Note Six

In the nebulous yet rigorous domain of dramaturging, erring among a multiplicity of thoughts and a multiplicity of actualisations, clarity is gained by subtly approaching each performance element contextually. Here, an imperative must always be attended to. Let's call it an immanent imperative, to attend carefully to all the elements present in the situation, even if supposedly peripheral, even if supposedly insignificant: a dancer's specific body and particular modes of moving, of being, and of temperament; a gesture's, or step's, or phrase' singularity within its own logic and within the overall logic of its articulation with other preceding, succeeding, and/or surrounding gestures, steps and phrases; not only an object's material composition and functionality but also the poetic ramifications of its name (for instance how an object works as a mere tool or instrument cannot be isolated from how its name works in a field of words that can create a subliminal yet concrete resonant field of acoustic images, or signifiers). Mapping how all these elements fall into place by sometimes cohering, sometimes adhering, sometimes dispersing, and sometimes conflicting with each other, is the task of dramaturgy. The dramaturg serves this task by identifying, following, and enabling this multitude of forces to follow the lines they themselves draw. This is errancy at work. This is the "anexact yet rigorous" work of errancy.

Actions and interactions as objects, dancers, choreographer, dramaturg, and everyone else, all acting and reacting. Through, and on, this co-active field, not so much a text but a texture is weaved, interweaved, sutured. A surface starts to emerge - a skin, a vibration, a mood. Elements fall into place - either spontaneously, or after months of concatenation.

Erring. Erring. Erring.

Not knowing. Not knowing. Not knowing.

Doing. Doing. Doing.

And yet, there is nothing more terrifying than working from the position of not knowing. But in this very specific terror, the name of a fugitive force is already there, error. This affect is exactly what strikes the dramaturg in his or her daily labour. It is exactly what the dramaturg is constantly being accused of: of making a mistake, of not seeing properly, of not dancing properly, of not deciding properly, of not knowing the piece properly…

To learn how to deal with these accusations of not knowing is the rite of passage all dramaturgs have to go through, at the boiling moment of actualisation, when the premiere is impending and the piece stubbornly insists on remaining a vague cloud. I certainly experienced moments in which dancers demanded that I dance the section I was telling them "did not feel right." So you go up there, you look like a fool, of course, you do not know how to dance but you dance anyway, and everyone has a good laugh and, because you do not know but you dare to dance your ignorance, a blockage has been removed and the work has now found a way to continue its actualisation. But for me, in all my work as dance dramaturg, the real terror of not knowing was only one. And this terror, despite its repetitive nature, is always specific to each and every new piece, so it needs to be dealt with over and over again; the terror of not knowing how to help the work escape the cliché.

As Gilles Deleuze reminds us in The Logic of Sensation, all apparently empty spaces that serve as support for representation (white canvas, white sheet of paper, empty stage, the dance studio) are all already filled, prefilled, actually overflowing with innumerable clichés, which have first to be removed before something else may take place (Deleuze 76-78). This preoccupation of representational space by clichés is particularly prevalent in dance, when not only the stage but also the dancer's body have been filled with techniques and gestures that seem to be readymade in order to serve a certain preconception of what a dance work, an art work, is, or rather, what it should properly be. This is the drama, this is the terror - not knowing how to scramble what already fills up our bodies, our perceptions, or even the piece that is yet to exist, with clichés. Thus, we get lost so that something else may arrive. As Deleuze writes: "The [blank] canvas is already so full that the painter must enter into the canvas. In this way, he enters into the cliché … He enters into [the canvas] precisely because he knows what he wants to do, but what saves him is the fact that he does not know how to get there, he does not know how to do what he wants to do ¹" (underline added).

¹ Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sensation, Trans. D. W. Smith, University of Minnesota P, 2003, p.78.