Ten philosophers and ten dancers walk into a room in London…
Curated by Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca and Heni Hale, on November 29th and 30th 2019, we came together at ID to share a series of workshops and discussions that focused around the notion of attention: ‘On Attention: A Performance Philosophy Workshop’. The event resonated with and addressed how we pay attention to each other – how do we share practices and across practices? How do interdisciplinary approaches make spaces for the multiple threads that different practices offer an idea?
For me, this exploration of building frameworks for how ‘we’ come together, (how we pay attention to each other meaningfully) is important work. On a macro, global level, it reflects the 21st century’s call to understand and find equality in the process of coming together that is globalisation. On a micro, practice level, it is part of the problem-solving process for how the field of dance (or philosophy) reaches beyond itself (and avoids navel gazing!). Both these are issues artists are grappling with in these times of political populism and the ‘post-truth’ environment of 2019/2020.
Ten philosophers and ten dancers walk into a room and we find we have 20 people working with their own practices to explore how they can be together with each other. The topic of Attention comes from a shared need to be grounded beyond one’s imagination (to be a part of the environment – to notice – to pay attention to Being) in order to be able to communicate what Being means from the perspective of one’s own practice. We were trying to find a starting point to reach out to each other. The first workshop by Olive Bieringa, took us back to a moment of conception and traced developmental stages of the feeling-body to bring us to the moment of being in the room at ID in our bodies. Olive used the senses as a locator for where our body ‘begins’ and ‘ends’: smell, touch, taste giving us an awareness of Self in this place through the aroma of an orange peel or taste of tangerine slices.
The next workshop in the afternoon was run by Komarine Romdenh-Romluc who shared questions from her Phenomenology philosophy practice which we discussed in groups. Komarine drew relationships between attention and awareness. She asked us to consider questions raised in her practice in terms of our own practice. On Saturday (the second day) Wahida Khandker used fine art practices to begin to discuss consciousness in terms of Being – looking at what consciousness is and who or what we attribute as having consciousness “do octopus dance?”. The two days ended with an Authentic Movement workshop led by Charlotte Derbyshire – in which we practiced attending to and allowing impulse to initiate movement and then witnessing the movement of a partner.
For me, two points were raised: the politeness of misunderstanding, and togetherness as an artistic endeavour.
The politeness of misunderstanding:
I listen and nod as my dance teacher explains a detail of the movement. A dancer in rehearsal listening to a direction from the teacher/choreographer often smiles and nods in silence obviously stopping movement to listen. Then when the direction is complete they begin the step again with a change to the physicality of the movement that incorporates the newly given direction. I have had the experience where I physically address the direction and the choreographer stops me again: I have not understood. My movement betrays my misunderstanding, and so they explain again using different words or coming and moving my body physically. I dance again and this time I have understood because the movement has changed. I dance ‘understanding’ it is demonstrative, understanding is visible.
Of course, not everything is as simply understood in dance as tell-do (which is why technique classes misunderstood for years can lead to long term injuries); but overall, understanding is often visually affirmed. So, dancers in discussion that involve only verbal (academic) exchanges are often unnerved – how do we affirm a shared understanding: “I understand in my body”?
And then there is a battle of politeness vs. interruption. Dancers (excuse the generalisation) do not want to interrupt to define something or understand it, especially coming from the often silent studio space where we listen and do. The doing of understanding seems out of place in a verbal discussion. However, this assumes that understanding by talking is superior to understanding by doing - that it is not ‘ok’ to say “oh, do you mean …. (gets up and moves)?”
But when other disciplines reach out to collaborate with dance, that is what they want: our way of understanding, our way of living in the moment of the nowness-of-movement that comes with our way of expressing knowledge bodily. The dancer getting up to move in answer to the verbal theoretical question is a way to respect our knowing (and makes dance such an attractive form to collaborate with). But the courage it takes to get up and move in an ‘academic’ conversation require some self-reflection in dance. What do we mean …beyond getting the choreography right or responding to the improvisation task? How are we in this place? How aware are we of the legacies in movement that dance techniques bring in terms of how they have related to the world and how they have historically been passed down to us?
For the philosophers, these questions of where they find their identity, the legacy for how the world is made meaningful (ontology) and how they have learned what they know (epistemology) are central to identifying what they are “I am a phenomenologist following the work of Merleau-Ponty” (for instance). But how this work manifests as doing now, in this moment, is what can be lacking for the philosophers (excuse the generalisation again!). Reading the dusty books of wisdom that are the currency of Western Philosophy does not illuminate how to live the moment of this; to live the moment the way dance is ever present in the now. So, tasking dancers to be more responsible for knowing where they are coming from and the implications of their doing, and tasking philosophers to act the nowness of their histories and theories makes the coming together of dancers and philosophers clearly valuable. And I think as we move forwards it requires safe spaces (like this one) where we can facilitate a rude-misunderstanding (or a brave-misunderstanding) where we stop, step back, notice fundamental difference and not assume it needs homogenising into similarity. This is about doing away with polite misunderstandings and tolerances, and rather focussing on the inconsistencies in each others’ practices as clues to the possibility of growth in ourselves. Get up and move ‘wrongly’, smell it, taste it: find new ways to communicate.
Togetherness as artistic endeavour:
As I move with the others on the stage I make space for them, I anticipate this step takes Kemi further across the stage and she has to get back to centre for the next part so I hold back on that jump to let her pass and then heave myself forwards once she has passed to get to stage right in time for the next beat. The togetherness of dancing a piece of choreography is a tacit mosaic.
From experiences dancing/performing like this one above, we, dancers, are practiced in the togetherness of holding of space from a physical perspective. I wonder how well we believe in our physical skills, in terms of seeing them as principles for togetherness on wider scales. Interdisciplinary coming together is an opportunity to explore ‘others’ through how we pay attention to ‘otherness’. At what point do we feel connected – what do we do when that happens? What do we assume togetherness means? Where does sameness sit in togetherness? On the stage, we physically engage in these questions to allow for the number of people on the stage dancing. Liberating the principles of this ability to all move to create something together seems to be about noticing the knowledges in the practices of dancing beyond its aesthetic. In the togetherness of interdisciplinary work, these skills provide strategies for the metaphorical holding of space. How we open our dance practices, ourselves up to each other and what frameworks we need to do this meaningfully gives dance the challenge to ‘bring the body to the table’ across subjects in which the body has been marginalised to being a shell for the mind. How the perceived mind and body are in togetherness in dance offers larger lessons in togetherness at this moment, in this global political climate.
Aware of the tasks the 21st century offers us, I keep returning to where kindness sits in the practice of doing. Not a soft conforming, but a sharp practice of brave kindness, that pays attention to how we notice each other. Interdisciplinary work such as this challenges us to question and find methods for how we think-move together without needing to be all the same.
Adesola Akinleye
Dr. Adesola Akinleye is a choreographer. She is a Senior Lecturer at Middlesex University, leading the Professional Practice course in the Dance faculty. She began her career as a dancer with dance Theatre of Harlem (USA). Over the past twenty years she has created dance work ranging from live performance that is often site-specific and involves a cross-section of the community to dance films, installation, and texts. Her work is characterized by an interest in voicing people’s lived-experiences in Places/environments through creating moving portraiture.