18/6/2020

I like to join Peter, Marta, Julie and Joanna’s editorial thoughts and add…

Since we met in February 3D and 5 senses, we have experienced world events and challenges, anything between stunningly beautiful and extremely painful. I appreciate how we team have responded, bringing improvisation and fluidity and flexibility to adapting content and structure in a most considered caring presence. Rigidity didn’t have a look in.

Choosing to engage with collectives, gatherings, public talks, projects and moments attentively dedicated to curiously question, rattle and actively engage in shifting outdated systems and living practices, I accepted the invitation to co-curate The Grand Re-Union project with delight. And I am loving the opportunity to honor my roots in dance. Among many and a few, in particular, I am hugely grateful to learning with Simone Forti whose approach to communicating with someone and about something, informed the direction of work I choose in the mid ‘90s, and became fundamental in all my living.

Let’s take the hierarchical rug out from under our feet, and consciously re-fresh the concept and beliefs underpinning thinking and the resulting communications.

I welcome this moment of destabilization, and The Grand Re Union fully engaging.

Rivca Rubin

when joanna lesnierowska asked me to help gather family and friends around a big table for a feast, a celebration of 15 years of dance at stary browar nowy taniec
i said yes without a blink with an eye.
she said it should be like a great reunion of artists, teacher and students that spend time in poznan, leaving their traces in the community.
wasn’t there a group of dancers in new york in the 1970s that was called „grand union“? they „just“ came together to perform dance-improvisation, and wasn’t one of them, yvonne rainer, an influential guest here in poznan in 2007?
isn’t the nature of a family celebration always multigenerational, and all guests are welcome?
can we just call it „the grand re-union“?

yes and yes and yes.
there is not a lot written about the „grand union“, but important traces of that legacy are extremely present in my artistic work as dancer and choreographer, as instigator of group performances of dance-improvisation and in my teaching. contact improvisation, contemplative dance practice and anatomical release-work are major motors of my work and are directly traceable to that collective.

so yes, lets gather in poznan in june 2020 and celebrate by sharing, caring, moving-with and listening-to each other, creating a pause, a slow down, in a world threatened by the speed of growing social inequalities through the unfair distribution of wealth in our local communities and globally, leading too often to nationalism and authoritarian leadership.

then, suddenly, the whole world paused. revealing a lot of truths about our nature and the systems that we created, the way governments handle this, the way our local communities handle this, who is family?

my role in that team of curators is the constant reminder of the practice of the body, the grounding and the lightness, the attention to the perception, the moving, the breathing.

as you read this, where are you? you most probably sit somewhere.
how are you sitting? do you feel your sit bones resting?
and your spine?
are you leaning on something? are you balancing the disks of the vertebrae, one resting on top of the other with an elastic disc in between?
-pause-

how about your feet?
-pause-

and your head?

what do you hear around you?
is there a radio playing somewhere, children playing in the yard? traffic? birds?
-pause-

what do you see when you lift your head from the reading? trees? sky? wall? another person?
and what do you see when you „turn your fucking head“, when you change your point of view? what is beside you? who is with you? what is behind you?
-pause-

what do you smell? take a moment to smell. or is there a memory of smell? this morning opening the door to our small balcony the smell of the flowering trees was overwhelming, and as i sit here writing this it is still in the air.
and what about taste? an aftertaste of your last meal or drink? your salty lips? your saliva?

and breath. are you breathing? of course you are, but how?
where is the air coming in? your nose? your slightly open lips?
cool air on the way in, warm air on the way out.

where does it go to? what cavities inside your body does it fill?
can you pay attention and be the witness of your moving-breathing?
—long pause—

these last weeks were full of loss.
my personal loss of great teachers, colleagues, friends: nancy stark smith and mary overlie. it slowed me down even more, to the point that „standing in space“ (the title of mary overlies book) and balancing on the globe, to do the small dance, was the only thing i needed and wanted to do, and it was enough.

and the murder of george floyd that sparked widespread protest filling the empty streets and plazas of many cities, for the fight for more equality and unity.

i pause in grief
not knowing where i, where we, will go from here.
the grand re-union is the great un-known.

with care
full of care
careful

peter pleyer

Turmeric Face-mask Recipe 

tablespoon turmeric powder
5 teaspoon of yogurt
5 teaspoon raw honey
5 lemon juice

Add more turmeric as needed or achieve a smooth paste

Since almost 5 years I am preparing for 2020.
2020 for me and my program and my venue and my team means
the end.
I went through all stages of mourning.
I was shocked and in denial,
I felt (very) angry,
and of course
I spent all my energy in trying to fix it and in bargaining and then
I felt so guilty (very very) of my own incapacity
ended up (very) depressed
And finally,
I arrived to working it through, probably right in time to
have a dream.

I imagined I’m not alone and
Those who I admired, loved, shared all my 16 years in the field with
gathered together coming from all over as family,
assembling and uniting
in doing thinking caring (for each other and for Others) and sharing
time space love and
all this amazing knowledge that has been generated through the decades of
choreographic practice and thinking

I imagined
I believed again
In what we built and exercised so far having deeper sense
And trusting
in what we will decide to build and exercise together having even more meaning
in and for the future
And it felt oh so empowering

I imagined having Hope again
Hope that inspires us into action and
brings the calming understanding that
the end is actually the new beginning.
The transition.
The liminal time and space.

So I called everybody
to not transit alone.
And to sketch a path to follow
And to celebrate and be grateful for
all seeds that has been planted
to grow in all unexpected times and spaces
honoring all that now needs to be resolved to evolve.

And then in one second not only mine but the whole world came to a standstill
And transition became suddenly not only my personal challenge.

And with all the anxiety, confusion and suspension it brought,
we have chosen to accept the invitation
to this particular dance macabre
As world madly improvises beneath our feet
so do we.
And we intent to never stop.

And as much as it feels oh so scary, it is also oh so thrilling

And here we are
Here I am, with you
In the eve of our encounter
Embarking on the journey
Into Unknown.
Feeling like starting an expedition to discover the Brand New World we dreamt about.
The thing is just that
it does not need to be discovered.
In fact, it is already here.
And just needs to be re-build.
brought into the daylight from depth of our dreams as

A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together becomes reality

And
In 2011 I was working on the piece inspired by the paintings of Edward Hopper. For months before (and since) I was exercising looking at the world with a ‘Hopper glasses’ recognizing myself constantly in a middle of his images. One of the practices was also re-creating and thus examining the composition of images with the iconic LEGO figures (that I am in love with since). It was following the belief that to see (understand) the world one needs to first build its model (as only what exists for no other purpose than to be seen, we really look at…).

In the first days of pandemic lock down, I was reading the article from The guardian stating We are all Edward Hopper paintings now.

Then strolling through completely empty Stary Browar shopping mall (what a spooky experience) where since 16 years our studio resides, I bumped into the LEGO shop. The window pane made me smile:

LET’S!

I have been invited by Joanna to co-think about the Grand Re Union gathering as a researcher and curator working mostly in the field of performing arts and reflecting the institutional practices. Albeit my curatorial practice is deeply rooted in the contemporary theatre, I have been carefully observing and reflecting choreography in recent years, perceiving it as space where new ways of being together are actually activated, embodied and practiced.

While co-working on the original plan for the Grand Re Union as a 10-days long festival in June 2020, I have been imagining it as a crack in time, where we could not only take a break from every day flow, but also when we can invite contemporary artists practices to encounter with its past – and their various transformations, developed within last decades.

It was somehow about inviting the ghosts of previous fights and hopes to haunt our anxious present time and share with us their wisdom, successes and failures. I’ve been imagining Grand Re Union as a temporary common space that would let us feel, experience and learn each other; as a live gathering in its deep political meaning, where unexpected and unthinkable ways of being together and support each other are activated.

What seemed fascinating to me was an attempt to document such an encounter and search for diverse ways of translating the live experience into a material that can be shared further, outside the ephemeral community temporarily gathered at one place.

The pandemic outbreak forced us to resign from the live gathering but strongly reinforced the need of support and solidarity. I would be happy to see how we might translate the 10 days live gathering into 10 issues of online magazine: an online resource of knowledge and shared practices; a way to get together while being physically isolated. Maybe it could become an actual political gesture: as a tool we could potentially use to support our every struggles.