybe in this sort of weird hallucinogenic night where he's become somebody else. That seems like a good point to sort of turn the show into a kind of dream, or hallucination or something, or to open it up so that we could maybe explore its subconscious.
[00:12:12]
Edith Podesta
Thank you, Renee. How did you work with the text? Did you get the audio recording? Did you get to see a copy of the text? How does that work as a dancer?
[00:12:23]
Renee Sigouin
So I had-
[00:12:26]
Jonathan Young
She was there from the very beginning.
[00:12:27]
Renee Sigouin
Yeah, the pleasure and privilege of being there, like from the [start]. Jonathan did a table read with- not the cast that ended up doing all of the voiceovers- but an original cast from a pre-test run. So I heard John's original version of the farce script, I was sitting there listening to the actors performing it. And they're all such unique characters in the way that they use their voices. Like, for example, Nikki plays Minister de Sousa, and she has such a very, like a unique raspy kind of dark tone. And then I was talking to her in the, in the kitchen after and then she was using her normal voice, and I was just so thrown by it. So I heard that first sort of table read. And I was listening to how John structures his dialogue. And it's very easy as a dancer to picture how that text is being sort of thrown back and forth between the characters. And also John always uses these words and sentences and like idioms that have double meanings that you can interpret as physical directions. So there's like, this specific characters that you can hear in, in this sort of tone and characterization of the voices that immediately gives you inspiration for, like how to sort of put a character on into your body stylistically. And then there's the percussive and rhythmic nature of the dialogue. And then yeah, these kind of double meanings that imply, maybe a literal interpretation that you could do. So I heard that, but also prior to that I was familiar with, I'd seen "The Statement" and I had understudied "Betroffenheit". So I had sort of tried on that style of interpreting the dialogue already. But as John said, the characters in this piece, were kind of like, just very extreme, the most extreme versions of themselves, whereas in "Betroffenheit", all of the characters were kind of these elements of Jon's voice and Jon's mind. So in the very beginning, after that table read, we did a residency at The Banff Centre, and it was just myself and another dancer andn the technical team, and Jon, Crystal. So I was trying on a few characters- they were all sitting out in the audience, and they would play the text, a few recordings. And I would just kind of do stuff and just kind of like, get thrown into action. I remember, we were doing that first scene with the crazy laugh into a backbend. So that was one of the first thing, and it actually stayed in the show.
[00:15:57]
Jonathan Young
You've been like every person in the show. Yeah, you could perform, Rene could perform any of them.
[00:16:05]
Renee Sigouin
But, Crystal talks about text or language as like an animating force. And so I think Jon sort of touched on this when he was talking about, the farce as a force that acts on the dancers. So as a dancer, in this process, I was always kind of asking myself, no matter which character I was playing: what are the forces acting on me for coming from the narrator, or the structure of the farce? And what are the forces coming from inside of me, springing me into action. There's also an element in the middle section where the text becomes more psychological. And that sort of internal dialogue is something that I always have, even if it's not the text that's being spoken, I sort of have an internal score that I create for myself. So I use that type of thing to interpret the character stuff as well. Especially when I'm playing Misha the character who does the speech. And for Misha, Jon and I have had discussions like- one time I asked him: does Misha know that she's in the farce, or not? And I think it's fun for me as a performer to play with different levels of like, the part getting sort of completely taken by the farce and having that informed my physicality, where I'm sort of swept away with all the other characters. There are also certain moments where I feel more connected to the voice of the narrator, and I feel sort of outside of it, and observing and questioning what the other characters are doing.
[00:18:27]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, it's interesting that that character has a kind of freedom, even though she has no agency. She doesn't speak, she doesn't seem to participate in that way, or can't participate. She is kind of like an outsider or, like a true Insider. Yeah. And we almost forget sometimes that Misha is even there, and then we remember Oh, right. She's there observing and and making stuff happen. Yeah.
[00:18:54]
Edith Podesta
Thank you, I wanted to ask Pawit about the how contemporary dances moved parallel to or away from the Ramakien
[00:19:11]
Pawit Mahasarinand
Last night at a post show discussion, I was amazed by your response that before taking on this project, you had not like read like The Inspector General. I think this is the exact opposite to how Ramayana have influenced dance traditions in this part of the world. We all have read the Ramayana and all versions of it and it has been ingrained in the the soul and the body of the people working in the arts, and also the general public as well. If you are from this part of the world, it's as normal as eating staple food like rice, curry or noodles: we cannot get away with it. And so, I think it vary from like one country to another, how rigid the training is. Pichet Klunchun, the classically trained dancer and choreographer from Thailand, once said that the definition of like contemporary dance varies from one culture to another culture. He said that, in Bangkok, at a post-show discussion, we had a Southeast Asian project, which was funded by the Goethe Institut, and its fire, fire fire. So the Goethe Institut invited three contemporary dance companies from Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, to work on the same scene, the same episode of Ramayana. And they present it for 20 minutes, like amazingly, like different. When you look at the Cambodian version, it still looks like very traditional. So in certain cultures, if you bend one rule, it's not traditional anymore, it's already contemporary. But then in other countries, you have to go very far away from the original in order to be considered contemporary. So I think it depends. But of course, we all wants to get away from the hegemony, from the tradition from the oppression or the suppression- Am I being too political now? The election is next Sunday in Thailand. So, but then again, for example, in Thailand, if a company wants to, like donate money to support the arts, they have to donate directly to the Ministry of Culture. So you cannot directly donate. Well, of course, you can donate to the companies, but you will not get the tax refund benefit. So in other words, the Ministry of Culture control what's being like presented on the stage?
[00:22:39]
Edith Podesta
What stories can we tell, are they controlling the stories that we can tell?
[00:22:46]
Pawit Mahasarinand
There's a recent astonishing case that was about two years ago where the Ministry of Culture stripped the title of National Artist from a writer. Yeah. So they stripped the title, because he was he was too critical of the government. And then, you know, in Thailand as a National Artist, you get a salary as well. You get a salary, you get the health care benefits. And you get official passport. That's how it is, hopefully, it will change. Next Sunday.
[00:23:33]
Edith Podesta
We have hope. Corrie, can you please talk about the creation process of "Mimpi" or "Loading, Unloading"?
[00:23:41]
Corrie Tan
So I think today I'll talk about "Loading, Unloading", because I think "Mimpi" is doing quite a nascent process. Yeah, see a couple Mimpi's artists here: we're still working on it. So I'm going to talk about the work of P7:1sma, which is a dance company in Singapore, it's a Malay minority dance company. Their tagline is "Malay is a concept, dance is a strategy", which I really love. And I've written about P7:1sma's work for quite a few years, before they invited me on board to take on a writer-in-residence role with them, which is quite a shapeshifting role; sometimes being like an embedded critic, sometimes being like a text dramaturg. So I quite like moving between these positions. "Loading, Unloading" was kind of the first formal relationship we had as writer writing with and for P7:1sma, which was a really enjoyable process. So I maybe I'll talk about writing about dance later. But today I'll talk about the kinds of narratives that P7:1sma uses in their work, maybe using narrative in a more expanded sort of way. So "Loading, Unloading" is the first time P7:1sma was commissioned to be part of a visual art exhibition at the Singapore Art Museum, which is temporarily now located at the Tanjong Pagar DistriPark, which is right in front of the port in Singapore. And of course, the port is a huge part of Singapore's economic identity, which is something that P7:1sma was very interested in interrogating, through their bodies, thinking about labour around the port. So they kind of took that as a point of embarkation.
So I'm going to talk about two kinds of narratives that we looked at in the process, one a more macro narrative and one very much more micro. So P7:1sma enjoys inviting in researchers or subject matter experts in the first phase of their creation process, where they really can expand or wander down as many themes or thematic interest as possible, before becoming a lot more are focused in their scope. So we invited in the architectural historian Dr. Imran Dean (?)- who is just phenomenal, he's an incredible academic- to really talk about histories on maritime labor, and also naming and mapping, right in the Southeast Asian Archipelago or the Malay Archipelago, the Nusantara, in particular. When he was talking to us during that first lecture with all the dancers in, all the creative team, the sound designer, set designer, he really spent a lot of time thinking, how do we map this part of the region, and the connections between sites through import-export, trade, not just in the contemporary era, but even during the colonial era, and also pre-colonial? And we were very interested in thinking, how do we shift the narrative of this region told through maps? Which the Europeans did a lot where they mapped us in all kinds of directions. I think one of his first invocations to us was how do we peel away from a Eurocentric story, and really rethink the connections we have with other sites in this area. And he kind of invoked the Malay term for map which is "peta", but also talked about the Javanese etymology, which is "peta" or "petatan", which can mean shape, imagination, visualization, idea, notion, concept, and mode of action.
So mode of action was most interesting to us. How can we remap the site through the body as a mode of action? And that really was a question that I think lingered with us. And the performance as they thought about how their bodies would interrupt. You see their bright yellow kind of costumes, the very, very invisible labor that was taking place at this site. So there's kind of broader decolonial histories that we're thinking about. And then in terms of a much more micro-history, we did an interview with a prime mover driver at the port. So all of us gathered, and he kind of shared his what his work was like everyday as a prime mover driver in this massive, sprawling space, we actually got, we got PSA Singapore to drive us around the port. We couldn't take any pictures, unfortunately. But it really was, it was an experience. This driver, whom I'm going to call 'S', he really talked about the enormous sense of isolation, just driving for 12 hours a day just alone in his booth, and just trying to keep himself from boredom, so you won't fall asleep. Because accidents can really be fatal when driving massive containers. And so you see in this image, you see four radios in front of the structure. And he said he would often refer to his radio as his best friend, he would anthropomorphize his radio that accompanied him throughout his day, and he will often like sing karaoke by himself in his little booth. But every single prime mover in Singapore is installed with an anti-drowsiness device. So it's a little camera that is focused on the driver at all times. That can pick up the biometrics of your face and see if you're falling asleep. And if you're falling asleep, you're yawning, or you're showing signs of sleepiness, they'll know in the control room and like, make sure you're awake. So they're under constant surveillance as well. And so he said sometimes when he's singing karaoke, who like yell really loudly, and then it looks like he's yawning. And the supervisor be like, are you falling asleep? He would say, nah, I'm just singing. So we so we took both these narratives, I think, the broader scale of the narrative that Imran was talking about, but also these tiny mini stories. So the radio plays a big part. In the soundscape of the work. You can see a close up in the ways in which I think the show intervenes in different sites. So this is just one of the site specific activations that we did. We also did it in one of the cargo lifts. And what was interesting is that the lift broke down, so we actually had to get a lift technician to come fix it. And then he was so fascinated by the show that he stayed on to watch literally what was kind of us emulating the kind of work he was doing. Yeah, so I think maybe I'll stop there for now you can ask questions.
[00:30:27]
Edith Podesta
Yeah. I think you know, you were talking about personal narratives. So I think I might tie that to a question that I have about source materials. So we've been talking about narratives, but creating from original texts or physical scores or research materials, imagery, but this personal text- I mean, Jonathan, you dealt with that in "Betroffenheit". Can you talk about that or "Parade" and "The Statement" about using maybe personal narratives or an incident event? And then using that as an entry point into creation?
[00:31:07]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, I mean, I guess "Betroffenheit" was the first time that I had done that. Currently, in Canada, it seems to be a sort of prominent mode, I would say, is to use personal experience and to turn it into theater. There's a real trend right now of almost kind of like confessional work, and sort of eliminating the barrier between performance and audience and really trying to say, "Hey, it's me, and this is my story," and a kind of focus on that. I'm slightly allergic to that, I would say, and I don't gravitate towards it as an artist, but this show was about a personal experience. And I was as interested in the self. And the various events that occur within a self that has been, I don't know, fractured or broken, or is dealing with some sort of, like, cataclysmic event, and I was interested in seeing if the stage could be that self could stand in as me for example. And I mean, our approach to that was to kind of like, I would say, inflict the stage with a disorder, like a post-traumatic disorder. And we were looking at text as kind of one force, you know, the conversation that and as an approach, like, as a mode of as a mode of action. That kind of strange thing, where we always consider the language as kind of like the primary mode of action that drives us and it influences behavior and and narratives become entrenched. So that was one force in our show. And then there's the physical self that is very much a part of that, and also totally separate from it. And that, I mean, that's kind of how that show came about.
[00:33:16]
Edith Podesta
Because the title means, you know, having no words,
[00:33:19]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, it's a mysterious word. And there's no direct translation for it in English. And that was one of the reasons why it seemed like the right title. For me, it was that it was it was naming an experience that couldn't be named, it was like approaching something. It was approaching a kind of frontier where language failed. And it also Betroffenheit that like had a kind of explosive quality to it, too. Yeah.
[00:33:52]
Edith Podesta
Because I remember, I'm interested to know how you introduce the subject matter of that personal experience to the dancers, because I remember when I when I saw it, in the UK, I didn't read anything about it. I just bought my tickets turned up at Sadler's Wells. And I was like, Okay, great. I want to have- But the problem was, is that midway through the show, I find myself being emotionally tortured, and not knowing why. And I'm like, Wait, what is this show about? I'm like crying, but I don't understand why. And I was obsessed. When I left. I was like, uh, I have to read up everything now. So then how? How was it? What was the process of introduction, the creation process when it's your personal event? And you're working, you know, with this idea that you cannot describe this tragedy? You know, there are no words.
[00:34:47]
Jonathan Young
I deliberately kept the specifics of the backstory out of the show. Because I think, out of respect for the backstory in some ways, right? Because I didn't, I didn't feel like I wanted to use it in that way. And yet, there was still, it felt like, I mean, I was the person who was going through that event. And so it was my own content, but at the same time, it was much bigger than me. So I had to approach it carefully and with respect, and you were on stage I was on stage to Yeah, I mean, it was it was a kind of horrifying thing that I put myself into. But I mean, I guess I was interested in the kind of obliteration of self or getting past that like so. And also, the unlike "Revisor", where we have a cast of voice actors, it would like Renee said it was just my voice so we were able to kind adjust as we went along, I would just make recording after recording after recording as we worked. Yeah, I was sort of the self at the center of it. And I was also just a performer doing a job. It was kind of like crazy making. But it was also an interesting and, like, very valuable thing to do. It was incredibly hard. But it was also kind of nice to be freed from it. And to show up and just have to go through a series of moves. And sort of to go through this labyrinth that all plays are where you, you know, there's the moment you begin, and then you go through this crazy series of steps, you get lost in it. On a good night, you kind of almost wake up and it's over, because you've been inside it, and you forget about time you forget about yourself, you forget about all the things that you're constantly preoccupied with during the day. So it's like an hour and a half of kind of freedom from the self. And there's something beautiful about that. I mean, I guess that's what becoming super-present is all about, right is becoming detached from who you are. And those voices inside that are always with you.
[00:37:07]
Edith Podesta
What heavy subject matter to want to spend, you know, an hour and a half revisiting.
[00:37:11]
Jonathan Young
It came to a point though, where it felt like its own thing where the show took on a life of its own. So, I just had to play a traumatized guy. You know, it was like I was showing up to play a version of myself. Yeah.
[00:37:27]
Edith Podesta
And can I ask Renee, when you work with a choreographer? Do you work outside of text as well, with another type of text? Like, for instance, we were talking about maps before? Do you work with physical imagery in place of text? Do you work with? Sounds? Do you you know, is there a set of instructions rather than a narrative that you work with? What are the different types of physical scores you would work with in terms of creation, movement creation.
[00:37:58]
Renee Sigouin
There's so many. I mean, as a performer, I'm really interested in work that sort of intersects in physical theater and dance theater. And so that's mostly what I've been doing for the last 10 years. And everyone that I work with, has a different approach. So with one company that I work with outerspace (?) one of the choreographers, Tiffany to Garthen (?) really loves to work with sort of psychological statements. And so we will work and build sequences of movement or motifs that really have like a psychological sort of DNA. So an example just something as simple as like, nevermind, and several of these statements in a row that can influence sort of a rhythmic sequence of movements. And then also, you mentioned sounds, I think something I was gonna mention earlier, was that the way something is edited can really influence like a state that you can create. Even if there's already a set piece of movement, or if it's improvised. An example, in "Revisor", in the middle section, the way some of the text has been edited, is really layered on top of itself and sort of relentless, and as a dancer, I can take that and sort of interpret it in my body as being kind of tugged in multiple directions at once and the tension between being pulled and wanting, wanting something else. Yeah, so I think psychological states coming from text and sound influence a lot of how I work with movement, in terms of improvisation, or creating movement or interpreting choreography. I've also worked with performing text in like a more abstract way where the text is not necessarily narrative or directly related to the movement but more kind of influencing the mood or general feeling in the overall work? Yeah. When we're working with text with Crystal and Jon, one of the big ways that we have been working is like, very literally illustrating the sort of tone and texture and rhythm of the text, we'll try to insert as much detail as we can, as precisely as we can, starting and stopping, showing this sort of dynamic of the text. And I think, at one point in rehearsal, Jon sort of started to realize that it was also interesting to sort of shift the route that relationship where like, the movement doesn't align with the text, exactly, or at all. And so I think there's like a really wide spectrum of how we can physically work with that relationship between words and choreography.
[00:41:56]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, it's kind of endless. Yeah.
[00:42:02]
Edith Podesta
Yes, thank you. More shows more shows. Now, probably, can I ask about any examples from you know, the extensive interviews that you've done with dancers in Thailand, like Chompee's interest in Franz Kafka, for instance, as a as an entry point into creating?
[00:42:23]
Pawit Mahasarinand
Well, I think in the case of Jitti Chompee, is quite unique in the sense that he started with to become really interested in Franz Kafka's work, and then he adapted it into contemporary dance work. And then he started at a festival called Unfolding Kafka Festival. Which, come to think of it, the Kafka wrote about almost about everything. Right? So it can be anything, right? This festival can be anything. So it's like, "Unfolding Shakespeare". Which is like a smart title. Anyway, so in so it's a it's a biennial, contemporary dance, and visual art. Yeah, like in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. And so, I think he, I mean, I'm sure that he hasn't, he hasn't read like all of Kafka's works, but he is interested in like, certain certain words and certain themes that he created his own works, so and I think it's like an entry point, like, in the sense of like, to try to, like connect it to your work and also to your audience. So when the work is performed, like overseas, like Westerners, or Europeans, or Americans or Canadians, they at least know Kafka, along with an element of Thai traditional dance into it, so that you feel that you, you know, something about it. And then you're, you're curious, what is what is this creation is like. When I watched "Revisor" last night, I also felt this creative freedom, like in the work, because, unlike here in this region, not only Southeast Asia, but I think in Asia, in general, we are quite confined, like by by the separation, like for example, between dance and theater. So in other words, like, if you were, if you're trained in a dance school, you're not supposed to speak: this is dance, just move! And then if you were trained in the theatre school, then you don't know how to move, which is like, for me, it's, it's totally unnatural. Because like, we as a human being, speak and move naturally. And we'll come to think of it in our traditional performing arts, dance, theater and music had always been together. And then colonization: and then we started to do separate like the dance like dancers from the musician from the theater artists now but now like, those, like European and American countries, that they're bringing them back again. So I think it's time for us as well right to to come back together and like see how, like for example, a Pichet Klunchun, he's a very good actor as well. He is very good singer as well, even though I mean like he doesn't sing in his performance. And then if you think of his most like, known work, Pichet Klunchun and myself is theater. Right? Like this, these two, these two dancers, they, they show to us that they had just met. And they repeated it like, over and over again, like more than 150 times, like all year. They're acting, and they they're talking about their work. So I think it's important. Yeah, I think it's important to just like get back to, to this creative freedom, I think that is I think it's important for development of our contemporary art here in Southeast Asia,
[00:46:35]
Edith Podesta
The freedom to pull from any genre from any work of art.
[00:46:39]
Pawit Mahasarinand
And then I think the freedom to just like create your work from anything. And then use any possible mode that you can or collaborate like with people who have different training or different practice, like so that to just to make sure that you can get your your point across like to your audience, you don't have to be confined and then come to think of it. I mean, the trend worldwide now is that festivals are changing names. So use do you see less? I mean, like, you'll see the fewer like genre-specific like festivals, right, like theater festival, dance Festival, what you see like more arts festival or like something like Unfolding Kafka, can be anything. Right? You see more than that? Because that that's, that's, that's that the zeitgeist of especially like after COVID. Is it after COVID, we're still during COVID. Right?
[00:47:42]
Jonathan Young
What's COVID? What's COVID?
[00:47:45]
Pawit Mahasarinand
And we realized that we were closer, like to each other and different different fields. Right? Like before COVID. We did not even know what PPE is right? Now, we all know that PPE. It's a medical term, PPE. But now beyond. Do you know? You didn't, right? And so yes, I think it's important to, for I think, for educational institutions to be aware of this and make sure that of course you want to be you want to be trained fully in each field, but you cannot decline the relationship like among all the fields, and also the the arts and the science and the society as well.
[00:48:36]
Edith Podesta
Thank you. Corrie, can I come back to you with the maritime histories and movements like the performance of the human the organic movements that you found, when you were doing your tour that you have no evidence for? Because, you know, very secret. But can we talk about machine, organic labor? How you were using that as source material?
[00:49:00]
Corrie Tan
I might,
[00:49:02]
Edith Podesta
you can answer the question any way you want.
[00:49:05]
Corrie Tan
Yeah, I might actually say, I've talked a little bit about "Loading, Unloading". And actually, I might respond maybe with a different work. And a bit nervous, because there are a few "Tactility Studies" people here. But I'm gonna talk about "Tacility Studies", which is a long term project that I've been dramaturg for and actually the co-creators are in the audience. So it's a long term performance project by theatre and dance artists, Chong Gua Khee and Bernice Lee. And it really comes out from this, what they call the exploration of the body as theater. So it's very much thinking about the body as a kind of site for source material for this work. And really began as an invitation in 2019. We first started for audience members to really open up their bodies as the site for performance. We were very interested in thinking, how is the body read? How do we read each other's bodies and body languages? How do we develop competencies and fluencies and literacies? In the ways in which we connect with each other? And because it was I think they started to exploration in 2018 and they got me on board in 2019. So the kind of Me Too backdrop was very strong during this period. And we were thinking a lot about what is transgressive touch, how do we read touch in that way? What is reparative and pleasurable touch? And so the first work that we did- actually Adele, is here also? Yes- The first work that we did was in December 2019, not knowing the impending pandemic that was upon us. It was a very touch base work where audience members like G here is just being caressed by the various performers. And we're thinking about how we built consent into the ticketing or invitation process where audience members sign up to either participate or observe like, I don't want to be touched at all, right. So the body very much became source material. Even during workshops where we were workshopping in various phases, some of the exercises will include, because this is kind of based on us on a score. We brought in like conversational scores, or maybe workshops would begin with, how do we think of the word "brew", how does that unfold in a way we connect with each other physically.
And this pandemic happened, and it's very hard to do a piece about touch when touch is being pathologized. So we went through a lockdown as many other countries did as well. And it was interesting to me as a kind of academic and observer of this work, to think about how the work was not just being choreographed by the body, or the bodies of the audience members, we invited into the space, but that the state was also a choreographer of us. We have an Infectious Diseases Act in Singapore that had very strict guidelines around gathering. And it really looks like a score, right? Like you cannot — you must be two meters apart. And the guidelines for live performance, we're changing, like, every week, we wouldn't even know whether the show would open. We had to adhere to something like performance have to be behind a screen, how many meters away, like, do they wear masks? Do they not wear masks? Can we can people can the soles of people's feet be touched? Like you know, all these things we had to think about, which were very stressful, and in the weeks leading up to this work. So the second kind of iteration of a branch of "Tactility Studies" took place just after our Phase 2 Heightened Alert. Yeah, so many phases in Singapore. And we had, you can see here that bib (?) is performing behind the screen, we had a designated chair where audience members could sit. And it really felt- Yeah, like, like, our bodies are being oddly kind of, we're adhering to interesting kind of social choreographies of the state as, as we will also choreographing this work. So it was interesting to think of, in retrospect, now, the Infectious Diseases Act kind of sort of source text, or different guidelines for live performance that we weren't hearing to also be a kind of source text or para texts for the choreographies that were taking place. And also, I mean, just Well, I guess in terms of literal text, one thing very important to "Tactility Studies" is the invitation we extend to audience members and the kind of disposition that they have when they enter space, how they make acquaintance with the space or the performance. And often there's this little invocation or invitation that that is in text that is kind of incorporated into the piece. And often there'll be a kind of conversation, conversational score post-show to the world. It's not really a post-show. It's really kind of part of the work as well, I don't know if it is answering your question.
Edith Podesta
No, no, you're not rambling. It's all gorgeous. Please continue. This is great. This is great. No, no, no, please feel free to disregard my questions. Or do you could just go off and dance if you want, I'm happy for anything. It's all good.
Corrie Tan
You know, speaking of you know, talking about dance, you know, a word, a sound, a movement, a score dictated by the government, you know, there's this idea that, at the end of a meal, we might say, oh, we can't write about music, for instance, you know, because it's a language unto itself. You can't criticize music. How can you even encapsulate music when it's you know, it doesn't have words, it's a sound, it's a feeling. But how do we write about dance? So I wanted to ask the two reviewers, critics, dramaturgs on the panel, and then if you've any ideas about how we write about a very physical medium. Actually, that's interesting, because I think they're the reason why Bernice and Gua Khee invited me to join "Tacility Studies" was because of the way I wrote about movement and dance. So I don't know if this is specific to me as a person. But I've, I really enjoy writing about gesture and movement. And something I think they said about my writing, which I wasn't aware of, is that they said it was very tactile and very sensorial. And I've been trying to think about why that's the case. And I don't know if this is unique to- I only found out very recently that not everyone experiences emotions, physiologically. Which was very shocking to me, because I experienced things very physiologically. And I realize some people do and some people don't after like, informally polling people. But when I watch shows, or even if I have encounters in my daily life, I'm very aware that I embody emotion very extremely. So I often describe watching a show to me, as a critic, as I feel like a big tuning fork, I feel like I'm vibrating with a show. And I will feel the emotions of people on stage, or that I'm watching extremely deeply in my body, like I can tell you like, my heart is literally aching, or like, my fingers tingle. It's almost like synesthesia. So I often feel that when I'm watching a work, I am like, embodying and I can have very strong physical reactions to a piece like, like, not just crying, like I, like, feel very shaken by something. And then when I come out of that, I tried to capture that feeling in the writing. So that is how I write about dance. And so I focus a lot on these kinds of bodily experiences, whether it's like, sweat, or like observing sweat, or breath. Or if I'm sitting on concrete, the sensation of concrete, you know, like, you know, just trying to capture a lot of sensations in text so that you also feel my text, crawling through your body. Something like that. Yeah, I've experienced that reading your work, you know. And so it's really interesting that you feel that you are a tuning fork, because reading your critique, I also feel a resonance that I feel the same kind of- and then that's really interesting. Do I want to go to this show or not, depending on your review, depending on how I feel? Yeah, and I think maybe one more thing is that I can also feel I also like that there are textures in language. So I will pick words with certain shapes, or sounds or textures, or they have a crunch to them. Often, I will write a sentence and I'll swap out certain words, so that the cadence or the shape will sit in your body or your mind in a certain way. I've never talked about this in my life. This is really weird. Yeah, so that it will create a certain kind of emotional residue. Yeah. So I think of language as a kind of architecture also. It's a very weird experience. It's great. It's great. And do you (Pawit) write in the same way, when you're watching a performance? How do you share that for an audience who will you know,
[00:58:49]
Pawit Mahasarinand
It is a little different? Yes, but I'm listening to Corrie. And it reminds me of news I read. Last week in Los Angeles, an audience member attending LA Philharmonic had an orgasm. Yes. I think she was from Singapore. I'm sorry. I'm just kidding. That's a joke. But I, I'm just, I'm just like, really appreciate like, when, when people like get this, like, special response and experience towards a performance, like live performance. And this morning, a newspaper was delivered to my hotel room and I was in a toilet and reading a newspaper. And I realized that this is the first time in like, three months that I put my hands on a newspaper. So I think that's, that's how we writers, like have to consider that we don't write for print newspapers anymore. Most of us don't write for print newspapers anymore. And so when when we write online, we have to keep in mind that there are different ways to convey like to, to the readers. So in other words, like online, you can write as long as you want in many cases, and you can put as many images as many photos or video clips or interviews or anything. It's just a new way of of communication and I and I think that that's a new way of of writing Like arts review, as well. And then you have to keep in mind that many of the things that you're trying to describe like what happened in the theater, the video clip like or the photos, like in your, like online article can do that job for you. So you don't want to repeat that. So you write about something else. So I think usually increasingly, and we talked about it the three main elements (of reviewing) like description, analysis and judgment. So I think with the online mode, we can cut down on the description, and we can we can move on to analysis and add judgment. Yeah, so that's, that's I think that's how we like we adapt. And then I think with the digital world with an online mode is easier to connect with other things. And you can do the hypertext in the link and everything. That would, is a different way of reading a review, and also of writing a review. I mean, I always think that a great work is a great work, but then there must be a reason like why you bring like this great work of art for us to view in a specific place at a specific time. So in other words, like why like "Revisor", like now here in Singapore, Asian Premiere, and then I've heard that it's, it's continued to Taipei and Yokohama as well, like later on. Why, why do Asians need to see "Revisor"? Now? Yeah, so I think it's, and also "An Inspector General". Yeah. Which I, you know, it would be like hilarious is if this were like in Thailand, because, you know, Singapore and Thailand are total opposite in terms of corruption. In terms of Yeah, so and I realized last night that I was in "The Inspector General", as well, as a college student when I was what Junior? So I'm for interestingly, in the Thai adaptation, the director is now a National Artist of Thailand now. Not the one who got like, stripped of his title. The Thai name for the title is "Khor Rup Chan". Which sounds like corruption. Yeah, yeah. "Khor Rup" is like "krup". It's like the word that we put, like, at the end of the sentence to make it like polite. Yes. So yeah, I think it like this word would like resonate a lot with a Thai audience. And so, I think I have a tendency to connect it to like to connect a work of art to something else. And also, there's a certain requirement, like by the publication as well, I mean, the online magazine and newspaper as well. Even though I'm reviewing the work that I'm watching overseas, I have to make it like, somehow connected to Thai readers, so that they have a reason to read, like, somehow compare it to a Thai work, or to Thai politics or something that would that would, that would interest the readers Yeah. And but of course, there are there are like, dance criticism, like journals where you have to write like differently. So I think it depends on like, where you do publish, like your writing. And I don't have a Facebook or Instagram. Yeah. So it's like my, my reviews have become like my social media posts. I have too many secrets.
[1:05:15]
Edith Podesta
Thank you for sharing them today. I have one more question that I'd like to ask the panel and then I'm going to open it up to you. So if you would like to ask a question, have a think over the next five minutes or so put up your hand and a microphone will be will be given to you because we're recording this session. I really want to ask Renee about the training of a dancer: in the training as we were saying before, do you do you move into text? Do you look at breath do you look at articulation as well as physical articulation. Are you are you looking at the choreography of the mouth of language?
[1:05:55]
Renee Sigouin
I would say in my training I did, definitely. I worked with improvising with spoken text, I've done some, a little bit of voice work in my dance training, breathwork- Yeah, interpreting physical scores in terms of as a dancer, creating your own movement, or improvising. And, like in terms of interdisciplinary practice, I would say, like, I grew up training in classical piano and singing, I don't sing very much. I'm very- I don't sing. I'm not very good singer. No, I don't. That's why I took singing lessons. But I'm really, really bad.
[1:06:44]
Jonathan Young
Next piece.
[1:06:48]
Renee Sigouin
The dancer who can't sing,
[1:06:50]
Jonathan Young
But wants to and try.
[1:06:54]
Renee Sigouin
So I think actually, like, I've always been interested in this way of performing, even though most of my training and practice is dance. And then I would consider sort of like all of the work in my trajectory as a performer, I would also consider that part of my training, because with every project, there's a figuring out of new skills or new ways to interpret an idea. And so I would say, like, four twist, sort of influence of clowning sort of masking with the face. And yeah, I've I've worked with spoken text in performance. And yeah. So most of my training was dance, but I would say, my interest and the training that I was able to access did have influence from text and theater.
[1:08:03]
Edith Podesta
Fantastic. And then Jonathan, what kind of advice would you give to the writers in the room? Who have never done any dance if they want to collaborate with with a dancer or a choreographer? How do you bridge that gap?
[1:08:17]
Jonathan Young
I think I sort of see my job as creating context, for abstraction. Without spelling everything out. I mean, I'm interested in contemporary dance because of the power of abstraction or pure poetry. And when I'm watching a piece of contemporary dance, I noticed that I'm always asking "Who are these people? And what are they doing? And where are they?" And I love that there's no answer, or there's multiple answers. But if the answer was, well, they're, they're these people, and they're doing this with each other, and they're in this place, then it's lost. It's no longer abstract and it's tipped into narrative. And so I'm interested, though, in providing enough context that the audience then has it like an access point to read abstraction in a certain way without sort of stealing that power. Or you know, explaining it away, I guess. And so I think that, that feels like the kind of work that Crystal and I and the company are doing is, you know, we're working with abstraction and figuration and we're trying to sort of bring them together. But they also still have their autonomy. And so we fail, I think, when one or the other becomes redundant, or illustrative. Something is said and now we show it. And so it's like, we'll either do one or the other kind of thing, right? And it's looking, I am constantly looking for those moments of redundancy, where something has just become illustrative.
[1:10:09]
Edith Podesta
Thank you, who would like to ask any of our panel members a question? Just put up your hand and we'll give you a microphone. If not, I could continue asking questions for the rest of the morning. Any burning questions? Yes.
[1:10:24]
Audience Member 1
Hi, thank you so much for the dialogue is really great and really inspiring. Text and movement: they're both sort of forms of language of expression and I think in all languages, when you translate one to the other, there are some things that might get lost. From a writer's perspective, what are some things that you've seen that have gotten lost in translation; or from a dancer's perspective, what are some things that you are expressing through your movement that just can't be captured by text, just explored?
[1:11:04]
Edith Podesta
It's for all of the panel members.
[1:11:07]
Jonathan Young
Who's gonna take it?
[1:11:11]
Edith Podesta
You can all take it, you've got time
[1:11:13]
Jonathan Young
at once.
[1:11:14]
Edith Podesta
Let's do it then it'll be like the—
[1:11:22]
Jonathan Young
Something that's lost in translation?
[1:11:26]
Audience Member 1
What do you even see when you experience something, you write it, you see it move, it just something cannot be expressed. It has to be.
[1:11:38]
Jonathan Young
I mean, I'm certainly very interested in that as a subject matter. Like with with language, trying to approach something that can't be put into language. I'm interested where things fail, and trying to fail better. I'm coming up pretty short here. I'm interested where things fail, like, as a panelist.
[1:12:11]
Corrie Tan
I really love what you said, Jonathan, about providing context for abstraction, I think that could be used in multiple contexts, I think you do it, I guess, in the writing with dance. But I feel very similarly of that failure to capture. I think the attempt is what is most exciting, that when I tried to write about or with movement, or dance — I think maybe I use movement more broadly because I wouldn't call all this stuff I do with others, like dance work — I know that I inhabit a different territory, or I speak a different language from the body. So all I can do is give you a certain landscape, or snapshot, or long exposure of a thing. And that is what I can do adjacent to the thing itself. And then the both of them combined, give you the experience of the work. So it's not just that. Yeah, so I feel like they work in tandem. I was very inspired by an academic article written by this guy called Theron Schmidt, who says how we talk about the work is the work. And that really blew my mind, because then I think, oh, writing can be an extension of someone's encounter with a piece or extend the lifespan of a work in different kinds of conversational contexts, whether in text, or like, you're just talking to someone after the show about a piece. And I'm like, Oh, how can I contribute to this ecology of discourse about a piece, then it became quite exciting to play with — how something can be written with or about that feels like a coda or little satellites of text around a work. So I don't feel I'm competing, or trying to always translate, even though I do do that. Sometimes it's about context for what it is you're reading in the writing, because you can't really, like visualize the work in the writing. But I just try to capture the affective or emotional experience of the work. Because I know I cannot capture the movement for you.
[1:14:34]
Jonathan Young
So it becomes like a continuation.
[1:14:37]
Corrie Tan
Sort of an extension. I don't know if I'm making sense.
[1:14:40]
Edith Podesta
It makes total sense because it helps audiences locate. I mean, it's interesting when looking at the synopsis for 'Revisor'. You know, there's there's three or four critics responses to the work first, and then it's the synopsis, because, yeah, which I find really interesting, but it does help me locate: "Oh, this is what another audience member, you know, thought when they met the work." Yeah.
[1:15:09]
Pawit Mahasarinand
There is one of my favorite moments in the 'Revisor' that was in last night's show is "The Subject Is Moved". Yes. And for those of you who haven't watched it, I strongly recommend. Look for that particular moment like "The Subject is Moved", I think it answers your question as well. It reminds me of the conversation we had, I think two weeks ago like preparing for this roundtable. And I was thinking of like when we all lived in in the caves, and then probably the men like we would go out and hunt for big animals like bisons or buffaloes. And then they would bring back like to the caves and feed all the people in the caves and cave neighbors as well. And then they would show and tell a narrative of how they kill this animal, this heroic deed. And then they would use a lot of movements, the physical movements, and then there might be some kind of spoken language as well, then afterwards, they would further record this, like on the wall of the cave. And that's a prehistoric cave painting for you. So you see, like, originally, like, from the beginning, they're all together, like this visual art and this performing arts, and in the end is communication. You know, sometimes we think of like dance or theatre or visual arts as as art as culture, but then it's communication. Right? So I think, whatever means that are available to you, you use it, like to communicate your ideas to the audience, because you have to communicate your ideas to the audience. And you have to make sure that, like, you know, I mean, all the means, right, whether it's words, or a physical movement, or music, or visual arts, I think that's, that's important for, for contemporary, like artists to think of. Notwithstanding, I mean, the structure of the educational system that we have, right here in this region, now.
[1:17:39]
Edith Podesta
Thank you. Yes, the microphone is coming to you.
[1:17:54]
Audience Member 2
Hi, thanks for the conversation so far. I'm going to preface that I think, by talking and so this is going to be a very, very messy question. But I think something that I've been thinking about with dance-theatre, and I guess also with musicals is: what is the moment at which the performer or the character, I suppose, is moved to dance or to speak? And I think what you were saying just now about communication, right? What is the choice of the character to do either one or both? Or I suppose the slippages between what they are saying and what they are doing. I think I'm just kind of curious to hear people's thoughts on how do you think about the decision between movement or text or light. And what I found deeply interesting about the post show yesterday for 'Revisor' was the idea of - there is a regime of language, that under which there is movement, and you talk about the idea of like wanting the movement to overthrow the regime of language, right. And I was, so okay, I kind of have a general question about the kind of negotiation of text and movement and other staging devices, I suppose. And then a more specific question, I think, for 'Revisor' in terms of the decision to have the hole in the middle. And then to go back to act four of the farce, right? At what point does the revolution of movement fail? And then go back to to somehow language again, something like that. Sorry.
[1:19:49]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, I mean, for me, it felt like we had to obey the play. The play had to come to an end. But we also needed to or wanted to open up the possibility for something else within it. So we wanted to stage the inspection. And we also wanted the opening to close again, we want that, that forest to return it had to we didn't have a choice in the matter. We only had that one opportunity in the middle to try to let something out: "word must get out" is sort of one of the driving forces within it. But it would be kind of a fantasy to say, well, it's going to go away we get to do away with the ending — or at least that's the obstacle we set for ourselves. Of course at the end of the play also language does something totally different when it comes out of the mouth of the postmaster and it does become a kind of revolutionary force. I mean, it's kind of monstrous too, it's extremely destructive. And we see that person driven into something dangerous, because he has been for his whole life, certainly through the, during the course of the play, he's been holding on to the language that he has been ingesting to the point where he can't anymore, and he's, he's destroyed by it. And he's also one of the people at the end, who is left in that frozen Tableau, and the only person who is free of that is the one who never speaks. I mean, we're exploring these things also, without trying not to sort of impose like a value judgment on this stuff too; I don't think it's saying languages is the oppressive regime. And movement is the sort of pure force of freedom, it's more just looking at the forces and seeing how we can create drama by putting them together. And seeing how they negotiate the terrain of the stage. And because that's sort of where drama is found, I guess, in those forces which need to cohabitate and also are sometimes at odds with one another.
[1:22:09]
Corrie Tan
Sorry, maybe a very brief response. I think it's also because, at least in Singapore's context, it feels like texts can sometimes overtake movements. So the moment you have a piece of text, immediately, people are like, "Oh, what's the meaning", trying to, and something that I've been discovering, through exploring these kinds of more hybrid ways of performance is that oftentimes, in a way, the movement has to be much stronger. And to pull back the text in order for the both to kind of feel equally important and relevant. And the danger of having narrative kind of take over. And then people are like: "Oh, but then". Yeah, so it's just something else, it changes
[1:22:55]
Jonathan Young
It changes the way you read a piece entirely. And language has that way of becoming concrete. You know, these words have their concrete meaning. And I think that that's the terrain the show was sort of exploring and succeeding at and failing at, you know, I think.
[1:23:14]
Pawit Mahasarinand
In response to that, and when I was watching "Revisor" yesterday, I was also reminded of a work by Japanese playwright and theatre director Toshiki Okada. Yeah. And whose work is coming to SIFA next month, this month, like later this month. His plays are very wordy. Okay. So it's a play, I mean, you can read it in dramatic literature classes, but you would not enjoy it. Because you have to, you have to watch the actual performance. And then his performers, where most of them are theatre trained, they would have some kind of movements that are not necessarily relevant to the text. So for example, if I do this, it's not really relevant to what I'm doing. But it's exactly what they want to do at that particular moment. So in this case, the text take over but then again, do you see that kind of like movements that are ingrained in the work as well? And interestingly, his worlds have been presented by dance festivals in Europe, even though it's playwriting: it's a play! You need to read it. Yeah. So I think that that's another example. Yeah. So again, even though we were talking about, like this balance between movement and text and everything. So sometimes, it 3can be a beauty, like of it as well, because it's in life. It's not always balanced, right? Yeah.
[1:25:04]
Jonathan Young
And there's certainly no drama in balance. Balance has to be upset in order for drama to occur. Yeah. The Buffalo has to be killed. Yeah.
[1:25:16]
Edith Podesta
It's like we need another roundtable on listening to dance. Yes, there's a question.
[1:25:23]
Audience Member 3
You've described the process that you came to create, going from text to revised text to movement. And we've been talking about the pull between movement in words. I wondered what you would like as a remnant of this for other people to stage in the future. Is there a movement score? Or is it the text the words that you came up with? What is the best remnant if you like, but for other people to restage this work?
[1:26:02]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, certainly "Revisor" you could read that script and stage your own version. I'm totally fascinated by dance. So and how that's passed on. Like pre-video.
[1:26:16]
Edith Podesta
Laban. Yeah, Rudolf Laban
[1:26:19]
Jonathan Young
Notations right? But before that, it was just person to person to person to person, right. Yeah. It's no other way. No other way.
[1:26:28]
Edith Podesta
Yeah, it was really interesting. I was with the Martha Graham Company. And they were restaging, one of their own works, and for one of the dances, the notation didn't help expand it, the video didn't help really expand the intention that the dancer should have. And I was watching the movement director say no, look at this breath, this breath. So it was the remnant was actually the training of breath in order to understand the video of the movement. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. So So yours would be the script would be the remnant would be the thing that could be taken.
[1:27:13]
Jonathan Young
Yeah. I mean, that's an interesting thing. Would my play "Revisor" be of any interest as a text? You know, what would it hold up? I don't think so. I mean, and I think I maybe would have failed, if it does, you know, like that it can stand on its own without the movement means that it hasn't succeeded as a true hybrid. Certainly, the text for "Betroffenheit" doesn't hold up: it really just is this little thing, which is entirely dependent on the movement. I mean, I guess it holds up it's a fragment, maybe. But I think it really needs to be in concert with that other half of itself in order to live. I think.
[1:27:57]
Audience Member 3
So then your idea of combination for future performers would be say a video the movement plus the text?
[1:28:08]
Jonathan Young
I think so. Or like, it would be the text and Renee. Renee shows up to the new company, and she has the text, and then it's rebirthed.
[1:28:18]
Edith Podesta
That would be so wonderful on Amazon, like getting the script, and then you turn up. Here's your script. Let's go through it. Yeah,
[1:28:25]
Jonathan Young
You pop out of the box.
[1:28:28]
Edith Podesta
The best present? Can we organize that? The most expensive thing on Amazon? I think it would be? We have time for one more question. Well.
[1:28:43]
Audience Member 4
I think I will combine my question. I have two question. So the first one is, why is the intervention of spoken word or spoken texts is much more important in "Revisor"? And also, what will happen? If there's no spoken text or spoken words? Have you experienced how you transmit the information to the audience during the process, or to the drummer to see, for example, without the spoken text or spoken words? Something like that. Thank you.
[1:28:19]
Jonathan Young
And so the question is,
[1:28:21]
Edith Podesta
so I think, you know, during the process, did you take the text out? You know, I think this ties back to what you were saying before, if the text and body are saying the same thing, then one of them becomes redundant. How did you did you explore in the rehearsal room, a period where the text was taken, the voiceover was taken out and the body spoke for itself?
[1:29:49]
Jonathan Young
Definitely not during the farce sections, we began saying this is an obstacle we are placing on the show, we're starting here, we have to find our way through this language to get to this opening where the body begins to speak. And then gradually, I started imposing text on that trying to keep up with it. And in that zone, for sure, there were points where we took a whole bunch out at a certain point because it was almost like a kind of fatigue sets in at a certain point where this language is describing everything that we're watching. Like, I think we can only sort of take so much of that and we definitely pushed it to the extreme. But no, we knew in advance that this text is something — this apparatus — that we are going to be moving within. And that was that was just sort of the conditions we began with.
[1:30:50]
Renee Sigouin
While we were building movement for the middle section, there's something that Crystal likes to do to generate movement just as its own thing where she will sort of examine or distill what's going on in the relationship between the characters. And she'll describe it in a new, very, very simple way. And she'll ask us to generate images or movement, or improvised sequences with each other, that have these elements. Like I'm trying to think of an example I can't she give us a sheet of paper with a list of directives that sort of contain her own very simple description of like a rescue, for example. So [the example would be]: build three images of rescue with your partner. And so we'll generate movement like this. And so that is coming out of the text in a way, but sort of like three steps removed.
[1:32:00]
Jonathan Young
Yeah, or re-translating a scene we have seen in the first half, which was all about dialogue; people in a dialogue and taking that out, and looking at it purely physically, and then kind of eroding it or essentialising it or something like that. So that it does, there is a stripping away there.
[1:32:23]
Edith Podesta
Corrie wants to be very democratic, and because you also put your hand up, you get the last question. The microphone is coming.
[1:32:35]
Audience Member 5
Okay, so we've been speaking a lot about like how dance have been manifested through text, or that text taken as the source point, but I was wondering like because, you know, most texts from life into text then adapted into dance. But what about the other ways? Have y'all done anything where text was adapted from dance that was adapted through life and skipping the writing part? Because I think most of the time when we do dance, it's from texts as a source material. You know, but have you seen the other way where dance is the source material and texts are created from that and then without a text before that, you know?
[1:33:24]
Jonathan Young
I mean, because, you know my role in the company is now outside looking in. And I'm on this tour, not because I'm performing, I'm just here for the roundtables, but it's also because when I'm watching them rehearse and we're thinking about a new piece, I'm just watching how they interact and who they are and how they move in the rehearsal room, and how they go from moving something and then talking amongst themselves about what they just did. So in a way what I'm thinking about now is how they are moving and so in a in a way it is the origin for these language ideas that I get from it that turn into notes, that then turn into dialogue which then get imposed back on the movement. So there is a kind of loop