(Ode to the attempt by Jan Martens, photo Phile Deprez)
Jan Martens is a Belgian dance
maker and performer based in Antwerp. Having graduated from the Artesis
Conservatory for Dance, Martens began to develop his own choreographic work in
2009. His pieces such as ‘Sweat Baby Sweat’, ‘Victor’ or ‘Dog Days Are Over’
brought him international recognition and continue to tour all across Europe.
His current project ‘The Common
People’ is a social experiment in which he is creating a blind date situation
for non-performers. Next to that he is also creating a piece for the third year
students of the conservatory’s dance department in Antwerp. ‘The Score’ is
based on the music by American composer NAH and will be performed on 23rd,
24th and 25th June 2016.
In this interview Jan Martens talks
about his creative processes, future plans and what in his opinion is needed
for the dance field.
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What inspires and triggers you? When do you
decide to explore something further and make it into choreography?
I think it is different things
with different pieces although there is always a biographical element. Things I
am living with or thinking about. For example, when working on love duets, love
was a big theme for me. I was searching within this subject and so the work
then becomes a way for me to think about it and to deal with it. Dance system
is another thing that really triggers me. I like to relate my work to what has
been made, to use that and to make something new and different with it. That is
actually often the starting point of my works, to which then the biographical
element joins. I like when a clear autobiographical theme comes together with a
formal dance history or art history based question.
Also people that I work with are
a big inspiration for me and in that way I always look for diversity. I like
working with people from different backgrounds, of different age groups and
with different performing experience. I enjoy playing with what is perceived as
not made for a theatre and then place it in the theatre.
You work with dance and your works are
described as dance pieces yet in your performances it is, often taken to
extreme, more of a mundane and daily movement that dominates. What is your
approach to movement - your artistic language?
What I like very much is to
look for language that fits a specific concept I am developing and so, according
to each work, it can go different ways. For ‘Sweat Baby Sweat’, which is one of
these love duets, I was looking for ways to translate in movement that love can
be hard and demanding, that it can suck each other’s energies away. At the very
start we thought about the rules and principles of contemporary dance and
then did them differently. Lifting somebody you would usually keep two core centers together. We would instead use the element of lifting whilst keeping
the centers away or, if you would do that lift using momentum as your motor, we
would work with slowness and the unavoidable heaviness that came with it. We would
also work with partnering positions from Yoga or Kamasutra, use the pacing
taken from Butoh and then mix that with Rock ‘n’ Roll dancing. By doing so, you
end up with something that isn’t necessary working but it becomes a new
language. This language for me does come from the mundane, from what is around.
On the other hand ‘The Dog
Days Are Over’ is based on what was done in the 80’s by Lucinda Childs or the
last part of ‘Fase’ from Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. I think that you could
either take that language and do something different with it or use it in the
same way and say something different with it. That molding of the language is
a language that interests me.
How do you approach material during your
creations? Are you giving phrases or tell your dancers to experiment with the given
concept?
That again depends very much
on the piece. ‘Sweat Baby Sweat’ was created based on very strict improvisational
tasks, on which performers created the material. For ‘The Dog Days Are Over’ I
have imposed a form within which dancers could then create materials. With other
pieces such as ‘Victor’, we worked with very basic physical tasks that, by strictly
isolating and putting different views on them, became a movement language itself.
Your works seem to play with a fine line
between what is physical and what is emotional. On top of that, there is always
a story that is told. Do you begin your work by looking for ways to express a certain
story or do you start exploring physical vocabulary which then triggers and
invites all the emotional content to the work?
For myself I start with the
emotional content but what I present to the dancers is always very formal. I
try to foresee what emotions would come out from imposing a certain form. When
you start talking about what is to be achieved let’s say, it would no longer be
a physical translation but rather mental or expressive one and for me it needs
to stay on the level of the body. I am myself very busy with a story, but I try
not to weight down any exercises or creation processes by the emotional
content.
Do you search until you find the embodied
version of the very starting point or is this specificity loosening up
throughout the working process?
I know that I am searching
for a specific thing, but I am not always sure what it is exactly. With ‘Sweat
Baby Sweat’, because the piece was talking about such cliché theme that could
so easily go so wrong, we knew we had to find the right language for it. The
working process was no more about the story but about finding the accurate physicality
and form. In ‘The Dog Days Are Over’, as the vocabulary was created much
earlier, the search was much more focused on the dramaturgy, bodily limits and
actual sanity of the work.
‘The Common People’ is your most current
project with which you are now touring. What is the search behind it?
When beginning this project I
was looking deeper into the question of how can structure, with no imposed
emotions or story to it, trigger authenticity within performers. I figured out
that in my previous pieces there was no real space for coincidence and that is
what I was aiming for with ‘The Common People’. By providing non-professional
performers with a simple score that provokes human encounters, I wanted to take
my hands off the choreography. As you never know how the script will be
translated or how people would react to each other, the authentic factor is
very present.
Again staging what is humane and ordinary?
I think yes. I think it is
also a way for me to broaden the perspective of what beauty is. That I think is
something I am always busy with. Like in ‘Victor’ I wanted to question if a
young boy performing next to an adult man can be beautiful or is it already
perverse? In ‘Dialog’, which is duet for an older actress and a bigger actress,
I wondered if we can forget the very first impression of seeing an older and a bigger
person to then see these as beautiful? The same is with ‘The Common People’ which
is very much about the first impressions and how these affect and organize our
interactions.
Is it the first time that you work with
non-professionals? How does it change your way of working?
I did work with a
non-professional performer on ‘Victor’, but never with a bigger group like now.
It is definitely much different. I never correct them or say something is right
or wrong - this would cover the diversity that naturally comes out and which I
am fascinated by. When things are not necessarily going great you just say a
story to all, hoping that this one person will discover the in-between correction.
Are you comfortable with letting go of control?
Yes, it surely has more risk
to it. We did already six shows in three cities and the last one, the Utrecht
premiere, was not good enough for me, but that can happen. There
were also some reasons, why it wasn't the best one. We couldn't rehearse on
stage until the show started and once the performers got onto the space, it
overwhelmed them. What followed was a certain theatricality that does not
belong to the project and that can easily damage the fragile connections we are
looking for.
It
sounds like this project it working with something very delicate. How do you
make sure you get the right essence from the people that perform it?
It's about preparing them well in the given time frame. I say
things like: “Don't go theatrical”, “The most important in your encounter is
the other” or “Don't be a slave of your script”. I tell them to forget the
audience and to deal with the other, but of course that is not always so
simple. In Utrecht we performed in the Stadsschouwburg with 400 people watching.
The audience was very responsive and was laughing a lot, which triggered the
performers to play along. Working with professionals you could say: “Whatever
reaction comes from the audience, don't go with it, follow your own path and do
what you think is needed”. With non-professionals, it is different. You can
never predict how the audience will react and how that will affect the show,
but that I guess it is the authentic factor I wanted to work with.
All of your works are different, using
different performers and concepts, yet there is always something in common. Using
five words could you describe your style or principles that you are working
with?
Minimal is a thing, hard-core in a sense of rigid is a thing, humor is important and ‘it’ being alive. That is at least what I hope for. That is
only four though...
Are we
going to see these elements also in 'The Score'?
I hope yes, I hope we will get there. After 'The Common People',
I feel a strong need to choreograph again. At first the conservatory had asked me
to make a variation of ‘The Dog Days Are Over’, but then decided on wanting to
have a new creation, which would be based on similar principles. On top of that,
‘The Score’ is also my personal research on working with music, which is
something I never did a lot of. I am in search of what could be done on music and
I have the feeling ‘The Score’ is going to be quite of a formal piece. It should
still be alive, hard-core and with humor though. I still need to find a way to
melt it in, but for now we are busy creating material.
During
creations, when do you actually know if a piece is ready? Is there a moment
where you think that it’s finished?
Yes, but it's always different. With 'The Common People' I just
knew during the last try out- we did. Of course we readjusted and made small
changes just before the premier, but that always happens. With 'Sweat Baby
Sweat' it was really about finding the language. Once I felt we found it, I was
not worrying anymore. A couple of weeks before the premiere, the piece was far
from ready, but we did a run slowing everything down and it felt like that is
where the key was. Once the key is found, the worry is over. You realise what
the language is there and then you need to adapt everything according to the
rules that implement the choice of it. To know what you are going to do and to
then think about everything that needs to go in the same direction is a very
nice way of working.
From
next year on you are going to be an artist in residence in DeSingel. Do you
already have plans, ideas on how you going to use that residency?
We are going to have the office here, which is really great. I live
in Antwerp yet until now I have never worked in my city, I was always working
in the Netherlands or in Germany. It feels very good. We will also premier our new
creations here in DeSingel, with the first one coming already in September
2017. We will also be having three weeks of technical support and montage in
the theater, which we never had before, so to that I am looking forward. Also,
instead of working in a 10x10m studio, we will have a big space to work in and
that makes me very happy. It is great to have DeSingel on board for the next
five years, because if we are going to talk with other co-producers, it's
easier for them to trust in us or to be convinced that there will be a good
outcome presented in a professional way that is worth supporting.
The
work that you are premiering with in 2017, what is it about?
I'm not sure yet if it's going to be a trio or a quartet, but hopefully
it will be a piece with the music by NAH. I still need to ask him, I hope this
will be the case. For that work I am going to work with minimalism as a theme. The
idea is to have three or four pieces, where each time they are repeated, there
is less of it; less people, less material, less music, less lights. It is about
putting things away, stripping things down. Ideally every time elements get
removed, there would be a new piece coming out of that, even though it was part
of the previous one, it would now carry a very different meaning. That’s what I
am trying to do; something that goes from an abstract trio to a love duet to an
existential solo. At least, this is what it is now in my mind, but you never
know…
In this
moment, what do you think is needed for the dancing field? What would you say
is a necessity for the artists and their audiences?
I think we need to make connection. I think it is important to
agree that we are on the same side as the audience and we need to convince
people about that. We lost a lot of backup from the field, politics and people in
general. We need to win them over in a way. And not by making dancy easy stuff,
but by making art which has a base and concept to it and at the same time it is
there for people. I think this is also a responsibility of programmers who, instead
of dividing works according to what they think is right for their selected
audience, should be convincing their audience that the other work could also be
suitable for them.
Do you mean
making work more accessible?
Yes and that also applies for choreographers themselves, that
instead of performing only in theaters like e.g. Kaaitheater or Campo, they should
perform in all various places. We need to perform a lot. We need to win souls
again. I think that's important.
Kinga
Jaczewska and Regina Janzen, DeSingel, June 20016.
