The Excitement Of Collaboration

Tomorrow I will tell you what we did today. But as for this evening…

Let’s just say that tonight’s artist laboratory bordered on the hideous.

We are preparing for a guerrilla performance tomorrow at Kookmin University, a kind-of demonstration for the dance and art faculties.  We were given the stimulus for the mostly-improvised performance on Monday.  The concept… Subway.

We were broken up into our respective art-form groups, and given two days to prepare material for tonight’s rehearsal.  Last night, Soonho, Fonkam, Akino and myself rehearsed in the studio.  As I was sick on Monday, I was underprepared (nobody told me we had a theme, or that my homework was to prepare a movement idea for the rehearsal).

Nevertheless, the other dancers shared their ideas; we improvised, discussed and rehearsed.  We came up with three simple concepts

1: The idea of the pedestrian versus the interesting.  This manifested itself as an opening image of pedestrians crossing the space, gradually building until the collide, like small atoms shooting across space, bouncing off each other and continuing on their new, altered course.

2: Second was a line of dancers, standing in normal, neutral, everyday positions, and slowly coming alive and pressing through the negative space in front of them.  Gradually, this expanded into an expressionist transformation of the simple gesture of drawing a line, or in some cases, pegging a line of string in the air.  This in turn transformed to the negotiation of a highly engaged body navigating this imaginary web of lines, almost like a commuter navigating a Subway Map.

This had a second incarnation as an open improvisation on the drawing / pegging theme.

3.  The last idea was of a woman, dreaming on the subway. Standing still, or slowly walking in a dream state.  She is encountered by a dream (and the form of one of the male dancers) that tries in vain to distract her, finally picking her up and moving her to another physical location.  This was a nice play on the idea that the train, and the dream become one, both are vehicles for the physical body and the consciousness.

We brought this to the rehearsal.

The visual artists brought three skeins of sheer white fabric, and the musicians brought a rather good soundscape / ambient piece using found sounds and live voice.

The problem came when we tried to collaborate.  There was no real established working methodology, common language (linguistic or practical), or chain of command.   We fist tried to do an open impro based on the idea of using the material as moving set pieces, and the dancers dancing with it, the music layered over the top.  This then launched us into almost one and a half hours of utterly useless, circular conversation in languages.

It may seem strange, but the fact that the conversation circled around between both bilingual participants, and appointed translators was the least of our problems.  There was a real lack of parameters, decisiveness and an abundance of ideas and ego to go along with them.

Don’t get me wrong, we have quickly formed a pretty close group in just over a week (less for some).  But everyone has clear ideas about the project, about both the nature of the collaboration, and the physical manifestation of it, and these are not necessarily mutually compatible.

I won’t dwell on the specifics.

The Korean tendency to stay silent and back away from confrontation (to the point of totally ignoring certain people) was not necessarily helpful.  Also, the abundance of professional artists who are very used to either creating their own work, or being in charge on an ensemble, or not collaborating in such an intense cross-cultural context was not helpful.

I personally chose to disengage and support, rather than pushing my own agenda.  I don’t think that this was the best choice.  For some reason, everyone seems to look to me for decisive action.  I think this is because I started off as the only native English speaker in the project.  This initially gave everyone some kind of responsibility to make sure I understood what was going on.  Kind-of an English Verification Device.  I have found that it is usually up to me to ‘translate’ English conversations to the entire group.  Apparently nobody ever has any problem understanding my English, or my intentions.

The reason I bring this up is to say that often I find myself at the receiving end of confused stares, calls for clarification, and inevitably decision.  Tonight I chose not to engage.  Both out of respect for the directors of the project, and because there were already too many cooks.  Far too many cooks.

Also, I hate being a winker.  I know how to collaborate.  I have learned, through many different means, and over several years how to collaborate efficiently and effectively.  I even have experience doing this in multi-cultural, multi-disciplinary settings.  But I did not see it as my job to set up a safe, effective working environment, to set rules, to make things happen.

I am not saying that my inaction entirely contributed to the mostly hideous time everyone seemed to have.  But we did come down to 30 minutes left of rehearsal, with mostly nothing achieved, and others scrabbling to take charge.  Suddenly, the exquisite pressure that is such a catalyst for decisiveness and creativity manifested itself all at once.  There was a flurry of commands by many different people, in many different languages.  Some wanted to start form the very beginning with the fundamental concept of the piece.  Others wanted a purely mechanical solution.  Still others decided that they would just wait and hijack the performance as it happened.

Finally, Fonkam decided to simply explain the ideas that we dancers had come up with. There was silence.  I then asked the visual artists to do the same.  And then, the musicians.  I suggested that we start with these simple, strong ideas, which already exhibited synchronicity, and put them together in a performative context.

Somehow this single moment of clarity and silence prompted Soonho and CJ, the project directors to have a discussion, which resulted in a cohesive concept for the performance.  There was still a deferment to the group, which almost resulted in more discussion, but I very rudely declared that any strong idea was a good one, that I liked their concept, and that at this stage, we will have to be happy to run with it.

And so we will.

And now, my head hurts.