KEEPING STILL – PART 1

AVJ: We hardly knew each other when the project started out. Anne Teresa invited me to attend a performance of hers and as I watched I was especially struck by the pleasure in dancing. And also the pleasure in watching the dance. For me it was as if the dance conveyed ideas. My idea for this project was to convey ideas with light, to come to a plural alliance.

ATDK: Ann Veronica's work first caught my attention during an exhibition at Le Grand Hornu entitled 'Représentation d'un Corps Rond'. I was at once struck by the way in which the space was sculpted by the light. The light's immateriality which suddenly became tangible, an absolute without severity, a transparency, and a whiteness which simply speaks for itself. Later I saw a video work of hers showing a football match being played in the mist. And there too I liked the way she knows how to capture existential things with such a light touch.

AVJ: At the Venice Biennale I presented a project involving artificial mist and a child's voice which could be heard reciting an invented song called 'Flying'. That voice which you could hear in the mist was really important to me. The voice is in fact like light, it partakes of a similar purity and moves in a similar manner through space.

ATDK: In all the years that I have been working as a choreographer, my interest in light has been growing steadily. In recent years I have been looking for a way to work in a more stripped-down manner, to throw ever more décor overboard and to get back to the basic elements of performance. No more walls or layers of curtains, but an economy of means whereby less becomes more. Light plays an important role in this. I am also becoming increasingly conscious of the fact that the material you develop is largely dependent on the lighting circumstances in which they emerge. For instance, you might create a performance in a daylight studio but then suddenly it is performed in a black box. This is a distinct situation which requires a very different writing. Light works in a liberating way, unchains a very distinctive energy and completely changes the performance. Light acquires something godly at that moment.

AVJ: For me light isn't godly, rather it's a question of the vitality of life. Light is the shortest route to life.

ATDK: Light is the sun, and thus life. The moment you throw open the windows of the studio you let life in.

AVJ: Light is what you carry in you. It involves thinking, philosophy, politics and hope too.

ATDK: The notion of the possible is always latent in light, an open invitation to what is potentially present.

AVJ: In movement everything is in a state of transformation, nothing is fixed.

ATDK: Light is also movement, it is vibration. But it is also the space 'in between': between me and Robert, between me and the wall. It is in this in-between zone that movement's potential is to be found, and that potential can be expanded by the light. Keeping Still proceeds from that idea: from the movement which emerges from immobility, in dialogue with the light. The performance proceeds from the moment that immobility becomes movement, from that complementary polarity.

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ATDK: We decided on mist as an element of the representation early on, and that led us to Mahler's 'Song of the Earth' and to the feelings which this music evoked in me of the desert and of emptiness. These were two important elements from an early stage.

AVJ: We developed early on an understanding in our work methods. I saw in Anne Teresa's work a sort of intelligence at work, a grace which I had never experienced in that way in dance before. It was very easy for me to find myself in that, to understand what the other is made of and to arrive at a partnership.

ATDK: Besides us, we also wanted another partner. And for me that had to be a man. I asked David Hernandez, as our third collaboration, to create a vocabulary of movement for me and I asked Rob List to guide me in my search for my own language of movement. I also really wanted to be with someone on stage and in the end I found a partner in Robert Steijn.

AVJ: The selection of all that material came about quite naturally in fact. All these people's contributions fed our own language. For me it was important to show the vulnerability of that material.

ATDK: I had wanted for a long time to make a piece which would do justice to my concern with the planet and with what is happening to the planet. What is happening to our ecological balance requires this attention. In the performance it is as if two people are left behind in the desert, in an empty space. Maybe there's also an echo in it of Bruce Chatwin's Songlines: the belief held by Aboriginals that you can sing the earth to life. Keeping Still, part 1 gives an impetus to thinking about ecology. But I don't know what will come after.

This is of course a particularly topical subject and that also makes it very delicate. It is an issue which we are very close to. There are more than enough ways to get information on this issue but as an artist that isn't what I'm after. My answer is incomplete; it is allusive, not interpretative; it is an attempt to talk about the concerns without becoming romantic. But I do wish to express that concern, I think that's very important.

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By Elke Van Campenhout