by Matías Daporta

THE FLOW OF THE WORK

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INTRODUCTION

THE WORKS - FUNERAL WELCOME

- DOCUMENTARY THEATRE PERFORMANCE

- FLAT, NOT APARTMENT

- THE TRAINING

THE MOVIE (concrete & abstract)

- THE STORY

ABSTRACT CONTEXT

- PRIDE AND PREDUJICE AND ZOMBIES

- THE COMPANY & SWEAT

- WORKS IN RELATION

THE MOVIE (second layer)

- OTHER SCENES

- EXAMPLE1 - EXAMPLE2 BIBLIOGRAPHY

SUMMARY

4-5

6-21

8-11

12-15

16-19

20

22-25

24-25

27-34

28-29

30-33

34-35

36-42

37

38-39

40-42

45

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In a period of two years, I made six different theatre pieces: “Funerals, Welcome”, “The influ-ence of John Lennon”, “WorkingMaking out” (with Jochem Stechmann), “Documentary Theatre Performance” (with Esther Arribas) and “Flat, not apartment”. I also had chance to organise a residency space in Brazil with Clara Saito for performance artists (Summer 2013)

The six works have influence on each other, any of them would not have become live if it is not for the previous ones. By trying to understand each work and the works in relation to each other, I find that all of them insist in a certain aspect of theatre. There is also a constant tendency to get closer to cinema, in the first works just finding inspiration in it but at the end making a movie to replace the stage work. (graphic1)

Reading the pieces in this way I feel like reading my future in the tarot cards, and this time they are saying that what I should do next is a movie.

ESTHER.- We want to make a movie, and we are still working on the script. It is about GREGORIA, the main character, who spend her time killing artists.

(…)

This is the first verbal/acoustic line in the Documentary Theater Performance (a). This opening line stays with the audience throughout the piece, and affects their perception; every gesture in the play becomes part of that movie which does not exist and that maybe will never exist.

Movies try to imitate life and sometimes they are good enough to make us believe in the dec-orated life that they recreate. In theatre, we try to play casual or being natural on stage, from time to time the performer manages to trick us and we end up believing that this being “natu-ral” is actually what being natural is, we believe its truth. Now my play managed to trick me and I believed Esther Arribas saying that we want to make a movie. At the moment I am planning to make a movie.

(a) My first graduation piece, shown at Het Veem Theatre (March, 2014) Explained from page10 to 11.

INTRODUCTION

Graphic about the use of theatre strategies compare to the use of cinematic tools.

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In this essay I will only focus in the three works that are more directly related to filmmaking and to content or form: “Funerals, welcome”, “Documentary theatre performance” and “Flat, not apartment”.Analysing the work I hope to make clear the logic under my artistic development and the rea-sons that make me feel as imperative the idea of making a movie; but not any movie, but the movie that I will describe along the pages.

The three works were created independently, although based on different working methods, the three of them have a concrete relation with cinema. The pieces use cinema from different angles, but at the end, these angles emerge from or converge in theatre.

Each work can be imagined as a specific machine: form out of form, fiction producing fiction and spaces inside a space.

1. Form out of form connected to cinema, or editing as a guide for the eye. This is the ma-chine in Funerals, welcome. The relation to cinema comes by approaching editing and the evo-lution of montage as the creation process. The piece was scripted in the past but the product is composing in the moment, meaning product as the result of the exercise that every spectator accomplish while watching the piece.

2. Fiction inside the fiction is the gold of the piece with Esther Arribas, A documentary thea-tre performance. We were working on different motors for this machine, a machine that creates stories and transform the logic of things. If theatre is a fiction, that means everything in relation to it becomes fictional, the whole event that surrounds the play feeds this fiction. So, people partic-ipating in the event take a role of the spectator (like a scripted character). This is the machine that we are building.

3. Spaces inside the space, in which the space is initiated by a projection. A cinema in-side the theatre and a theatre inside the screen, the space as a container of spaces. And it is also about history; the space is what it is now, what it was and what it could be. Abstract space becomes a concrete description, or the other way around, concrete description becomes an abstract space that uses the screen to recreate the space behind to construct a concrete nar-ration on the space.

THE WORKS

Graphic on the shared content of the three different pieces.Underline the cinema related content

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Cinema began as filmed theatre, because there was nothing else before.During the 20’s a cinematic revolution occurred after the publication of ‘’theory of montage’’ by Sergei Einseistein. For the first time the montage was raised as a crucial part of the art of cine-ma, the film was no longer just the narrative, but a complex machine of meaning.

Funerals, welcome is a metaphorical recreation of those events, transcribed into theatrical expe-rience. The piece is divided into two parts, each part takes one of the two periods as a starting point, before and after the book. Cinema shifted from moving image to and image of tempo-rality. During the whole piece the dancers recreate dying scenes from cinema; in the first part death is an on going mantra; in the second part everything action has his own second.

When the audience come in the some lines of chairs are turned around, the spectators in these chairs receive a mirror through which watch the piece. Their arms become the tripod and their hands the camera, the audience choose what to frame, what to watch. There is a break in be-tween the two parts, when the audience come in again the chairs are back to frontal position. One spectator is invited to the space and is given a phone, this spectator receives information of how to watch the rest of the piece (distance, angle, position…); his spectator is the only cam-era now, the rest of the audience need to imagine what the “camera” is receiving.

The piece premiered in HetVeem Theater in Amsterdam in May 2013. Funerals, welcome was possible thanks to the collaboration between the University of choreography (SNDO) and Samu-el Feldhandler, Wilhelm Bloemberg and Thais Hvid (from the Modern dance department, MTD) of Amsterdam.

Let’s keep talking about it…

-FUNERALS, WELCOME(Het Veem theatre, April 2013)

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Deniz Buga 1: To me the piece started when they finished to fix the seats and the public began to use mirrors…

Deniz Buga 2: normally at first, I refuse to take part in performances-experiment, but in this case, I needed to be part of what I was viewing.

DB1: agree, to have all the possibilities of action. And how was for you to leave the room?

DB2: well, to re-enter the gates had been opened, the ground colour change, and everything started breathing space. The detail of putting a break in between awakened a special aware-ness of time and space. It was actually great, because I did not know that there was gonna be a second part.

DB1: I liked the fact that one person happens symbolically to represent me, to me and to all the spectators; as if I was said that if the choreographer would had the opportunity to give to every-one that position, he would.

DB2: This makes me be one more, as the piece does not exist without it, then without my either. And they were really integrating the rate of women instead of pushing the pace of the piece. This

DB1: The way she kneed down at the end, maybe it was said to her in the audios, the piece reminds me the movie Tokyo Stories.

DB2: maybe because of the scenes with martial arts or because of the discipline the performers enter and take a really sharp position… That sharpness was resonating on the space, even over-lapping with the architecture…

DB1: It was really intense when the audience is killing one of the performers, I remember it really sharp because is when the audience in not only the viewer but is becoming a killer. So, I be-come the killer too.

Comments

At the right page an example of a possible conversation that could happen in the movie. It is a transcription of comments from an interview to Deniz Buga (filmmaker) after watching the piece.

(The transcription was made as if it would have been Deniz Buga talking with himself to give a better example of the kind of conversations that the movie is looking for.)

12/45

“This piece brings a cultural manifesto, a way to bring our very being Spanish but not very clear, among other things used to express distance and cultural difference in a context as shown in the theater in Amsterdam, conducted through language and humor. “ Esther Arribas

This piece is my first collaboration with Esther Arribas. We share the stage with two other actors, Nicolas Rosés and Maciej Sado, who help the audience to understand the story through the simultaneous translation.

The initial concept states that every life runs towards a fictional image of a representation of life and that image has been created from a utopian impulse, which governs everything in life.

Theater then is in itself a fiction inside a fiction when tries to represent life. As theatre exposes its own fictionality, it may represent expressions of something deeper than life itself, more primordial or authentic.

The process was about writing stories and describing fictional theater/dance pieces. The piece is about those stories performed from different points of view: story telling, speech, acting… But any of them is about our transformation between scenes but about carrying the audience with us; if people can come to the theatre to perform the role of the spectator then we can make them become something else, only fictionalizing the idea of the theatre space. We keep sug-gesting realities and audience is active as they accept or reject these realities in their thinking.

Let’s keep talking about it…

-DOCUMENTARY THEATRE PERFORMANCE(Het Veem theatre, March 2014)

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“It’s a very unpleasant form of aggression.”Marina Colomina (performer/maker)

“It’s a manipulation that encourages people to rethink the possibility that the murder is justified only by the triumph of art, while it satirizes it. The narrative allows to reflect around the idol-Christi-anity-related death in Western culture. “

Lyndsey Houdsen (production manager)

“To bring this fiction in, the piece uses all means. The narrative is posed at the beginning, to then expand itself to show the power of a hypothetical reality. It becomes a reflection of the times and the world in which we are. “

Lisa Vereertbrugghen (performer/maker)

“I like the character as a way of living, an assertion that stains the entire piece and gives mean-ing to the proposal. Build a fictionalized reality, that is, converts the theater (the event as such) on stage where the at its most expanded way, reaching really far.

Marta Ziolek (performer/maker)

Comments

At the right page an example of descriptive ideas about the piece that came to Esther and me. This kind of sentences are the ones that could be hear in the movie to describe a piece..

16/45

The theatre is a cinema now, the place of the fourth wall is taken away. A screen covers the total front of the theatre. The space behind the screen is projected on it and when the audience is sat down the performance starts, but in the screen. Real sounds and bodies appears sporadi-cally, only to support the idea of the screen as a performer and performance.

Instead of seeing these images as individual shots juxtaposed and strung together, one should see this as choreography in and for the space.

The montage collects, collage, and collate actual and virtual to perform categories of reality. Our actual it is a virtual. The scenes took the form from the virtualization of another moment in time, when it was still actual, but in this space become something else to be actual again.

Let’s keep talking about it…

-FLAT, NOT APARTMENT(Het Veem theatre, June 2014)

18/45

Closeness of the screen, amplifying the sense of being behind the camera, disrupted by the speech, hand, face and visible preferences of the person behind the camera, constantly identi-fying and misidentifying with himthe being here and now feeling disrupted by the knowledge of witnessing the past of the cur-rent space, yet the sense of past is disrupted by the actual presence of the real bodies of the performersGhostliness of space, time, bodiesthe screen as a curtain, the curtain as a screen, screen showing, screen hidingthe relation to the space through exploration, anger, joy, domination, submissionthe power of the body in dominating the representation, click and change the space, pene-trate into the screen, mock the screen as hiding and at the same time celebrate it as revealingbeing the audience of your own performancethe knowledge shared with the audience that is a setting , not as a shock value but as part of the setting, constant miss en abysm that one forgets about the need for realitythe loss of reality when the screen is lifted as if it is a lame copy of it (especially because of the next utterly boring dance performances)

Sent from my iPad

Comments

The following are notes from Aylin Kuryel, documentary filmmaker and cinema journalist. It is another example of the work of talking. She wrote me this comment to say that she will write an article about the piece. Another kind of conversation about theatre.

20/45

I believe that every joy that requires an effort remains.

The question about how the audience should watch the piece is as important as other questions during the process. If when the audience enters on space has to figure it out how to watch, where to go, so breaking a routine in certain sten, it will activate a mental state of alert that will trigger them not only watch the piece, but to think about the decision that have been made. The pieces go from the situation to the action, which modified the situation and so on.

In the movie The Bourne Identity, the main character is an expert assassin on the run from a seemingly ever-present agency, relying on language and fighting skills. There is a scene in which Bourne enters in a café and immediately tells to his partner the number of doors that are in the room, a description of the people around, who is dangerous and who is not, where are the cameras, the phones… In few seconds he managed to read the space through a learnt survival instinct.

After the last piece, Katerina Bakatsaki described the three last works as training for the audi-ence to watch. After she said that I immediately imagine all the audience becoming Bourne agents.

I did three pieces using cinema as starting point...The three pieces worked as a training to be audience...

How could I continue with this series of trainings through cinema?What else can be trained?

…let’s talk about it…

Maybe a piece that is a training on talking about the work….

-THE TRAINING

MONTAGE to show dramaturgy

SCRIPT to show the event

SCREEN to show the theatre space

next?

FILM to show the work

22/45

In the description of the pieces I insisted on the comment of people and not in my own descrip-tion because it have been the most interesting part of the works. Talking and reflecting about different works (before, during and after) it has been my own training during my years at SNDO; maybe it is time to make a piece out of it.

I propose to make a movie, actually a documentary, about how people speak about art works, but not the result, not what is staged in front of the audience or presented in a gallery, but about how people talk about it: the feedback sessions, the conversations with the advisers or drama-turges, the audience’s opinions, the dilemmas of the author...

I will follow three artists during the process of making an artwork until its premier: one dance work, on performance and one visual artwork. I want to shoot and document all the conversa-tions about those works: with friends, family and professionals around. I will also interview people part of the system: curators, programmers, performers and audience.

In order to give access to a broader audience the documentary will be frame in a fictional con-text (page 20). There is and idea of what the script will be but

The people involve, after all their conversations will perform parts of the script that will place all this conversations in the context. The passion for the works will be justifies not only by the work itself but also by the lack of fear to die. (Explained bellow)

THE MOVIE(concrete)

“We mean a certain existence [of matter] which is more than which the idealist calls a rep-resentation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing— an existence placed halfway between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation.” (b)

I want to describe a certain existence (a way of living) which is more than which the idealist (Cinema) represents, but less than that which the realist (Alternative artists) calls a thing. It is about an existence placed halfway between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation. I am talking about when the thing is being created and the time before the thing is represented. It is when we talk about it…

Gilles Deleuze writes that the cinema does not just present images, it surrounds them with a world. But I don’t want to surround mi images with a world, but with worlds. I want to fill the time showing different people as combination of intellect and passion for what they do, talking about what they do, why they do… (c)

During my four year at SNDO most of the students struggles from time to time trying to define what is art. But it seems that is an impossible answer, since art is fluctuating, as the culture fluc-tuates. When we speak about a piece of art from the XVI century we apply the concept of art at that time, if we would compare with a contemporary work we will struggle in between defini-tions. But still we keep talking about it…While questioning we make just in case we find the answers in the doing.

I would like to document artist making work to bring to the cinematic screen not only images and people but their embodiment of the work and the different perceptions, memories, aesthet-ic and ideological and ethical preferences.

(abstract)

24/45

I read a quote from Virginia Wolf saying that death make the time hers, since nobody can die at her place, and that death is the thing that will never happen to anyone, because it is not pos-sible to remember it afterwards. Virginia Wolf writes in her last letter, before committing suicide, that she had the most pleasant life, full of any kind of experience; but there is a mystery that she could not solve because she could not experience it, and this question has been persecut-ing her in all of her books, this gap represents the only thing in life that she could not really talk about, death. She needed to die to fulfil her curiosity. Maybe she had a mental disorder that pushed her to commit suicide, but I would like to see her as an artist, so passionate for what she do that step over the fear of death; she died only to finish her work. And she found the perfect end. (d)

In the piece “Documentary theatre performance” we told a story about a massacre against art-ists (right page). I wrote this story in order to emphasise the intense relation that some artist put in their work, in how involve one can get while creating. Death works as a metaphor of the outside pressure (money, family, system, time pressure, difficulties).

-THE STORY

There is a character, an archetypical busyness man, bored of his life, maybe he even works for the government. Actually is she, a forty-three years old woman and single. One day a book about art ended up in her hands, it arrives by post without any remittent. It is a book of Taschem about one hundred artists, it is a heavy book. The character reads the book, since she has it… She gets really intrigue by this unknown world, the art world; she goes to every kind of events, from installations to dance shows, to museums to theatres to concert halls to galleries. At the be-ginning she does not understand the point of all what she reads but little by little, and after read the whole library of a museum of contemporary art, she starts to has her own ideas.She wants to be part of this world now.Her taste gets refined. her thoughts become opinions. Nothing is about liking or disliking anymore but about reasons, ideas and concepts. There are works that she comprehends, feel interest-ed and curious, get thrilled and excited… But there are works that has the opposite effect, an intellectual disappointment: political incorrectness, historical mistakes, undervalue of culture and so on. And sadly, everyday this works are more present in her life in stead the opposite, as much she read, more she critiques.While her intrusion in the art world she tries to find the Idea. She wants to be an artist, and she wants to be present.Nothing comes for a long time.But there is a work that changes her life forever; I don’t know which one yet.She starts to kill artists out of criteria that is never reveal. It is her artwork. Her statement.

ESTHER.- We want to make a movie, and we are still working on the script. It is about GREGORIA, the main character, who spend her time killing artists.

There is a jump in the story and we are in a police investigation. A police brigade is investigating a massacre against artists. They are totally lost.It is about two inspectors now, Ausilio and Socorro.There is no previous killing pattern that they can follow or get inspirations from, so at one point the investigation has to become and art research.It is insinuating that the investigation follows the same process of our killer.In order to understand the mind of the killer, they have to first understand art. They have to de-velop an opinion in order to confront it with the one of the killer.The inspectors arrive to an exhibition; there is quite some audience. With every frame we get the feeling that the artist is going to die. Murmurs around, not arrogant, just factual. We see one inspectors talking with the artist.Suddenly silence.The artist looks down, the hand of the inspector is grabbing a knife that stabs in the stomach of the artist, this one looks up again. Now we see the face of the inspector, unexpressive and white.

ESTHER.- That pale face makes us understand that he understood why but that he doesn’t un-derstand why he understood why.

And now we are in a near future. To kill artist has become a trend. Some people speaks about an epidemic and others speaks that is the natural evolution of the market. The art production got decrease; artists are dead or too scared to keep producing.Fictional title and poster of the movie. (By Yannick Diezenberg)

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There are three works that I would like to mention in order to continue framing the idea of the movie.

1. Seth Grahame-Smith a writer form USA who had drawn attention to this humble reader's book, "How to Survive a Horror Movie" and with the book about the history of U.S. pornographic film. But I would like to make a brief introduction to other of his books, “Pride and Prejudice and Zom-bies”. The book uses as core the novel from the 1813, “Pride and Prejudice” from Jane Austen but incorporates a contemporary topic on it. The story is set up in a zombie land.

2. Sweat –the movie- was created in Vienna in 2008 and it is the result of a workshop (SWEAT, the workshop) proposed by Tor Lindstrand with Mårten Spångberg. Although the movie should not be watch separetly from the conceptual work behind, in this case I would like to ana-lise it just as a movie about dance. The story tells a tale about 14 choreographers from 11 differ-ent nationalities, embarking randomly on a journey of love, life and dance whilst attending a workshop at Impulstanz, the international dance festival. The movie attempts to introduce a little bit the contemporary dance world while commenting/laughing at the Hollywood representation of the dance world.

3. The company was release in 2003. It is a mockumentary about neo-classic ballet world from poetic point of view, trying to give an aesthetic experience to the audience rather than content. The content is the experience of the dance work as such and all its up and downs. It is one of the few features movies that uses already made choreographies and the real rehearsal of those choreographies in stead to choreograph for the camera.

ABSTRACT CONTEXT

and...

28/45

Seth Grahame-Smith is a lover of literature and thus preserves its essence Austen’s book. And only in certain paragraphs plays and adds fighting against the undead. That means that either way is not a zombie book, neither a melodramatic classic.For some people, Austen’s book sounds absurd and boring as other novels that are based on the inner world of the characters. The author of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” adds just in the right spots so one can finish the book before getting annoyed by the moans of the charac-ters.

The following is the resume of the story (underlined the adds that the new book includes):

Elizabeth Bennet and his family live in a mansion; his father is a wise man who has decided to educate his five daughters not to be wives in life, but his mother believes that all they can do with them is married off well (since the death of Mr. Bennet’s fortune will go to male heirs), that is why she does not understand why the three have been trained in the deadly arts called an Asiatic martial art of self defense designed to meet the undead that roam the British countryside, although militias keep them controlled out of the cities.

In this peaceful life new wealthy neighbors come, namely Bingley, and soon are invited to dine with Bennet’s family with the secret hope that the young Charles Bingley marry one of the daughters. Bingley comes with Fitzwilliam Darcy, a very tall gentleman, even more than Eliza-beth, handsome but pretty quiet. During dinner Bingley suggests that Darcy takes Elizabeth for a dinner but refuses saying she is not beautiful enough. Making Elizabeth furious and attacks with his sharp wit to Mr. Darcy.

Overcome this setback the lesser of the Bennet’s sisters (Jane) is invited to Bingley’s residence whre a budding relationship arises. Meanwhile his family tries to marry Elizabeth with cousin Collins, a pompous pastor whose patroness Lady Catherine de Bourgh (who holds a secret army of trained ninjas and is considered one of the best warriors of the kingdom) believes he should marry one of Bennets.

After a dance in which it is suggested to Darcy to dance with Elizabeth. There they bitterly argue and while he admires her more and more, she hates more increasingly, until all of the sudden a zombie attack makes everyone go into combat mode, but only Darcy and the Bennet sisters are up to face the horror.

This is the moment when Wickham makes an appearance, an officer who makes Elizabeth be-gins to fall in love, and who hates Darcy (hate is mutual) because he, allegedly, stole his inher-itance. After the appearance of Wickham, Bingley disappears and gives no signs of life to Jane, fact that makes her really scared and ask for help. Elizabeth will have to find the love of her sister, discover the truth about the relation between Wickham and Darcy and survive the zombies. (e)

-PRIDE AND PREDUJICE AND ZOMBIES

Austen’s book opening lineIT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

Grahame’s book opening lineIt is a truth universally acknowledged, that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.

30/45

This movie from the 2003 was a collaboration between Neve Cambell (co-producer, co-writter and main character) and the director, Robert Altman. The film is a mockumentary that bring us inside a ballet company to show us the poetry and beauty of dance at the same level as the sacrifice and the routine of the work, the making and rehearsing a performance.

The storyline is minimal, and it mostly shows the real Joffrey Company of Chicago (there aire just three professional actors, the rest are dancers of the company). We are present in their exercis-es and performances, with some notes about their private lives that leave the discovered the distance there may be between representation and reality. Although the story focuses on young Ry, played by Campbell itself, this movie is more like a coral portrait.

The director was introduce to the ballet world because of this movie, and we, as spectators, ex-perience the director and a novice observer; we can appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of the dancers, to see them as human beings, with their successes, their skills, their abilities and their limitations and obstacles.

It is director of the company the one who introduced us, with his corrections to dancers, in what for him is the art of dance, and talks about the need to express with the body rather than the face, to convey the interior light inside them or make the movement that is latent in their bod-ies. The director tries to make poetry through the different frames and shootings, putting them in tune with the precision of the choreography; and he even gives space to make a fun of this over makeup movements in a parody that dancers make in one scene in a party.

The camera remains contemplative but jumping between a more dramatic to a tender look when collecting the tests or where the routine and effort explaining the final perfection. But ins this reality there is hidden from the public their humiliation, frustration and injuries that sometimes shatter illusions about life and sacrifice. In this movie, dancer are portrayed as any other people but with a fragile inner world, and with a sensitivity that sometimes leads them to suffer in solitude the failure or collapse of a forged dreams.

The film collects fragments of a single life devoted to dance, and would not be more than the experience of Campbell, who had to abandon the ballet when she was young by the frequent injuries that she began to suffer. There was not interest for the final reading to the story but for the construction of a “magic moments” that are taking us for surprise in each choreography.The film was highly praised by the critique but ignored by the public, accusing it of sectarian, dedicated to a very specific audience, and bored because of the lack of a strong storyline.

(Inspired by different critiques, (f))

-THE COMPANY

Lindstrand and Spångberg were asked by impulstanz, to come with a workshop that would be more than an educational frame. To set up a frame in which student and teachers share the same level, doing something that no one did before. Because of this frame, the participants should get more involve than if they are listening to someone carrying knowledge, who tells them about how to move or carry themselves.

The workshop, Sweat, proposes to create a movie about this workshop about the production of a film about dance. All the participants of the workshop have alternately taken all tasks, from choreography to film sets construction, screenplay, cinematography, dialogues, training, direct-ing…

As a sort of critique to the dance representation of Hollywood, the movie attempts to show more than what music videos or Hollywood dance movies shows; not only the bodies on stage, lighted and perfect, because this actually happen very occasionally, but also the struggles of the con-temporary dance life of a choreographer/dancer.

The workshop was inspired by a story “On the Marionette Theater” by Heinrich Kleist’s, which fol-lows the conversation between a layman and the first dancer of the urban opera. The layman, fully impressed by a presentation, wants to know what kind of technical mechanism has made it possible for the puppets to dance so convincingly that it seems as though dance itself has been shown in its most perfect form. The dance professional considers this for a moment, then gives an answer: When we see a “perfect” dance presentation and ask how it was done, then we’re al-ready missing the point. It does not depend on the mechanics, nor on the perfected techniques with which the individual limbs of the puppets are handled with the most precision.If one wants to understand why a dance appears “perfect”, it is much more effective not to focus so much on the technical perfection, but rather on the mechanisms of the representation of the dance. One will consider dance whatever he can associate with what he learn as dance, or the mechanisms of representation of it. The same happens the other way around, one will not be able to identify as dance, even if it has been perfectly executed, if it does not suits to the preconceive ideas od dance. What we perceive as dance is what corresponds to its rep-resentation.

The script mixed a complex perspective of dance (dance as a revolution, dance as ritual, dance as community) with a parody of classical representations of Hollywood (Carwashing, videoclip, a ballet class, a moment in a big theatre) but these two world never appear together in the movie but as separated scenes surrounded by love stories and friendship struggles.

(Inspired by different critiques, (g))

-SWEAT -THE MOVIE-

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The living

The training

The rehearsals

The show

34/45

The book makes use of the threat of death in order to give one more reason to emphasize with the characters. The book of Jane Austen belongs to another century but through the adds of Seth Grahame the book becomes contemporary and accessible again. As with the book, the proposal of the movie uses death and drama to give to reduce the distance between worlds (art world and not).

The two movies are really good examples of people putting an effort to bring closer to the cine-ma audience the work of theatre, or to represent fairly the work of theatre using cinema. Sadly both movies “The company” was accused of being too sectarian, relating in the discuss only to one concrete group of audience and “SWEAT” was a movie made inside a very specific context (Impulstanz) and has been shown only in some galleries.

“The company” takes the ballet work really serious, but maybe too serious. The ballet is deified, maintaining this idea of ballet as a high class art. The director tries to break it showing the hum-bleness of the life of the main character/dancer but it is not enough, since the priority of the director was the dance as an art form and the major part of the movie are recorded choreog-raphies on stage.

In the case of “SWEAT” it is more visible the intellectual approach to dance and choreography. Actually the interest is not on make cinema, good cinema, but about the study of the whole process. So, as a movie, the spectator is a little bit left aside and the comments on Hollywood representations makes a movie become a cynical exercise and not an open way to highlight contemporary/alternative theatre. I am afraid that from an outside viewer it gets dismiss or a joke.

In the images bellow you can appreciate the similarities between the scenes from the Holly-wood movie, “The company” and “SWEAT”, we follow the private life of the character/s, the training, the rehearsals and the staging of a piece. In both I miss the time in between those scenes, when people spend time digressing about a work, long and random debates about meanings and ideas.

-WORKS IN RELATION

36/45

Situations will be recorded. After the shooting it is going to be asked to the people to perform some extra sentences that will be add to the conversation in the post production. The sentences will be written in relation to the conversation recorded, for example: if an artist is doubting about the quality of his performance, a possible add could be that he is scare because he does not want to die.

Another scenes will be recorder, apart from the conversations and interviews, to create a sort of narration to the documentary. The idea is to give a strong and easy to follow plot to open the movie to people not involve in theatre. For example, if the process of “Flat, not apartment” as recorded for this movie we could include a scene when the audience is clapping, the maker (me) doesn’t come out to bow, but when the screen is release and uncover the space behind, my body is in the floor, death.

(More examples in the right page)

Imagine a scene in which an artist is struggling with his performance, he is scared that maybe it is too innovative, or too different from what she/he did before.He will be scared of dying. If it is too abrupt change maybe someone will finish with him.

The producer speaking about his responsibility on the work.At the end, producing a work is risking the life of an artist.

An artist doubting about the quality of the work, should I perform it or not. Is it ready or not?It is safer to show it later, to not perform yet, one never knows.

Audience is criticising a piece and speaking openly about her/his opinions.And there is murmurs around, the killer could hear that conversation, or maybe the killer is that person…

Family is pushing the artist to stop making art.It is dangerous.

Art schools speaking about how to make a good program.In order to protect the students life.

And artist is speaking about he capable to live from his artistic work.It is amazing that he manage to survived so long.

We are watching a, general speaking, bad show.A performer killed even before the shows finish.

A discussion about authorship between the performers and the artist.Who should risk he/his live?

A group of artist is talking about opinions and artist from the past.Actually in a reunion to remember the people murdered.

A psychologist is speaking about psychosis in art worls.How many artist are coming to her sessions because the had to stop making out of fear...

-OTHER SCENES

To exemplify more what the movie attempts to do, I have transcripted several conversations. Since the movie is proposed as a documentary, this add that I will show in the example will need to be created on the spot, once the conversations or actions are finished.(The crossed sentences are possible cuts, sentences in the movie that could be remove be-cause of the better understanding of the story. The sentences underlined are the possible adds to contextualise the conversation in the story)

The first example comes from a recoding of the outside eye meeting of “Flat, not apartment”. It happened the 15th of June on 2014. In the conversation were present Roberto Cassaroto (RC, the outside eye), Deniz Buga (DB, the adviser of the piece), Katerina Bakatsaki (the mentor), Ria Higler (director of SNDO), Clara Saito, Simon Asencio and Adriano Wilfred (classmates), Bruno Listopad (teacher) and me (M, the maker).

The second script is a conversation on the 12th of August on 2013 between Clara Saito (CS) and me (M) organising Espaço Mestiço (The residency space in Brazil, 2013).

(Examples from the page 38)

THE MOVIE(second layer)

38/45

RC: is this your work? your piece? – pointing at the hand program.

M: yes, that is mine.

RC: do you want to say something? Do you have any specific question that you want me to address? A specific desired on the formant of the conversation that you would like to have with me?

M: eh, well… First I would like to hear your opinions as spectators… as outsider.

RC: as spectator, and not knowing you, I was really fascinated by the way you created spaces in spaces. And this virtual/real… surreal spaces that I was exposed to, finally watching a theatre piece from someone that have survived his pieces, for all this time, it put me in a very engage way to enjoy the journey. So, I was very curious to meet you and know who is the author, the eye of this interesting way of creating spaces in that specific context. I have some questions about what I saw but in general, the identity of the space was the most intriguing and inspiring ele-ment, of what I will take with me from that experience.

M: (giggling)

RC: so, do you have any specific question in relation to this?

M: no…

RC: can I? can I? Do you want me to talk randomly or do you want me to ask you questions?

M: yes.

RC: I have a big question about the structure of the work. How did you combine the different el-ements that… ah… somehow created this universal situation of spaces. It was so cleverly done, impossible to push down by any crazy theatre radical.

M: The main idea was to make a video that is actually a performance. Like this it would be easy to satisfied different kinds of audience In order to speak… To transform the possibilities of the space… the possibilities of cinema in relation to the possibilities of theatre… So the idea was to make a video that feels like choreography and not like a movie. So that actually you relate to it as if it would be life show. But is true that yesterday, speaking with Clara, she said that at the end was too many tricks, too many effects, and I am agree that at the end we decided, I decided to include all the tricks, that for me are not tricks but reflections about the space, and put them all together. And we dropped the idea of keeping it as choreography, a linear, eh… approach towards the video. Maybe we got scared at the end, of making it too concrete, or to specific, maybe I got scared to take a decision and stand for it. But, what was the question?

RC: if you can talk about the structure, because I have the feeling that…

M: ah, the structure. Well, the structure was basically like this, I had an idea of choreography and this coming…

RC: in and out…

M: yes, in and out. So basically was this, and the structure was how can each of this in and out

-EXAMPLE1

can bring a different perspective of the space. So in each in and out, in the second part, there is a new thing coming.

RC: so would they in and out, also be somehow, shared. Well, you brought the video of the kids, or the video of the guy when he…

M: yeah, yes… the thing for example

RC: is this… part of the idea of bringing those in and out

M: for example, with this example I wanted to bring a very cinematic frame, like a, like a frame of a cinema scene. We spoke about Jodorovski… to have a little spot that is like this, just this, but then you uncover the space. So we bring you to the cinema but then we take you out… you are in the theatre again… everybody happy when we uncover the space. We flat the screen much more, but then we open it and we create space. And with the girls is similar, we bring you to another theatre, another contexts, eh! Another kind of spectacle, for the one who like this kind of things. And then we bring you in again with the next scene… I think is Jonathan, also because the girls are doing like…

RC: ya, making connexions… That was your discovery.

M: yes.

RC: When you say, I did, I did, you mean you made the editing in your own?

M: well, he helped me a lot

RC: so you worked together.

DB: well more in feed back. Giving feedback. In terms of editing Matias has created…

RC: and in set?

DB: I was doing the camera, because it was impossible for Matias…

RC: do you see this work being developed? Was it like ah… a chapter of a final sharing…

M: my dream would be to do it in a lot of different theatres.

RC: but…

M: do the same process. Go to the theatre, shoot, make a performance. So, shoot the perfor-mance of the theatre. Edit. It has to be the same theatre.

RC: yes, you would… am I right to say that you have structure in your mind that can be some-how contextualise in different spaces. And you would bring the same cinematic, theatrical idea.

M: yes, yes…

DB: but Matias, take care… You know and we have talked about it… Finding a technique or a system one can kill her/his own art, and showing that zombie art is like a suicide these days.

40/45

(…)

CS: why did we dream that Cristian Duarte did not replay to us?

M: maybe because we are insecure…? With the project… With the whole situation

CS: maybe we think that we don’t deserve help… because we are not good enough.

M: or maybe that we are really possessive…

CS: and we want the people just only for us.

…or maybe we want to create something from the group, so if there is a leading figure the group can not develop itself.

… It is super cool…

…but then we should make psicomagic act… to make it change.

M: why would that affect to Cristian Duarte ?

CS: because people can… maybe people can feel the subconcious of other people… maybe we are not sure that we totally want him.

M: why do we wait for him to reply, why don’t we let him go…

CS: because we are living what we think is…

…ok wait… now we are speaking about reality…

M: ok so…

CS: Or because in the dream we thought that it would be cool to have someone famous to reach more people, but we did not think if it would fit or not…be secure or not

… so maybe……what we should do ii to put oa frame of how he would help us being part of the project… How can he protect us ?

M: in the dream he said that he would come…

CS: but then he did not answer.

M: but he said that first… then we were waiting also because he made a promise.

CS: when we finish the program we could write him clear what he can do if he takes part… like this it would be clear what would be his role and he will not take over…

M: do you think he was interested enough to take over? And do you think we could allow this to happen?CS: he have to be clear at one point, we have not being clear until now… we said that it would

-EXAMPLE2

be great if he comes but not to do that… maybe we end up doing a big choreography…

… we should finish this program…

M: ok come here, we finish it!

… and now clara get naked and make a dance for matias…

CS: jejejeje

…wowo, there is hope in the world for me, because after ayawasca I thought I could not do anything again in my life, and I feel that I am working again… it is nice, no?

…next year I am in impulsranz

M: I think I wanna go because I don’t wanna have a summer like this anymore.

CS: I will do like sethareh… after being depress and scared for one year and I will meet a lot of people, and I will be happy again.…maybe is arrogant but since I came from the ayawasca

CS: I think that one comeback from a psycosis. I spoke with Louis and I thought that Paff is a place where it could happen, because it is so open.

M: since he did not inform us… We would have take it more relax…

CS: and Bojana will never allow this to happen, and Jan has the responsibility on the space… Hey Jan, Louis is making a reseach in the room, would you like to give some feedback.

M: it would be totally different…

CS: the funny thing is that he was taking the drugs since long except there… If you don’t have a psycosis you are not a real artist. I read an article that speaks about that only artist are the ones that get psychosis these days, the one that dare to keep producing, in spite of the whoel situa-tion.

M: ya, it should have been me… But I am a coward and I try to find easy solutions, like calling Cristian Duarte to protec us.

CS: actually is one of the important thing that I whant to speak about

M: what ?

M: did you fart

CS: no… the important thing is that in all the cultures there was a place for a crazy dance, like Tarantela, or African rituals… but now society considers those dances as a psycosis, a sickness to cure. Maybe we should open the space and call it something else. The dance of confusion…. But it does not work with Louis because in PAFF there was no movement, we were just talking… he did not find the space for the dance of confussion.

42/45

he did not find the space for the dance of confussion.

M: for how long do you think we were speaking

CS: Louis is my teacher…

M: at the same time I am reading this book against mysticism. So, at the moment I don’t know what to think…

CS: ya, but I mean simply allowing him to live his live without medicine…

M: ya, but…

CS: ya, but with Louis will be only three hours per day in a psychosis and the rest like normal… I mean if he would not take any madeicine. If he is scared is fine, if he get a sychosis is the love for his art what produce it, it is beautiful.

M: but previouly you said that he was not normal before. How was the theory of his father?

CS: that maybe Louis was also aware that he could end up like this… and that’s why he was so healthy. And not the opposite. Killed like the other artists

M: so, he lived his live always scared.

CS: no, knowing that he could shifts… yes, scared… but this is the theory of the father…

Here should be the end, but it is actually the begining.

THE FLOW OF THE WORK

44/45

BOOKS

(b) Henry Bergson, Matter and memory (1896) http://www.reasoned.org/dir/lit/matter_and_memory.pdf

(c) Gilles Deleuze, Cinema 2: The Time-Image (University of Minnesota Press, 1986)http://monoskop.org/images/6/68/Deleuze_Gilles_Cinema_2_Time-Image.pdf

(d) Douglass W. Virginia Woolf’s illnesses (Clemson University, 2004)http://www.clemson.edu/caah/cedp/cudp/pubs/orr/illnesses/PDFs/vwillnesses.pdf

OWN WORKS

Documentary theatre performancehttps://vimeo.com/95295402

Funerals, welcomehttps://vimeo.com/74047191

Flat, not apartment(Not yet available)

HIGHLIGHTED WORKS

(e) Pride and predujice and zombieshttp://neulit.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/prideandprejudiceandzombies.pdf

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5899779-pride-and-prejudice-and-zombieshttp://rincondejaneausten.blogspot.nl/2010/03/despues-de-varios-meses-leyendo-este.html

(f) The companyhttp://watch32.com/movies-online/the-company-157933/episode-1.html

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-company-2003http://www.labutaca.net/films/22/thecompany3.htmhttp://www.filmaffinity.com/en/film341229.html

(g) SWEAThttp://vimeo.com/86948434

http://www.castyourart.com/2008/08/06/032-sweat-dance-performance-movie/http://www.impulstanz.org/en/archive/2008/performances/id291/

MENTION MOVIES

Tokyo monogatari (Tokyo Stories/ Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gXr9Ud_rdw

Bourne identity (Doug Liman, 2002):http://gnula.nu/accion/ver-the-bourne-identity-2002-online/

F. Matías Daporta González

matiasdaporta@gmail.com0031 (0) 685871804