Hans Theys is a twentieth-century philosopher and art historian. He has written and designed dozens of books on the works of contemporary artists and published hundreds of essays, interviews and reviews in books, catalogues and magazines. All his publications are based on actual collaborations and conversations with artists.

This platform was developed by Evi Bert (M HKA / Centrum Kunstarchieven Vlaanderen) in collaboration with the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp (Research group Archivolt), M HKA, Antwerp and Koen Van der Auwera. We also thank Idris Sevenans (HOR) and Marc Ruyters (Hart Magazine).

ESSAYS, INTERVIEWS & REVIEWS

Stefan Dreher - 2005 - Alles über Angie [DE, interview]
Interview , 6 p.




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Hans Theys


All about Angie
A conversation with Stefan Dreher



Dreher: If people would be totally self-sufficient, they probably wouldn’t move anymore. I certainly wouldn’t. That’s why I believe that the origin of my dancing is insufficiency. We try to become complete, we try to find and seduce someone outside ourselves. Dancing is about trying to become visible, trying to be there for another person. It’s also about reinventing yourself, trying to be there every different moment. Trying to follow schemes, but also trying to disrupt patterns. This is one of the reasons why I think this choreography is about rebirth.

- We try to perfect ourselves through imitating, but the final aim is to be different?

Dreher: “Station to Station”, my previous choreography, was about learning. Someone initiated a movement and the other dancers tried to imitate it. The more exactly they tried to imitate it, the more the differences between their bodies became visible. Some movements were so difficult that nobody could imitate them. I didn’t mind, because often a so-called badly executed movement was more beautiful than the well executed ones. The most interesting thing about stage is failure. On stage you don’t have to be a hero or a genius. On stage the loser is the winner. This is certainly true for comedians and clowns, but also for dancers. The imperfect movement is more fascinating than the well-known, predictable one.

- You sometimes use the image of clumsy, dancing birds.

Dreher : Yes, I once saw a documentary about the courtship of certain birds and I was struck by it. I loved to watch it and I like to use it as an image for my work. Birds perform courtship behaviour to attract mates. The first thing that strikes me about it is their consciousness of being watched. Instinctively, anyway, they know they are being watched. Without a beholder, the display would lose its meaning. Secondly, the birds move in a very elegant way, but at the same time they are extremely clumsy. They stumble and fall continuously. They’re very serious about it as well, which makes their behaviour very comical.
          I believe that every dance is a kind of courtship behaviour. In contemporary dance we recognize it in the humor and sensibility of the body. But also in the relationship between the dancers and the public. The choreography in it’s totality should be a form of courtship towards the public. When my daughter Fanny dances, she is completely unaware of any concept of moving, but she is very conscious of being looked at. First she checks whether someone is looking and than she starts dancing. She flirts with her daddy through wriggling her hips. But because she doesn’t really know what she’s doing, she’s very funny to watch.

- Your improvisations and choreographies are also fun to watch.

Dreher: I certainly hope so. I’m very serious about them.

- They are very moving as well.

Dreher: I’m glad you think so.

- You seem to practice a kind of joyful mechanics of movements, laughter and emotions.

Dreher: In the real world everything seems to make sense. I would love to make sense on stage also, but in my heart I know it’s ridiculous. Just like the birds.

- Did you recognise a similar ambiguity when you discovered the writings of Jung?

Dreher: Exactly. His writing style is prodigious: poetic and scientific at the same time. You believe anything he writes. For instance when he writes that the discovery of the possibility to light a fire through the rubbing of wood was an accident that had nothing to do with the wish to make fire. According to him, somebody invented a ritual that consisted of rubbing wood. The ritual’s purpose was to create a distance between the young, rubbing man and his family. The resemblance between the rubbing of the wooden sticks and certain sexual movements gave the ritual its power.

- It’s hard to imagine a sexual movement resembling the rubbing of wooden sticks.

Dreher: Perhaps, but that’s not the point. The point is that even the vaguest resemblance to a sexual movement might confer a certain poetry or mythical power to a movement.

- Whereas sexual movements have nothing particular in themselves, of course. We find similar movements everywhere in nature, without there being any chance of an underlying meaning. I can hardly imagine that the pumping of our heart or the swelling of our chest try to tell us something.

Dreher: (Laughs.) Jung’s examples are really funny. I remember a tribe where the young men got up at night to stumble around in circles ramming their spears into the ground… Sublimating their sexual energy, they accidently invented agriculture.
          According to Jung our creative force and our libido – which he considers to be identical – originate from the separation of an original, androgynous being. The only time we can really create compared to nature is when we create a child. All other, apparently creative actions are sublimations or in the worst case suppressions of our creative possibilities. A sublimation is a successful way of living with your creative force (with your being ‘just’ a man or a woman, the insufficient half of a split being) for example when you take care of your children.
          People who cannot handle their libido start doing strange things like obsessive cleaning. The comical thing about cleaning is that the repetitious movements that come with it quickly resemble a sexual movement. It´s all a matter of rubbing. So the more one suppresses one’s libido, the more it seems to reveal itself. The cleaning is a denial of sex and at the same it’s full of sex… One can clean one´s body, but one can also clean a complete room, all the tiny corners and dirty places…
          Furthermore, somebody who cleans a room executes a kind of dance. The person assumes the most peculiar positions, bent forward, kneeling, lying on his or her belly or back… It´s a beautiful choreography, full of energy, joyous repetition and inevitable diversity…
          Forward and backward, up and down, in and out… I liked the idea to create a choreography with similar movements…

- Actually, you used Jung’s images as a starting point for your choreography?

Dreher: I wondered whether I could use them to make the aspect of courtship more visible in my work. They don’t have to be absolutely true. They’re just things to try out.

- In this sense, there’s a link with the general nature of your work. You try to find a sensible way to introduce movements that are not really dance movements. You also don’t want the dancers to “express” something. It seems that any movement can be a good movement.

Dreher: I like to watch people and to frame their movements. A framed movement is always beautiful. I would like to create a similar beauty on stage. Without beauty, without a spectator being moved, the movement is pointless.

- Very often you start from a daily gesture, but you take away it’s function or meaning to turn it into a mere movement.

Dreher: Yes, I’m not so fond of perfect dance movements, because they make the choreography unreal. I would like to create a real stage presence. I would like us, dancers, to be really there. I would like us to reinvent ourselves every moment. Every movement can be a kind of rebirth. We have to be able to create movements without preconceived ideas. Someone initates a movement and the others react to this movement. We try to be really there. We don’t execute formats, we are in the here and now and try to react directly. Our brain still works, of course, we are constantly taking decisions and making plans, but we don’t stick to our plans. As soon as we start doing something automatically, we change the pattern. The transgression has to be as swift as possible.

- To the outsider the dancers seem to be forgetful.

Dreher: Yes, we constantly seem to forget what we have been doing. But at the same time we keep track of the others to decide who we will follow, in what way, and how we will spin new patterns in space. The result is a kind of pulsation, whereby different groups form and disintegrate. You get waves of movement. Geometrical figures. Everything seems to fall apart and suddenly there’s something else. The group becomes like a living creature. Everything moves that way, through division and coming together, expanding and contracting.

- One of the images you use is a flock of migrating birds.

Dreher: Yes. They don’t watch each other, but they seem to feel each other’s presence. Suddenly one of them shifts place. A swift and tiny accent that seems to correct the shape of the entire flock.

- In the beginning of each episode of ‘Angie’ every dancer receives a set of cards.

Dreher : Yes. Each card stands for a particular situation, sound, gesture or movement like fainting, falling, swimming, laughing, cackling and so on.

- And in the beginning of each episode the cards are shuffled and distributed?

Dreher: That’s it. Each episode is different. I try to replace the habit of copying and repetition by a free adaptation of a precise set of rules.

- The second episode reminded me of Stephen Leacock’s comparison between a horse and a bicycle.

Dreher : Tell me.

- Leacock observes that the pedals of a horse don’t allow for a comfortable circular pedalling movement, but he adds that free-wheeling on a horse is an extraordinary experience.

Dreher: (Laughs.) The image of freewheeling on a horse appeals to me because it implies the displacement of a movement (or the concept of a movement). We can only make a limited amount of different movements. Seen from this point of view, the obsession of us dancers and choreographers to find always new movements is quite comical. We dispose of a fascinating set of daily movements that are rarely used on stage, e.g. brushing one’s teeth. We simply have to bring them to stage to make them interesting.
          On the other hand, when entering the abstract space of a stage, there’s no point in merely imitating the movement of brushing one’s teeth. You have to use the movements to create something new.

- In fact the dancers are lured into the moment by the invitation to react to the improvisations of their collegues?

Dreher: The ideal would be to bring us dancers so far that we start moving without any preconceived idea, without any idea whatsoever, in order to obtain a set of movements which is not limited by thoughts about dance, representation or meaning.
          Ideally we shouldn’t know we are freewheeling on a horse or what it would mean to be doing so… It would be something for the public to see or to feel. The emotions and ideas would come afterwards, as projections on a continuous and spiralling flow of movements.

- Last week you told me you had had a marvellous afternoon dancing blindfolded. Why did it give you so much pleasure?

Dreher: Dancing blindfolded, I suddenly felt free from any gaze. I didn´t feel judged anymore, not by men or women. My voice became deeper. It felt like pure energy and movement… And on top of this I had the impression it was funny to watch.

- You also told me you would like the choreography to be more and more decomposed.

Dreher : Yes, that would be wonderful… Like a flock of migratory birds… Or like a cloud of mist…


Montagne de Miel, February 25th 2005