field studies: a conversation in aesthetics

by michael klien

‘Field Studies’ takes the form of an ongoing conversation between a choreographer (Michael Klien) and a dancer (Elena Giannotti). One could say a choreographic dialogue, as the dynamics and revelations of the actual conversation carve out realms of ideas that are aesthetic in their nature. So far a year’s work, ‘Field Studies’ is not a ‘piece’, not a defined product, has no ‘outcome’ as such, nor has it been the attempt of a focused creation. It has taken the reverse strategy. To create by digging. Ploughing into the worlds we inhabit whilst letting actions be the heralds of new found territories and truths. At times we attempted to be as thorough in our communication as we possible can, hence unearthing instances of dance. Of course any conversation is a choreographic conversation of some sort, rich in dynamics and movement in thought. This particular conversation lives of these movements, examining them as they arise and adding them to the repertoire of the continuous dialogue.

For some time now has my work been concerned with the creation of fields, spaces or realms for embodied thought to take hold of the presence and reveal to us otherwise hidden realities. Realities that shamelessly disobey the dutiful ordering efforts and conventions of conscious minds: being in constant flux, unbound by mental-frames that rise through individuals and hives. Such fields offer deeper attractors, morphogenetic fields and other dynamics to take hold of thought and bring forth, reveal glimpses, of immanent, embodied realities. A mode of being can emerge, that transcends the urge to order, that in itself is open to change, that in itself carries the potential for change. Such fields I, as a choreographer, attempt to harvest. Maybe the conversations of ‘Field Studies’ is an attempt to clear secure space for the dancer to loosen his/her grip on the situation and become primal energy, a life giving something, a human being in the cradle of its context – to assume her and with him, all of our, role in the larger context of the living.
It is for the choreography to clear and prepare the stamping ground. It is for the dance to become fire for the village to gather around, to share modes of being that we all know, hidden in the figments of our flesh.

Originally Field Studies had been themed ‘an excavation of mind and nature’. This is actually the most precise description of what Field Studies is. An excavation through conversation, conversation with all the tools of our trades – relations, movements, dance, ordering, patterns and other forms of listening.

published 29 February 08  /  no comments yet

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