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TRANSCRIPT
Het Parool
Tuesday, 23 March 2010
Art and Media
Copy of Copy Makes Original
Bregtje Schudel
Contemporary dance makers look back at dance history within the second edition of Cover . Choreographer Andrea Bozic (1970) got inspired by choreographer Yvonne Rainer (1934).
It is pitch-‐dark at the Amsterdam University Theatre where the runthrough of After Trio A takes place. A dancer learns a part of a dance phrase from Yvonne Rainer’s Trio A from 1966 from a monitor that is hidden to the audience. Dancer number two later copies her movements. On the right screen, statements appear from Rainer’s No Manifesto (1965). ‘No to glamour. No to the heroic. No to the antiheroic.’ On the left screen, footage is shown of Yvonne Rainer from the original Trio A.
In the meantime, a camera records the dancer’s movements which are later projected on a screen before which the dancers move. Result: an image in front of an image in front of an image. Or: a copy of a copy of a copy.
Bozic has felt a strong affinity with the work of Yvonne Rainer for a long time. However, she has never really seen any of her work. “There is very little original video material. What is left behind from much of the work is what she and the others have said or written about it. But every time I read something by her or
about her, I feel affinity. In how she thinks, her sense of humour, her search for how to show dance without doing ‘as if’. Rainer said once: ‘The ideal audience is an audience that sees both the spectacle and how this spectacle is made.’ I am myself busy with a process, with how things work.’
The two basic principles behind Trio A are simple: ‘The first is about continuity. Everything goes on without any accents. It was a reaction to what she identified was a feature of western dance -‐ always based on a build up, an explosion and then a release. Rainer wanted to show something without a hierarchy of moments in time. The second: she had a problem with the relationship between the spectator and the dancer as inherently voyeuristic/narcissistic. Therefore, the dancers may never look straight into the eyes of the audience. If this does happen, they close their eyes.’
Many people were inspired by the piece in the course of fourty years and Rainer herself has made other pieces based on the Trio A dance phrase.
This poses an interesting question: What is the original here? “There are no original materials,’ says Bozic. “All information is already re-‐worked. My milk comes from a plastic box, not from a cow. I have never seen that cow. There is only a black and white film left behind from Trio A, danced solo by Rainer. However, Trio A was never danced as a solo but always as a trio.’
Bozic asked Rainer for permission to re-‐interpret her piece. ‘I sent her a concept before we started. She was symphatetic to the idea of showing people on stage who go through a process of learning. She is not very difficult about it. She let everyone do what they wanted with Trio A.’
However, Bozic emphasizes, After Trio A is an original piece that she has made with her collaborators. “I do not follow authorities. She offered something first which has caused a chain reaction. I am one of the people that has reacted.’
Andrea Bozic. After Trio A. 26 and 27 March, Frascati 1. Cover#2. 24 to 27 March in Theater Frascati.