-09.10.2024-
Imaginatively kinetic contemporary and urban dance.
Above is the byline on Sol Invictus's poster. By all means, there's no way for me to identify what exactly that performance, event, dance, theatre, gathering, gala, festive, showcase, presentation, or meditation could be before I witnessed it in person - and it remains even now. Yet, the question is: Y does it matter? Although I could start with my lack of knowledge in dance, dance drama, physical theatre, or other jargon and try to come up with an - whether equivocal or not - answer through the analytical thinking I'm known for, that would be on the precise contrary of my most precious takeaway and birthday gift from last Friday night.
Before delving into the actual details that brought my sensations to life, there is a wondering of mine that has haunted me for many, many times I have to relate here. Again, it is hard to summarize that complex of thinking into one sentence, so I'll try to convey it within a limited number of examples. The first one would take me back to approximately three to four years ago when I stunned a new high school classmate with some statement I myself wasn't even sure about (and actually, it's nothing more than a defense mechanism or boasted words of a boy). I said: 'I find myself living within two layers of functioning systems - one belongs to physicality, firsthand experience and reaction, feelings, etc., and the other runs independently to evaluate, judge, and guide my final response to the out world by viewing myself from a distant perspective.' At the time, I hadn't heard of concepts like first-and-second order desires, dissociative syndrome/disorder, and so on. What my restricted mind knew was even though I would admit that it was somewhat toxic, it was still something I had to stick to in order to 'function' back then. I intend not to judge myself - it is something unfair to take advantage of the growth of these years. Nevertheless, nowadays, I can perfectly understand why my classmate was stunned.
Another example would be my wading into poetry - as a defense mechanism as well. As you can see, this site used to be dedicated to presenting my poetry. But now, my poetry is dead, for now. I believe I've already mentioned this here and there, but the used-to process and mindset of regarding poetry as a shortcut to encode my messages and meaning, hope for being disguised, and wish for the least chance to be deciphered would do nothing positive to me anymore. If it's always a disguise, then I'd rather stop writing as I've gained the courage to express directly, at least to some extent, just like right now, and I'll try to keep this trend. While I'll probably still use my poetry in such a way from time to time, the intriguing potential of my finding its pure beauty is worthy of waiting, worthy of killing it for now. That being said, this is another example of my too-much-thinking/analyzing/concocting/pretending intervening with that directness in sensations.
And when it comes to relationships, the same struggle applies. It was always hard for me to answer the questions 'Have you been in a relationship?' or 'How many relationships have you been in?' (yes, teenagers like the sort of questions AH) - since, indeed, I am just now in my first mutually committed relationship, it's even harder to deny the lessons I learned from the previous, not relationship, but more than romantic experiences. One of the banes that resulted in this situation set itself in my own words and others' trenchant comments. I once wrote and said: 'For me, in order to make the decision to start a relationship, it takes more than the combination of impulse and evaluation.' And recently, my girlfriend commented: "If only you wanna express (your feelings), it won't be 'I like you' but 'I've done a thorough analysis and discovered that I have affective emotions on you,' per se." And, yes, I'm still like this. A little bit of self-defense would be that I've shifted from the evaluation party to the feelings party now. But still, this incapability of completely falling for feelings annoys me from time to time.
So much for the mawkish gibberish; the last example I'd like to introduce is music. While in the post Mixing Engineer - A Conductor Behind the Curtain? (sloth-slumber.com) I touched on creativity versus technicality, which in a sense also constitutes an aspect of this wondering, this time, I'm about to refer to a broader scenario of the general musicking (let's define it simply as 'every engagement in musical activities'). In February, when I visited NYU Abu Dhabi for the first time, a friend in the candidate weekend asked me a question: 'Given you are learning music (or are a music student), have you ever come across situations in which you can't immerse yourself in music anymore but have to analyze constantly?' And my answer back then was: 'Actually, yes - for a while. But nowadays, I've attained the ability to, at least for most of the time, switch between the musician mindset and the audience mindset.' I won't deny that in many professional cases, turning on the second-order active listening system is essential to becoming a good musician, and I am quite satisfied with that ability to switch between modes. However, I always wondered whether it was our destiny to enjoy only half of the story, the art, and the life.
Optimistically speaking, I always naively believed that there would be a middle ground for this and for all those wondering - even if there seemed no way out back then. Fortunately, it was in that atmosphere and course Sol Invictus created I was, and I am more than ever convinced that fine lining firmly exists in our practice - if devoted, if honest, if faithful.
Applause, applause, and applause. The one that I can hardly recall at all but never forget as well.
Then how did it happen? I wonder now. How did Sol Invictus mesmerize me to stop that incessant analysis while imbuing me those understandings, although it may not be in the form of analysis, inadvertently? As a still person who does not know well about the form of performance and its theoretical methodologies, I may end up failing to offer a clear scheme - on the other hand, maybe it was precisely due to this naiveness that the magic happened to me. To be honest, the conjury didn't set off right away - I did spend more than half an hour at the beginning of the performance trying to decode it in terms of what the message was, how the choreography meant, which section we were in according to the music, etc., and I failed. Yet it was when the many details hopped into my horizons one by one, the whole picture itself began to merge in my mind as one single piece.
It was when I first surprised by the inclusion of a uniped dancer in the cast to be such diverse, when I unconsciously caught his gaze offstage, sitting as a still social being rather than that seemingly omnipotent performing being, when he could dance as exquisite and as intense as the others, and when he was frozen so still, so determined, and so brutal under the spotlight in stark contrast to the frenzied rush around him - that I SAW the performance, aka. I LOVE the performance. Not to mention the physical difficulties it took for all these to happen, I was even more gripped by that contrast of he himself on and off the stage, by the breaking movements so very crafted for him and for the scene, and by the collective efforts of the entire ensemble dedicated to include, to present.
It was the moment when light became a stage within a stage - where the space was even further weighted, divided, and portrayed - that my initial understanding of lighting design was completely revitalized by a set of monochromatic lights. It was when the circular movements—the sprints and leaps, the prayers and conflicts—found their place within the dome of light, and when the walls, defined by the sharp edges of light, were intermittently breached by the aimlessly wandering crowd, creating a monotonous and homogenous prison of dullness, that I realized how technically 'simple' it could be - at least without the LEDs, lasers, beams, and so on - to support the piece given the exact, clear, usage of tools - just like that of in mixing. (And so will I try to harness it for the first time in front of the lighting console instead of the mixing console in our upcoming first class production).
It was when I suddenly truly recognized what the choreographer had said about dancing without counting and clicks eventually would transform the performance to another level after witnessing the ostensibly desynchronized movements of the dancers to appear as a whole with so many characters of each - physically and mentally - preserved, and when the nature of breaking dance to have detached from the exact tempo but align the inner rhythm with the music was demonstrated in that devised choreography, the profound power of physicality left me in awe.
It was when I finally smiled and waved at the uplifting Mongolian music, after feeling daunted for what seemed like a century, and recalled that distinctive arm-swinging movement I had seen just a month prior in Inner Mongolia I was more than ever glad to have music and memories of joy to summon at that moment, as if I, as a spectator sitting in the audience, had also joined the festive throng on the stage. And it was when the music disappeared in a second and left the air with only silence - silence emphasized by the haste footsteps - the contrasting emotions - joy, pain, fear, anger, and so on - were much underlined, triggering me to include such music or sound effects as an indication to the ambiance in the later production.
And it was the sun - coming from the lights and embodied in the mirroring of that mass curtain - served as the focal point of the conflicts as well as the beacon of strength, echoing the mythical figure - had visually stunned my senses. It became the immense hijab over the woman who stepped out of the 4th wall in front of the stage and was only to be dragged backward into the arms of a man and to the collective force of disciplines and institutions of restriction. It became the overwhelming wave drawning the headspining dancer but also the wave from which the headspiner was reborn. That single ideological and physical symbol being used in diverse directions and contexts brought its adaptability to life, associating all those figurative and metaphorical moments in the performance to create an ineffable yet cohesive narrative.
At the end of the day, the answer may be as simple as 'that performance has both good technicality and storytelling compared to many that only focuses on one of them,' said by a fried of mine. However, what makes it so appealing to me is the existence of something built on and absolutely above the two sides of the coin - and even sensations, just like the utter praise and dedication to life, love, and dance in the performance, transcending that mere moment of time.
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