The Body Weather Farm (1985-90 period)
Encounter with
Christine Quoiraud, Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri
With the participation of Jean-Charles François
and Nicolas Sidoroff for PaaLabRes
2022-23
Summary :
1. Introduction.
2. Before the Body Weather Farm, the encounter with Min Tanaka.
3. Maï-Juku V and the beginning of the farm. Tokyo-Hachioji-Hakushu.
4. Body Weather, the farm, and the dance.
5. The commons within Body Weather.
6. Choreography, improvisation, images.
7. Relationships to music.
8. Conclusion. After the Body Weather farm.
1. Introduction: Presentation of the Encounters.
The origin of this text stems from a first encounter in Valcivières (a village in the Forez, France) in 2020, as part of CEPI (Centre Européen Pour l’Improvisation) between Christine Quoiraud and Jean-Charles François. On this occasion, Christine Quoiraud presented an illustrated lecture on Body Weather, her own activities of Body/Landscape (called “Corps/Paysage”), and her improvised long marching journeys (called “Marche et Danse”). In the perspectives of the fourth edition of the PaaLabRes collective, the precise documentation of the diverse practices that had taken place during Christine’s presence at the Body Weather farm in Japan (1985-90) appeared to be of great importance. Many critical points remained to be clarified after this presentation, notably concerning:
- The relationships between the activities of everyday life at the farm, the practices of cultivating the land, of raising animals, with the artistic practices.
- The relationships between the various participants committed to the farm project.
- The relationships with nearby farmers.
- The relationships between dance and the environment.
- The relationships between dance and music.
Christine suggested to PaaLabRes to organize an encounter by videoconference with Katerina Bakatsaki, living in Amsterdam, Oguri, living in Los Angeles, herself, living in south-west of France, and for PaaLabRes in Lyon, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff.
Two encounters with all these people took place by videoconference on May 31, 2022, and February 15, 2023. In between these two interviews, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff formulated in writing a series of questions. We decided that the questions asked by PaaLabRes would not appear in the present text, except as short introductions to the various sections of the document.
The recording of the oral exchanges in English during the two interviews have been transcribed (with the precious help of Christine Quoiraud) by Jean-Charles François and translated into French. The original English verbatim has been edited to make it clearer for readers, but wherever possible, we tried to preserve the oral nature of the exchanges.
The different sections do not automatically follow the chronological order of the two interviews but are based on the principal themes discussed in a specific logical progression.
2. Before the Body Weather farm, meeting Min Tanaka.
Presentation
Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri, and Christine Quoiraud are three dance artists who, from 1985 to 1990, had in common their participation in the Body Weather farm created by Min Tanaka and Kazue Kobata a hundred kilometers from Tokyo.
In order to situate their approach and provide insight into their initial careers, this introductory part is devoted to the circumstances that led them to meet Min Tanaka prior to their participation in the farm.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
You can all see me laughing, of course, because it happened so long ago. It’s been quite a journey. Now that we’re all in different phases of our lives, I have mixed feelings about my memory of those circumstances, so it’s best to laugh about it. But to answer straight away to your question, I can tell you that when I first went to Japan, I was twenty-one years old, and I had no clue of what was ahead of me. I met Min Tanaka around 1985, he was dancing at La MaMa Theater Club near New York, and Œdipus Rex was presented with Min being the choreographer. A performance of Œdipus Rex also took place in Athens, and for that production they needed local artists to paticipate, so I had the chance and pleasure to be selected. That’s how I got involved in the production and this is how I got to meet Min and his way of working. 1985, twenty-one years old! You can imagine a young horse knowing that there are several possible paths, but without knowing exactly what it needs and wants, because simply of a lack of information. And in 1985, we didn’t know exactly in Greece what « contact improvisation » was, we’d only vaguely heard about it, so information about what was going on in the world was very, very rare, if at all existent. So, I was curious, I’d just started to dance in Greece at the time, but I was looking for something else and without knowing exactly what it was, I was travelling in Europe, meeting different choreographers, having auditions. I met Pina Bausch, I could have joined her company, but I didn’t because intuitively I thought no, it wasn’t for me. So, I was curious, I’d just started to dance in Greece at the time, but I was looking for something else and without knowing exactly what it was, I was travelling in Europe, meeting different choreographers, having auditions. I met Pina Bausch, I could have joined her company, but I didn’t because intuitively I thought no, it wasn’t for me. Anyway, I met Min in that production, and, I think, before and above anything else, there was something that I strongly believed in intuitively, that I trusted, or that I could connect with, but I still didn’t know what it was. Whatever it was, I thought, “Well, I want to know what this person is doing”. And at that time, he mentioned to me that he was conducting two-month workshops in Japan, so, I thought “I am going!” Just a funny anecdote: I took my pointe shoes with me – I was a student at the time and part of my studies was classical ballet – just to give you an idea how clueless I was. So, I landed in the studio in Hachioji, the farm was not founded yet. So, going to the farm was a consequence of being part of the practice in the community at that time, before the farm came into existence. By the way, I went there in 1985 for two months and then I stayed for eight years.
Oguri:
So… maybe it’s my turn… Let’s start. So – I am laughing! – it was thirty years ago! Thirty years ago, I left also everything behind, I was there five years, same years as Katerina and Christine. Like Katerina said, there was a two-month workshop: “Maï-Juku V, an intensive workshop”. Min Tanaka started this series in 1980. OK, I’m going back a bit: I lived in Tokyo. I wasn’t born there, I studied visual arts – a kind of conceptual art – with Genpei Akasegawa. He passed away in 2014. He was a very important name at that time in the art’s scene in Japan. When, in the 1960s, so before Japan had a big world expo in the 1970s in Osaka, and before that he was a non-established artist, he met the movement of the Neo-Dada organizers at the Hi-Red Center and collaborated a lot with Nam June Paik and John Cage. Anyway, I was interested in studying with that kind of visual arts. And during the 1960s, Akasegawa collaborated extensively with Hijikata Tatsumi[1] as part of the Japanese Ankoku Butōh movement. Studying with Akasegawa, I was introduced to all avant-garde work of the sixties. And
Christine Quoiraud:
I met Min Tanaka in France, actually in Bordeaux, by chance. I was at that time dancing in a company whose style was based on the Cunningham technique, and I was preparing a spectacle when someone came up with a small flyer with a photo of Tanaka Min advertising a workshop. It was the second year he came to France in 1980 or 81 in Paris, after a big presence in the Festival d’Automne in 1978. And that’s when he met Michel Foucault and Roger Caillois. Min Tanaka was giving a workshop in Bordeaux, so I left everything and went to his workshop. And as soon as I opened the door, I was captivated.
I remember it very well a sound-listening exercise was proposed: people were blindfolded and walked along a string laid on the floor. Min Tanaka produced sounds, clapping his hands or playing with paper. He moved around the room, changing heights and distances. We were supposed to point with the index finger in the direction of where the sound was coming from, and meanwhile you had to keep your balance, one foot against the other on the thread laid on the floor. It was a revelation, I was immediately totally convinced. Before that, I’d experienced several types of techniques in contemporary dance. At that time in France, a lot of foreigners were coming, many Americans, but also Asian people: I had met Yano and Lari Leong who already gave me a sense of what the state of mind of these parts of Asia was. But when I met Tanaka, that was it! So, I immediately went to the next workshop he gave a month later in Bourg-en-Bresse. There were forty people. He was giving us the basics of Body Weather, the manipulation/stretching work, and a bit of work on sensations, and he offered us the opportunity to take part in a performance. So, he designed a kind of development for the performance, which was mostly improvised, but with some elements given, with few instructions. It took place in a huge gymnasium. When the audience came in, we were seated in the audience and gradually we bent over against the public and moving down slowly towards the floor. And that impressed me immensely, actually. So, from that moment on, I quit my job, stopped everything I was doing. I bought a car to live in it. I started the Body Weather nomad laboratory and travelled all over Europe. So, I was visiting all the Body Weather groups, which were being set up in Geneva, in Groningen, somewhere in Belgium, maybe it was Ghent, and in France, in Pau, in Paris. I’d travel from one group to the next, always sharing training and performances, mainly outdoors, in the streets, or anywhere in the city. Tanaka came every year from then on to give workshops mainly in Paris, or in Holland, or Belgium, and I joined all of them. Every year he would say to me: “Christine, why don’t you come to the intensive workshop in Tokyo?” I finally decided to go in 1985. Also, I came there with a visa valid only for that workshop, but I didn’t go back. I could not leave after what I’d been through. I stayed for over four years, almost five years. As far as I remember…
3. Maï-Juku V and the creation of the farm. Tokyo-Hachioji-Hakushu.
Presentation
In the minds of the PaaLabRes inquirers (Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff) the Body Weather farm project implied that a group of people had decided to live on a farm. Hence the idea that there was a beginning, which could be described in detail to grasp the origin of the approach. But the answers from the three artists demonstrate that this was not the case: the process of building the farm was very gradual and was inscribed in a constant back and forth travel between Tokyo and Hachioji (a suburb of Tokyo), then between Hachioji, Hakushu (the place of the farm) and Tokyo. This is one of the important aspects of the Body Weather idea: the body like the weather is constantly changing and not fixed anywhere. This concept means less the idea of migration or displacement, of travel, but rather of fluctuations produced by friction in a given environment.
We’re dealing here with three environments, one completely urban (Tokyo), one completely rural (Hakushu) and one somewhere in between (Hachioji, a suburb of Tokyo). The activities at the farm developed gradually in interaction with the local farmers.
Christine Quoiraud:
Before the beginning of the farm, the workshops took place in Tokyo, but a lot of times, they took place in a suburb far from Tokyo, Hachioji with a dance studio. There were rice fields near the studio and a river, and we often went to work near the river. Or at one point we went to the mountains 30 minutes away. At the end of the intensive workshop, we moved to the farm for the final workshop of the two months period. And when we went into the water of the high waterfall and all that followed, it was the key turning point. And Min was very proud to show us the farm. We all went there together. There was this workshop in the river and there was a fire after that, it was late October, it was freezing cold. We finished the intensive workshop there, on the farm. Then came the beginnings of the farm.
Andres Corchero didn’t arrive until February 1986 for the next intensive workshop, which only lasted a month that year.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I don’t think that there was an “A-day”. I think it was really a long process of different events and different ways of working that led to finding a place and do on. So, I don’t know if there was a first day, but before I say that, I just want to point out perhaps, maybe just to say, that when I met Min in Athens, the part of his work that intrigued me the most was certainly the work that he invited us to do outside the studio, outside the theatre space or the studio space. And as Christine and Oguri have already said, Min was engaged in work that already involved weird places, situations and contexts, away from dance or any kind of formal art manifestation. It was a question of working outside so-called art spaces… Let me rephrase the question: what dance can be when experienced in many different contexts, when engaged with many different bodies, not only human bodies of course, not only one’s own body, but also the bodies of the non-humans? This question was Min’s major preoccupation in his work from that time onwards. That’s what I just want to point out, and actually for me, that element and that quest within the work that Min was doing inevitably led to creating a basis, a sort of place and network embedded outside the city, and outside formal artistic contexts.
Christine Quoiraud:
Like Katerina said, we didn’t start working on the farm straight away, it was part of a process. And, in my memory, we had to build and organize the farm before it became operational. We started by building several chicken houses. Oguri can talk about that much better than me. It’s only gradually, little by little that we got chickens and then started growing rice. In autumn and springtime, I remember you guys building the chicken houses. That’s when we had this wasp attack. Those wasps were in springtime, no? And planting the rice was more like June or something, May/June maybe?
Oguri:
Shall I talk a little bit about the cycle? So hi, Oguri here again. Yes, farm was being prepared right before Maï-Juku V started… some friends were already working there at the time of Maï-Juku. I went at the farm with my motorcycle. And my first impression was that this land was so beautiful. Yes. It’s changed a lot now, but in the 1980s… Hakushu is about 100 km west of Tokyo. So, about 2 hours away with my motorcycle, experiencing a change of scenery, an evolving landscape, changing, changing, changing, so beautiful, beautiful river and gigantic rocks in various shapes, really almost like chaos. The last time I was there in 2017, it changed completely. Now, it’s not the same at all. But at that time… yes…
I know, the farm is not like a real nature, the farm is a work done by humans in nature, the farm is a human product in the ecosystem of nature. But there are still a lot of nature forms, mountains, and big rocks, and sometimes a typhoon produces a disaster that changes all human order, bringing back the nature. And it’s a quite high elevation area, around 800 meters high, it’s a cool air, water is constantly running by the house and rice field because of the slow open flat land. Yes. Hakushu lies at the foot of Mount Kaikomagatake in the 3000-meter-high mountains of the Southern Japanese Alps.
And as Christine said, in Hachioji, which is a suburb from Tokyo, that’s where already a big transition is happening, from the harbor of Tokyo to that city, Hachioji, where the Tokyo metropolis becomes Yamanashi prefecture and it’s a kind of transition before we go to Hakushu. And that transition is very interesting.
Min Tanaka and Kazue Kobata[3] are at that time running a small alternative performance space in Tokyo: Plan-B. This is like a first artist self-running alternative art space. It’s a tiny underground theater. So, every month, or every other month, at Plan B, Maï-Juku as a group presented a dance performance there. Myself I presented there a solo performance every month.
Yes, I will talk about that too: this has to do with something like transportation, transport: Tokyo, Hachioji, and Hakushu. A very interesting experience, transportation, moving, and activities in the three places: the farm, the workshops, and the performances.
Anyway, the farm is the place to return to after work at Hachioji, Plan-B in Tokyo, and national and international tours.
Living in Hakushu, the farm life, the traditional organic farming, experiencing the rhythms and cycles of this most human lifestyle. This connection of the human body to nature is necessary for Body Weather practice. We developed many things: the annual production of an arts festival, also with outdoor sculpture, traditional and contemporary performing arts, music, conferences, a symposium…
Life on the farm necessitated a transition that was far from brutal. Our life is not shockingly changed. But, for me, it had a big impact on the life cycle: Tokyo, you have the night, you keep working in the night, you are in a theater, you have to start at 8 o’clock or whatever. But in that farmland, all farmers got to the bed at 7 o’clock. So, our cycle completely changed, working with a chicken, or irrigating the rice field. If you are late, you lose a day. Or feeding animals, they cannot wait. So, our cycle is completely changed. The night is completely dark, which is beautiful with the stars… So, that’s big impact, change.
When I mention “life cycle”, it’s completely linked to most human lifestyle and the question of the human body. When we started working in Maï-Juku and Body Weather farm, we’re almost never alone, twenty-four hours a day. Always somebody is working with you, and every day you’re eating three meals together.
And I’m now jumping to the farm time: it’s, a community group working together. But at the same time, you know, a very serious individual commitment is required at all times. Of course, just being there is a commitment, but every work both in the farm and the dance – I don’t say “the dance” but the workshop – self commitment was very strong. On the other hand, we’re not professional farmers. And I never think that I am a professional dancer either, this practice I’ve taken up, is it dance or performance? And as we are not like professional farmers, we learned from the farmers themselves on the job site, in the field. The idea that we’re not there to learn a technique is very important to us. It’s the same for Min or for the Maï-Juku Body Weather dance too. We don’t proceed from technique, but we’re very much like in a job site. I mean, it is not like a studio as a place preparing a performance elsewhere. So, farming was like this, and dance practice as well. It was a big transition: Hachioji had a dance studio floor, but in Hakushu at first, we didn’t have this kind of floor. Later, we built something like a stage, and we used a Kendo martial arts floor, to do floor work mainly in the land. So, farm and dance, neither had priority for the life in there.
Christine Quoiraud:
At the time of the 1985 workshop, Maï-Juku V, there was a lot of back and forth, going back to Tokyo, going to the farm and back to Tokyo, and in my memory, you were really one of the Japanese who often went with Min and Hisako, over there to the farm, to organize the venue of the group, and you are one of the witness of this beginning point, more than probably we, the foreigners, the non-Japanese. I’m sure you have memories about the discussions you had with the farmers, the neighbors… What do you remember of these talks when preparing the farm? From an administrative point of view, but also from the farm point of view, and also the necessity of organizing a program of what was going on in Tokyo and to Plan B, the performing space.
Oguri:
Yes. These all three things happened simultaneously. Actually, I didn’t have much connection with the place in Hachioji because I lived more often on the farm side. May be, yes, Christine and Katerina, Frank and a few other people lived in Hachioji. They had rented a house there, so, your base was more in Hachioji…That’s a transition time. So, while living there, you were keeping a training in Hachioji. I remember that, during the Rite of Spring (or maybe not that one, another performance), we had rehearsal in the Hachioji studio. And then we went to the Ginza Season theater, a big theater, for a performance in homage to Hijikata. Yes, we built a set and rehearsed there too.
Christine Quoiraud:
That was much later. Hijikata passed away in January 1986. But at that time, there were lots of moves between Hachioji, Tokyo, Hakushu… It’s more a question of whether you have any memories of who decided, for example, to build the chicken houses?
Oguri:
Ah! OK! All the organizational side…. Min Tanaka had a big vision, I think. Why did we have these chicken, to what purpose? We didn’t need the chicken for the eggs, but for the shit, for the fertilizer. It was thanks to this fertilizer that we were able to successfully grow vegetables. Organic farming wasn’t so popular back then. We didn’t know about popular organic either. Yes, we didn’t use chemical fertilizers, we started like this. Use less chemicals, you know, weed killers or insecticides. That’s all we knew about organic farming. We didn’t even know about recycling, but recycling was already a tradition in Japanese life. It was nothing knew at that time, but organic was … how can you use it as in the case of traditional fabric. And besides, not much income.
It’s very interesting seeing that in the farm, Body Weather farm and Min Tanaka, we never owned the land. Instead, we just borrowed the land and the house. About agriculture in Japan in a village, of course all farmer families own their land. But most of the farmers are like Sunday farmers, they all have a job. They have a full-time job on the side. Farming is their second job, they have to keep the rice fields going, because as I said, rice is very essential to Japanese, rice is more than money, rice is like life, rice is like God. A bit like each of us, it grows, it develops. Many hours of intense work and a great deal of pressure during the harvest under the autumn sky. Rice grows and changes like a human being. Farmers must therefore continue to keep up rice fields. That’s an essential thing for each farmer. When the farmer gets old, children don’t want to take over being farmers. As a result, there are many fields, beside rice fields, as vegetable fields or mountains that are no longer tended due to lack of human power, so a lot of places are let to somebody to use. So, we got many places and fields that are like abandoned, and not in very good condition. So, we cut down the trees, get rid of the rocks, clean up the field and put it in good use. In many places, lots of farmers ask us to take care of this, as well as the house that goes with it. But farmers are always close to their money: after a few years, the field is getting in good conditions, “OK, give it back to us”. And you have to give it back. We were very kind to the farmers because we were learning a lot from them, and they let us use a lot of their land. So that was a very unique relationship between us and the village farmers.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
In that respect, I also remember very strongly that there were times when we very often went to help other farmers – whether there was an agreement about it or not – and in fact, it was also a way of learning and knowing how to do things. I don’t know if Min pre-thought about it, but that’s how I have experienced it, while we were out there trying to survive with the minimal means, we had to at the same time try to figure out how to literally make things. What I mean by things, is of course the house, the objects, the lands, the animals also… How to live and work with these entities. Well, we lived there, we were also there helping the other farmers. Then, in fact, it’s not just the case in Japan, I know the same thing in Greece, the countryside and the farms are deserted, and young people are leaving. And on top of that, you have big corporations buying up farming land. That means that small farmers are losing their land and therefore the connection to their place, the connection to their land, the connection to the knowledge, and to their ways of living they’ve known. So, we were learning, but in this way our presence was also contributing in a very modest way to reviving also the life of the village, and thereby, in a way, literally restoring vitality to the farmers. And then, later on, came the festival that brought more activities in, and so on. I think that this was part of Min and Kazue’s vision, as a sort of conscious activism: OK, we went there to learn, but also to play a supporting role.
Christine Quoiraud:
And I think, how shall I put it, it was pretty natural, because before going to Japan, I also lived in the countryside in France, it was very natural, when there was hay to cut, which was the case when I was a child, everybody came to help, and I think it’s really part of the life of rural community. Less so now because of machines, but at that time, up to the early 1980s it was still fairly universal…
In the early day of the Body Weather farm, there were not so many people living there, not that many… Like Oguri said, at the earliest, there has been the two-month intensive Maï-Juku V workshop. Then from the group of 40 people many returned to their own countries or personal lives. We remained to meet with just over ten people, half of them Japanese, the other half non-Japanese. I remember that there were about 16 people or something like that. And then, a small group of Spanish people came, and we remained a kind of settled group for quite a while, with other Japanese coming in from time to time, I don’t remember their names. And yes, we remained with the same number for quite some time, even a few years. But, a lot of foreigners, of non-Japanese, left… went to give classes and workshops in their respective countries like Frank in Holland, Tess in Denmark. They often left to teach in other parts of the world. I remember that. Katerina and I were there. Later, we left too… I mean, most of us remained there for a long time. I ended up leaving at one point, but it was mainly for personal reasons, like family in France, problems…
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I have to say that I only started teaching and even thinking about teaching after I came back to Europe after 1993. It wasn’t part of my vision at that time. Then in terms of knowing when we moved to the farm, I think Oguri you were there much earlier than Christine and I, for example. Is that so?
Oguri:
Yes. I lived may be two months or a month in Hachioji when Maï-Juku V started. And halfway through the Maï-Juku V intnsive training, I started living on the farm. From then on I lived there for five years. Living there, it is very hard. Nothing there is really prepared for the living.
We used some rental house, a farmhouse, a deserted house. Nobody had lived in that house for many years. I remember that before the intensive training started, I went there, as I said, with motorcycle, with my tools, hammer, and a saw, like carpentry tools, to help, and build with two people from the village, Encho and Akaba San. They become later big supporters and mentors. The house is like a paper door, you know shoji. Shoji door is made of paper. There’s no central heating. I mean, later on, like after two years, everything was changed. But in the beginning, it was a very interesting experience [laughing], like the way people lived a hundred years ago, that kind of aura experience for one year. So, it’s not a suffering life. At the beginning nothing prepared, later we prepared everything, we are not punished then. Yeah, basically that’s it. Yes.
Just one thing, gomme ne [Japanese for “sorry”]: what Christine said about watching things. Yes. This is very much like Japanese mentorship, you know, a mentor never talks, even in the case of safe Japanese cooking, traditional cooking, they never teach you. Yes, you have to steal, steal that technique… Then, there is always some gap too. So, you develop your own ability to do things. Yes. That’s what I wanted to add. And of course, watching is amazing, we were always watching. Watching is very important. After that, you can see the difference. That’s one thing I learned during my first year.
The first year, we know nothing how to grow things, except radishes. Radishes, you can get them after hundred days. We really started from scratch at first. So living is also from scratch, but we lived from that land, and we got lot of support. All farmers giving us something, even agriculture equipment tools. That is, secondhand tools. And “You know, you guys, use this”. And at the same time, as Katerina said, we bought some vitality to the village. After a few months: “Oh, these guys are serious… OK, we better help them.” But it took at least a year to prove ourselves.
At the beginning, we all grew very, very long hair, it was for performance purpose. Min had some vision, all males and females would have very, very long hair, like wild horses on stage. So, everybody let their hair grow. For the Rite of Spring, we looked like hippies. All village people didn’t trust us or didn’t believe we were going to continue running the farm. That’s what changed after a period of two years, three years, year by year, our relationship with the community changed a lot. “All these guys working so hard, honest people, and who do these crazy dances.” Something touched their hearts. We organized that festival in the farmland, so we brought many entertainments from other regions of Japan, or foreign countries, Japanese performers, singers, sculptors, and all these people bring in more audience and activities there. We also helped them. “Actually these guys are not bad.” In fact, we were always invited in their homes. We had different languages: Greek, French, and Spanish. And with different skin colors. Of course, nowadays, the presence of non-Japanese, of foreigners has become a common occurrence in the Japanese countryside, but back then European, Americans, were rare, it’s unusual in that time. Yeah, it was very unique experience for each of us. For the village people, I think it was a shocking impact at first. That’s what life was like there.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
In terms of who went to the farm and who stayed there, it changed constantly. Although you have to imagine, for example, that in the first year, I don’t remember for how long all the foreigners for different reasons, good or bad, were still keeping houses in Tokyo, in the suburb of Tokyo, in Hachioji. While some people, like Oguri, had already moved to the farm. So, we’d go to the farm, us foreigners – correct me if I am wrong, Oguri and Christine – while still keeping our accommodations in Tokyo, because we all also had to work to earn a living, because there were costs involved for us for transport tickets, for business, and so on. For different reasons, we felt it was necessary to keep somehow a foothold in Hachioji, and work to earn money in Tokyo. That’s what we did. However, there was no money involved in our commitment to the farm or to the dance practice, to the practices we did there. That’s why we kept our lodgings and our jobs, and the studio in Hachioji, and we would go to the farm either when hands were needed, or when we would have to rehearse, to prepare for a group performance at Plan B.
So, the constellation of people at the farm changed a lot, absolutely all the time. There was a core group that would be at the farm on a more regular basis, and then we’d come to do farm work, for rehearsals and dance practice, and then we’d go back to Hachioji. Now, you have to imagine that – and this brings me to your question –when we were there, then the work had to be done, because things needed to be built, the chicken house, the fence needed to be corrected, or some chicken needed to be slaughtered, just to name a few things… We did the farm work and the maintenance work for the place, which were also considered part of the training. I mean, engaging with material, engaging with the timing of another thing, another material, another form of life, was considered as part of the training as well. For example, more concretely: how to weed the wild grass, you have to bend down to the ground, you have to work on the ground, it’s small, it’s small, and we were not using electrical tools, we only use all types of tools that were almost extension of one’s body. So, a massive part of the training consisted of finding the best ways to use the body to be efficient in the work. The understanding of how to exert force, in which direction you are going to gear the movement, so, how to use your wrist to grab the grass in a way that you can pull it out with its root, so that it doesn’t break. And so on, and so on. So, that was part of the training.
Now, indeed, because we had to rehearse as well, there were hours set aside for artistic training. So, we had to wake up early in the morning, feed the animals, do the urgent farm work, which was already a form of training, and then have a very quick breakfast. And then the rest of the morning was devoted to rehearsals, then lunch again, and then farm work again. It was happening in a way that I wouldn’t call “organic”, but all the different needs, all the different concerns needed to be taken care of, to be attended to. This is how the day was being packed. The cooking was done, as I recall, on a rotating basis. I remember, me not being able to boil an egg, having then to prepare dinner for 15 people. The panic!!
Christine Quoiraud:
And sometimes we fasted to prepare for performances.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Oh sure, oh yeah! But [laugh]…
But attending to things, attending to needs, whether it was a performance, whether it was a personal need, was as much a matter for the people who were present at that time. Attending to food, attending to the maintenance of the house and of the place, attending to the life, to the social life in the village, because that was also a big part of the activities. I can still remember spending a full day doing different kinds of work, and then ending partying, I mean, eating and drinking at Akaba’s house, or at Encho’s house… until early in the morning (Akaba San and Encho were two of the farmers who supported us). And then…
Christine Quoiraud:
We were young!!!
When I first arrived in the summer of 1985, there was that studio space in Hachioji in a suburb of Tokyo. And there were already animals around the building like chickens and a pig. And always a dog or two, or a cat or two, yes, and we lived with that presence. They were really small shacks near the building for the animals. It was in the suburbs, but it was still the city. There were no fields as such. There was no farm, just a dance studio. Nearby, there were rice fields, but not so many, and a river. So, the main activity was in the studio. Already Plan B existed in Tokyo. To go to Plan B took like – I forgot – but maybe two hours by train. I’m not sure but it was something like that. So, we often travelled from the studio to the city center.
And before that, Min Tanaka, when he came to Europe, often took us to work outside in parks, anywhere. And when we were still in Hachioji, during the intensive workshop (1985), he took us to the mountains for a week. That means that we were also dealing with wildlife in the mountains. And then, at the end of 1985, beginning of 1986, we started the farm. There were a lot of travelling by truck or by car, from Hachioji to the farm. And then, gradually, a team of dancers lived at the farm. Others continued to live in Hachioji. They kept jobs in Tokyo to survive. And then sometimes we would all gather at the farm to work, to carry out a major work, or to rehearse for performances. And then, sometimes we would go on tour in Japan. So, at the beginning, the core place of the activity was in Hachioji, and very soon after its opening (at the end of 1985), the farm became the main place.
I would like to add something about what you both said. About language, when I met Tanaka Min in France, he practically spoke no English at all. He used a translator, so he was at that time surrounded by a bunch of young Japanese, who were studying with Gilles Deleuze in Paris, and were translating for him. At that time Kazue Kobata was always travelling with him, and she was also translating in English, and she managed to introduce Tanaka to Michel Foucault, and, if I remember correctly, to Roger Caillois. And Min really talked a lot with both of them and was very impressed thanks to Kazue’s English. And then, around this time, I think in 1981, Min went to New York, thanks to Kazue. There he met Susan Sontag and musicians like Derek Bayley, Milford Graves, and so on. And, from then on, Min started to study English. Gradually, when he returned to Europe, he could use anatomic terms to explain manipulations, but he still always had a translator. And when we get to Maï-Juku V, I remember it very well, Min spoke much more in English, he asked the Japanese to learn a bit of English, and also encouraged the foreigners, non-Japanese, to study a bit of Japanese. In reality, and still today, there’s this kind of broken English between us.
Mel Graves and Min Tanaka at the Body Weather Farm. Video by Eric Sandrin.
4. Body Weather, Farming and Dancing
Presentation
Body Weather was based on the idea of perpetual change in the body and the weather. This raises questions about different ways of looking at farm work and artistic production work, the relationship between everyday life, the environment and dance work in its training and performance dimensions. Participation in the Body Weather farm involved a very intense commitment to all aspects of farm work and dance. But this commitment remained based on individual confidence in the philosophy of the project, and not on blind adherence to a closed community.
Oguri:
I want to explain a little of the history on a larger time scale. The Body Weather laboratory I think started around the 1980s and lasted until maybe a few years ago, that means about forty years history. And I was there five years, so it’s what I am talking about, my experience over five years. I left in 1990. During that period there were many changes, and before I was there it was another time too. And about Shintaï Kissho, “身体気象”, “Body Weather”, that’s kind of a method of this movement: the body is not a fixed in itself. It’s not a stable, fixed territory. It’s in perpetual change like the weather. It’s not like a season. Weather is constantly changing at any moment.
Christine Quoiraud:
I have a question for Oguri again: do you think that Tanaka had heard then of Masanobu Fukuoka?[4] Because I think it was in the 1970s that he left his job as an engineer and started to do organic farming, creating a commune. I think he was pretty well known then for the way he gathered volunteers to work on his farm and he had a commune that changed all the time, young people coming to him to learn and help. They lived there in a very sober way. And that reminds me a lot of what we went through in the beginning of the farm. For example, there was a group, forming the main group, mostly Japanese, living on the farm, and foreigners who came from time to time to do some special type of work with the neighbors or without the neighbors, and then also throughout the year there were volunteers coming to help from different parts of Japan. So, I was wondering if Min had heard of Fukuoka? I don’t remember hearing him talk about this guy but… may be…
Oguri:
I’ve never heard Fukuoka’s name from Min Tanaka’s voice. He never did. I’m sure he knew but he didn’t mention it, but I think that’s very much Min.
Just one thing, I was about to forget about that. Going back to that first time when I was working in the farm, I was very impressed by the land. At the same time, on the farm, labor is not done for someone, labor is for yourself. Because people in urban environments depend on their customers, or their boss… But here, on the farm, as I said, there was a form of commitment and responsibility, but the whole work is for yourself. That was a very strong kind of our commitment and, you know, and that was the purpose for being there. Including the dance too. That’s what the dance method was all about. It is a very simple word and nothing special. Of course, you have to make your own decisions and, as I said, we are not professional at that time. We don’t know that. We have to find out things out on our own, like, some answers, because all neighbors farmers are like mentors too. I remember that. And let me talk about land also… I know I had very different perspectives from Fukuoka. Like: what’s special about a region, regionality. What’s particular in that area or regionality, in that place… How to say? There is a traditional-like ritual or celebration in a dance. Celebration or some ritual, or kagura,[5] or dance there. We learned a lot about how to cultivate the land and how we think about what is the origin of the dance. Because this type of method, Body Weather, is not a dance technique as such. Min Tanaka, he never teaches us how to dance, no. In other words, our practice is not a study of how to dance or a practice confined to the studio. Our training is very much oriented towards sensitivity work. And… the class is very open. I mean, dance is very open for any kind of skill.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
As far as I know, the term Body Weather was borrowed – not borrowed but taken – from Seigow Matsuoka.[6] But am I right to think so? I am not sure. I mention this because when Min was working, traveling, exploring, with Kazue Kobata, he was also a lot involved in artistic and thought movements taking place at the time. The stimuli that gave rise to the work that emerged, to everything that he did, were of a theoretical as well as philosophical nature, and had also a very strong connection to movements of thought already existing in Japan, the United States and Europe. So, I just want to bring that in… Of course, I don’t know. I am not sure if Min has explicitly spoken about all this. I do know that Kazue Kobata did, and I’ve had conversations with her about it, about all the different movements of thoughts that were enlarging our approaches and encouraging Min to continue with the work he was doing. Not only Min, but also all the artists that he was working with. Because he wasn’t a solitary genius. I think we all had that kind of experience! There was always the presence of an extended community.
5. Commons and Body Weather
Presentation
Commons, what we call in French « communs« , can be defined as an articulation between resources that exist within a community, and rules concerning the way in which that community operates with regard to these resources. In the Body Weather experience, we can see that there are a lot of resources linked to the farm and to the dance practice, to Plan B and to all the spaces around the farm. How these aspects of common life were organized, how did the community function in relation to different interactive practices taking place in different spaces, environments, and with living creatures and objects? It’s about the conjunction of experiences, the existence of a community with little in common between its members but a commitment, autonomy and responsibility, taking initiatives in a non-formal structure, perpetual movement and evolution.
Christine Quoiraud:
Well, there’s not ONE answer to the questions about the commons. If there is an answer, it has to do with the passage of time. When I first arrive in 1985, things were different. The farm didn’t exist yet. And then the farm started. Then the farm continued. We started by building the chicken house and growing rice, and it was a gradual change. So, there are several answers, many answers.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Allow me to use the word “community” not in the sense of a closed church, but as a network of forces, of people, of contexts, that always been central to Min Tanaka’s engagement. A bigger community of people, of artists, who had the same questions and the same concerns as he did. That’s one thing. And another thing I’d like to say, concerning that question of community: you are there because you’ve chosen to be, and you better have the guts and the commitment, for yourself, to fully engage. We’re not there to do it for you. And at the same time there was no pre-agreed reason for why we were there, there was no common belief. We are all here because each one of us had totally different motivations, and different interests, and different types of investment. Personally, I found that precious, I would not have stayed otherwise.
And also, I speak for myself, it was always important to feel things out and also to register with myself. That’s what was interesting because, you know, I was young. Intuitively I could understand things and give them a place, also listen to my experience – not the dance experience but the life experience – I’d acquired from the place I came from. And also the ways of being in community, the ways of doing things together, the ways of understanding and sharing work, where we lived together with others.
But, for me, it was also important to feel that I could actually betray that sense of commitment, even if only with myself. Why do I say that, because it gave me the security of knowing that I wasn’t in a sect. That said, I also want to say that it was fascinating at the same time how all of us, each one of us, were there out of our own different motivation, and still we had all made the commitment to be there together. And also doing things together, without there being any agreement on what that should be. Of course, there was the training, there was the necessity to grow as artists and eventually as people. There was a trust in witnessing the work and its potential outcome. It was not about developing a method, but in the way questions were posed: about dance, about movements, about land and nature, and about non-nature. So, these questions were present in all forms of production, in any kind of work activities, that had to be carried out, whether it was cutting the grass, whether it was learning from other farmers who have been there for generations. When they tried to figure out who we were, they wondered if that was “making mistakes”. But the commitment was to actually do that together. So, in terms of commitment, I mean, that has been always for me very interesting, very fascinating, very exciting. I always had to commit myself to something other than just myself. It’s something that exist among farmers, they know that you have to feed the animals, you are not on a vacation, you have to be there.
There’s no division between leisure time and work time, you have to be there, available, and your rhythm and your needs, your body are available for the service of something else, of the animals, of the plants, of the seasons, of the water that follows its course or stops flowing, etc., etc., etc. So, that sense of: “OK, I’m an individual, I’m here for myself, and I’m responsible for my actions, I’m autonomous”, and yet there’s always this call to actually relate and commit to something else that isn’t myself. And it’s not necessarily linked to that community as such, it’s always bigger than that. It’s the other humans, as being together, but it’s also the animals, the plants, the cultivation, and so on. The tools that we use. Yes, there are a lot of nuances to this notion of commitment.
Christine Quoiraud:
I think we learned a lot by watching… by observing, which is also a way of understanding farm work, like, I remember, when we went to help Encho (one of the farmers, a neighbor) in the rice field. He showed us how to cut the rice and hang it on a pole. It was a situation of having to observe the action, in order to be able to do it ourselves. Or when he showed us how to use a tool to turn over the wooden logs on which shitake mushrooms grow, we watched his gestures so we could imitate them – not imitate them exactly – it was a question of grasping, of embodying the gesture of the one who knows how to do it.
And I remember myself trying to follow the M.B. training (« Mind and Body training », a very dynamic training as part of Body Weather),[7] I had to watch the bodies of the guys in front, of Min when he was correcting a little or showing different rhythms or other things. And when he was directing the preparation of the performances, it was the same. I’d listen, I’d watch his body rather than listen to what he was saying, his explanations which remained a bit surrealist for me. But for me, his body was not at all surrealist, I could grasp a lot of things. And by the way, Oguri, in my memory, before Maï-Juku V, there were a few solo performances at Plan B. But from Maï-Juku V onwards, Min started choreographing to encourage us – I think I was kind of the first one of the foreigners of that time to present a performance. So, my composition was first. Everyone laughed… So, I asked Min to choreograph my next solo. It was early January 1986, shortly before Hijikata’s death. Afterwards, Min encouraged everybody to do a performance once a month, which the three of us did as much as we could. This was in parallel with the collective work of the group, or the work directed by Min Tanaka. Each of us had the opportunity to develop our own research and test it in front of an audience at Plan B, which was an amazing privilege, an amazing way of learning… and also an extraordinary proof of trust. Voilà.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
In terms of the possibility of proposing initiatives, I don’t recall having the need to do so. However, I also don’t have the impression that I’m someone who passively follows the course of things, because I could have my own ways of engaging with things, like for example I could have my own motorbike and, at given times, I could move away from the farm and come back whenever I thought it was necessary. So, I, personally did not feel the need to initiate concrete things. And I guess, I am not also the type of person to do that, but at the same time I never felt I didn’t have the space for myself and act on my own, to make decisions independently and autonomously.
I think if Min had not given the trigger, suggesting: “Why don’t you do…” I’m not sure I would have done anything. Actually, Min somehow encouraged me, and yet, in this context, there was plenty of space to do our work, to do whatever it felt necessary to do. Given that there was a space also, Plan B was there, available to us.
Christine Quoiraud:
I think we initiated small things. Oguri, maybe you remember when we started working together, we were in charge of the communication, how to say, designing the Plan B calendar, and at one point, I was translating into English – I had to work with Oguri, because I had no idea of Japanese. These are small things, but they added a stone to the edifice, to the main project. And as far as I am concerned, I managed to take a lot of initiative on my own, in the same way that Katerina could take a motorbike to escape. So, I was also able to take small initiatives to resource myself, so that I could then come back to taking part in the group. And it was because I was not Japanese, sometimes I really needed to do that, and it was by returning to my own language, to the French language, that I was able to realize this.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I think there were different places. It’s good to look at them from different angles. At the beginning there was a location in Hachioji, which was the dance studio. Then there was the farm, something completely different, a place with its intrinsic structure, with all its complexity and its improvisational character. We have also a seminal place, Plan B, a performance space. And all sorts of other places where performance would take place that were either theaters or outdoor places, within Japan or elsewhere. Then there were also all the places we had to go to sell and deal with the products of the farm, and I think that was part of our lives, of our practices as well.
If I try to define the commons in terms of locations, there were a) seminal places, b) important locations and c) places where a particular activity took place. Of course, there were other places as well, and, later on, came another house more to the south, close to the sea.Because the Body Weather farm was in the mountains. But, I mean, the life of the group changed in relation to these different places. I hope that this makes sense. So, again I repeat, it was Hachioji, the studio, and of course the houses around it, this particular space, a kind of small village situation on the outskirts of Tokyo. And then, you have the farm, you have Plan B in Tokyo, the theater space, and you have these other spaces where performances took place. Then, in my perception, there were all the big activities initiated by Min, so most of the important performances, the tours, and we were invited to participate. We were never obliged, but we were invited to take part.
There were also the moves – Oguri and Christine correct me if I am wrong – the big moves to the farm. I mean, these big migratory moves were initiated by Min, and maybe also in collaboration with Kazue Kobata and with other people who belonged to the artistic scene of Tokyo at that time. But these big moves were initiated by Min, and we were invited to participate. Plan B as a space was already in existence, I think, at least when I arrived. So, we have these places that exist, and we have some sort of structure that moves around that it is initiated and triggered by Min, Kobata, and the people who work closely with him. And then, within these bigger main locations and structures, we’re invited to participate by taking our own initiatives and to create our own work. That’s how I see it, that’s how I can make sense out of it, because a lot of it was left to our own initiative, I mean it was growing as we went along and according to needs.
That’s how I experienced the development of the different activities. The animals arrived. The rice fields had to be taken care of. Because that’s what was happening on the farm, we had to take care of it. In a way, there was an aspect of organicity, but at the same time there were many things that were already there, or that existed on Min’s initiative. I mean, the big performances, big theaters, were initiated by Min, or by other artists who had invited Min to participate or to choreograph, and then he would also invite Maï-Juku group to participate. So, some of these commons were determined as and when necessary, by the need to do something at a given moment. But each one of us, in different ways, initiated, supported, followed or redirected what was happening. But there was also a bigger structure above all that – I call it structure, but it was a very fragile structure, a non-formal structure: Min had his vision of things, and he was going on, he was moving on. Who wanted to join, fine, who did not, bye-bye, something like that. And yet, within that, there was a lot of space for us and a lot of invitations from Min’s side for us to take our own initiatives, to develop our own creativity, to have our own connections to the different places, to be there and understand and feel what needed to be done.
Oguri:
So, as I said before, the movement of Body Weather history is also constantly changing, as Christine explained. Katerina said it too. “If there’s something that we need, [chanting] we———– are going to do it.” Commons, the commons are not permanently fixed: the farm, the dance company, and Plan B. I was completely involved in all three activities, for me it’s the same, there’s no separation. There was the nojo’s [farmers] community. The community of who worked the land. People who weren’t involved in the performances, other people included in performances, but not in those of Plan B.[8] There were different ways of looking at these “commons”, a little more flexible, or expending and moving to. On the subject of Maï-Juku, moving from Hachioji to the farm was a big transition. Since the beginning of Body Weather, not as a parameter but as, let’s say, the essence of Body Weather, there was no question of staying solely at Hachioji, in this dance studio. It was necessary to move the activities to the farmland, to the rural world – I don’t say “nature”, just “farmland”, or environmental place. It’s just as Min Tanaka had done when he started dancing, first on the street, then in a theater. And now again, it was question of dancing in a specific site or outdoors. He never fixed the stage, but integrated into new places, moving to one another. So, I hope you understand, Maï-Juku is not a dance company – yes, in a sense it is – but it’s not a dance company fixed once and for all, with a choreographer and contracted dancers, who get paid for their performances. Not at all like that, yes… And at the same time, it’s another context that depends on individuals – I think I said something about a strong commitment on the part of individuals – it is very much organized, but it’s also very much an individual thing. In fact, now, Christine, Katerina, and me, we’ve been working completely separately and developed very different dances. So, we weren’t there to assimilate Min Tanaka’s choreography or to acquire a technique, Min Tanaka’s dance technique. This community is not like this. The commons are determined by the individuals within the commons. To come back to individualities – is it really linked to the commons? (I’m wondering myself) – obviously, financially, it hasn’t been easy for anyone. Because I was there for five years, from the moment we started working on the farm. We started by learning from the farmers how to do it. Yeah, none of us were experts at it at first, so, we were learning that. So, farm work didn’t pay as such. No, maybe at that time, dancing, big projects, brought a bit of money or commercial work, movies.[9] So, yes, many things were happening at the same time.
The farm started I think in 1986. All village people didn’t trust us or didn’t believe we were going to continue running the farm. That’s what changed after a period of two years, three years, year by year, our relationship with the community have changed a lot. All these guys working so hard, honest people, and who do these crazy dances. Something touched their hearts: that first year, Min, Kobata San, and other people organized a festival, the Art Festival, a pioneer project in Japan, outdoor. Something that never happened in Tokyo metropolis. But in this more marginal place, in the farmland, outdoor, a performing art event: sculpture, and music and performance. We brought many entertainments from other regions of Japan, or foreign countries, Japanese performers, singers, sculptors, and all these people bring in more audience and activities there. That was very much like a pioneer project in the 1980’s, now it’s getting more common place. It was another activity form of Body Weather activity and beyond, and we were all involved for this at the farm: farming, studying, driving the dance, and organizing, producing events. We were getting more accepted by the community. In fact, we were always invited in their homes. Of course, nowadays, the presence of non-Japanese, of foreigners has become a common occurrence in the Japanese countryside, but back then European, Americans, were rare, it’s unusual in that time, yeah, it was very unique experience for each of us.
Oh yeah, another thing, this is a bit symbolic about rice: rice is a very essential matter we plant, especially for the Japanese. There are so many names given to one grain of rice, from the rice growing to the rice coming to my mouth, the name changes. It’s like these different names given to water: ice, water, snow, all transformations giving rise to different names. So many names are transformed each time in relation to other ways of being. That’s how the commons can be seen in the context of Body Weather. But I’ve learned from that tradition in the field – OK, all right, maybe I’m probably creating chaos – OK, ask me some specific questions! [laugh]
Christine Quoiraud:
I can add something which maybe extend somewhat or is connected to what Oguri just said: I remember that when we started the farm, there were no animals. The main focus was really on rice, getting the rice crop going, and then, gradually, we built the chicken house, and suddenly there were thousands of chickens. It wasn’t just Min who decided on the development of the farm, I think Hisako played a big part in these kinds of impulses. Suddenly we had goats and donkeys. And I remember that, when I left Japan, Tanaka Min offered to entrust me with cows. He wanted, me to take charge of the cows. I said: “No, thank you!”. But it was a way to establishing a relationship. We spoke about the place. This was how the original group had to adapt. These animals had to be taken care of, they were part of the environment. At first, they weren’t present, and then a little bit present, and more and more present. And so, the rice was like a must, because in Japan it’s everywhere, as far as I know… But the animals, it seems to me, were very important for Min and Hisako. The animals were present also for their shit as a fertilizer, but also to earn money, because we were selling the eggs. I’m thinking clearly about the animals and their sounds and their smells and their pee.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I just like to try and clarify this notion of commons and of community. Because from many of you, you hear it said – and it’s also for me, wonderful to hear it – again and again, again, that there is a community in existence. But in the context of Body Weather, there was nothing in common between its members, and this is what gave the project its particular strength. Of course, there’s dancing, there is a need to dance and to explore dance, to explore how to understand dancing in life, how to relate, how to exist with each other, how to exist with things, with objects, with plants, with tools, with money, with no money, how to exist within other communities that also exist with us, while we are also not exactly sure whether or not we form a community. We just didn’t know. At least I didn’t know. I don’t think that we ever felt that there was anything we could designate as part of a common order.
There was a shared desire to be there, but each one of us had our own particular needs, expectations, and projections, and so forth. And also, their own ways of engaging with all this complexity, or chaos in other words, not chaos in terms of whatever, but chaos in terms of unpredictability. Everything relate, we are related. There are principles that are laid and guide us and stay with us, like the rice, like putting ourselves in relation, like questioning ourselves, how not just be in relation, but questioning how to do it, that is to do what we don’t know. Also questioning the morals, the ethics, and the politics of all that. Nobody decided: “OK, this is how we are going to do it”. We thought about it, we were figuring it out. And yet, and yet, and yet, there were bigger schemes that were constantly in motion, by which I mean that all notions were constantly situated in particular contexts. There was always the presence of all kinds of dancers, of bodies, as micro-communities. The community without something in common, that was very radical, it still is, at least in my mind, and that’s why this whole bunch of people wasn’t a sect, there’s no promise land, no obligations. We were there because we’d realize that “OK, I can do this, I can relate, I can respond to what needs to be done, I can…”
Christine Quoiraud:
Just one more thing. As far as I remember, the shape of the group and the activity developed on their own, but when we were on tour, when we travelled to France for performances, I remember that there were a lot of differences with what was Japanese. Min often talked about the tradition, tradition in Japan… And when he was in Paris at the time, he was somewhat critical of the style of democracy in use in France. I just remember one of Min Tanaka’s “remarks” when we presented the Rite of Spring. Nario Goda,[10] a dance critic, was with us and he fell ill. He was in hospital for a while, and Goda San, Mister Goda was very excited: “Oh, I am sick, I’m going to stay in Paris, I want to stay in Paris, I love Paris, I love France, there’s lots of good food, good wine …” And Min Tanaka said to him: “No! You shouldn’t stay in France, it’s too soft, the mind is too soft, the mind is too mild”. It spoke to me a lot, then, it was like: “In Japan, we can have this strong energy, this strong capacity to work. We don’t stop, we don’t give up,” like the Cossacks – an image that comes from me indeed – but that’s how I felt a bit at the time. You’d never get tired. You could continue even if you were tired, yes, absolutely… So I suppose Min was also wondering what it’s about to be a group, how a group could behave, how life with others could be envisaged. How is it to live with several people, and with an ever-fluctuating number of participants. During the first year, there were a lot of people on the farm, and then in the middle of the winter, it shrunk. The size of the group varied constantly. There was, I think, something akin to a non-adhesion to capitalism, in the way we were confronted with the economy. But on the other hand, to my feeling, there was a strong tendency to turn to tradition. And as a result, there was this tension between tradition and a certain willingness to invent something new. And probably, other influences, I don’t know, but I think I can feel or imagine something more open, somehow, – I would not dare to use the word – a certain anarchy, but…
Oguri:
Just I want to say this: as we are related to the land, it is also the case with dance. Dance is mobility, it can take place anywhere. With just the body you can present dance and it’s a one-time thing. And we don’t own our dance either. So, I think, it’s a very effective method. What I mean is that if we consider this notion of communs or of the commons, it’s kind of the essence of Body Weather: of not owning the land, of not owning the dance. It’s not about ownership.
So, that’s make sense now, that the dance and the land are always rented. We borrow the land and the dance as well. But during the pandemic, it is the first thing that becomes impossible, it limits the dance so much, that we can’t do anything. Yes, I am sorry to remind you of that. I’ve always thought that dance was the strongest media, you don’t need to carry instruments, you can go any place, just with your body. But during the pandemic, it was so difficult. I’ll stop here. OK, thanks.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
And yet, we as dancers we’re always moving. I mean, it was always another fascinating for me the way while working the life of the group was growing, that there’s a sense of mobility, of sudden shifts, changes of direction, mutations, movement. And yet there’s the question of not owning land, and yet there’s the question of working the land, of relating to the land. Getting your working hands dirty…
Oguri:
… Yeah, rooting, finding you roots…
Katerina Bakatsaki:
… finding your roots, working the land, I mean, creating a relationship with the land, as you say, with the rice field. Understanding also with the body, what it needs, its timing and being able to accommodate and support it, to be at its service, the same thing with the animals, the same thing between each other, the same thing with the music, the same thing with performances, wherever we are sharing the space with others, whether they are human bodies, or objects, etc. I think that was this notion of working the land: finding your roots, without owning. And this, for me, now I am recalling it, also with hearing your words, and “Ooooooooh!” [laughs], it’s really inspiring, time and again. And I think that was in terms of this notion of the commons: you know, things are moving, shifting, places are changing, we are embracing what needs to be done, etc. And so, there’s a constant move, and yet we need to get the actual relationships working with the village, with the villagers, with the rice, with animals, with the land, with each other, and so on. So, we are not owning land and yet we are working the land, again and again.
Oguri:
That was our Body Weather community. But you know, sometimes I feel that’s the big reason why I left the Body Weather farm, was because it was at the same time a very old-style community. These farmers, very conservative too! Yes. But that was a kind of challenge for Min working there. I am not putting, how to say, that he is not a great man and a fair person either, but I think at that time… OK I shut up now.
6. Choreography, Improvisation, Images
Presentation
Was Min Tanaka a choreographer? It seems that he wasn’t in the strict sense of the term, but he was nevertheless an initiator of performances and stage director of dance. This meant that there were hierarchies in the artistic value of different forms of choreographies. Given these circumstances, what happened in reality during the preparatory sessions to performances? How much improvisation went into the performances? What was the place of technique, if it made sense?
The presence of images was an important element that enabled different pieces to formally emerge.
Oguri:
First of all, at least in my memory, in the 1980s, Min Tanaka never put his name on programs as a choreographer, such as “composed by Min Tanaka”[11] in a group performance, I remember it well. Composition implied a very strong framework. And choreography what task is it? It changed over time – I am just talking about this1985/86 period – it is a task, a movement or choreography proposed as a task. The task of jumping in the air, a task like jumping up one hundred times, and body straight. That’s an example. But composition is like a very clear road map, whereas usually we never repeat the same performance again. Even in the same series of performances. Second day, in the same series, a lot of changes take place, even this composition is slightly subject to changes. The next season, the performance resembles the original model, but still with some little differences. So, performances never stayed the same, at that time.
Later on, especially when we were living on the farm, then many productions, rehearsals took place on the farm. Indoor, in a studio – it’s not really a dance studio, it was in the house, we had a bigger room there, upstairs. So, rehearsal took place there or in the field, where we built a stage to rehearse. Again, for the performances it would create different situations. Sometimes we are doing the performance in the small studio, or at other time we’d present in a big theater the study pieces we’d created in the small studio. Processes were different. Usually, we worked out composition. And since we were living together, composition could be explained in a more abstract language… But very much related to each individual body. Body including spirit too, yeah, not like considering if someone had flexibility or if someone moved well, it wasn’t that important. And there was a lot of improvisation involved. Min demanded so much responsibility from each performer. Min Tanaka didn’t say how to move, he didn’t determine the form of the movement to choreograph. Later on, when we had gained a lot of experiences of dance in the farm, in outdoor, I remember a composition very, very simple: just being there, assuming a presence. But each time, after rehearsals, he’d tell us clearly what he has noted for each dancer individually. Everything he observes gives rise to very clear comments pointing to change things, to make the performance better, yes, without ever giving a goal to achieve. That’s what I remember about working in those days. Thank you.[12]
Christine Quoiraud:
We worked a lot with images, and these images came from Tanaka Min’s experience with Hijikata who choreographed a solo for Min. He used the images maybe from that moment on, the years when he was working under Hijikata’s direction, I think it was 1984. We got there in 1985. That was when he used the images. As I recall, he was really proposing us a methodology for working with images. So, it was a list of images. And as Oguri said, he would never show us movements. He just gave us the words and let us work with those words. And then, he would see us in rehearsals. And then he would adjust. And, again, to my memory, it was as if he were sculpting or creating the space of the body in space. And in space, that means here with the light, with the set, with the unfolding of time, with others, and I think he was always conscious of the audience’s presence. Whether inside or outside, the question of the audience’s presence was always a big deal. And what I learned most at that time, I think, was the consideration for the audience. And this image work consisted of always searching for ways to give vitality and energy to the pathway of the images, something impossible to stabilize or fix. Impossible to fix it in a form. Even now, if we showed you an image, maybe I suppose Katerina, Oguri and me would probably start looking for bringing this image to life.
When I use the term “image”, it was a list of words. Actually, in 2017, I organized a workshop at the CND (Centre National de la Danse), and I invited Oguri to lead it, focusing on “image”, and there is a recording of that workshop at the CND. And, in fact, in the feedback work I did on this experience, which is online (médiathèque du CND), I transcribed Oguri’s work. I transcribed, translated, and commented on his work. In that text, I even dealt with the fundamentals of Oguri’s teaching. By “dealt”, I mean décrypté, to decipher: “Oguri says this, and he shows that”. And I describe: “his hands are on his head, and his shoulder is moving towards the back, …”. I describe what I see on the video, what I see of his movements, of his body, in space, as he teaches.
Oguri:
Just one thing about the choreography of Min Tanaka, and this image work that Christine just mentioned. Hijikata Tatsumi, Tatsumi Hijikata was a big, big, big inspiration for Min Tanaka. And Min Tanaka was choreographed by Hijikata Tatsumi, I think in 1984. Then, at that time, Min Tanaka was very close to the Ankoku butō[13] movement. What Tanaka shared with Hijikata Tatsumi that experience working with those images. So, Hijikata Tatsumi used many images from the environment or paintings. And Min kind of introduced us about this work with Hijikata, and we also included this work on images in many of our performances. And later on, the approach to this “image work” changed somewhat.[14] The things that I introduced at the CND was really old work. They’re just all different tools that no longer correspond to actual choreography. They belong to that particular time. To what we did at that time. I think later on, he changed his method. This work on images has been internalized in our body. The outside world is in our body. As a result, from that moment on, landscapes are inscribed in our bodies: we have like a “big lake in the body” or a “tropical forest in the head”. And there is “a house burning inside the body”, and “smoke comes up”. It’s not an external image. It’s Internal. We have moon, or sky in our body too. That was a big change for the performances. Before it was so precise. With this body part, you render this image. You have to have a very quick mind to recognize and adopt any body position. This idea of inside-out changed everything, and Min Tanaka’s experience became mine. I don’t know how he now works with people. So, as his style of dance or choreography method is like Body Weather, it never stays at the same stage. So, yeah, again, I am a kind of a witness to the 1980s. It’s only been five years… but it made a lot of changes in me.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
As Oguri said, there were different periods, and there was an evolution in the different images used at given times. So, I would be hesitant, I mean, some images are strongly remembered. But what I do want to say is that the work with the images was also part of the practice and was one of the many different ways of sensitizing the body to the words that exists within each image. And to sensitize the body to also non-human entities, whether it is an object, whether it is the water, whether it is the river, the rice, and so on. So, the images evoked again something other than human, coming, inviting non-humans in the body. So, one of the images that comes to my mind now, is that of a young monkey boxing with the sky, boxing the sky, correct me if I’m wrong. Boxing with the sky or boxing the sky.
Christine Quoiraud:
With red gloves, and this monkey was sitting on a barber’s chair [laughs]. But at one point, we were three women dancing and we were like the asses of cows [le cul des vaches], and our pelvis were swinging “ting… ting… ting… ting…” (like the cow’s tails chasing flies, we swayed the hips from one side to the other). Or you had a vertical electric pole inside your body.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
So, the images were used in many different practices to sensitize and to alert the body, but what was specific, as I said before, was that the images were inviting the other non-human and they were extraordinary, I mean, in their scale, in their richness.
Christine Quoiraud:
But it was also an opportunity to fragment the body. We had at the same time to focus on several images addressed to the body, and each part of the body would be in charge of a particular image: head, and arms, and torso, and belly, and back, and legs, and feet, all at the same time. And then we would switch to another set of images, which was also a source of stress for the nervous system. As if we were… Min Tanaka was using the words “to be attacked” by images. And so, it was also a way of being in control and on the frontière, on the borderline of lack of control, and we were always on the verge of falling totally out of control. Fatally, it was akin to the risk of improvisation, that’s what it was. We were also trying to reach the images, and they were somehow out of our hands, always escaping. In my memory, it was a question of increasing intensity, the intensity of the capacity to concentrate.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Another image, another work, which was used later on: I remember that we practiced a lot, we practiced in the sense of research and exploration: it was a work with the notion of the puppet. So, you are a puppet, and you are moved by a puppeteer, you are moved by strings. It wasn’t a question of imitating, but of that notion, that invitation to the body to disarticulate itself – how can I say? – the invitation to the body to be moved by something else than the body itself. And the notion also, I think, that many of these images called for permeability. The permeability of the body – I remember Min using the word “attack” instead – but it’s actually about the body being permeable to the imagination, through again sensations, and imagination that is outside of itself.
Christine Quoiraud:
To be “attacked”, bombarded with images, is a way of saturating the brain with information, of thwarting the habitual production of images specific to each individual. You have to give yourself a chance to be “danced” by something other than your own imagination.
We also worked a lot with “stop motion”, like you start the movement, and you stop… you introduce the idea of cutting off the direction of movement and thinking about the duration of the movement, its extent and how long the stop will last. So, we did a lot of this, and at one point we also worked a lot on repeating the same movement, “again… again…”, or “long time”.
Oguri:
I think, a little bit, also, about “training” and “M.B. training”. We practiced the very coordinated body, body coordination with a rhythm, right side and left side. So, it’s a way of becoming conscious of connecting with the body and body parts. By lifting knees, turning hips, very simple things. But these shifts of direction were like the intention of how to go towards something else and to achieve the dismembering of the body. Dismembering… Yeah. This “image work” that Christine has just introduced, involved dividing up all the limbs of the body: head parts, arms parts, torso, and legs. And at the same time, moving different qualities, different speeds, completely different images movements at the same time. And this image is shifting into the next movement, the body parts changing with a hundred of transitions, transitioning, transitioning, transitioning between images also being part of the essence of the practice. So, that is more a purpose of dismembering the body, like a memory of early childhood, of a newborn baby’s way of moving. Of course, that movement is not connected with your mind or consciousness, or angel’s smile. When a baby starts smiling, it’s not the result of an emotion. It’s a kind of sensation to come. So, I think the inspiration focusing on these aspects came from Min Tanaka or Hijikata Tatsumi. It’s our body memory of early childhood experience at that stage of the movement. And again, that precise image brings external things into the inside. This is a huge challenge. If you don’t understand this, you can’t do that. Some people can do it, and some people cannot. How to accept that: you are bringing a whole city landscape inside your body? But I think dance can do that, yeah!
Christine Quoiraud:
This exercise was very hard. There were dancers who couldn’t realize it or couldn’t realize it on their own. It was a question to fill the whole body with a patchwork of constantly changing images. A concentration hard to hold.
Oguri:
Concerning Min’s choreography, training, M.B. training to coordinate body, actually I think the purpose was more about dismembering.
Christine Quoiraud:
The training was not there to strengthen the body’s capacities, but rather to deconstruct its coherence as a psychosocial unit.
Oguri:
Yes, we worked a lot with a partner. And body is best text for learning. We have a body stretching method and body alignment series called “Body Manipulations”. Between two partners: no talking for two hours to commit with each other’s body. Stretching like a body alignment. And after to talk to each other about the experience, responding to it fully. To share what had happened during the two hours of mutual commitment. And to share again and again. And learn that bodies are never the same, ever changing. Again, here we have all the concepts of Body Weather: never stay the same and take responsibility for sharing time and space with others. These principles were maintained over time.
It’s a little bit related to the idea of the Japanese mentor. It doesn’t matter if it’s Japanese or not. But about mentorship or morals or ethics, it’s there: we learn that technique includes the space. As in martial arts, we always start to clean the space and start with a salut. That kind of morality and respect of the space. In dance, we’re learning space. And that each is a mentor to the other. I learned a lot from Min Tanaka, and from Noguchi San, operating lighting backstage at the theater. Or producing vegetables on the farm, or from the area farmers acting as mentors. And even after five years becoming known as a skilled dancer or skilled farmer. For sometimes I had to act as a leader for young people or beginners. The relationships I had with these people also taught me a lot. So, all this is also related to the communs. In that community, it’s also very much learning from each other. Everyone is a mentor to everything, it’s everywhere. Our producer, Kazue Kobata was one. Our colleagues, like Christine or Katerina, all came from different backgrounds, this is a very unique part of Body Weather: Europeans, Japanese, Americans, we all lived together too. And the common language is English, which I still don’t speak very well. So, that’s how we communicate and make things happen. And still, we have this kind of strong relationship after so many years.
Christine Quoiraud:
I think I’m very grateful for the mutual relationships, the fact that we helped each other. We influenced each other. I mean, I was, like Oguri. Oguri helped me somehow on the farm to get a glimpse of the Japanese state of mind and maybe, as we discussed, I was transmitting the Western individualistic state of mind – I was more into thinking about encounters and exchanges. We influenced each other, maybe without being conscious of it, but mediated by the fact that we spent so much time together. It seems to be very banal, but it wasn’t so banal. As Oguri said, we continue to have the same kind of relationship after so many decades, after such a long time, it’s a very strong connection. And I want to share the idea that I don’t think I went there to learn a technique or how to dance. But I know that at the end of that experience, as Oguri said, I also felt that I was totally ready to go out into the world and dance. I really had this feeling, not that I was proud or pretentious, but I had the guts, the courage, yeah! And the most difficult thing for me when I came back to Europe, was to be able to continue this intensity of life. And at that time in France, in Europe, it was a totally different logic. It was the beginning of the “intermittents du spectacle” in France, similar to this state of mind of a civil servant, a fonctionnaire state of mind, and I couldn’t enter that state of mind. Yes.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
In terms of technique, I think that we all know that technique has different states, different forms, different ways of understanding or disseminating. I think that the whole training including M.B. was there to answer the core question, which was, if I may say so, how to embody oneself in a plural way, in multiple bodies. I mean, if you consider training as research and not as a methodology for becoming something, that already clarifies things a lot. And, for me again, the question that constantly arises is how to be embodied in a plurality of bodies. You might question that possibility, maybe seeing from other points of view, that this plurality is problematic, but anyway, as a philosophical question, you have to ask yourselves: what if the body is never one, is more than one, and if it’s more than human? So, this is why the whole training is research, is finding ways to explore this fundamental question. In that sense, I don’t think that technique serves to become something, but it is a very clear, a very coherent, however not closed, methodology for questioning things. This is how I perceive it. Now, how does it lead to performance, how does it become a presentation on stage, very basic things that I can pick up? Once again, it’s all about cultivating the body’s permeability, and also its capacity to be lucid, clear, attentive, but without being self-absorbed, so as to have the tools to exist in performance. However, it is not a training that leads to performance, it’s, as Deborah Hay[15] also puts it: you are always training, you are always practicing also while you are performing; or you are never practicing, because you are always in the process of performing. There is the need to pay attention both to the body and to everything that isn’t the body, and it’s this aspect that needs to be the focus of training. So, in that sense, this is a technique, a non-formal technique, which is present in other artists such as Deborah Hay, Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, etc. So, it’s a non-formal based practice. The question I asked myself in relation to technique or the lack of it, after I left Japan (and to this day), goes something like this: “How can I keep training, how can I keep practicing?” How can I practice the life and all aspects of that life when I’m no longer in Japan?
7. Relationship to Music
Presentation
The relationships between dance and music in Body Weather is open to conjectures. Is this a story of dance gaining gradual autonomy from any illustration of musical discourse, or is music part of a general sound environment in which dance takes place in various modes of relationships? The notion of environmental sounds might include everyday life sounds (urban, rural, and natural), musical composition of a given space, improvised interactions with a musician, or recorded music in many styles. Are the sounds of the environment points of contact for Body Weather supports for body movements or sources of inspiration?
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Before music there was listening. I mean, before the conscience of music, there was the conscience of listening. By the way, when we talk about language, it’s not as if language was not there. Language was present, but perhaps because we didn’t understand each other, there were different ways of listening to language. I am not saying something new, but I just want to say that language wasn’t eliminated. All sorts of different languages were present, broken English, broken Japanese, attempt to speak without losing the sense of what you are saying, trying to understand with the eye and the ear at the same time while somebody is talking, etc. So, language was present as a mode of listening, as something that you clearly can’t understand, but you attempt to, but not in terms of semantics. By the way, I’ll never forget the Obon festival [Traditional summer festival, around August 15, celebrating the deaths].[16] The music, the dancing, and the singing, at Obon festival. Anyway, music…? There is a lot to say, right? Oguri? Christine?
Oguri:
Music, music at the farm, [laugh]… I have still strong memory of the sound of frogs. There is a second house on the farm that served as storage. And formally they used the upstairs for the silkworm. It was just one floor. Actually, the farmhouse has no doors, except for the toilets, it’s just… you know… Anyway, one big room upstairs, and originally there were no windows… At the early summer, the water from the rice field was prepared. The surface of the water is very clear, and there are frogs, frogs making a sound, from one field to the other field, they are making some chorus, and copulating in open air. It was… I’ll never forget it. “Hrogh, ghrogh, hrogh, ghrogh”, [he imitates a frog] I don’t know, like a thousand of frogs, like hundred frogs making noise, and setting these two fields in motion…
Christine Quoiraud:
… and constant sound of running water.
Oguri:
Ah yes! And water is so beautiful, trrrrrrrrrrp, and… And, I don’t know if it’s still there today or not.
Christine Quoiraud:
Yes, it’s the same.
Oguri:
I mean, water is running but it’s a different water too. Doesn’t make the same sound. And the houses, and traffic, it’s all changed. It’s not so quiet anymore…
Christine Quoiraud:
… and the sound of fireworks…
Oguri:
Sound of fireworks? Yeah… But anyway, there were always some noises in the house, like Katerina said, lot of languages in the house, no doors. Yeah… and some girls are fighting… only girls… [laugh] Oh! I shouldn’t say that. [laugh]…
Christine Quoiraud:
…and also singing songs a lot, I’ve often been asked to sing in French…
Oguri:
Oh, yeah! yeah! You have a beautiful voice, Christine!
Christine Quoiraud:
… one of the first solo of Oguri in Plan B, he danced on Klaus Nomi… [singing] “I’m wasting my time… on you———-” (souncloud.com).
Oguri:
[laugh] You sound worse! I mean, there was…
Christine Quoiraud:
We had M.B.Training on music like the Beatles, like “Stand by me”, like “bla, bla, bla,” Michael Jackson… And so on… And there was the music from traditional groups. Sometimes we had also visitors, like foreigners coming with guitar or other instruments. And there was also mainly Cecil Taylor, Derek iley…
Derek Bailey & Min Tanaka – Mountain Stage (1993) by Ian Greaves.
Oguri:
We didn’t talk about “Art Camp”, the Hakushu annual festival (international summer festival organized by the whole group and with the villagers).[17] You know, I think the second year we lived on the farm, we started organizing the annual festival. We were not farmers yet, but we started this annual festival, that was another remarkable event.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I would like to go back to music. In terms of music, like instrumental music, there’s a lot to say. I don’t want to speak about Min, because Min as an artist has had incredible collaborations with a lot of musicians, and thinkers too. But as far as we were concern, and the way we were relating to music, I think we were questioning, – maybe I’m speaking for myself – about how to do it, we were playing a little bit the perspective of the autonomy of dance in relation to music, which wasn’t new, because it had already been done in the United States and in Europe. But we were sort of eager to understand how dance could stand on its own independently from what music is or can be. And from there, little by little, we built, we researched the connections to music.
I don’t have the answer as to what is the relationship for anything to the thing we call Body Weather. There’s also a difference that’s perhaps more specific, between on the one hand the use of the experience of music and the sharing of space with music during performances, and on the other hand in practice, in training, in the ways we conduct our lives, in our mutual engagement with each other and with the work. So, we’re talking about different territories that interact, of course, but also imply different situations. That’s something I need to clarify. Also, if we place this experience, or experimentation in the context of our training and our performances, it’s because our relationships to music and sound were different in both cases. It was also something that wasn’t exclusive to the work happening within that community. I mean, to draw the bigger context, we know the post-modern experimentation and all the work of the pioneers of the Judson Church,[18] it’s also the same kind of experimentation, an exploration. So, I don’t believe that it was something unique to the work we were doing. It was something that put a light on what was present in a great many different artists and in different places around the world: the primordial importance of listening (I already said this), that is, activating the body to listening. Of course, I think that seeing and looking are important, but orality was a fundamental thing in the training itself, the activation to listening to anything that sounds. So, a lot of silent work was taking place in natural environments – I am talking about training here – so, that was an activation of the ear to tune into micro-sounds, to micro-sounds that one makes in one’s own body, in relation to the sounds of the environment, and to the sounds that are produced by interaction.
And then also, I do remember, we were dealing with animals, so learning to listen also literally to the sounds that animals make was essential, was necessary, to actually find a proximity. But here again, it’s nothing new, I mean, it’s not an innovative thing, it’s a thing that all farmers know. It’s also very present among anyone who deal with animals. And so, as you can see, I am still not addressing the question of music and I am dealing with listening to different types of sounds that are produced, and the possible responses that can be made to them.
Christine Quoiraud:
During the early days of his visits to Europe, Min Tanaka proposed in his workshops listening exercises such as the one I described above, where participants were blindfolded and had to point with their index finger to the place of sounds produced at various locations in space.
Oguri:
I remember those workshops, and what Katerina said about them. Yes, I agree. Just few things. In performance, there was not anything directly relating rhythm with movement, in Maï-Juku or in Min Tanaka’s dance. And I don’t remember any movements that corresponded exactly to the music, such as a moody melody.[19] So, dance wasn’t related to music in this way. I think really that music is not like making construction of the dance, it was not this kind of relationship. Music is possibly an important element as environment. With music, we could feel something like an emotional trigger or encounter the sounds and silence allowing an understanding of the space. That is what we learned from the natural environment, like I said of the frog sounds, how that sound passed from one field to another, a total experience of the environment in space and time… all night long until I fell asleep. And so, it is in a daily life or artistic creation, or in workshops, where we are experiencing, stimulated by life… this whole life. For me, farming and performing are not separated from living. I don’t separate, our life is one.
And what else? Oh, there was one composer always invited. Mister Noguchi.[20] He plays the synthesizer. So, he always plays music live, he never used records, sampled material, or recorded compositions. He never records his compositions, as dance only happens once. Mr. Noguchi’s sounds happen only one time. It’s easy to say “improvisation”, but it is live music, and it’s not, you know, making a living. How to say? It’s not a question of finding a reason to make the body move through a moody sound that elicit a floating movement. With him, it’s not the case. It’s very much like a stimulation and a space facing. Yes, spatial, spatiality. Yes, he creates a sonic space. That’s my memory.
Minori Noguchi (live electronics) and Min Tanaka (dance), 2006, Tokyo.
Minoru Noguchi is a composer who uses electronics, noise, and various equipments. I remember he installed many micro-speakers in the space where the audience was seated. And before the performance starts, in the pre-performance time, that’s start making “t… ttt… tt… t… tttt…” [faint vocal noises], very, very subtle noises happening, yes, and this would gradually change to make like a “free———-” [almost singing]… Yeah. Very much sounds related to space and to the consciousness of the people in the audience, or of performers, consciousness that awakens, that kind of composition and what it could arouse.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I think it is very interesting, Oguri, the way you raise the question of spatiality of sound. And also, you’re careful to stress the importance of distinguishing the function of the work of Noguchi, of the sounds, of the music made by Noguchi. It wasn’t an ambient music, as you said, it was not creating an atmosphere, but rather to create a space literally in terms of vibrations whose nature is actually very concrete. By this I mean creating space, different types of space, micro-spaces, or different senses of space, different imagination spaces, different sensitivities, or triggering through the ear different sensitivities to space, to space as it exists. I think Noguchi’s input was of this order. Of course, he was also aware that his contribution was part of a work of art in its totality. But his constant input was perceived by us as layers of space superimposed on each other. And that brings me back to training and how training comes into performance. I agree with you Oguri, there are constant interrelationships, flowing into each other, and at the same time, I think there is a combination of ever different situations. The training was really about training the body to listen in different ways, to respond to acoustic experience in many different ways, and to orient oneself in the ability to know where one is, and to situate oneself, to place oneself somewhere in relation to sound. So, in this respect, any acoustic production, the music if you want, the sound matter, during performance was actually received in the same way. Or to put it another way, the bodies were trained or alerted to respond to sound as if it were material, and as if there were also a space that constantly ask the body to orient itself from the nervous system, to orient and re-orient itself, to reposition itself, to place itself again and again. I hope it makes sense what I am saying. Yeah, it was a constant activation of the body trying to orient itself in relationship to sound.
Christine Quoiraud:
As we speak about performance, I have one more memory of early Tanaka Min in Europe. And, at that time, he was performing like almost naked, dancing in slow motion with no music. Except for some duets with Derek Bailey, in Le Palace in Paris, and later with Milford Graves. But then, he started this series called “Emotion”, that was in the early 1980s. But it was “a motion”, as in the sense of setting oneself in motion. And it was accompanied with very strong emotional music, like a very popular music, but it was really a clear decision on his part to play on the audience’s affects. But when we took part in Maï-Juku, if I remember correctly, there were several different kinds of performances. Sometimes we would perform indoors. Most of the time Minoru Noguchi was the sound space maker. But sometimes for solo work, Min would come in with music of his own choosing. Or many times also, we performed outside, for example in rivers. In the movie by Eric Sandrin “Min Tanaka et Maï-Juku”,[21] a sequence of dance in the river is shown, it was an exercise, it was not a performance. The movie maker chose to put some music for the film that had nothing to do with the circumstances. It was at the end of the intensive Maï-Juku in 1985.
Body Weather Dance in the River. Eric Sandrin, « Min Tanaka et Maï-Juku ».
Katerina Bakatsaki:
And of course, the soundtrack of the documentary is the artistic choice of the maker of the film.
To go back to the question of music’s relationship with dancing, practicing, performing, moving or exploring, researching dance, again, I feel the need to say that it was through practice and performance, by which I mean the totality of the work, that the main focus was to raise the question of “what is dance?” again and again, and again. And then seeing dance not as a discipline, but as a phenomenon that belongs to life, not only to humans but also to entities other than human. Dance was explored as a thing of its own. You know, maybe the question of dance and music was not even raised. Because dance was seen as a phenomenon in relation to anything else. So, what sounds, sounds, what moves, moves, and that’s it, to put it that way. From this point of view, the major concern was not with the music, but the question was how does the body listen? For me, looking back, I understand that when we talk about dance and music, one of the core questions was not about the music, but how the body listens when it’s dancing, even if it’s outside of any performance.
Christine Quoiraud:
I just want to add something on this point. In my memory you have to distinguish between two situations: on the one hand, there were times when Tanaka was choreographing, and then he would sometimes propose recorded music. On the other hand, at other times, he would perform with a musician, improvising. He would be improvising the dance, and the music would be improvised, with live music. And Noguchi also took part in this process. And by the way, Noguchi had been working with Min for several decades. They knew each other for a very long time, and they worked together for long periods. And, yes, I remember that when Min was choreographing group pieces in a closed theatre, he really organized everything. For example, he would organize the lights, the set, and also the movements, the choreographic movements, he would organize things by giving a kind of narration to the sound somehow, including the silences. He proposed a narrative that would give sounds a raison d’être, a purpose, an objective. I remember feeling that way. And I also remember, for example, that for the solos he choreographed for me, it was pretty clear that it was a form of organization with a peak, a summit, and maybe something perhaps flatter, and at a given moment, I was on a kind of rupture, a silence, a long silence which I had to confront as a dancer on stage. And it was like he forced the dancer’s attention, but also that of the audience.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Do you mean, Christine, that it was somehow scored? I mean, the acoustic environment was scored in some way and imposed to other people, is that what you’re saying?
Christine Quoiraud:
Somehow scored, yes, as was the lighting design. Actually, when Min encouraged us, advise us to choreograph our own pieces at Plan B, to develop our own work, and I remember very well that we were like helping each other, one dancer helping another dancer. We all tried to construct the stage, the scenography of our performances, with an organization of the lights, with a set, even though the absence of set was of course a set as such, and also the sounds. It was like giving a distribution of elements over the course of the performance. And for me, this was something very important, to have the opportunity, this great chance, this chance to try to do things by myself. It gave me also the possibility to go along with what Min Tanaka had developed in relation to music. Maybe I’m not just describing what Body Weather was as such, but rather talking about my personal experience, there with Min, with training, with life, and with the other dancers.
Oguri:
Just one thing. I remember that during the creation and in the relationship between lighting and sound, there is a kind of communication between the performers, the dancers, and the musician, and with the lighting too. Yes, it is a meeting that happens like that, I think Christine already told you, for the audience and for the dancer. We also felt not an artistic vibration but a spiritual vibration, something to push us to do things, yeah. But I have personally the feeling that… it’s like a secondary thing. I remember that I have a lot to do with lighting at Noguchi’s side. So, I worked a lot as a lighting designer too. I was operating in the lighting booth during the performances, beside dancing. And Noguchi, you know, sometimes provoked the dancers. As I said, he had a synthesizer and a mixer. Sometimes, you know, it was just “boom, boom”, to provoke reactions from the dancers by playing disruptive sounds… OK, “go on, go, go on, go on!”, this kind of noise that urged us to go on. In his company, I felt that it was very much like life itself, rather than a matter of aesthetic experience, a very spiritual matter of being during the performance. Yes, definitively something extra.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
I like what you’re saying, I like this term “spiritual”, I just want to say this: I would use for my part, again, the expression “material”. By this I mean that Noguchi’s sounds and Oguri’s lights, by their presence as an integral part of the performance, implied an interaction, an independence, a resistance, etc… And once again, it wasn’t the type of music, the musical aspect of the music, that counted, but the material, the power of the material itself. The power of the material was what mattered most. Music as material, as very concrete living matter, with all the other bodies and lights alive on stage. I mean, it’s the idea that everything that sounds or moves is part of the totality of the performance and is interrelating constantly. I think this is the way I saw it, that’s how I can voice it today, and how it speaks to me, looking at what it was then.
Oguri:
I think so, material, yeah. In a good way, I understand. And I think that, again, when I was in the lighting booth with Noguchi, we had these kinds of reactions or approaches, aesthetic, and material, spiritual. I learned a lot, later on, when I was dancing with musicians. Because we were like sharing the space, not at any time interrupting each other, but with this kind of almost provocation “come on!”, this kind of relationship. I learned from this experience: how Min Tanaka approached dancing in free improvisation, that relationship. It is this part of interrelationships I learned from when I was in the lighting booth. I am involved at the same time as a third person, working with Noguchi and with Min, we were building a kind of relationship. And it was another kind of material on stage, another being present in the performance. I learned a lot, later on, when I was dancing with musicians.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Yes, just to clarify my position, when I say “material” I don’t mean ideas, but materiality, just like bodies, such like light, such like the objects that are present, such like the audience, that’s what I’m referring to.
Oguri:
It’s not an ambivalent, invisible thing, and it’s not something that happens backstage, it is really actual, right in front of the audience.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Yes.
Oguri:
I did not say that dance and music should form a package, in which they are intrinsically linked. It’s about sharing the same space, yeah, and not encroaching on each other’s territory.
Christine Quoiraud:
I have two more memories that come back to me:
a) At the very beginning of Body Weather, there was also Hisako Harikawa. She was exploring voice. She was – I think I read somewhere that exploring voice was part of Body Weather in the early years. I believe she started out as a vocalist, then she became a dancer.
b) I remember once or twice, in a solo performance Tanaka Min choreographed for me, he asked me to speak. To talk, to make my voice heard on stage, improvising. And once, he asked me very clearly: “Please can you evoke a memory of your childhood on stage”. And another time, I forgot what it was exactly. Twice, at least, he asked me to speak during my performance. It was more giving words, sentences. He asked me to tell a story. And of course, I could have lied, and I was speaking in French to a Japanese audience. Yes, I could have lied, but did not think about it [laugh].
Katerina Bakatsaki:
Concerning the difference between the sounds of everyday life and music, I don’t remember a conversation as such on this subject, but I do remember that music was used as such, also with recorded pieces already in existence. I don’t remember having to choose a particular relationship to music, I don’t recall that, like being invited to relate in a particular way to music. But different types of musical scores were used. When I say “music”, I mean the sounds produced during the performance, like sounds produced by another person being part of the performance, or the musical scores. But I don’t recall any particular, specific invitations to relate to music as such in a particular way. That didn’t mean that there was no distinction between different kinds of music. And also, Min himself worked with a lot of musicians playing live music, I mean, in improvisation. So, the music as such was there, present.
Christine Quoiraud:
And also, in his performances he would sometimes produce gibberish. I remember very well at Plan B, sometimes he was like a drunken guy on stage, using his voice. He wasn’t using intelligible words anymore, it didn’t make any sense, the meaning was more into the tone of the voice…
8. Conclusion: After the Body Weather Farm
Presentation
In conclusion, Katerina Bakatsaki, Oguri and Christine Quoiraud briefly describe their artistic trajectory after leaving (around 1990) the Body Weather farm. Katerina and Christine returned to Europe and Oguri emigrated to California. It’s interesting to note that, while continuing to be greatly inspired by their experience on the farm, they went on to develop very different artistic initiatives in very different living contexts and places.
Katerina Bakatsaki:
When I came back to Europe, the Japanese context for me was of course inevitably very present at the time, and at the same time also not so much. Many aspects of life there remained important, interesting, fascinating, and relevant to me no matter where I was, or at least I thought so at the time. So, the main question then was how relevant was that experience of life and work in Japan here? Who could I share it with, how could I continue it, who could be my peers, who could understand me? Because when I landed back in Amsterdam, all the work, the way of looking at it, and its ethics could not be understood at all, it was as if I was coming from another planet.
When I arrived in Amsterdam in 1993, there was a lot going on: the milieu of the modern dance, post-modern dance, was in a way much oriented towards the individual as such, I mean, all the methodologies were concern with “what do I feel”, and “this is the truth, this is relevant and good”. But if you were coming from another place, you would constantly asking question like: “Ah! Ah! Hm! Hm! is this OK? Is this how I feel? And yet, is it true? Is it relevant? And how what I experience does meet the other, the other’s body, or the other’s space and time?” The practice that I was embodying had didn’t correspond to the contexts prevailing in Europe at that time. So, little by little, we had to create our own working environments with people who were willing to participate. We built up ways of training ourselves, of practicing and then engaging others, and so on.
It might sound tedious or cheesy, but the biggest lessons for me, the biggest place for practice, was to give birth to a being, to have a little body next to you, to deal with a little baby, a little young body, and to have to understand what it was and to be patient, to learn to live with it, etc. And then, I had to work with people who did not choose to work with me. So, I had a long period of working with people who did not have any background in movement or anything like that. I would not choose them, but for some irrelevant reasons, they would be part of my project. So, I had to be at their service, I had to understand their needs, then invent and devise ways and methodologies to share my work with them. This was for me the biggest school after coming back from Japan. Because of course, in Japan, everyone shared a similar motivation to be there: “I want to be here, and you know, whatever happens I can take care of myself somehow”. Now, I had to work with people who were working with me almost by chance. This created a difference, that dynamic was very interesting for me, and I had to find the appropriate words, ways of devising exercises and methodologies, determining ways of working.
Now, I am not dancing anymore, I am not performing as such anymore, but I am working a lot with others. I am not interested in choreography as such, as a way of presenting work anyway. I did a lot of work developing pieces for non-theatrical spaces. There was a period when I worked with a group of dancers, and we would work in marginalized urban environments. And that meant homeless shelters, or shelters for people who lived with psychiatric or mental illnesses, or houses for victims of domestic violence. So, it’s true that my interest as a maker wasn’t so much in making pieces but rather devising practices geared towards questioning what a practice is and what are the bodies that could be relevant to exist in such spaces. This was rounded up and then I moved on. Now I am working most of the time as a mentor, artistic advisor, and teacher.
Christine Quoiraud:
Well, when I came back, I was pretty lost. It took me a while to readjust to the French state of mind, as I’ve already said, and for two years I was living with my bag on the shoulder. I couldn’t stay in one place. I was just performing and giving workshops. With nowhere to stay really. I lived in a very, very great poverty. But it suited me, and I took charge of my life as a soloist somehow. And then, gradually, I started trying to organize a farm with a dream of repeating somehow the experience. In the South of France. But very quickly that failed totally. It gave me the opportunity to start what I call the “dance camp”, the Summer Dance Camp [Camp de Danse d’Été]. And that’s how I started the Body Landscape projects [Corps/Paysages]. And that lasted over five years.
And then I started developing projects over periods of five years or so. The “Body/Landscape” projects happened everywhere, in countryside, in big cities. I shared a lot of that with Frank Van de Ven at the time. Each year these projects took different profiles. I wanted them to be evolutive, and they did. I also tried to play the role of mentor for young artists, for young dancers. In a way, I was reproducing a bit what I’d learned Japan. Not as a teacher, but as someone who can give the tools to be independent and autonomous in production and exploration. And during these “Body/Landscape” projects, I also managed to bring together the dancers I’d met in Japan. Like Katerina who came several times and others like Andrés Corchero, Frank van de Ven.
And then, Frank and I split up. And I started the walking projects. And that was for me a way of getting closer to the essential questions: What is dance? What is art for? For whom? Is art separated from life? So, the walking projects were developed over many years, in fact seven years. I focused everything into the fact of walking, on the notion of being a collective in movement. For, say, one month, one thousand kilometers. Nothing was planned, nothing was organized. I called that an “improvisation workshop”. And the first improvisation was to find a place to stay at night. Sometimes it was raining outside. We had no tent. And gradually I took people along to do performances, to exercise themselves in public. So, it was also dealing with the reasons of life, of the ordinary life in the places we were passing by, whether crossing cities or in the countryside. We behaved differently if there was a group of ten people, or twelve people. If you are in the middle of the mountain, or suddenly you are in Pamplona or in a big city, you’re obliged to change, to adjust your behavior to what you’re encountering.[22] And for me, those walks were the happiest period of my life. Because in the end, there was no “teaching”, no “performing”. It was just a matter of walking, sometimes without taking anything, not even a toothbrush. And since then, I’m just getting old, that’s all, [laugh] busy with archives and telling stories. But I am still teaching, giving workshops a little bit. Sometimes being a mentor when asked.
Oguri:
OK, what happened to me? I found, yeah, gold, I got a life partner, Roxanne Steinberg,[25] and I moved to the United States thirty years ago. She participated to the sixth Maï-Juku (1986). With Roxanne and Melinda Ring, we started the Body Weather Training in Los Angeles. And we were invited to participate in an artistic residency program at a homeless women’s shelter in downtown Los Angeles. So, that was my new platform for teaching and performing. And with that program, I made a contract for transforming an old chapel into a theatre space, called Sunshine Mission, as part of the homeless women’s shelter. That was the beginning of my career in Los Angeles, we had a space, a studio to teach and perform. It formed the Body Weather Laboratory/Los Angeles. And we applied to be recognized as a non-profit organization. That way we could get support from the city, like the Cultural Affairs department, or the County of Los Angeles, the State of California, and so on… We started presenting an art program. And after five or six years, we moved to Venice, west of Los Angeles, to set up our own studio. Now I am in artistic residency at the Electric Lodge, a studio theatre. I continue the Body Weather workshops and performing and producing by myself, or in group work. And I present emerging dancers or master dancers in the city, and my old colleagues. I invited Christine, Andrés Corchero, Frank van de Ven to be here, teaching and performing here in Los Angeles. So, in doing that, and also since my experience in Japan was very much related with the land, I developed projects in the lands in California. I spent a couple of years to a project in the desert, a research for ways of dance resource in the United States. So, I was digging desert land to produce site specific works, working with non-dancers. It would be a big group of people, in a specific site, without taking any permission, something like a happening performance in a public space. And seasonally, I am being guest faculty at UCLA or Bennington College (Vermont), in a university teaching context. And I’m still presenting my solo dance and group work. And I’ve been collaborating a lot with Andrés Corchero from Barcelona, and collaborating with Christine Quoiraud as well.
1.Hijikata Tatsumi (1928-1986), Japanese dancer, choreograph and teacher, well-known as the creator of butōh dance. See
See: wikipedia
2.Tess de Quincey is a choreographer and dancer who has worked extensively in Australia, Europe, Japan and India as a solo performer, teacher and director. She founded De Quincey Co in 2000. See de Quincey Co
Frank van de Ven is a dancer and choreographer who spent his formative years in Japan working with Min Tanaka and the Maijuku Performance Company. In 1993 he, together with Katerina Bakatsaki, founded Body Weather Amsterdam, a platform for training and performance. See Centre national de la Danse
Andrés Corchero, dancer, resident of Catalonia, explorer of body languages, he worked in Japan with Kazuo Ohno and Min Tanaka. See Body Weather
3.Kazue Kobata (1946-2019) was a Japanese curator, professor, translator, and former Artforum contributing editor, whose interests spanned film, architecture, avant-garde music, and dance improvisation.
See: artforum.org
See also in Christine Quoiraud archives, CND research, “Dive in in fine”: Médiathèque du CND
4.Masanobu Fukuoka (1913-2008) is a Japanese farmer, known for his commitment in favor of natural agriculture.
See: wikipedia
6.Seigow Matsuoka: essayist, specialized in art, author of numerous works on culture, Japanese and Chinese art. Director of Editorial Engineering Laboratory, Tokyo.
data.bnf
7.M.B. training, muscles and bones, mind, and body, etc.: dynamic training on music, with jumps, squats, stretching, rhythms, coordination, flexibility, anchoring, etc.
8.Christine Quoiraud’s note: At the farm, there were a lot of people who were just passing through, not necessarily involved in performances. Sometimes there were also dance artists who were not performing at Plan B. There was a lot of passage and variable geometry at the farm. Oguri was at the main core of all Body Weather activities, at all times. A life entirely committed and dedicated to Min Tanaka’s vision.
9.Christine Quoiraud’s note: It happened that a large sum of money came from big productions or participation in commercial films. The money was then used for the life on the farm.
10. Nario Goda, dance critic and journalist. specialist of Butōh. See “Interview avec Sherwood Chen, 7 février 2019, Paris”, translation and notes by Christine Quoiraud, note 232, p. 11. Médiathèque du CND
11. This can be verified by consulting the “Plan B calendars” in Christine Quoiraud’s archives at the CND/Pantin. See CND
12. Christine Quoiraud’s notes: Min was briefing us after the performances with clear feedback comments. He was constantly changing, improving the composition, adjusting for each one. His wish was that nothing should be fixed. No version in advance. He worked by shaping performances with the dancers.
13. Ankoku butō = the dance of the darkness. [la danse des ténèbres]
14. Christine Quoiraud’s note: Min Tanaka transmitted this learning received from Hijikata to us, dancers, first in a workshop situation and then in the use of this practice in performance.
15. Deborah Hay is an American experimental choreographer working in the domain of postmodern dance. She is one of the funding members of the Judson Dance Theater. wikipedia
16. Obon (…) is a fusion of the ancient Japanese belief in ancestral spirits and a Japanese Buddhist custom to honor the spirits of one’s ancestors. wikipedia
17. See Christine Quoiraud’s archives at the CND, Eric Sandrin’s film “Min Tanaka et Maï-Juku”, and by the same author, the film “Milford Graves and the Japanese” on YouTube.
18. Judson Dance Theater was a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists who performed at the Judson Memorial Church in New York between 1962 and 1964. wikipedia
19. Christine Quoiraud’s note : Min Tanaka often danced to well-known salsa tunes or other very sentimental music.
22. My watchword then was “circuler, circulez” (pass by, go through, let’s move on)
Encounter with Vincent-Raphaël Carinola and Jean Geoffroy
Vincent-Raphaël Carinola and Jean-Geoffroy’s contribution is in two parts. On the one hand, a research article, “Espaces notationnels et œuvres interactives”, originally published in English under the title “On Notational Spaces in Interactive Music”, by Vincent-Raphaël Carinola and Jean Geoffroy, in the proceedings of the conference organized by PRISM-CNRS in Marseille (May 2022).
On the other hand, the transcript of a meeting between Vincent-Raphaël Carinola, Jean Geoffroy, Jean-Charles François and Nicolas Sidoroff in Lyon in February 2023.
Access to the two parts and their French versions
First part
Access to the article “On Notational Spaces in Interactive Music”
Access to the French translation “Espaces notationnels et œuvres interactives”
Second part
Encounter with Carinola, Geoffroy, François, Sidoroff
Access to the French original version of « Rencontre avec Carinola, Geoffroy, François, Sidoroff »
Encounter with
Jean Geoffroy, Vincent-Raphaël Carinola
and
Jean-Charles François, Nicolas Sidoroff
1erFebruary 2023
Translation from French by
Jean-Charles François
(with the help of Deepl.com)
Summary :
1. Origin of the Collaboration
2.1 Toucher Theremin and Agencement
2.2 Toucher, Hands/Ears Correlation
2.3 Toucher, Notation
2.4 Toucher, Form
2.5 Toucher, Process for Appropriating the Piece
3.1 Virtual Rhizome, Smartphones, Primitive Rattle, Virtual Spaces
3.2 Virtual Rhizome, the Path to Virtuosity, Listening
3.3 Virtual Rhizome, a Collaboration Composer/Performer/Computer Music Programmer
3.4 Virtual Rhizome, the “Score”
3.5 To conclude: References to André Boucourechliev and John Cage
1. Origin of the Collaboration
Could you retrace the story of how you met, how did your collaboration come about, and what was its context?
We already worked with Christophe Lebreton[1] on different projects and although Jean and I had often crossed paths, and I knew and admired his work and his various collaborations with composers, I was looking forward to the opportunity to work with him. The point of departure was all the work they had done, Christophe and Jean, on new electronic interfaces and the role of the performer in relationships to them, Jean will be able to tell you more about these projects in detail.
For a concert in Seoul, I had selected some applications taking account for their framework, sound possibilities, possible developments and I had written a short text as an introduction to the concert, in which we also played other pieces by Xavier.
What I realized almost immediately was the possibility of recreating spaces that were different from those imagined by Xavier, and it was equally possible to work on a kind of “sound intimacy”, because in fact, there’s nothing “demonstrative” about playing with a smartphone, you have to lead the audience to enter in the space you’re proposing, and thanks to the different applications deviating from usual utilization and used in different ways, it was as if I had in front of me a new instrument.
In this case, everything stems from the sound and the space it suggests, and then you need a narrative that will enable you to keep a relatively clear framework, since without this framework you run the risk of going round in circles, and playing the smartphones like a child with a rattle…
As with the Light Wall System[4] also designed by Christophe, the most interesting thing, besides music itself, is the absolute necessity of working on a narration, on a form. This should be obvious to any performer, but which is sometimes forgotten it in favor of the instrument, its virtuosity, its placement on stage…
With the SmartFaust applications,[5] the main aim was to return to a sound devoid of « artifice », that would enable us to invite the audience into a totally revisited sound universe.
After this concert, Christophe had the idea of taking his work with smartphones a step further, and then he proposed to Vincent to imagine a piece for “Smart-Hand-Computers – SHC”, a term that better represents this interface than the word “smartphone” which is primarily used to designate a telephone.
From the outset, however, the process was different than with Xavier, if only in terms of creating the sounds. The fact of having two SHCs totally independent of each other with the possibility to include aleatoric elements in the piece and above all, work on the writing of the piece itself made it a totally different project from anything I had done before. Moreover, this piece is an opportunity for us (Christophe and I) to imagine other performing frameworks: we developed a solo version with a set-up similar to that of the Light Wall System, and we’re working on a project for two dancers. Virtual Rhizome by Vincent-Raphaël Carinola really functions as a permanent laboratory, which incites us to constantly revisit the work, which is essential for a performer. These three proposals around the same piece raise the question of our relationships with the audience: from a) the intimacy of a solo with two SHC, b) to a form of address to the public within the Light Wall System framework, and c) to a choreographic piece in which dancers are at the same time performing the music with their body movements.
This piece enables us to re-examine the act of interpretation, which in itself is an exciting question that performers I think don’t often enough consider.
2.1 Toucher, Theremin and Agencement
Raphaël
Following this first experience we wondered whether it would be interesting to write a work for this “instrument”, bearing in mind that from the moment the theremin is connected to a computer, the instrument is definitively no longer a theremin (the more so since its original sound is never heard). The instrument is the theremin connected to a computer, to sounds and sound processing modules distributed around the audience. This is partly the subject matter of the article « On Notational Spaces in Interactive Music »:[8] here the instrument becomes a playing system. What we consider to be the instrument, the theremin, is just one part of the system, which is in fact the “true” instrument. The theremin is equipped with antennas that capture the performer’s gestures, lamps or electronic circuitry that generate a sound that varies according to the distance of the hands from the antennas and, sometimes, in the same cabinet, a loudspeaker is included. This is like electric guitars, there is a kind of amplifier that can be more or less close to the musician. What interests me here is the possibility to dissociate the organological elements of the instrument and turn each component into a writing support. The performer is then confronted with a sort of fragmented object within a system. On the one hand, the performer has to deal with an instrument very different from the traditional one, since he/she doesn’t control everything because part of the sounds are generated by the computer – so, he/she is playing an instrument that has the ability to function on its own – and, on the other hand, the performer has to follow a score which is not entirely constituted by notation on staves. The score also includes the computer program, which contains the sounds I have generated, integrated into the computer’s memory. So, the score itself is scattered across the whole range of media supports: the graphic score of the gestures, that of sounds, the computer program, the interactive programs, and even the “mapping”, that is, the way in which the interface is correlated with the sounds and with the unfolding of the piece in time.
This is why the performer’s work is quite different from that of a performer who is playing an instrument with which he forms a single body, since with this new instrument – as a system – the body tends to be separated from the direct sound production. One part of the way the instrument functions escapes him/her. The performer doesn’t always control the totality of the sounds (since I am the one who generated them as well as the sound processing modules). Moreover, the computer can also function automatically. That’s what’s so interesting, because it means that the way the performer can adapt to the system becomes in itself an object of creation, the object of the composition, and that’s what’s so beautiful. The performer cannot be considered as someone who appropriates a piece fixed on a support, external to her/him, and which she/he then comes to interpret: he/she is part of the work, one component of this “composed” ensemble of interfaces, the computer, the fixed sounds, him, her, the musician, her/his corporeal presence on stage, etc. We face the same type of problem with Virtual Rhizome but addressed in a very different and very strange way.
Here is the video of the version of Toucher by Claudio Bettinelli :
The fact that the situation in which you find yourself partly escapes us could mean some sort of comfort for the performer, but on the contrary, it really disturbed me. This project allowed me to find myself really at the center, first and foremost as a “listener” before being a performer. This requires concentration, to pay attention to all the sound events that you generate, as well as those that you don’t necessarily control and that you need to appropriate and integrate into your “narrative”.
What makes this attitude more sensitive is the fact that, with these instruments, everything seems simple, because just in relation with a movement. Even though the theremin is extremely technical, each person develops his/her own technique, an attitude linked to a form of inner listening to sound, listening that does not pass exclusively through your ears but also through the body.
Raphaël
In fact, what’s very complicated for me with interactive systems in general is that, if everything is determined, that is if the performer can control each sound produced by the machine, she/he becomes some sort of “operator”. The computer takes no initiative, everything must be determined by conditional logic: if-then-else. The computer is incapable of reacting or adapting to the situation, it only does what it’s asked to do, with a very… binary logic. Everything it does, the way it reacts, is limited by the instructions specified in the software program. That’s why you never have the same relationship with the digital instrument as you do with an acoustic one, in which there is a resistance, a physical constraint, linked to the nature of the instrument, which structures gestures and allows the emergence of expression. That’s why the idea of simulating an instrument that escapes the musician’s control, forces the performer to be in a very attentive listening, to be literally on the look-out, to strain the ear, to charge listening with tension. I think that if you want – I don’t know if it’s possible – to be able to find something equivalent to an expression – when I say “expression”, I don’t mean romantic expression or anything like that, it’s something proper to the musician on stage, to the performer, something that belongs only to him or her – you have to find new ways of making it emerge in interaction with the systems, that’s somewhat the idea of inviting the performer to “stretch the ear”.
2.2 Toucher, Hand/Ear Correlations
Raphaël
Then there’s also the process of interaction, on what actual parameters is it possible to act, a volume, a sound form? From there on, you have your “playground” where the hand can develop its movements, intuitively at first, then by exploring the relationship between sound and gesture to give it a singular form of coherence.
Raphaël
2.3 Toucher, Notation
Ultimately, the question is: should we play what’s written or what we read?
This approach changes things considerably. In many pieces you have introductory notes that resemble more instruction manuals, sometimes they are needed, but they become a problem when there is nothing else besides!
When You read Stockhausen’s Kontakte, even without having read the introductory notice, you’re capable to hear the energies that he wrote in the electroacoustic part. In Toucher, as in Virtual Rhizome, we have a very precise structure, and at the same time sufficient indications to leave the performer free to listen and make the piece his or her own, keeping with the limits set by the composer. It’s really this alloy between a predicted sound and a gesture, an unstable equilibrium… but it’s the same thing with Bach.
With pieces like Vincent’s, it’s essential to have this intimate perception: what do I really want to sing, ultimately, what do I want to be heard, what pleases me about it? If you adopt exactly the same attitude behind a marimba or a violin or a piano, you will really achieve as performer something that will be singular, corresponding to a true appropriation of the text you are reading. The idea is to make people hear and think, just as they do when a poem is read: what will be interesting will be the multiplication of the poem’s interpretations, each one allowing the poem to be always in the making, very much alive. It’s exactly the same with music.
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2.4 Toucher, Form
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2.5 Toucher, Process for Appropriating the Piece
Sidoroff
For me, there’s one thing that’s really incredible, it’s the prescience that you can have of a sound, a prescience that is revealed through an attitude, a gesture, a listening. For Virtual Rhizomes, we don’t always know which texture is going to be played, what impact it will have, and the listening and attention that result from this open up incredible horizons because potentially, it compels us to be even more intuitively aware of our own sound sensations. It’s this balance between the attitude of anticipating integral listening, and the notion of form we’ve been working on, that you need to keep in mind, so as not to get into that famous « rattle » Vincent talks about. It’s interesting to think that a texture played that you don’t know a priori will determine the development of this particular sequence, but you still have to give it a particular meaning in terms of space.
During my last years as percussion professor in Lyon, in order to ensure that this particular attention to sound was an essential part in the work on a piece, I wanted no dynamics to appear on the scores I gave to the students, so that they would just relate to the structure, and that the dynamics (their voice) would be completely free during these first readings. At that point, the question of sound and its projection becomes obvious, whereas if you read a written dynamic sign in absolute terms and therefore decontextualized from a global movement, you don’t even think about it, you just repeat a gesture often without paying sufficient attention to the resulting sound.
On the contrary, Toucher and Virtual Rhizome (like other pieces) force us to question these different parameters. For me, Toucher as Virtual Rhizome, are fundamentally methods of music: there are no prerequisites, except to be curious, interested, aware of possibilities, and present! Such freedom offered by these pieces is first and foremost a way of questioning ourselves at all levels: our relationship to form, sound and space, this is why they are true methods of Music. These pieces are proposing a real adventure and an encounter with oneself. On stage, you know pretty much where you want to go, and at the same time everything remains possible, it’s totally exhilarating and at the same time totally stressful.
Raphaël
Right now, one of my students is practicing the piece. He worked on the available online videos to understand it, to understand its notation, etc., which saves time. But that wasn’t the approach used by Jean, who had another kind of experience. I think that each person deals with it in a certain way. But it’s fair to say that, generally speaking, video has become an accessory to the score.
3.1 Virtual Rhizome, Smartphones, Primitive Rattle, Virtual Spaces
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When you’re playing a video game, you might find yourself in a room or on the street, and then at some point you take a turn, you go to another room or to another street, and then you’re attacked by some aliens, you’ve to react, and then you move on to the next stage. It’s a sort of virtual architecture in which you can move in many different ways. This was precisely the idea in Virtual Rhizome, to depart from the traditional instrumental model, which still exists in Toucher, but which is no longer appropriate here because there’s no space to explore with this object that is the smartphone. And from this came the idea of building a virtual space and using the smartphone as an interface, almost like a compass, enabling you find your way around this architecture. That’s how the two things, the rattle, and the video game, are linked together.
3.2 Virtual Rhizome, the Path to Virtuosity: Listening
When I recorded with Vincent the percussion sounds used in Virtual Rhizome, I played almost everything with the fingers, the hands, and that allowed for much more color, dynamics, than if I’d played with sticks. When you’re playing with the hands, there is a particular relationship with the material, especially when you’ve spent your entire life playing with sticks, and in fact, when you’re playing with the hands and fingers your listening is even more “curious”.
Then, in this piece, you need to thoroughly understand the interface and play with it, especially with the possibility of superimposing states that can change with each interpretation. But once again, this is only possible with a clear vision of the overall form, if you don’t want to be overwhelmed by the interface.
Whoever the performer is, there is one common thing, which is this necessity to listen: you hear a sound if you go to the bottom of what it has to say. This means writing an electroacoustic piece in real time, with what you hear inside the sound.
It’s the idea of this interiority that helped develop the interpretation, because at the beginning I was moving a lot on stage, and the more I evolved with the piece, the more intimate, singular and secret this approach became. That’s why on stage there is a counter-light (red if possible) so that the public can only see a shadow, and ideally closes the eyes from time to time…
What’s interesting with the versions with dance is that, ultimately, even if the movements are richer and more diversified, there is really this inner listening that predominates, and forces a certain purity, a choice of intention before the choice of movement, that gives rise with the dancers to totally peculiar listening and embodiment movements.
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3.3 Virtual Rhizome, a Collaboration Composer/Performer/Computer Music Programmer
With Vincent, everything seemed coherent and flowing, even when we were recording many sounds over the course of a day. Everything was clear to me, and I quickly understood in what sound universe I was going to evolve in, even though I had no idea of the form of the piece, but just knowing the landscape is an essential thing for the performer.
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You raised the question of virtuosity earlier, Jean-Charles. Speaking then of virtuality or virtuosity, I liked the link you made between the two. The virtuosity here resides in the fact that there are two smartphones, behaving in complete isolation from each other. They don’t communicate with each other. You could play the piece with only one smartphone, in a way. You could switch from one situation to another, forwards and backwards, using a gestural control. With both of them, you can combine any situation with any other one. This means that you have to work extremely hard at listening, precisely because, on the one hand you don’t always know what automatized sequences will appear, the textures, the layers mentioned by Jean, and on the other hand, you have also controlled sounds, played, each of which can be very rich in itself. The use of two smartphones implies a great deal of complexity because of the multitude of possible combinations. This requires working intensely on an inner concentrated listening, to orient yourself in this virtual universe, which precisely has no physical consistency. There’s no score anymore, the score is in the head, it’s like the Palace of Memory in the Middle-Ages, a purely virtual architecture that you have to explore. That’s why I like the way you link these terms of virtuosity and of virtuality, because each depends on the other, in a way.
Nowadays, with the presence of set-ups, “agencies” [dispositifs], the notion of writing has completely changed its framework, you have to describe the music and at the same time to develop the electroacoustic set-up process of captation, in real time, that is, building an instrument.
The composer can only partly cover the second third, bearing in mind that lutherie also evolves in the writing process… The only obvious thing is that from beginning to end, there is a spoken word, that of the composer, in terms of: “This I want, that I don’t want”. And for me, this is the alpha and omega of creation, that is, its requirement. The composer provides us, performers, with a material, a discourse, a narrative, a vision, a relevance. It’s not a question of hierarchy, but this kind of spoken word is at the heart of the whole process of encounter and creation.
3.4 Virtual Rhizome, the « Score »
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At the top of Figure 3, there’s also a word: “ineluctable”. These terms have been added to produce intentionality. The performer doesn’t just generate sounds, she/he animates them, gives them a soul, literally, and to give them a soul requires an intention, a meaning. It might be a concept, I don’t know, a geometric figure, something that generates intentionality. This is important in the score, but what is notated is actually a possible pathway, and this is the result therefore of the performer’s work, it’s a pathway followed by the performer during the collaboration, and which becomes a possible model for the piece’s realization. It’s interesting to note that it is this pathway that was followed by other performers who played it, as if the form was definitively fixed.
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3.5 Conclusion: References to André Boucourechliev and John Cage
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1.Christophe Lebreton : « Musicien et scientifique de formation, il collabore avec Grame depuis 1989. » Musician and educated as a scientist, he collaborates with Grame since 1989.
See: Grame
2. Xavier Garcia, musician, Lyon : Xavier Garcia
3. Charles Juliet, Rencontres avec Bram Van Velde, P.O.L., 1998.
4. « Light Wall System was developed in LiSiLoG by Christophe Lebreton and Jean Geoffroy. See LiSiLoG, Light Wall System
5. SmartFaust is both the title of a participatory concert and the name of a set of applications for smartphones (Android and Iphone) developed by Grame using the Faust language. See Grame, Smart Faust.
6. Claudio Bettinelli, percussionist, Saint-Etienne. See Claudio Bettinelli.
7. Vincent-Raphaël Carinola, Typhon, the work is inspired by Joseph Conrad’s story Typhon. See Grame, Typhon.
8. “On Notational Spaces and Interactive Works”, 2.3, 2nd paragraph.
9. Thierry De Mey, Silence Must Be: “In this piece for solo conductor, Thierry De Mey continues his research into movement at the heart of the musical ‘fact’… The conductor turns towards the audience, takes the beat of his/her heart as pulsation and begins to perform increasingly complex polyrhythms, …3 on 5, 5 on 8, getting close to the golden ratio, she/he traces the contours of a silent, indescribable music…”. Grame
10. “On Notational Spaces and Interactive Works”, op. cit. 3.1.
11. Thierry de Mey, Light music: “musical piece for a ‘solo conductor’, projections and interactive device (first performance March 2004 – Biennale Musiques en Scène/Lyon), performed by Jean Geoffroy, was produced in the Grame studios in Lyon and at the Gmem in Marseille, where Thierry De Mey was in residence.” Grame
12. Jorge Luis Borges, Fictions, trad. P. Verdevoye et N. Ibarra, Paris : Gallimard, 1951, 2014.
13. “On Notational Spaces and Interactive Works”, op. cit. 3.2.
14. See Monique David-Ménard, « Agencements déleuziens, dispositifs foucaldiens », in Rue Descartes 2008/1 (N°59), pp. 43-55 : Rue Descartes