Cut it in half
German choreographer Alex B speaks to Youssef Rakha about her latest show
Of the many modes of artistic interaction now suffusing Egyptian culture contemporary dance is among the most promising. Free from both the limitations of the word and the associations of national or Western identity, it has become established as a particularly inventive form of self expression, often relying more on creative improvisation than on more accepted methods. The least Westernised practitioners have testified to feeling, in the process of coming up with a piece, a sense of freedom and personal identity seldom to be encountered in other forms of dance. And irrespective of one's response to a new show it is on the availability of choreographers and performances from all over the world that the future of contemporary dance in Egypt relies.
The presence in Cairo of the Berlin-based choreographer Alex B, who presided over a two-day workshop and gave two performances of her Me, Myself and I on the Al-Hanager stage last week, was one example of such exchange. Organised by the Goethe Institute, both the performance and the workshop attracted dancers and interested parties from the theatre. And for Alex B herself the experience proved sufficiently engaging to solicit the desire to come back and work. The exchange was, in this sense, unequivocally commendable.
"The workshop was very, very good," the choreographer reported. "I was very surprised by the creativity of people here. They come to you with so much freedom. It proves that there can be great contemporary dance here, all this creative potential. There was very little time -- two six-hour sessions -- but we tried to make the most of it. It's very difficult to talk about. There is nothing I can say except that it was very good, very creative."
More generally, Alex B found being in Cairo "super interesting". The workshop apart, organisation was smooth and effective; and the response of an audience attending this decontextualised "anti-Cairo" show proved remarkably stimulating. "I don't mean 'anti-Cairo' in any negative way," Alex B qualifies her statement. "But the show is so quiet, so diametrically opposed to the atmosphere of the city, it strikes an anti chord."
The show, for its part, was perhaps not for everyone. Split into two 25-minute parts that concentrated respectively on music and movement, it was structured to disorient and based largely on the concept of dichotomy. Sitting through the first part, however, many audience members were expecting movement. And the failure to see anything other than a kind of DJ standing by a keyboard to one side, with a clarinet and saxophone on the floor before it, and eventually a musician who seemed to come and go, picking up an instrument, playing for five minutes or so and putting it back down while he performed only the most rudimentary movements, served not only to disorient but to disappoint.
Complex, recorded sound effects complemented the solo playing perfectly but rather than having a relaxing effect on the audience, as Alex B intended ("tonight," she reported following the performance, "people stayed very quiet and relaxed as the music played, so it was like an intervention in their spaces"), it acted to compound the audience's impatience. Nor did the dimly lit, bare yet cramped stage induce serenity, with its predominantly red colours and hollow, tunnel-like appearance. Not until the second part started, following a few moments of by then highly coveted silence, did the audience begin to appreciate that, where movement was expected immediately, the point was to exclude it entirely from the first half of the performance: supply the music first, then stage the movement in silence.
"The idea," a ruffled yet satisfied choreographer on her way to Alexandria insisted, "is to open up a different level of awareness. In this piece especially I wanted to force the audience to perceive things not as they expect but in a different and unexpected way. There remains -- and that's an interesting part of it -- the notion of looking with your ears and listening with your eyes. It ties in with the movement part of the show" in which a simply clad man and woman seem to engage in a complex, ongoing scheme of give and take, playing out a relationship or, more in line with the conceptual basis chosen by the choreographer herself, demonstrating the continuous interaction between two aspects of a single identity, an ego and alter-ego, a person and his soul. Such was the core of the show.
"I had worked with the musician on and off for six years and I wanted to do something with him," Alex B resumes. "Not just get him to do the music for my movement. We wanted to create an evening in which there is both music and dance. To change conceptions and challenge preconceptions. So we thought we'd do it this way. The first half," like one half of the character in question, "would be just music. Then, when the dance starts, there is no music. But in many ways the music you hear still goes with the dance. So it's as if you listen to the music of the dance first, before seeing the movement, and then you see the movement in silence; the music you hear during the dance takes place only when the boy and girl are still.
"My inspiration," she goes on, "comes from watching, observing people and the way they deal with one another. No, no. No physical theatre or Graham Method. Just my own method. I like to improvise and try out different things and every show is different. I also work with different people at different times. Things are continually changing and in Germany the funding isn't always forthcoming. So you can't always work with the same people. Sometimes I work with people I've worked with before, sometimes with new people. In this show, for example, I had worked with the girl but not the boy. And, yes, all things considered, I think it went pretty well."
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 22 - 28 May 2003 (Issue No. 639)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/639/cu1.htm