PAGE 84: "Hombre, Baile!"

Antonio Gadès
"La mort de Don Juan"
"Don Juan's Death"
 22 janvier 2014

"Hombre, Baile!" 

Israel Galvan
23 janvier 2014

PAGE 83 : INTIMIDATION - From Sinha Dance Rehearsal, Fall 2013

 This summer I met Roger Sinha, the choreographer of Sinha Danse Compagnie,
and I talked to him about my desire to experiment drawing from dancers in action.
He friendly replied that I could come and draw during his rehearsals this fall.
So in November, I stopped by the dance studio three times, for few hours,
and gathered what I call some "DRAWING NOTES".

The show they were working on is about Bullying, Intimidation. Abuse.
The coincidence is that this subject speaks to me a lot.

When I first came, I didn't know anything about the subject of the show, about how this choreographer would work, about his dancers, and about what I could  catch with my art medium from such a live situation.
What was I there to find?


 
The first day, I took few minutes just to observe Roger Sinha's language as a choreographer.
I found his style very "geometric", maybe due to all those use of mudras, Indian traditional hands gestures. Part of his origin is Indian.
The dancers in this piece are moving very fast. And there are lots of details.

 
I focused on what I felt most dominant in their way to dance, the hands work.

And I had to admit that it's really difficult to capture the fast movements of hands, when you're not so familiar of their structure, at the point where you don't have to think about it, so that the feeling can be directly translated.
I practised a bit on them, and at home made few quick researches about the main mudras.
A subject that I care to develop.
Also cause it brought me back to my personal Indian origin.


 


Then I observed the whole sequences of the first chapters of the piece.

Again and again.

I noticed that I had this time to train also my memory, to remember the sequence, and be able to follow the dancers, maybe to anticipate.

But the particularity of a drawer, is yes the memory, but most of all,
the ability to make choices.

And then to synthesize those choices into a composition reflecting my own point of view of that suggested moment from the dancers.

It's quiet the same process than when I draw from real life in the city, while my environment is constantly moving and being transformed.
I interprate the moment, from what I see, and what I feel.


In those cases you have to be very confident in your technic, and almost not to much think about it.
It's about finding a balance between the control and the spontaneity of the gesture.
Plus, the goal to add a meaning.
To say something.
  

After that, came another surprising challenge: the Gumboots!



Didn't know about that traditional dance at all.

So again, I had to study the main and dominant character of the movement: the boots in action!
Just the boots, cause I don't have time to draw the body.
That means, when I draw the boots, they have to express the movement of the whole body, that stays invisible!
So fun to do!
It took me a while to understand.


And finaly, the other particularity of playing Gumboots, is ... the beat!
How to translate the rythm and the sound made by the dancers'band?
And it will depend on how it is integrated in the piece also.









I didn't really have time to experience that till the end, but a beginning of an idea arised.
The observation is in my mind.

The last day, I focused on the whole piece indeed.
Its structure was also more controled by the dancers.

At some part of it, Roger Sinha included some text that a dancer had to say.
Another interesting new element for me (intonation, accent of the voice, meaning of the words...), especially cause I like to mix drawing and writing together.
I just noticed few ideas.

At the end of those few hours, a graphic style naturally emerged from my drawing notes.
My interpretation of the story was starting.
 

At the beginning of the rehearsal, knowing the subject, came to me immediatly one question:

 "What End is the choreographer going to choose for this child being abused, victim of bullying?"

 As for me... there are three choices for now:

- Whether the child is extremely resilient and can pass upon the abuse, 
especialy if he finds understanding people around him to help him, and most of all, to believe in his version, to admit the suffering, and then to act to stop the violence.

- Whether he dies. Physically, mentaly, in his heart.

- Or maybe... he's going to sublimate his pain in a creativ act!

For Roger Sinha and his friend a playwrighter, the End would reflect a monumental gathering, of the bad and the good ones of the story, kind of a Happy End!

Mine is just based on true Humanity. That is not always as simple as black or white, I think.
But ... I am a Visual Poet!
I work from the Truth.
My purpose is not to entertain, but to relate what is, according to my honest heart.


Then I let this experience on a side.

Looking at my drawing notes again, I discovered not only an intepretation of a dance show through drawings,
but my inside movement through my own body,
experiencing the act of saying and telling, through the art of drawing,
from  a live and life situation.
Do you understand???!

But I don't have yet the answer of my first question about this dance piece from Roger Sinha.
WHAT END?

Intimidation can be seeing everywhere, every day, among adults as well as children.
I personnaly was victim of manipulation and abuse, even in my professional work as an artist.
The answer I had?
"Well, we are sorry for your bad experience with those people, but as for us, we always had good relations with them."
Empathy, Solidarity, Humanity, Justice, should not stay only simple words.
They should become acts of Change.
The recent case of M.Claude Robinson perfectly illustrates that.

Here in Montreal, 
lots of the Artists have adopted the values of this North American Society:
individualism and extreme capitalism.
To steal the ideas and creativity of one another seems to be a regrettable common game, in a very competitiv and business based world,
where even art works have to be produced faster and faster.
Another subject to develop later.

But, as ARTISTS, like all human beings, will reach the end of the road too,

Stars in the sky will remain for Eternity,

Always guiding the new Poets through times of Solitude!

It seems that I have finaly found my very END...

"Be the Change you wish to see in the world"

said someone called Gandhi... one day...

Habiba Nathoo, 

january 2014, 4th.