I Get Lost Danspace Project Platform 2010 Danspace Project We Would Like to Acknowledge All Those Who Have St

I Get Lost Danspace Project Platform 2010 Danspace Project We would like to acknowledge all those who have St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery contributed to this project including: Djédjé Djédjé Dance “pushes beyond the limits that our ordinary 131 East 10th Street Gervais for the inspiration; Ann Rosenthal, Cathy understanding has set and our ordinary experience perceived, New York, NY 10003 Zimmerman and the entire MAPP team for the constant danspaceproject.org support; Mark Jarecke and Rob Van Wyen at FOUR32C bringing through the dancing body...open spaces that we had for the design; Christina Burnett, Catherine Dénécy, and Editor-in-Chief Judith Walker for the translations and interpretations; not supposed to be there...” JUDY HUSSIE-TAYLOR Dr. Yvonne Daniel for joining the conversation; Andrew Lambert and Anthology Film Archives for opening — Karmen MacKendrick Editor the doors; Nina Winthrop for her hospitality; Janet KATHERINE PROFETA Stapleton; Baryshnikov Arts Center; the Danspace Project Board of Directors; thanks to Steven Taylor Curator, Interviewer for the late night editing; the mighty Danspace staff RALPH LEMON including Jodi Bender, Peggy Cheng, Kate Garroway, Abby Harris Holmes, Leo Janks, Abigail Ramsey and Publisher Reghan Sybrowsky; and of course the generous artists DANSPACE PROJECT who have shared their work and process with all of us: Solo Badolo, Maria Hassabi, Judith Sánchez Ruíz, Robert Art Design/Direction Steijn, and David Zambrano. FOUR32C/ MARK JARECKE, ROB VAN WYEN — Judy Hussie-Taylor, Ralph Lemon Typeface and Katherine Profeta SAUNA BY UNDERWARE

Printer COSMOS COMMUNICATIONS

Photographers TARA FALLAUX, MICHAELA GRILL, ANJA HITZENBERGER, JASON SCHMIDT, AND MICHAEL TRAUSSNIG

Contributing Artists SOULEYMANE BADOLO, MARIA HASSABI, JUDITH SÁNCHEZ RUÍZ, ROBERT STEIJN, DAVID ZAMBRANO, DJÉDJÉ DJÉDJÉ GERVAIS introduction timeline curatorial artists’ biographies works cited funding & thoughts statement responses

08 12 18 20 28 36 36 08

1 introduction BY JUDY HUSSIE-TAYLOR Executive Director, Danspace Project

The Danspace Project platform I Get Lost, contexts for two decades, I deeply respect curated by Ralph Lemon, marks a new his capacity to challenge his own aesthetics, initiative and an experiment in presenting at politics, and working methods. We also Danspace. This platform, made possible in share an interest in artists whose work blurs part with support from the Andrew W. Mellon the lines between forms and who push up Foundation, grew out of an identified need against conventional notions about what “a to develop alternative modes of presenting dance” or “a work of art” can be. and commissioning artists with the goal of re-energizing these practices. As the first In New York City, as in any arts capitol, there initiative in this research period, Danspace is an extra-institutional dialogue between Project has invited select guest artists to artists that spans forms and generations; it curate multi-week platforms over the next informs the future of the arts. As we consider two years. the future of dance in the United States (or throughout the world, for that matter) The platforms serve as an opportunity for it is important to look not only at the final Danspace Project to pose questions about production/product, but also to reveal presenting practice and process. I invited working relationships between artists. I am Ralph Lemon to be the first guest curator interested in finding a way to illuminate Pictured: Ralph Lemon because, having worked with him in various these ongoing dialogues. Photographed by Tara Fallaux Pictured: Hermes Maltosis Photographed by Anja Hitzenberger

11 Ralph Lemon’s platform presents artists making work on multiple continents, and more specifically, artists probing western European and West African art historical narratives and practices, as these address body and performance spaces as sites for transgression, transcendence, trance, and transformation. As scholar Karmen MacKendrick reminds us, dance “pushes beyond the limits that our ordinary understanding has set and our ordinary experience perceived, bringing through the dancing body…open spaces that we had not supposed to be there, that are not supposed to be there: spaces of trangressive delight.” These impossible-to-codify experiences are at the heart of this platform.

In 2005 Paul Schimmel curated an exhibition a film that contains rare footage of Haitian The artists Lemon has invited to participate While words like “utopian,” “authentic” and at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art Vodou practitioners being possessed (or in I Get Lost — David Zambrano, Souleymane “transcendent” have complicated and loaded (MOCA) entitled Ecstasy. While the exhibition “mounted,” hence the film’s title) by deities Badolo, Judith Sánchez Ruíz, Maria Hassabi implications, the phrase “explorations not focused on work made under the influence (Loa), during sacred music/dance rituals. and Robert Steijn — use the body to go driven by commercial or academic concerns” of various psychotropic substances, it also Deren, one of a small but influential group beyond the body. In his catalogue essay for is, across the board, relevant to the research brought to light an often unspoken drive to of seminal experimental filmmakers to Ecstasy Schimmel notes that in our time, and practices represented by the artists in use art as a vehicle to go beyond the visible emerge during the 1940s & 50s, became an when “the authentic, the transcendent, and this platform. and enter an altered state. The catalogue initiate of Vodou during her Guggenheim- the utopian have been subjected to sustained essay cites the cult of Dionysus as an early funded residency in Haiti, and was extremely critique,” many artists have “nevertheless It is my hope that the works presented indication that art in the western classical hesitant about editing the footage. It was focused on the exploration of transcendent through Ralph Lemon’s platform do not tradition has, at its root, the desire to go only after her death that her husband Teiji experiences through the creative act, ” and provide a series of final performance products, beyond conventional realms of experience Ito edited the film, joining music to dances/ that “their explorations are not driven by but rather create a context for an open and into a state beyond the limits of the rituals inaccurately. For Lemon, a decade- commercial or academic concerns but by conversation between artists and viewers, body. long research project ensued, at the center their often utopian faith in the capacity allowing us all to ask questions to be further of which is the tension between form and of art to expand and alter perception and explored through the body over time. A little more than a decade ago, Lemon was non-form, control and release, authenticity consciousness — an experience that can inspired by Maya Deren’s Divine Horsemen, and artifice. never be owned, only felt.” 12 2 timeline & thoughts

BY KATHERINE PROFETA 13

1995 Ralph Lemon, in Miami to make an 1997 Ruminating on those two events, Ralph 1999 Mr. Wang, a farmer/musician from 2004 Ralph works with a group of four experimental documentary on the Haitian- turns to Maya Deren’s footage of Haitian China’s rural Yunnan province, speaks American dancers and one West African American community, sits in a crowded, trance. He doesn’t yet realize that what he of shamanism and demonstrates a song dancer. This last is Djédjé Djédjé Gervais, drum-filled restaurant. Suddenly, a few thinks he sees is different from what he’s designed to appease the dead. He sings who has continued to collaborate with tables over, a young woman begins flinging actually seeing, which is in turn different lying on his back on the floor, tapping his him since 1997. Ralph asks the group to her body violently against the furniture, from whatever once happened in front hand in an unpredictable rhythm. A room experiment with “dancing outside the eyes rolling back into her head. Someone of Deren’s lens in 1940’s Haiti. He asks a full of performers from locations across Asia, body,” taking their inspiration from violent whispers, “she is just learning, does not room of five West African dancers to take Africa and America watch, then try to learn. episodes in African-American history and the yet know how to let the spirit ride her.” A their inspiration from those slow-motion At the end of the day, Mr. Wang informs concomitant wish to transcend them. They few months later Ralph observes an older trancing bodies. But no one says yes. His Ralph that he must never perform this call the resulting improvisation “Ecstasy.” priestess enter a trance — her passage, by request is out of bounds, and dangerous, for onstage, for fear of “bringing on the ghosts.” The performers remain more lost than contrast, is smooth and expert. a group of men who understand trance and Ralph shelves this point of inspiration once found for a grueling five minutes, courting possession as an almost-mundane fact of again. a complete dissolution of form. Djédjé daily life. They cannot travel in that direction explains to me that Ralph’s instructions without proper context and protections. are not dangerous to him this time around Backpedaling, Ralph explains that he wants because all the elements are not in place to explore something like trance, but not for real trance. Still, he understands his job trance, but still like it. He tries calling it “a differently than the American performers — secular sense of freedom” but that doesn’t he must play with the edge of getting lost work, as real trance is anything but freeing. but not go there completely. Realizing he’s been painfully naïve, Ralph shelves the idea — for now. 1995 1997 1999 2004 2009 Ralph is not done. He experiments with 2010 Ralph Lemon has invited five artists they all share the impulse to channel their compelled to join the dance, considers restaging Ecstasy with the same cast of five, to join his platform, now entitled I Get Lost. research into a contemporary performance it a great compliment. He understands pushing it even further, letting it fall apart, That pedestrian label has a better chance format, in front of you, a performance-going the decision to remain still nevertheless, reconstituting the broken pieces, and letting than any other of sidestepping tricky public in 2010 New York City — another very to witness from within that tension, as them fall apart once again. He asks them to problems of cultural and religious definition. specific cultural context. extending from “a basic human need for try it drunk, or stoned, or both. They discover It focuses instead on what all might be able contemplation.” that the intoxicated body does not in fact to agree on: the power of a moment when DAVID ZAMBRANO, born in Venezuela and now provide the experience they are looking for — that useful illusion of circumscribed selfhood working internationally from a base in the SOULEYMANE (“SOLO”) BADOLO AND JUDITH 14 that particular loss of control is too familiar, — that coherent “I” — is lost to something Netherlands, brings Soul Project, the only SÁNCHEZ RUÍZ bring two independent solo leaving no room for the essential unknown. larger, something other and beyond. But piece whose creation predates the platform. works which, through their placement 15 However, maybe it can help them begin to questions of cultural and religious context In its title David conceives equal parts “soul” side-by-side in a single evening, will understand what they are looking for. endure nevertheless. When artists try and “solo” and “sole,” this last as in the inevitably create a conversation. Solo and make work that operates in both the sole of the foot, an essential grounding for was born in Burkina Faso and his work has Meanwhile Ralph begins to formulate a terms of the 21st century art world (with its the international performers who solo by occurred there, here, and in Europe. His platform for Danspace around the idea of relentless march towards the “new”) and the turns to “soul music” from many different dancing extends in large part from his trance, or not-trance, or something-like- terms of spirituality (with its emphasis on countries. He challenges his dancers to move understanding of his own cultural and trance. The word is equal parts helpful and continuity and what endures) how do they the same way these singers sing, to strive spiritual heritage, as a descendant of the problematic. As French ethnomusicologist understand what they’re doing? How would to match the transformational power the powerful Gurunsi masks in the village of Gilbert Rouget has clarified, while the it be appropriate to situate it, experience it, human voice can wield. Kya. He brings customs and rituals on the potential for trance may well be granted or attempt to describe it? edge of permanent loss forward into the to all human beings, the potential, when Ralph reported a visceral reaction to Soul present and beyond, evolving them within a it manifests, is always socialized. It only The performers Ralph invites have Project, when he first viewed it in 2008. The contemporary art context – thus to a certain occurs within particular contexts: a certain contrasting rapports with his slippery state it engendered in its performers was extent he inverts the initial proposition of special music, a certain special movement, a theme. In particular, some have concrete contagious. As a viewer he felt inhabited, this platform, dancing in order to not get lost. certain spiritual purpose. To abstract it is to cultural experience with trance or spurred to join the soloist, to get equally lost For Danspace he has prepared an evening to negate it. possession. Others understand those terms in these voices — even as the work implicitly honor his late mother, who bore 15 children metaphorically. They all, however, can get discouraged audience participation. The and saw only 3 survive. A key element of his lost in one way or another, to one end or tension between watching and doing exploration is one the several names given another. They all research that transient was intriguing, as well as the interplay of him soon after birth: “Yaado,” which means realm of embodied experience, into which individual against collective. David, when cemetery. The gesture was homeopathic, language does not manage to follow. And he hears from audience members who felt designed to protect him from the fate the 2009 2010 name evokes. Solo/Yaado casts himself as on a performance. Robert has worked in And then there is one more who is lost an intermediary between those still here on the past with the concept of performance because he is no longer here, no longer part earth and those within the cemetery, who as shamanism, and collaborated with the of this platform. DJÉDJÉ DJÉDJÉ GERVAIS, born have passed to the other side. Korean shaman Hiah Park. He used be in the in Côte d’Ivoire and now working in the US, habit of staging his own death, again and had planned to participate as a performer, Judith was born in Havana and now works again, whenever he found himself on stage until he suffered an injury rendering him in New York. Her work is a carefully chosen — rehearsing for that ultimate, irreversible unable to continue his research in time for mix of composition and improvisation, loss of self. These days he hopes to achieve this project. Djédjé has worked with Ralph highly responsive to the immediate a transformational moment when death and through all the investigations into an elusive present of performance. She explores the life find a sort of integration. danced transcendence, from those first multidirectional architecture of the space misguided steps in 1997 to the most recent 16 around her, drawing lines and creating Maria’s previous work has not demonstrated grueling research. As an initiate in his home tunnels that relentlessly disassociate body such an explicit connection to Ralph’s theme culture, Djédjé has experienced trance as parts and destabilize her sense of place. She — or, at least not at first glance. But through part of religious life. In his current work, 17 aspires to a state in which she can “let the her careful, formal elaboration of the formed in part by 12 years of conversation body lead,” developing images and emotions presentational body she creates a ritualized and performance with Ralph, he seeks to that emerge unexpected. Her solo, And space in which the audience is invited to explore controlled trance as a form of artistic They Forgot to Love, makes use of her own wander, to lose itself. Maria’s work points expression. Regardless of his absence, his voice, as recorded reading passages from an out the extent to which transformational artistic aims endure as part of this platform. autobiographical work, and thus the act of states are not achieved through utter Without the influence of his wisdom and listening to the self reflecting on the self is formlessness but rather through an intricate body intelligence, Ralph would not be asking built in to the piece. For Judith getting lost is devotion to form. the questions he is asking today. part of the magic of the moment of creation, as evidenced by the improviser who steps Maria and Robert’s theme together — their I Get Lost — perhaps we all understand a offstage with absolutely no memory of what chosen vehicle for getting lost — is Love, little of what that could mean. But isn’t it just occurred. specifically Eros. Robert says he hopes to even more important to ask, as these artists seek “truth by Eros,” an allusion to Plato’s do: what is gained through this loss, in its MARIA HASSABI AND ROBERT STEIJN, in definition of Eros as a spiritual aid, insofar bewildering midst? response to Ralph’s invitation and as it reminds the soul of Beauty in its most challenge, collaborate for the first time perfect form. (continued) 2010 Pictured: Horacio Macuacua (foreground) & Milan Herich Photographed by Anja Hitzenberger

3 curatorial statement BY RALPH LEMON

18 Our attitudes and our choices are, in no small part, the consequence of “The culturalization of spirit”: is that perhaps I ran into many of the participants in Paris, of the “occasion of personhood” that organisms concoct on the fly of each what we’re discussing? And therefore, the all places, Summer of ’08 -- a few old friends, 19 liberation of spirit? Not a retreat, not a some new. Saw shows, lots of dancing, sensed instant (…) anchored on ancient neural structures. spiritualization of culture, with terms similarities, talked, drank, got intoxicated, — Antonio Damasio such as “authenticity,” “honesty,” “truth,” excited. Later on, more sober, I came up with “sincerity”… But rather the freedom to these questions: Thinking about...how the way we act, the not the beginning of the feeling, the brain- be singularly “moral,” stripped bare to way we are possessed by something — an body idea, which I have been grappling with something concise, emphatic, simple, and What is the belief network of your art practice, idea, a belief, a spirit, a love — how the most all my creative life: as a consequence, practicing a position the belief system in your thinking and in the basic human actions may have everything of “universal doubt.” Becoming universally chemical responses of your body? to do with our patterned (but unreliable) The only way to show a true human, and therefore powerfully vulnerable. chemical mind-bodies. “Neural pattern respect for God is to act morally And therefore, generous. What are some of the (shifting) essentials of maps,” “convergence zones,” “body loops”… your formal concepts? Is there a pattern that and whatever sun, moon, star, wind, rain, while ignoring God’s existence. Universal doubt, one of our few profound has become manifest over time? landscape we are in. Primitive and present, — Zizek, paraphrasing Hume truths. (Death is another one.) Communicating always at this very instant. this may be the best art. Do you think your body has a point of view Hmm. in this (conceptual) thinking, a faith? An This thinking (instant) takes time. An empirical body (and theater) to overcome... agreement, and/or an argument? If by “morally” he means according to a it seems. Below are some thoughts I wrote down belief system, a body-mind belief system, I I get lost. in December ‘08, while on an airplane to get it. If not, I don’t. A cultural/chemical body to embrace. That someplace warm and sunny, the beginning morality, love. Let’s see what happens. language in discussing this platform (in Of course, Hume thought this a long time response to some Zizek I was reading...) but ago. This is meant for anybody who dances, I guess.