LéaT

Alain Platel.   When I discovered his work, my whole world collapsed and crumbled, my belly, my soul got crashed. How on earth could this exist and how on earth had I missed this? 2007, back from a party very late at night, I turn on the tiny tv I used to have and watch ARTE. A woman is dancing, stumbling, ‘stuttering’, she is very skinny, uncomfortably skinny, it is uneasy yet intriguing, her movements seemed to speak the language of her tormented soul or at least, tormented body.  A dance that wasn’t just about the dance, a dance that seemed to go beyond the body, an embodiment of what’s beyond. Humanity. Its tragedy.  This is what I long for, Art that confronts.  I have always been curious and attracted by avant-gardistes, Dada, Fluxus.. Chris Burden, La Monte Young. Something in what they did seemed off but was essentially ‘just/right’ to me.  Once I had discovered the existence of Alain Platel’s work and whenever I could, I religiously attended each of his performances. I

This course is inclined toward qualitative research methods. Write about your thoughts on positivist and non-positivist approaches. How do you reconcile yourself to a non-positivist position? What experiences in your past inform how you feel about these two positions? Include your thoughts on embodiment and Cartesian dualist’s mind / body divide. Relate this to your own practice and your professional experiences.     These big words scare me.  Positivist approach; scientific and fact based.  Art experience/training is necessarily subjective.  I keep questioning what I do, its legitimacy, its impact, its necessity even. So my understanding  of it is constantly changing. And so is my practice. My approach to movement today is far from what it was 8 years ago. It is deeper and just-er. Like; I have dug and entered the world that I wanted to explore a little more.  I am uncovering it as I am digging.  I am creating it as I am digging.  There is still so much more to unpack and to discover.

  I am having a hard time focusing on my practice at the moment.  I am spreading my energy between touring, admin, fundings apps (always!), marketing, earning m o n e y.  I realised often I feel as if I was in a competition. Who does better, who brings more audience, who sells more tickets, more likes, more interviews, more. And when I loose my confidence, when success is measured from the outside.. well, that's when I feel endangered. And I shrink inside myself and I disappear inside a hole. And I give away/up (my) space.  This happens when I lose focus.  When I forget the WHY.  The transcendance of our art form, the essence of my work: the craft, the research on the matter dance, dance, the creation.  I had a close look at my 'Creative DNA' (Twyla Tharp). And that is exactly what I forget when I transform into a mouse. That it is all about the creative act.  At least.. for me. 

  I have managed for the first time in my life to properly disconnect over Christmas.  It was one of the first time I was not jumping straight back into a tour or a creation so I guess that helped. Chickenpox helped too.  I had a hard time reconnecting gently. I did reconnect, but violently, harshly, brutally. Like; I had forgotten what the struggle of being a mid-scale maker is: making work and touring it. You have funding, but not enough. You do not have no money, but you do not have enough of it.  I have read The Creative Habit (Twyla Tharp) and I loved it. It reconnected me.  It reconnected me with kindness and warmth to the essence of my practice: creating.  When I mentioned that I needed to be on my feet more, I should have said, in my head too. I want to move out from my belly in order to be more rooted to the ground (serenity) and to connect more to my thinking brain (academic léa hello). I need to come out of myself more. I need to challenge my beliefs or to really research a

Last week I taught pro class at The Place.  I love teaching. I love the openness of the participants, their trust to follow me in imagination land.  We transform in ostriches, we disconnected from the 'vertical line', we connect to the 'horizontal' one. We disconnect the brain - or try to. We release, we open, we empty.  (can you feel my Big Essay making its way gently..)  INSTINCT.  I taught Monday - Friday.  On Sunday night, I see Anna's email. I have never met her, but she wants to come to class. Anna is deaf and is wondering whether the class will be physical (= easy to follow visually) or somatic (= less easy to follow visually). The thing; my classes are both. Highly physical but also, digging in sensations, imagination, experimentation. And I speak. Oh how I love speaking!!  There is something I always hated about myself: the over-expression of my body and my face. Gosh, I could not watch myself speak or even listen to someone. I move everything, my face is h

  I have been very intrigued about some of your approach and research on somatic practices.  Dieter, Ann, Cael, Matthew.  When I started reading one of the module 1 handbook, I could not start but feel a squash in my stomach: "On this course we are coming from a starting point of embodiment. Embodiment does not separate mind and body. A separation of mind and body which is called Dualism, links knowledge (thinking, understanding, and ideas) with the mind only, and links sensation (hunger, growth and pain) with the body only; the dualist mind / body separation leaves the body as something that carries the mind around but is not a site of knowing." See. I do get this. Totally. Of course.  But my experience with illness totally shredded/crushed/destroyed the relationship between my body and my mind. My body had betrayed me and my mind was the only 'thing' that was me. My body became for a very short period of time (probably a couple of month after my diagnosis) a thing I