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ON DANCE


Beforehand
To speak about my approach to dance, it is necessary that I describe my perception of reality. My dance draws entirely from my world-view and my fundamental beliefs.
I state no truths. What I will say will be a very subjective -- yet concrete and precise -- description of how reality appears like to me through my dance. I believe that the more subjective we are – and if we can be concrete in our subjectivity -- more universal we can be.
Like any belief, my belief is my own. Another will have a different belief. It is not important that we all share the same belief. Clearly, what I will speak about is not a discussion about the right or the wrong perception, belief, or method.
However, it is important to realize that how one acts, how one dances, or how one is, is based upon fundamental beliefs of each person. This fundamental belief cannot be compromised, because it is a certain truth for each person. It is also important that the belief comes from oneself, not from another’s teaching.


Source and its Manifestations
Dance is what passes through me. What passes through me is a force invisible. It is like a will or desire of all things of the universe. It is not visible, it is not tangible, it has no name. It can only be sensed through how it manifests itself through me.

Out of many experiences that influenced how I dance today, there were, in particular, two experiences I remember well.
The first experience was when I felt, physically, the space flowing through me like a river. This is the closest description to what it felt like. It was on one evening, in my room, when I was very sad. Without any warning, suddenly I began to feel as if the universe was running through me. It seemed the most natural occurrence and, as I felt this, I knew that the world is always like this – that only I had never noticed it clearly. The experience was so singular, curious, and energizing, that I was not sad any more but was in joy. I felt that I perceived reality in clarity.
The second experience happened while on stage in one of my early performances. Suddenly, I felt as if there was someone (something) behind me. It was a very strange feeling, because I knew that there was nobody there. IT was moving me, and I observed myself being moved without my own will/intention to move. I noticed that the lights have become bright and clear, all colors vivid, and I could almost see each particle in the air. I noticed that some parts of the space were heavy, some parts light. Some parts of space were dense, some sparse. Some parts cold, some hot. There were currents in the space. I do not mean air currents. It was as if they were currents of space itself. I noticed that the space itself chose for me where I will be, how my body will be moved. The densities and the currents of space became manifest in my body. I did not dance from my own self. I was danced by something else. I felt again the keenness of perceiving reality. Things were in clarity, and I knew this is how it is to really dance. It is very simple, and one has to do nothing from oneself. One simply needs to “listen” and be moved.
These experiences of moments of clarity did not happen often. However, after these experiences, I began to dance in a way of Listening. Rather than “to do,” or “to create”, I spent my time to try to listen to reality. This listening happens with whole of our body and soul. I listened to this invisible force. I trained in order that the mind and body can allow easily to manifest this invisible force. I begat to call this force ‘the source.’ This listening and allowing the source to manifest in my body – this was for me dance. It is not so simple, but it is actually very simple. Clearly it was the one reason I continued to dance – because in this way of dancing, dance became impossible to separate from my life. To enter into the state of mind and body of intense listening, and to be ready and be available for the source to manifest in us – this means for me to have a concrete relationship with reality.

I believe that this Source is the origin of all things that exists. We are all manifestations of it in various physical forms. (When I speak of physical forms, for the moment I will speak of “all that exists” --matter and energy that physically exist. )

Yet the Source is not a cause of all things, nor is it a maker/creator of things.

When I face the signs of the source, it is like to face “absolute reality”. It is like an invisible will, an invisible design. It exists outside of me, but it exists everywhere. All that exists resides within it. It is like Time and Space itself – the Desire of Time and Space.
To know the Desire of Time and Space is to know its manifestations in us. I sought towards self-study -- self-knowledge.


Vertical Relationship
Then what do I mean “Dance is what passes through me”?
It is to face all clear signs of manifestations of the origin.
I use the metaphor that our relationship between us and the source is a vertical relationship. We have, in our modern society, created horizontal relationships, many of which do not have direct reference to the origin. We begin to have a horizontal and relative reality, that is not rooted in the origin and therefore less concrete. We acquire many relative behaviours. As a result, our true origin is less visible, less clear. It is as if we begin to be reflection of reflections – we become more complex and indirect in our existence.
If we have a vertical relationship – if we are rooted in the one original source of all manifestations -- then we have a direct relationship with all things that exists. Our being is more clear, and our origin is revealed in our being.
In vertical relationship, there is a sense that there is no difference -- there is no boundary --between one and the other (individual and the rest of the world). There is no sense of the “I” in this being, but our conscious minds, which do live also in a horizontal reality, can observe its own being in this vertical condition, and live with and learn from it. This is self-knowledge.
For me, dance must strive to exist in a vertical relationship with reality. Dance for me is not a self-expression. We ourselves are “expressions” of one original source. As a dancer, I try to offer myself in the state of close listening to the origin. Dance is to listen – when we listen, something passes through us. Thus, I say that dance is that which passes through me.
This “something,” is what I call the Desire of Time and Space. Time and space is the place of absolute reality. The desire is its invisible design, the original intension. We are the crystallization of this invisible design.
I feel as if my truest soul desire is the desire of Time and Space, the origin. In this sense, I have a belief that “soul” exists outside of me, inside, and everywhere. It permeates all, and all things reside in it.



Materiality vs. life-force. The human consciousness of materiality.
Our nature is complex. I feel Life complicates existence. Human mind has a unique privilege to observe that condition. Human mind is a unique phenomenon and a unique tragedy.
Material with no life-force has a simple and pure existence, but it has no privilege to observe its own purity. It has no consciousness to view its own truth.
I often envy the clarity and beauty of non-living beings.
They are not complicated by life, and their existence is absolutely true to each nature. A stone is truly a stone, a leaf is a truly a leaf. It tries to be nothing other than what it is, and it acts according to its own properties. A human, when dead – while still keeping the human form – is truly a material being.
Certain life-forms, for example plants, are closer to a material being than certain other life-forms, like animals.
What I mean by the purity of properties of material, I mean that it has no other will than its own materiality. For example, if you throw a dead wood or dead animal into a rapid river, it will be moved by the condition and its environment according to its form and materiality. It is pure movement. When you throw a live animal into the river, it will try to swim with it, or to swim against, to preserve its own life.
Humans are unique in that we can be conscious of our own material (made of matter) existence apart from the life-force that is its volition. Hence, humans have often sense of separation, or co-existence (duality) of, material body vs. immaterial soul/spirit. Our mind can also control our life-preserving instincts – in a river, a human can choose to let our material be, and drown, while it observes its demise till death. Our consciousness can realize the state of our own materiality, which will exist even when we are dead (though it may decay and reform to other forms than who we are). We are able to have a premonition of death, when the body will become devoid of the life-force. Because of our ability to have this premonition, we have also the possibility to view and treat our own materiality like another entity apart from ‘us.’
By observing our own materiality, we have the key to perceive the world from the purity of a material.



Some definitions.
We have different definitions for words, depending on our perceptions and the time we live in.
For the purpose of my writing, I clarify the words that often have different meanings.

• Notions about Existence and Life.
In the way that I use the word “existence,” it is anything that “is.” Life is not a requirement for this “being.”
I stress this only as some people believe that when one dies, one does not exist. Their use of the word “existence” is, I believe, a particular and singular, way of existence: an existence where we have a feeling a “continuum” within our individual entity throughout a certain period of time that we can be conscious of our existence.
This is a limited way of perceiving sense of existence -- and it is in a linear perception of time -- as we, the living, only have this sense of continuity of existing because of certain operating mechanisms that we have as humans. We can still live without these mechanisms, as we see in different cultures and in individuals who are often marked as having disorders of this mechanism.
How would one perceive the world in the lack of this mechanism? This becomes closer to a “vertical” sense of time – the state of no time (or only ‘now’) of any matter that has no conscious mind. This is closer to how I use the word “existence”.
In dance, I utilize “existence” in the non-continuum. Each moment has a sense of being infinite, When a performer lives in this perception, audience too experience this perception. It is my cheif mode of communication.

• Notions about dance and movement.
Not all dance exists as a vertical relationship. Not all dancers’ aim is this. Some dances exist as horizontal relationships – within the social behaviour and within the social perception of time and space, which is in a relative reality.
Not all dances are aimed for an audience -- there are collective dances where there is no audience.
My approach is toward a vertical relationship. In my dance, I deal with time and space in a way that differs from usual social perception of time and space. I present my work for an audience.
There are several common notions about dance by a general public, that do not relate to my dance.
One notion is that dance is a self-expression. -- It is not.
Another is that dance is about movement or shapes of the body and the composition of the bodies in space. -- This is only as a result. It is not the essence. All bodies, dancing or not, are in movement, and they are situated within a space.
We cannot deny that today, the public is more concerned for categorization (essentially futile) and what the events stand for in social context. The trend is more toward superficial appreciation of dance to gain cultural or social status, or to be diverted by something a little different, but not understandable (not uncomfortable.) I venture so far as to say that the public now enjoys more the superficial, and is content with being presented with what is visible with the eyes and what is easily comprehensive logically or impressive emotionally. In response to public demand, more and more dance has moved to simply series of movements, visual aesthetics, or intellectual concepts, put on the body from the outside – completely “decorative or conceptual” – and in truth, they are complete lies.
A situation that demands the audience to listen to themselves has become rather undesirable for majority of public. The trend is more or less severe in different countries, but exists throughout most of ‘civilized’ nations.
In spite of this, or because of this, I continue to believe that all people, at the very bottom of themselves, desire to listen to themselves. To be with reality, and to look to our own selves, we are very often in the dark. It is my work in dance. If one person can be touched, then there is a reason to dance again.