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I LOVE SLEEPING DURING A WORKSHOP: IT CAN OPEN UP SO MANY DOORS
By Frans Poelstra
Art was not part of my growing-up, there were hardly any books at home, I did not go to museums, theater, etc., but playing was part of my growing-up. I played with my friends on the street. We made up games, were knights, played soccer, etc. and talked about what we wanted to be when we were older – being an artist was never mentioned. For a long time I wanted to become a truck-driver and later to become a cook. By the time I was 14 years old (1968) I had no idea about my future. One thing I did know; not to become like my parents (although I loved them).
Also, Amsterdam started to become the San Francisco of Europe, the music of Jefferson Airplane, the Doors, Jimi Hendrix and experimenting with drugs, filled my life. So, going to school was not really my thing, I changed schools about 7 times until I got tuberculosis when I was 17 and this changed my life drastically. I stopped taking drugs and after I got better I was lucky to get a job at the theater school in Amsterdam as a theater technician although I had very little experience. This job opened for me doors to the arts. I was happy to be involved in this theater scene, supporting the “artists”. But after 7 years of being a technician I got bored with the job and I thought to become a male nurse. I started to work in old people’s homes, hard but satisfying work.
Meanwhile I also started to attend a creative dance course once a week. I enjoyed it a lot and the teacher advised me to try to enroll myself for teachers' training at the theater school. To my big surprise they took me, and there I found myself back at theater school but now as a student. Of course by then I had already seen a lot of theater and soon I started to make my own small pieces. It became clear to me that there was a possibility to be on the stage myself and to make my own work. To become a teacher was not so important anymore. I asked permission to change to the Modern Dance Department (now SNDO) and this happened. I was 26 years old and from then on things just unfolded in front of me. For the first time in my life I felt I was in the “right” place, at the “right” time. Amsterdam, SNDO, 1980. I had interesting (guest) teachers (Pauline de Groot, Katie Duck, John Roland, Simone Forti, Steve Paxton, Deborah Hay, Lisa Nelson, Yoshiko Chuma, Nancy Stark Smith, etc.) who were not busy with how turned-out your legs were or how high you could lift your leg. Some had let’s say a more holistic approach to the body, some were busy with improvisation, and some were more conceptual.
I realize now I learned so much without having the feeling I was learning something, I was just “going with the flow” and enjoying it. Some of the work “hit” me immediately, contact improvisation for example saved me from the feeling I had in other technique classes in which I always felt stupid. Other classes “hit” me years later, e.g., the release classes of John Roland. I was lying on my back for hours, thinking about every possible joint and bone in my body, and yes, probably I was sleeping or thinking about a project most of the time but I do have vivid memories about certain improvisations which we did at the end of every class. I love sleeping during a workshop; it can open up so many doors. Also, the relation I had with my fellow students was of great importance, we were performing in each other’s works and we made many, many performances, almost every night there were performances at school plus the Friday-lunch performances.
My first solo performance at the SNDO was in my first year. I think this solo was for me the “point of no return” for working and living as an artist, although I did not realize this at that point. For three months I spent almost every evening in the top floor studio of the school. I was lying on my back most of the time, dreaming, and fantasizing, sometimes utterly depressed, sometimes bored, sometimes ecstatic and sometimes just working hard. The performance was a mixture of my experience as a lighting designer (very simple but effective lights), being naïve, my love for the ordinary, the absurd, the casual, humor and having a lack of self-censorship. Of course I was very flattered with the good reactions and it affirmed me that I was on the “right” track, although I had no idea where this track was going.
Some of the other work I did was quite conceptual, but I did not know anything about conceptual art. For example, a performance in a dance studio, which I had completely emptied, no seats, clean, especially the mirrors. I let the public in and then closed the doors. I was not in the space. I opened the doors again after 30 minutes. Or a performance in a theater space where I did not do anything, only when people wanted to leave I begged them to stay, saying everything was fine, that things were so cosy and when they insisted to leave I would say I could do something for them, a little dance or a song or telling a joke. But like I wrote before, we did a lot of performances at the school.
Three other things where important during my school period. I went to Wuppertal to Pina Bausch to look and participate in rehearsals. I was surprised by the very associative manner Pina Bausch worked with her dancers, the complete lack of information about what she was working on, which meant that the dancers where not loaded with meaning, and very free in their interpretation of the questions she had. And also to see the whole hierarchy and machinery of a big dance company (which turned me off). In 1983 I joined a summer workshop with John Cage in Finland. John Cage was for me a big eye-opener, not only because of his ideas and music, but also because of his personality (completely open and accessible) and his commitment to his work. A story.
The first time I heard the music of John Cage was at a concert in 1979. The concert took place in the “Oude Kerk”, a big protestant church (which used to be a catholic church before the Iconoclasm in 1566 in Holland) in the middle of the red light district of Amsterdam. John Cage was not present at this concert and I do not remember the title of the concert, but it was a piece for 4 orchestras. Each orchestra was placed as far as possible from each other in a corner of the church. The conductors' job (four persons, one for each orchestra) was to keep track of the time. The beginning of the concert was the four of them standing together in the middle of the church and pushing the ‘start’ button of their stopwatches at the same moment. Then they rushed to their orchestras and stood in front of them keeping track of the time by using their arms as the arm of a stopwatch. What happened then was a beautiful “sound-scape”, the audience walking around in the church moving from one orchestra to the other and back, hearing the music and the outside noises of the busy red light district. The whole entourage and the music moved me. But what actually blew my mind was when I was biking back home after the concert. I was hearing sounds I had never heard before, or let’s say I had never paid attention to. Also, it was as if I was able to zoom into very delicate sounds in the middle of the loud noises of a busy city. I knew all this happened because of listening to the music of Cage. The concert had opened up my ears in a way that I had never experienced before. And, and I think this is quite crucial, I did not know anything about his music, ideas and philosophy then.)
Also in 1983 we went to New York to work with the visual artist Robert Whitman, performance artist Yoshiko Chuma, choreographer Remy Charlip and others. In New York I tasted the life of a young downtown performance artist. No money, working in different jobs which had nothing to do with art and at the same time running from one rehearsal to the other – it felt like being in a movie.
In the last year of my dance education 1983/84 I started to take classes again with the first year. I thought the students in that year were more interesting than in my year. I felt their energy, curiosity and their openness, which I missed with my year group.
After I finished school I immediately got work in the Italian based Group/O, directed by Katie Duck. The work was theatrical, absurd and with a strong emphasis on music and improvisation. Katie was the director, but I felt very much involved in the whole process and the decision-making, something that has been a priority in working with others.
I realize now that being a male in this still female world (go to a dance class today and you still will find yourself among mostly women) has been of great influence. It is so much easier for a man to survive in this dance world than it is for a woman.
I’m this guy from a lower middle class family, nothing artistic around, and here I am, writing about how I developed to become the artist I am today. I still have a problem with the idea that I am an artist.
(2.11.2009)
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