It’s been more than 20 days since I came from the Philippines to participate in this documentary dance performance called “Small Stars of the East Wind” here in Japan. I went through the days with ease and calm anticipation. I have created and directed theatrical pieces on many occasion in recent years, But I have not performed in a while, let alone a dance performance, specially not with an international ensemble and an avante garde Japanese Director who was raised by the legendary Ohno Kazuo himself.
It almost feels like this is one of my most intense performance collaboration yet equally one of the most defining and important.
I am at a breaking point. A good healthy kind of breaking. I could easily fall into the trap of over analyzing theatrical pieces . Dramatize. Spectacularize. Downplay. Chop actions to minute units. Create a Plot. Yes, Exit. Burn curtains, as usual. Inside me is brewing resistance, a life force, a new vision.
Like many theatre practitioners I too had my preferred jumps to hurdle a production process. This creation is mostly especial because it does not simply get one reflecting on material , or creative process , it resonates a vivid commentary about the theatre practice itself and its potential to pollute.
How theatre, as an overused and probably misused vehicle for social drama might ingrain in the performer’s (and audience's) very psyche, and amalgamate certain fixations, ways and habits that might pollute his life or stage persona, thus becoming inauthentic, unoriginal, fake, and disgusting. But then one must already have a strong fixated thinking about the theatre or a certain performer to clearly categorize, sometimes discriminate. But what’s a bag of moving flesh and bones doing onstage? Lighted upon and being watched by people? Ok dancing. Ok acting. Ok making random harmonics. Ok maybe, just maybe, Changing the world. A world full of fixations and expectations.
Drama for Drama.
Who now is an Actor? Who is an Action Maker? What makes one move? How do movement turns so pure and divine so as to call it a dance? Why do German Love songs hurt? How to rehearse a funeral?
Among these to tinker, this much I know, It is expensive to scar oneself, to open up to a critical vulnerability, baring past weaknesses and most precious childhood memories of friends and family. Displaying, not acting, a burst of primal fighting energy.
But with all this constant rearranging, and fine tuning of multi-polarized energies I’m grounded. Not fixated. This is an affirmation, and an intimate confession to you, the reader, the audeince
Go see a performer onstage today, go feast on his raw desperately giving heart, for the sake of his vision, of broken mirrors reflecting the world through his imperfect body and soul.
We offer to you this invitation and be one with us in spirit, keep it with pieces of us with it.
Blessed be.
Angelo Aurelio
Nishiwaga, Iwate, Japan
(waiting for the cue)
