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(UN)DANCING REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER AND SEXUALITY WITH KEITH HENNESSY AT IMPULSTANZ 09
By Satu Herrala
Not quite the Same, not quite the Other, she stands in that undetermined threshold place
where she constantly drifts in and out. Trinh T. Minh-ha, “When The Moon Waxes Red”
The idea of doing a Queer workshop at Impulstanz started as a provocation. Keith Hennessy had been wondering why people busy with performances and workshops at the festival so rarely use the opportunities to question and disrupt the social norms, especially those of sex and gender. The queer glasses are often missing and therefore a lot of essential issues go un-noticed or unspoken. About 20 persons showed up to the workshop. Slightly more than half of the group I would consider to be heterosexual and female, and the rest more or less queer - there was no heterosexual male - but as we started to experiment between fixed positions, our identities became increasingly fluid.
What is “queer”? In English, it means odd or strange. In the early 20th century, it began to be applied offensively to homosexuals. The word has been subsequently reclaimed to refer collectively to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and non-normative heterosexual people (LGBT). From the beginning, Hennessy emphasized that queer is a tool rather than an identity; a tool to operate in between and around the enclosures. He encouraged us to turn the tool into glasses to look at the world, into a pen to write with, and into a body to discover.
We sang “Wade in the Water”
The structure of the workshop was, "not a continuous line but a flow”. Theory, physical exercises and discussion swirled into each other and created a moving space for us in which to question and explore. We noticed at the beginning that everything is political - like sitting in the circle at a dance workshop (instead of standing in a line) - and that the personal is political - like the clothes you wear and sexuality you practice. We formed a choir and sang “Wade in the Water”. Keith Hennessy drew our attention to the history of the song, to the fact that it emerged from indigenous people living in slavery. Those who are excluded or marginalised often suffer violence - some manage to turn it into poetry. We were invited to approach our queer practice with the awareness of both.
Queer identity intersects with other marginal identities and therefore multiple issues such as race and class have to be addressed alongside sexual practice and gender preference. Hennessy often referred to Trinh T. Minh-ha, a Vietnam-born filmmaker, writer and composer, who speaks a lot about the movement to and from the margins. The point is not to change the center or create a new one, but rather to change the relationships between these polarities, create movement between them. A position is to have somewhere to operate from - but are you able to shift?
What happens when two people meet? Whether we ask someone autobiographical questions or exchange weight we negotiate boundaries. We try to figure out where we end and the other begins and what is the space in between. Borders can be represented as lines on the map but in reality they are spaces - borderlands. According to Gloria Anzaldúa, Mexican-American feminist, author, poet, scholar and activist, borderland is a space of exchange and infection in between national borders, a place of both and neither - just like queer. “Borderlands are physically present wherever two or more cultures edge each other, where people of different races occupy the same territory, where under, lower, upper and middle classes touch, where the space between two individuals shrinks with intimacy,” she wrote in “Borderlands / La Frontera: The New Mestiza”.
How constructed we are
On the first day Hennessy offered a series of exercises starting with meeting someone and asking a few questions, then exchanging skin contact (in other words, infecting each others' eco-systems), and then engaging in a physical play of exploring and challenging each other's boundaries. This exercise brought up a lot of questions that I kept re-visiting throughout the week. What am I curious about? What do I want? How do I suggest that to another person? What is not being communicated? What are my taboos? What do I do when I am bored? How to complicate or disrupt what is established and safe? What do I not tolerate? What kind of positions I take? How to change those positions? How to negotiate all this with another person and establish a satisfying space to meet and play together?
On the second day we started with an exercise where one person is looking away and the other one is chasing the gaze of the partner. We arrived very quickly at stereotypical ways of looking and being looked at, and what we consider more female or male behavior. We examined them more closely and personally in another exercise. Hennessy created a line in the space by placing a female shoe on one end and a male shoe on the other end of it, and then we asked each other questions such as, “how do you cook?” or, “what kind of underwear you wear?” and positioned ourselves on that continuum. That exercise created an interesting discussion on how constructed we are and how we gender things in our personal lives. It revealed various different strategies for individuals to approach the task; strategies influenced by our parents, upbringing, culture, education, commercial factors, film and TV among others.
We talked about the history of feminism and womens' rights movement and how queer is an extension or evolution of that. Every community, movement and -ism creates its own centers and margins - there is always someone who feels excluded and marginalized in the group. How to create a largest possible solidarity among different marginalized communities and work together? The most interesting space where most movement and experimentation happens is between the established enclosures. Maybe that is why many influential queer, civil rights' and womens' rights movements started on borderlands - for example on that between USA and Mexico.
A liminal space to experiment
Keith Hennessy pointed out that many queer academics talk about fluidity and change, and a lot of that talk actually sounds like what we do when we practice improvisation. He suggested that the studio could be that liminal space to experiment and research with the “you” who is someone between “every-day you” and “performer you”. In fact, could the studio be the place to invent the future? As artists working with the unknown, with what is not (yet) there, could we anticipate theory rather than respond to it?
I found it inspiring how one moment we talked about theory and the next we were engaged with sensing our bodies and shifting the room into a space of intimacy or monster playground or comedy freak-show. Hennessy's work is strongly influenced by shamanistic practices that he used to guide the group into moving towards unknown territories. The group was very open and receptive and together we met our patterns, stereotypes and taboos without shame or discomfort. We spend some time discussing shows that we saw at the festival from the queer point of view. The two most discussed ones were “The Bagwell in me” by Ann Liv Young and Anna Teresa De Keersmaeker's “Rosas Danst Rosas”. It was interesting to realize that once you put your queer glasses on they will stay, not only to look at performances and the world around us but ourselves as well.
On the last day, we were looking at each other for a long time. People suddenly had so many faces without trying to fix one. As we returned to language after this simple but powerful experience, we talked about binary thinking and how to undo those patterns of oppositions. To undo the thinking, we have to undo the language - female and queer are oppressed not only socially and politically but also in terms of signifying meaning. Keith quoted Trinh T. Minh-ha who said that: “Meaning has to retain its complexities - otherwise it will just be a pawn in the game of power.” Her writing, together with many other feminist writers, operates between theory and poetry. That borderland is a place where new meaning can occur. Our borderland is the body. If we want to challenge the norms and representations of sex, gender and race, dance and performance is a good place to be.
Workshop description: http://www.impulstanz.com/festival09/workshops/wid345/en/
Keith Hennessy's blog: http://zeroperformance.blogspot.com/
Try this - a gender quiz: http://www.utne.com/1998-09-01/just-who-do-you-think-you-are.aspx
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