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00:03:09 00:03:12
What are you looking at?
00:04:00 00:04:03
Take a closer look.
00:05:14 00:05:17
What do you see in me?
00:05:33 00:05:36
Turning the mirror around.
00:06:01 00:06:12
Offering possibilities. Maybe you see something you recognize.
00:06:24 00:06:27
Something familiar.
00:07:33 00:07:42
I spend a lot of time looking at my hand. Maybe it’s something I did as a baby. But I don’t know.
00:08:00 00:08:03
Always trying to measure.
00:08:07 00:08:11
It’s mine or not.
00:08:44 00:08:50
Every time I see somebody, the first thing I do is look at their hands.
00:09:00 00:09:07
I love when people, they don’t know what to do with their hands, because it gives them away.
00:09:38 00:09:45
It’s not always exciting, but if you look close enough…
00:10:24 00:10:35
Do you understand me? It’s okay. You don’t have to get everything.
00:10:48 00:10:51
There are a lot of things I don’t understand.
00:11:42 00:11:47
But I have faith in these useless actions.
00:12:15 00:12:18
Okay. Watch this.
00:12:55 00:13:00
That was the opening moment for No One is Watching (1995).
00:13:40 00:13:48
I give myself a lot of impossible tasks. And many years I was trying to get off the floor.
00:13:55 00:14:01
I think I spend so much time on the floor because that’s where I feel safe.
00:16:12 00:16:22
Trying to rest on my own body. Trying to build a shelter.
00:16:51 00:16:54
Giving up the task.
00:17:24 00:17:38
Rituals for forgetting. To get out of my mind. Stop thinking. I’ll let you know when it’s coming.
00:18:17 00:18:43
The mind is empty and you’re not thinking and you’re completely open. You invoke energy in your body and everything starts to culminate. You allow yourself to be possessed with energy and states. Everything starts to pass through you. You become an energy servant. You invite it. You move…
00:19:12 00:19:18
Slip away. I want to let it go.
00:20:31 00:20:45
Exhaustion is something you can count on, at least. There is no escape that way.
00:20:54 00:21:07
I wanted to be more resistant. It doesn’t really happen to me, things are going to change.
00:22:20 00:22:32
I was really relieved when my dance teacher said that it was okay to sleep in the studio.
00:23:41 00:24:11
I studied hours and hours of release technique. Relaxing your shoulders. Feel your weight onto the floor. Relax the jaw. Your eye balls. Your eye sockets. Let everything go.
00:24:11 00:24:42
And I realized that watching a junkie is good, because they’re the most released of everyone. Because not only are they completely released, but in the end it’s absolute bliss. Well, I don’t know.
00:24:42 00:24:52
Whether or not they’re conscious about being seen. How do you see? How did they see?
00:26:29 00:26:57
I guess I’m as interested in choreographing presence, or let’s say awareness, attention to things and these steps. To show that, I have these steps. I’ve got them right here.
00:26:59 00:27:10
I don’t know, I guess I always want to tell my dancers that they have options. Even when they choose their steps.
00:27:12 00:27:17
I mean, right now I’m doing them.
00:27:17 00:27:20
Now I’m absent.
00:27:21 00:27:27
Now I’m forgetting.
00:27:28 00:27:31
Now I’m trying really hard.
00:27:32 00:27:37
Now I’m feeling trapped.
00:27:38 00:27:43
Now I’m trying to remember.
00:27:44 00:27:51
Now I’m thinking about anything else than steps.
00:27:52 00:28:03
Now I’m hoping to convince you I’m here. And I’m really enjoying this moment.
00:28:04 00:28:19
And now I just try to be, get myself out of the way.
00:28:20 00:28:46
If you see any action, you look at it from all sides, like you’re looking at an object. You look at it upside down, you peer into it, you feel the weight of it, if you get desperate you can see what it tastes like.
Well, for me, that’s interesting and then you somehow work with all those possibilities.
00:29:47 00:30:11
Actually, I got really bored when I first started dancing. I don’t know, it was very hard for me to learn. I was easily distracted and I had to create these really huge fantasies in order to feel the most simple movements.
00:30:11 00:30:39
Like when I had to do a, you know, tendu,
I would imagine like a very hot, sexy story between my foot and the floor.
00:30:40 00:31:03
Or like if I had to do… you know. And I would see this and I would imagine this absolutely fatal attraction between my two hands.
00:31:03 00:32:00
And I realize I had to really make sure that
my face didn’t gave me away and that nobody could know the story behind that.
00:32:10 00:32:22
I don’t know what to do next.
00:33:00 00:33:46
I would say that the doubt and the indecision and the problems of choice-making is a part of it. It’s actually a really good tool. Because when you make choices, they have consequences, you have to stand up for your actions.
00:33:46 00:34:37
I mean… And I really like being in two places at once. I’m not going to stop trying.
00:34:37 00:35:18
Or you find yourself in compromised positions. Either you give in or you use it. And stand up for yourself.
00:35:18 00:36:03
There is a scene in Forgeries, Love and Other Matters (2004), and Benoît [Lachambre] is here and he is stuck on the floor and I have a sense I have to rescue him. One of the recurring themes: helpless rescue, like the laughing girlor the stumbling man or…
00:36:04 00:36:48
Maybe all this narrative is going on, all this drama, but I’m only thinking about rhythm. Maybe that’s what makes it dance, and not text.
00:39:14 00:40:09
I never see an empty space. I mean, right now, for me, it’s packed. It’s full of presences. I don’t know, full of memories and people. A lot of people. A lot of… many people I know, strangers, people I see. Energies like… I don’t know, like people wishing things. Unfulfilled desires. Or stories. Unfinished stories. A lot of stories. And all crammed together.
00:40:09 00:40:56
For me, when I see this space now, it’s like an attic. You know, where you put stuff people gave to you and you don’t know what to do with them. Or things you want to pack up. Or like old letters that you really couldn’t bear throwing out but you probably won’t read again. I don’t know, things that are broken. Stuff, just a lot of stuff.
00:40:57 00:41:20
And I think that’s why it always seems really hard to go from here to there. I mean, it’s not hard. It’s not hard but it’s never really simple.