Bodytelling
by Francesco Chiaro
The body has always had the potential to unsettle us with its strange exigencies, suppurations, desires and demands. Studied over the centuries from all perspectives, it was only around the 70s that Western critical theoreticians recognised it as a site of meaning, a «communication machine» as Umberto Eco used to say. Both a place of discourse and power and an object of discipline and control, the body thus became a product of social constraints and constructions, a material site where identity categories such as race, gender and sexuality are fleshed out. But bodies are not only a passive receptacle of inflictions. As a matter of fact, it is through the body that individuals can conform to or resist the cultural expectations imposed upon them, and it is exactly by combining visceral matter and socio-political agency that some of the performers seen at Norway’s Oktoberdans 2024 made their physical, dissident stance, challenging subjection with subjectivity and letting resistance initiate the body’s movements.
Brought together by Bergen’s BIT Teatergarasjen celebration of its 40th year of activity, the following four performances stretch, speculate, provoke and redefine what a body can be and do. From the crippling pain of gender dysphoria in The Basement to the raging kindness of decolonial practices in Pearls, or from the queer, non-anthropocentric ecologies of Undersang to the posthuman, xenogeneic ambiguities of ontogenesis dreams, corporality finds itself centre stage and the performers’ presence becomes a tool for a storytelling -or better yet, a bodytelling- that is well aware of its audience.
Indeed, as Daniel Mariblanca, Joshua Serafin, Harald Beharie and Astrid Sweeney/Weixin Quek Chong develop their status-quo challenging, corpus-centred narrations, the spectators themselves are called forth to take responsibility and participate in the performative act, leaving the comfort and safety of their privileges behind as gazes are met and questioned and bodies are touched and shaken.
The Basement by Daniel Mariblanca - photo by Ursula Kaufmann
The first and perhaps more “violent” example of this was, sans doute, the katabasis into the unsung tribulations and laborious fights for realness of trans persons. A long, plush, catwalk-like carpet traces the connection between a bare body and an abstract scenography, outlining from the get-go what will be an arrowlike choreography of self-presentation. And indeed, as soon as the audience settles in on both sides of the elongated stage and the lights focus on the cluster of skin and harness and high heels to the right, the struggle begins. Dancing his way through life ever since he was 17 years old, Daniel Mariblanca, a Barcelona-born transgender performer, brings his own personal experiences in the theatre space, giving voice, flesh and time to an often invisible reality.
Premiered in Oslo’s Dansens Hus on 29 August 2024, The Basement is a solo performance about « the multiple realities and fictions that arise from the dynamics expressed when power relationships are morphed», but also about what a body can do when going beyond the «boundaries set for what is acceptable, legitimate and beautiful». Drawing on an artistic tradition of both visually and physically demanding performances, Mariblanca continues his political research on gender identity, heteronormativity and queer alternatives to it. Enacting the words of Canadian philosopher and social theorist Brian Massumi, who purports that «there is no the body» but only a «continuous bodying», the Catalan performer takes us on a painful, gender-dysphoric journey to self-determination, putting on display the wounds and scars of transitioning out of an imposition and into a choice, leaving behind an iconography of erasure.
As his body inhales and exhales on the floor, his identity females and males in a growing crescendo of frantic spasms that clearly convey a torn individuality hidden behind a mask of overwhelming submission and conformity. Through a very canonical use of music, which dictates the tensions and intentions of every movement, The Basement drives its message home one physically taxing metaphor at a time, adding blood and grit to an already teeming overabundance of self-explanatory symbols.
When the process of physical liberation finally ends and the identity mask is done away with, one (lengthy) performance ends and another one begins. This time, with clear eyes and an exposed face, the relationship with the audience forcibly changes and the spatial boundaries of a formal theatre setting disappear, thus successfully transposing the internal freedom also on the outside. After a brisk jog to reappropriate himself of his newfound synchronicity between flesh and soul, Mariblanca invites a few members of the public to step on the stage where a white, rectangular piece of paper reflects some blurry projected images. When the intimate bubble is big enough, words take over the scene, retelling the same tale of non-normative existence we just bore witness to. After having poured his heart out both literally and figuratively, the performer then invites the whole audience to join him for his «favourite part of the show». And this is where things get tricky.
After an (intentionally?) partial search for consent to take part in whatever comes next -which felt more like an emotional blackmail than anything else («if you are ok with participating, keep the cape; if you do not want to participate, remove the cape and I will understand that you don’t want to get close to me»)- Mariblanca whips out a dildo-bearing mask and a brush-ended butt plug, thus turning his body into a silent statement-making tool that proceeds to interact with the cape wearers’ hands now filled with paint. This momentaneous phallic imposition -which could very well be justified as an artistic reproduction of the constant phallic impositions of our male-dominated society and, at the same time, could also be seen as a violent take on Preciado’s “monster” that, here, does not limit itself to only speak, but actively and physically penetrates otherness-, seems to plunge The Basement in a bit of an ethical quandary about representation that is up to each and every one of us to question and mull over, perhaps more with corporal intuitions than with mental exercises. Because after all is said and done, as Driftpile Cree Nation queer poet Billy-Ray Belcourt once wrote, «let’s start with the body, for so much is won and lost and lost and lost there».
Pearls by Joshua Serafin – photo by Thor Brødreskift
Albeit coming from a similar struggle, here exacerbated by the violence of centuries of colonial domination and cultural effacement, the following performance decides to take a different path to catharsis, choosing to use the body not as a physical tool, but as a spiritual channel towards liberation, perhaps aware that the colonised’s anger is part of the binary of colonialism and therefore colonial and, as Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson says somehow tongue-in-cheek in her gorgeous collection of short stories Islands of Decolonial Love, «if you take some of the things from settlers and some of the things from your ancestors, you’ll find you can weave them into a really nice tapestry, which will make the colonizers feel ambivalent and then you’ve altered the power structure».
Darkness. Then a white light in the shape of obscure words: «In the middle of the sea/Go towards the sun/Sink to the ends of the sea/She’s gone/Vanishing away». Then darkness again and light again, this time black and revealing: a mystical portal lays silent at the centre of the stage. A video of three bodies suddenly appears, setting the scene. Darkness once more. A slow, energic chanting ploughs through, illuminating a gorgeously-clad, long-haired figure that calls forth two more presences. And when they all finally appear, our trio of gender-diverse Filipino bodies is complete and the ceremony can begin.
Drawing from non-normative ideologies of pre-colonial Philippines, Joshua Serafin, Lukresia Quismundo and Bunny Cadag «return to an ancient past searching for the future», inevitably wrestling with the «wounds imprinted by the empire on body and community». After Timawo and Creation Paradigm, Pearls encompasses all the materials and works produced in the previous chapters of the Cosmological Gangbang trilogy, thus representing the culmen of a research that strives to heal the spiritual brokenness of our times through a process of self-decolonisation and de-binarisation. Indeed, by tapping into both a language and a culture that used to place no stigma on gender fluidity, Serafin carves out a path to a queer ecology in which the earth -and not the Western logos- is our source of knowledge.
A return to nature that begins with the video in which the three performers stand by a river that feels like a home (Tagalog can also mean “river dweller”), where words flow by as these «undefined creatures» silently look on, bathing in this multiverse of a «swamp». The action then proceeds on stage, where Bunny continues their invocation while Lukresia and Joshua move separately in unison, inhabiting the space from an in-betweenness that is hard to understand, at first. Indeed, as a multi-disciplinary artist, Serafin does not fear cross-contamination and eagerly combines dance, performance, visual arts and choreography in their works, offering a layered experience that demands a generous attention and care-full patience to be fully appreciated. Moreover, by owning their own language unashamedly, without bending to the colonial diktat of forced translation, the gorgeously fluid performers open up a liminality in which the power hierarchies of hegemonic gnosis can be subverted, both through their voice and their body, the latter of which here, pain-ridden, fracture the colonial veneer of aesthetics, re-imagining an elsewhere of decolonial futures and becoming the key to unpack the historical violence that still echoes in this heteronormative, dehumanising contemporary society of ours.
As in-betweenness demands it, the classic dichotomic theatrical space must be shattered, and that is why we find ourselves face to face with fourth-wall-breaking smiles and questions from these up until now «undefined creatures». Indeed, as soon as the performers introduce themselves with humorous banters and provocations, their identities become more defined and their movements more legible, less foreign to us, as if saying that only through understanding alterity can we recognise selfhood. By figuratively donning the robes of Babaylans -animist shamans, almost always women or feminised men (asog or bayok), specialised in communicating, appeasing, or harnessing the spirits of the dead and the spirits of nature-, Serafin, Quismundo and Cadag declare their purpose of addressing generational trauma in an attempt to heal it, all the while struggling with their own rage in the face of all the darkness imposed on them.
Once the audience picks up the invitation to chant, thus vibrating at the same speed of utopia as the three priestesses, the massive “mother pearl”, a higher being that «collects everyone’s stories and makes them better for the future», brings forth community and the liberating power of sharing (because one is not free until all are). As stories of colonisation, rape and death accumulate, layer after layer, the active resistance of the three performers who strive to remain kind in an unkind world strengthens and polishes them, generating an anticolonial creativity that sparks, speaks, dreams and gives shape to a thing of beauty – that is, to Pearls.
Undersang by Harald Beharie – photo by Julie Hrncirova
The next performance, albeit extremely different in setting, aesthetics and intention, somehow shares a similar use of the body, employed here too as a channel to an elsewhere in which «questions about cultural fictions and what it means to belong» abound. Winning the 2024 Norwegian Critics’ Awards for best concept and choreography, Undersang by Harald Beharie takes shape as a «performance ritual» that inhabits the ever-changing environment of a forest, where «s shimmer of queer ecologies and extravagant gestures» abound.
Having conceived it as a «ground for refusal» and a «reclamation of time», the Norwegian-Jamaican performer and choreographer -together with Christian Beharie, Karoline Bakken Lund and Veronica Bruce-, invites the audience to undertake a silent walk up the mossy and damp slopes of Kanadaskogen, an elaborate “set design” thousands of years in the making. As we feel our way along brooks and bogs and leaves and soil, our temporary path meets the equally ephemeral migration routes of deer and other ungulates, making the divide between the tidily urbanised space of the city and the unpredictability of the forest all the more stark. By the time we arrive at the designated spot, a myriad of pines have suddenly shot up from the ground and all we know -that is, all we can feel-, is our own unshelteredness.
Whether sitting down or standing up, the audience is allowed a few moments to physically and mentally arrive in this musky cradle of a stage, taking in the few artificial interventions on the space (a couple of amorphous chairs sprouting out of some trees and a bunch of Cronenbergian contraptions meant to shake branches) before a groaning is heard in the distance. The first performer to come out of the very fabric of this green tapestry we are currently co-creating wears a thick vest and even thicker leather pants and has a lament stuck in the cave of their mouth. As more and more BIPOC bodies emerge from our surroundings, all with a wail in their bowels and a tension in their muscles, the dichotomy between human and non-human seems to dissolve, making space for an insurgent posthumanism to take over.
Indeed, as Undersang slowly but surely rids interpretations of nature from human assumptions, thus successfully queering nature, a new, contextually specific space is created where self-determination is supported and non-anthropocentric views are reclaimed. «Weaving Afro and Asian-Nordic diasporic narratives» into their dramaturgy, Beharie and co. successfully establish a symphonic choreography of cries and grimaces and jolts that bounce to and fro these human-shaped creatures only to resonate even louder, reaching a deep place where the sounds of lovemaking, childbirthing and life taking become one big, collective, throbbing and all-encompassing undersong.
Once the performance is over and the dancers return whence they came, harmonising with the environment both via their voices and their bodies now turned branches and trees, we find ourselves yet again at the mercy of the elements, but this time, perhaps, we too are less vulnerable to it, less monolithic in our views and, above all, more ramified.
ontogenesis dreams by Astrid Sweeney and Weixin Quek Chong – photo by Thor Brødreskift
And a ramification of the senses if also what the last performance of this article summons up. A hybrid product, half-way between performance and installation, the collaborative research by choreographer and performer Astrid Sweeney and visual artist Weixin Quek Chong focuses on the sensorial capabilities of bodies and on how they determine how we inhabit a space.
Inspired by «moulting processes of insects, queer ecologies and Octavia E. Butler’s science fiction trilogy Xenogenesis», ontogenesis dreams explores the impermanence of an organism as it undertakes a transformation, both physical and spiritual. Hosted by the Nordic Residency Exchange Program, the project, still a work in progress that will premiere in the Spring of 2025 at Copenhagen’s Dansehallerne, begins and ends with a body. As we take our seats around a luminous tube that limns the makeshift stage of Bergen Kunsthall’s Live Studio, an ambiguous figure breathes irregularly from underneath a gelatinous sheet of transparent material. Knees bent, chest taut and arms abandoned on the floor, the creature’s imperceptible movements, amplified by the evanescent live sound recording and manipulations of Albert “Moss Kissing” Dean, invite us to rethink what is human and what isn’t, forcing us to remap the once familiar shapes of our own physicality. Surrounded by white, gooey-looking alien sculptures, the equally slimy Sweeney -now free from the weight of the mucous membrane- struggles to attain verticality as non-human combinations of high-heeled legs and joints try to grasp, hold and maintain a balance that keeps slipping out of reach.
Metaphorically clear in its intention, ontogenesis dreams draws a parallel between this being’s vulnerability in the midst of a metamorphosis and our own fragility in the face of change, highlighting how crucial a role the environment plays on our personal development. Indeed, as the performer bares not only her own nudity but also the project’s uncertainties and incompleteness, the audience’s gaze proves to be an extremely dangerous place to be, as it hangs between perception and projection, determining and imposing solidity to a liquid and amorphous identity that asks for nothing else than to live, transform and evolve - something that most of the bodies represented by and in these performances have not had the privilege to do.
The shows were played within Oktoberdans 2024 international dance festival Bergen – Norway, various locations from 16 to 26 October 2024
71BODIES presents
The Basement
by Daniel Mariblanca
choreographer and performer Daniel Mariblanca
scenographer Kjersti Alm Eriksen
light designer Thomas Bruvik
sound artist Lykorgous Poryfris
filmmaker Ursula Kaufmann
technician Andreas Lassen
external eye Ingeleiv Berstad, Koyote Millar
company and tour manager Davone Sirmans
produced by 71BODIES
supported by Kulturrådet
co-producers Dansens Hus, Carte Blanche, Rosendal Teatre, Rotterdam Theatre, What You See Festival, BIT Teatergarasjen
Pearls
by Joshua Serafin
concept Joshua Serafin
performance Joshua Serafin, Lukresia Quismundo, Bunny Cadag
sound Pablo Lilienfeld
scenography RV
light Ryoya Fudetani
costumes Katrien Baetslé
video Federico Vladimir Strate Pezdirc
artistic assistance Rasa Alksnyte
theory & poetry Jaya Jacobo
outside eye Arco Renz
coproduction VIERNULVIER (BE), BIT Teatergarasjen (NO), HAU Hebbel Am Ufer (DE), beursschouwburg (BE), STUK (BE), WpZimmer & C-TAKT (BE), Theater Rotterdam (NL) supported by Vlaamse Gemeenschap, Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie Residencies Emerging Islands
acknowledgement Talaandig-Manobo community and Kulahi in Bukidnon
the text includes translations by Christian Jil Benitez, Rica Paras & Macky Torrechilla
Undersang
by Harald Beharie
choreography Harald Beharie
artistic collaborators Christian Beharie, Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce
performers Amie Mbye, Loan Ha, Jens Trinidad, Nosizwe Baqwa, Carlisle Sienes, Mariama Slåttøy, Harald Beharie
sculpture Karoline Bakken Lund, Veronica Bruce
music Christian Beharie
costume Karoline Bakken Lund, Harald Beharie
costume/sculpture assistant Reem H. Shinee
producer Mariana Suikkanen Gomes
outside eye/sparring partner Deise Nunes, Hooman Sharifi
co-production Black Box Teater, Dansens Hus, Oslo, Rosendal Teater, BIT Teatergarasjen, RAS, TOU Scene
supported by Norsk Kulturråd, FFUK, Fond for lyd og bilde, Campilhas International – Connecting dots, Davvi – Senter for scenekunst
thanks to Pål Græsvik, Erick Kelly, Torbjørn Kolbeinsen, Tore Lund, Nicolas Jara Marthinsen, Magne Misje, Sven Undheim and Charlott Utzig
ontogenesis dreams
choreographer, performer and director Astrid Tetsche Sweeney
scenography, sculptural installation and co-director Weixin Quek Chong
sound design- composer Albert “Moss Kissing” Dean
lighting design Ryoya Fudetani
videographer/photographer Julio Galeote
dramaturgy consultant Yasen Vasilev
outside eye Benjamin Francis, Jonas Vandekerckhove
co-producers deSingel, KAAP, Dansehallerne Residency support, Holstebro Danse kompagni, Esplanade Theatres on the Bay, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen Kunsthall
supported by National arts council Singapore, Statens Kunstfond and Culture Moves
