Sarjo Sankareh
Right in the very beginning I was inspired by the fact that this project didn’t expect dancers to copy or imitate any form or shape but instead to find one own path through interrogating, research and by asking questions that Ko Murobushi use to ask, this I find to be the true means of inheritance.
A small note from my daily journal.
Day 3 of rehearsals: Today i cried during my own improvisation and this has never happened to me before, I thought something might have changed within me during these few days. I remember the priest from the temple we visited said “in other for change to happen one has to find the truth that lies beneath and only by accepting this truth one can go through real change”. I must have uncovered a part of me that i haven’t seen before and this encounter was quite powerful and emotional for me.
In this project I had to ask myself What dance means to me as an individual and what I want to bring forward or
convey to my audeince and In my process I used among other things, text Ko has written about dance where he at times describe what dance means to him. Below is a small text I have used as inspiration for part of my research along with several other elements to explore in the studio.
The fascination of dance is the power of the body to transform/be transformed. It is an unending
present tense, an event of the moment. Confronting the wavering boundary of the body in <the now,
the here>, it is an incident, a single <experiment>.
The idea of always being present in the moment, being able to surprise yourself and your audience, breaking out of every form or shape, breaking boundaries and limitations of our own bodies and that of society. This was the biggest challenge for me and at the same time the most interesting one also because already from day 1 in the dance school everything is well planned and organised, you put together a set of movements then repeat them so many times that it becomes part of you and with no element of surprise, always about the right shape or how high you can jump or how many turns. Working in this project gave me the possibility to explore a different way of doing things. I tried my best to challenge myself by putting away most of the knowledge i had from before and try to accept this task with a different mindset and a different approach. It was a big challenge and two weeks was way too short but I have learned so much in this period and I can really feel the influence in both the way I think of my own dance and my ideas og what dance can be.
This project gave dancers the possibility to explore and research with a different perspective which led to several unknown discovers for both ourselves and to our audience. I believe the type of work Ko was doing is far beyond just Art and movement, being able to break the norms and doing the unexpected. This is something that is really lacking in the new generations of dancers in this time and I hope many others will also have the opportunity to go through this process in which ever way that could be of benefit to them.