Receptive Bodies, Emerging Identities – reviewing "The Diary of Alice" by Joavien Ng and Paloma Calle

nospam@example.com (Jochen Roller) — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 00:19:43 +0100

As we arrive at Baba House, a beautiful Peranakan residence in the southern part of Singapore, we are welcomed with glasses of red wine as we pick up our tickets. Here, the underlying concept of this evening's performance is already outlined: Hospitality. After a while, we are asked to proceed to the back of the house where Joavien and Paloma sit facing each other at a large table. They hold playing cards in their hands, between them is a bottle of whisky on the table. There are empty chairs next to the performers, with small glasses on the table indicating where the audience is supposed to sit and join in.

Over the next hour, Joavien and Paloma engage in an identity-building game. While playing cards (and drinking whisky), they reveal the identity of a woman called Alice. Biographical anecdotes alternate with refelections, both being told by either Alice herself (there is a Joavien/Alice and a Paloma/Alice) or by someone who knew her (again the two performers take on that role). What is faszinating in this performance is how the identity of Alice emerges through an interplay between Joavien, Paloma and members of the audience. Joavien and Paloma perform biographical bits and pieces and then engage the audience into the construction of Alice's identity. While the parts of the two performers feel being scripted, the identity of Alice completes itself differently in each performance, depending on what information is added by the audience.

The conception of "The Diary of Alice" allows Joavien and Paloma to act as hosts: The performance is in fact a reception for the audience's phantasies. In an act of generosity, Joavien and Paloma provide their brains and bones to be bodies that accomodate Alice's identity. The fact that these brains and bones are locally from Singapore (Joavien) and Spain (Paloma) doesn't matter in this context: The hybrid soul of Alice travels in and out of everybody who sits at this table in Baba house.

Interestingly, the collaboration between Joavien and Paloma originates from as cross-cultural exchange organized by ASEF in 2009 in Lisbon (Pointe-to-Pointe). The great achievement of this performance is the management to overcome emphasizing possible cultural differences for the build-up of a common body/identity. This common body holds all contradiction, non-linearity and confusion of cross-cultural engagement without emphasizing it.

Towards the end of the performance, Alice decides to change her physical appearance and participates in a drag king workshop. As Joavien and Paloma are starting to transform their bodies with beards and plastic dicks, the lyrics of the Tom Waits song played earlier in the performance re-emerge in my ear: I must be insane/To go skating on your name/By tracing it twice/I fell through the ice/Oh Alice/There's only Alice.

If you want to have a look at the production process of "The Diary of Alice", you can log onto www.alicelisbon.blogspot.com. This blog was partly used by Joavien and Paloma for writing the script over the distance between Singapore and Madrid.

Fakapale - about dance, money and women’s rugby in Tonga

nospam@example.com (Jochen Roller) — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 02:48:59 +0100

I am standing under a huge Mango tree near a rugby field in Nuku’alofa. Team Tonga plays team Samoa. The game is fast, despite the heat and the exposure of the playground to the blazing sun. It is a complex choreography of passes, runs and dodges, a simultaneous co-existence of elegance and brutality. A strange mixture for me who grew up on fair-play soccer! One of the Tongan girls has it. Whenever she has the ball, it’s a score for sure. Once the ball is seized by the iron grip of her arm it will only release its embrace behind the goal line. I am quite surprised to see this player later that day on a dance stage.

“It’s like everywhere” she says smiling, exposing four golden front teeth which were presumably knocked-off in another game. “Everyone here has two or three jobs.” Her dancing is equally amazing than her rugby play. Thrusting, very distinguished arm gestures change in a split of a second into an intricate play of hands, commented by a diversity of precise head tilts in various angles. Then, something unexpected happens. A man with an impressive belly walks towards the dancer, staggering. The moment I think he is going to run her over like the Samoan girls tried before in the game, he pulls a 5 dollar note out of his pocket and sticks it to the dancer’s forehead. “That’s a way of honoring the dancers” my local friend tells me. “It’s called fakapale.”

As the man has put a first note, other members of the audience get up and walk up to her, more money in their hands. To stick the money onto the dancer’s body turns out to be a tricky interaction. The donator has to know the choreography very well for when it is a good moment to approach the dancer. Otherwise, one of the dancer’s arm gestures might knock him down. Eight men are standing in a circle around her, waiting for the right moment to enter the dancer’s sphere. It looks as if the eight men were about to feed a wild animal. Now the dancer slows down in pace to facilitate the men sticking their money onto her. Ironically, the slower pace produces less sweat so all money bills fall onto the floor which becomes slippery for the dancer’s steps. I am happy that the music stops and the dance is over.

What was supposed to be an expression of honor for the dancer looked to me like trying to choke the choreography to death by money. “You palagi” the dancer laughs at me as I share my thoughts with her after the dance. “You always draw wrong conclusions. Dance is just like rugby: You’re tackled, you’ll adapt!”

Later in bed I have a bizarre dream. I dream of my dance company dancing on a rugby field in front of a team of faceless numbers, with Arnd Wesemann being their captain. My company tries to keep up with the choreography while the opponent interferes with elbows, knees and feet. Slowly, the numbers’ team advances the goal line. I wake up sweating, starring at a 2 dollar note that has glued itself onto my leg.

Jochen Roller - Goethe-Institut TanzConnexions

Receptive Bodies, Emerging Identities – reviewing "The Diary of Alice" by Joavien Ng and Paloma Calle

Fakapale - about dance, money and women’s rugby in Tonga