Guillermo Aarzo and Pere Faura
december 2008
www.ddanza.com
- In your work there is a kind of discussion
between theater, dance, performance and musicals. Why all this
elements?
First of all, discussions are always artistically very interesting,
because in them there’s always a conflict, therefore, a challenge.
I understand Theatre, in capital letters, as the encounter between
some one who proposes a conversation (the performer) and some one
who is seeking for a conversation (the spectator) even if sometimes
this conversation also ends up in a discussion.
Any element used to develop this conversation is for me completely
valid: movement, text, lights, video, music… and it’s clear that
some of these elements belong more than others to some of the categories
you are mentioning, like text to theatre or singing to musicals.
But I believe in the performance as a whole, where all the elements
included serve the concept of the piece from their own particularity
as elements, in discussion with each other, creating every time
a new event, however people want to call this event: dance, theatre
or performance. I don’t care.
It’s clear that my pass trough the “theatre” and musicals world
has had an influence on my choreographic development and I’ve kept
on including elements of talking, singing or tap dancing in my
works. These elements are part of my history and part of my body,
and both my history and my body are the result of many different
influences and experiences that coexist or maybe fight in one same
place, and that is what I also do that in my work, I combine different
disciplines to live or argue with each other in one same place,
the stage.
- These days you are presenting your last project “Do you havea
cigarette? and other ways of approaching”. How important is the
clubbing culture in your work? What is what fascinates you the
most from it? And what is what you hate the most from it?
Clubbing culture is again part of my history, of my body, in the
same way as tap dancing or musicals. Actually I think I’ve spent
more time in discos than in some dance classes. On the other hand,
clubbing culture has to do a lot with theatre, it’s an encounter
of people where there is dance, sweat, seduction, laughter, and
where ideas and stupidities are sheared for a while, just for a
while, cause probably next day they are already forgotten. Both
Theatre and Disco have a very strong ephemeral component, and that’s
very fascinating for me, as it is at the same time the most beautiful
and the saddest thing of both worlds.
Another element that fascinates me as well is the element of superficiality:
a lot of people think that people only talks bullshit when they
go out, and I completely agree, I say and hear a lot of bullshit
in the disco, but I like it, that’s why I go out, cause sometimes,
in between all that bullshit you find that conversation or that
encounter that has a strong impact on you, and you remember it
for some time. That reminds me to “Theatre” or “Dance” very much,
like when you go to see a performance, and after a lot of bullshit
they finally do or say something that you will remember for a long
time.
- In “Striptease”, you play with the gaze, reflections, and impressions.
Which were the motivations to create this piece? Where do the rolls
shift?
The piece was a commission, but thanks to that I discovered the
big potential that striptease has as a performative event. I got
fascinated by the relation between dance and eroticism: dancing
to seduce, the choreography of desire, but also dancing to hide,
to tease, to fool. Dance as a tool of desire control. And on the
other hand, the gaze, the sexual gaze versus the artistic gaze.
The disquieting gaze of the spectator who decides weather that
body is a sexual object or the motor for an artistic experience.
In the piece I compare the roles in Striptease with the roles
in Theatre, specially concerning the issue of expectations, the
contract that performer and spectator sign when audience gets into
their chairs, in search for something new, different, never seen…
in other words, in search for the end to their dissatisfaction.
I think that both striptease spectators and theatre spectators
have some dissatisfaction in themselves, that’s why they are there,
to see if “the other” can satisfy them in that aspect in which
they can’t satisfy themselves. Therefore, they leave very disappointed
if they don’t like the show, cause that means they still remain
empty, that something is still missing.
In striptease maybe it looks more obvious, as sexual pleasure
is easily recognizable, both when it is already present or when
you look for it. But in Theatre, it happens something similar,
yet the pleasure we look for is different than the sexual one and
more difficult to detect, but it is pleasure anyway, subjective
and individual. And is in this comparison where the rolls shift,
where the spectator is confronted with his own way of being spectator.
U think the performance becomes a kind of big mirror for the spectator.
- Do you like stripping your inner self in front of an audience?
I guess so… cause in a way I show the part of me that I want to
show, what I think it can be interesting to establish the conversation
with the audience. What I don’t want to show, I don’t show it.
Well… sometimes talking with people after the performance, they
say things that reveal that probably very unconsciously I have
shown parts of myself or my personality that were not part at all
of the initial concept of the piece… So I think that in a way you
are never in full control of what you are showing or producing
when you are on stage, but that’s also something very beautiful
and unique about theatre, cause in a way you always end up naked,
stripped by the gaze of the audience, and you ought to be a bit
exhibitionist and find pleasure in stripping your inner self in
the same way that Demi More finds pleasure in stripping her outer
self.
- How importance is in your work the irony and the symbolic means?
Irony is very important in my work as a humoristic tool. I think
the contemporary world we live in, so complex, unequal and serious
needs a humoristic and ironic contemporary art that helps us laugh
about ourselves.
Irony is a very strong unifying tool, as it tends to unify the
perceptive experience, it creates a common ground of understanding,
when in contrary, the abstract is always a disintegrating element,
cause it has to do with subjectivity, with each individual’s own
interpretation. I personally like mixing both in my work, the abstract
and the ironic, once again, in constant discussion.
- Which are your sorts of inspiration?
My main sort of inspiration is the common, the global, what unifies
me with the other, with the spectator. I’m interested in those
materials that belong to the collective memory, what makes us become
a group, what we share, and therefore, what defines our identity.
And once I pick up one, I take it and break it a part in thousand
pieces and create a new puzzle made out with the same pieces that
reveals a new picture. I like transforming the common, the known,
into something new and unknown. Cause in the result there’s a strange
mix between the joy for the newness and the nostalgia for the recognition.
A very nice discussion again. My last works have dealt in this
way with musicals, striptease and disco dancing.
- Did you get afraid with the success of “This is a picture of
a person I don't know”? What did this piece represent in your carrier?
“This is a picture of a person I don't know” represented a lot
for my artistic and professional development in many ways. From
an artistic perspective, it became the sum, the ultimate culmination
of many different artistic obsessions I had been collecting till
that time, it was the end-exam piece for my choreographic studies
that brought together not only what I learned in the school in
Amsterdam, but everything I had learned in life. All my artistic
and even personal influences are some how visible in that piece;
from musicals, to video-dance, tap dancing, singing, contemporary
dance improvisation and my last (un)love affairs.
I think it was a success cause it stayed very close to me at the
same time that it stayed close to the people, to the audience of
contemporary dance who were starting to get familiar with referential
work and a bit tired of abstract subjectivity often too serious
and distant.
The success is the perfect harmony among all the parameters involved
in a creative process, that’s why it occurs so little times, cause
there are many, many factors to be considered, more than the ones
that as a creator you can control. And “This is a picture of a
person I don't know” came in the right moment in the right place
and in the right format: a solo, easy to sell in a market hungry
for newness and “young talents”.
The success of the piece generated big expectations that forced
me to produce something new in a short time and obviously the result
was not the expected. I’m talking about my solo “Discopolis”, that
I showed as a studio presentation in Gasthuis Studios, just after
only a month of working. A lot of people came, and they all left
disappointed, no-one looked at it with constructive eyes, from
a work-in-progress perspective, from its potential, every one wanted
another finished product as good as “This is a picture of a person
I don't know” to fulfil again their dissatisfaction. From that
point on, I decided not to show work-in-progress again, never ever
again… Something I haven’t achieved completely, cause in one way
it is quite impossible task and on the other hand these kind of
presentations are always helpful, even if they make you feel very
insecure. But thanks to all that I think I learned to manage better
all those production elements that have an influence in the context
where you show your work. And that’s important.
I kept on developing the ideas of “Discopòlis” in my next project
in the National Theatre of Catalunya, where it finally became the
solo piece called “Striptease programat”, a performance much closer
to my initial ideas and what I really wanted to make from the beginning.
I think I’m a quite fast dancer, I can shift between different
techniques very easily and change from tap dancing to say a text
or sing a song in a moment, but as a choreographer, I think I’m
really slow.
“This is a picture of a person I don't know” was a success cause
it was the result of many years dancing jazz and tap, two years
of recording the audience in different ways, and 2 previous pieces
that relate video and dance together. This is what I later called
recycling technique, where I use the same ideas in different conceptual
contexts to understand them better and finally use them in the
format where they become most powerful.
Success, then, in my case, has to due with time. And once after
graduating from SNDO, enrolled within the professional market,
time is gold, and people want successes without paying for the
time to create them. And specially if you need a lot of time, like
me.
- How was working with Jerôme Bel? And how important has he been
in your own work?
I entered Jerôme Bel’s company as a performer at “The Show Must
Go On” three years ago when the show was already created, so I
was not part of its creation. Nevertheless, Jerôme always rehearses
and re-rehearses every moment of the show when there is a new gig,
probably cause the 20 performers are always different. This work
is always very interesting. Jerôme is master in presentating, which
is not representing, the quotidian: how to walk, look or simply
be on stage. This work has been very influential to my own work,
but while Jerôme presents it completely isolated, just the quotidian
individual and that’s it, I present the quotidian body next to
the virtuous but embodied by the same performer, who sings or tap
dances and in the next moment, he’s quiet, tired and takes his
sweat out of his face. And these two bodies embodied in one they
remain again in constant discussion.
The work of Jerôme, on the other hand, was also a big influence
concerning the concept of meta-theatre. He was one of the first
choreographers to talk about theatre in the theatre, to talk
about what all the people that we gather there in the theatre
to make a show happen, performers and audience, have in common.
About the conventions we follow, most of the time unconsciously,
when we go to the theatre. And he makes them visible in a humoristic
manner, and that’s also another reason why I like his work. I
think Jerôme is one of the best theatre-strippers.
- How is your work at Frascati Theater?
Frascati is a production house for young makers, where they produce
and assist their projects during their first professional years.
It’s a very interesting and important structure not existing in
Spain yet. But it also has its negative side. It’s a very big structure
where personal relations become more distant and impersonal, and
the administrative work that I also have to do because of its dimension
sometimes overwhelms me, but little by little I’m learning how
to manage myself better inside that structure, and how to take
as much profit of it as possible.
I’ve recently had a lot of economical problems with my last project
due to some subsidy issues, that made me rethink how I would like
to finance my projects in the future and which organizations I
would like to collaborate with. I think this will be always a constant
reflection anyway… But for now, I think it’s just a luxury to know
that every time I want to do a new project, there is someone who
takes it in consideration.
- Do you get inspired by old musicals?
It’s funny because old musicals inspired me more when I was a
child than later. Now I can’t say “inspire” is the right word.
I look at them with nostalgia and respect, I use them in my projects,
like “Singing in the rain” or “Gilda”, but in the same way you
classified them, that’s how I see them: old.
I admire their neatness and precision, the virtuous smile of Gene
or Rita, but in all musicals History it seems that this virtuosity
has only served simple stories and archetypical characters, characters
with no inner discussion at all, yet “Singing in the rain” and
“Gilda” could be one of the few exceptions, as their plots or sub-plots
are a bit more elaborated, but nevertheless, they just feed one
unique aim, common in the whole genre: entertaining. And that’s
why I see them old.
I do believe contemporary art has to entertain, but not as an
aim, but rather as a tool to generate reflection in the audience.
Contemporary theatre should be a collective space for individual
reflection.
- Have I forgotten any question that you would have liked to answer?
I think your work is a bit similar than mine. We both invent questions,
but your questions are meant for someone else to answer, when my
questions I have to answer them myself in the studio. So with the
ones I already answered to you and the ones I have for myself for
tomorrow’s rehearsal, I can’t think of anything else I would like
to answer myself. I hope all the answers you got from me are anyway
enough for you to write your article tomorrow. Thanks a lot.
> see published pdf version in spanish
source:
www.ddanza.com
|