RESEARCH REPORT

S   A   L   T

INTRODUCTION

 

The purpose of this practice led artistic research was to choreograph SALT, a one-woman show, which would serve as an exploration of critical humor in contemporary dance, and develop my perceived, as I like to call it “critically funny body." Through the exploration and evolving of this work, I aimed to push forward and potentially innovate my existing methods of play and decision making, while constructing and deconstructing a comedic, yet critical universe, that could in some way resonate and subvert an aspect of the troubled times we are living in today.

The initial research question:  

 

How can I come to a better understanding of the humorist intentions within art works and how to use that knowledge to improve and empower the critical thoughts I wish to tackle? 

 

Prior to this creation and practice led research, I explored various angles of my artistic practice trying to reaffirm which aspect I was equally enthusiastic about as well as perceived as the most urgent to tackle. While feeling strongly driven to engage with social issues in my works, I wondered around in studies on:

- the grotesque;

- the carnivalesque;

- humor;

- subsequently, took an important detour and fell in love with public space;

- reaffirmed my drive with artistic activism;

- to then, finally, find strongest resonation with the art movement Dadaism, particularly because of their celebration of humor and nonsense, with as means to shake up and subvert against critical issues.

And while curious to understand the argued resurgence of Dadaism, New Dadaism today, I decided for this Avant Garde art movement to accompany and nurture me in my research journey on choreography and critical humor. 

 

Critical humor is a term that I started using myself referring to subversive humor, which speaks about the comedy, as Dadaism also did, that “confronts serious matters, but in a playful manner that fosters creative and critical thinking, and cultivates a desire and skill for recognizing incongruities between our professed ideals and a reality that does not meet those standards.” Kramer, 2015. 

 

Through this journey, questioning, nurturing and potentializing choreography and critical humor from all the delicate angles of the universe I was about to explore and construct;  

  • I researched about lecture performance – nurturing the format of this work;
  • I researched about stress, mental health and zebras nurturing the dramaturgy of this work;
  • I researched about Dadaism, humor theories and freedom of speech 
  • as also listened to hours of pod casts of stand-up comedians speaking about their craft, reappreciated the craft of slapstick comedy, interviewed a professional theatre, circus and street clown artist, went to see live stand-up comedy in Porto – Portugal, all ways to nurturing my awareness of critical humour.    

 

This Research Report - Exegesis, aims to make you travel, in Chapter 1, to the explanation of the title of this creation SALT. In Chapter 2 I share my artistic practice, the period leading up to this creation, particularly from of the moment the main character of this piece, an animal humanoid zebra figure, came to the surface. Chapter 3 consists of a broad consideration and contextualization on Dadaism and New Dadaism that allowed me to zoom into art & humour in times of crisis. Chapter 4 will unravel the dramaturgical subjects and playfield of this work: stress/mental health, lecture performance and zebras. In Chapter 5, I will share my methods of play while diving into this universe. Chapter 6 unravels the development of my understanding of humor and freedom of speech. Chapter 7 will note how the premier, and being in front of the audience first time, evolved. I will then in Chapter 8, make a critical reflection, to in Chapter 9 finally share my Conclusion.  

 

As you have noticed, I made you travel all the way to the bottom of this Research Report page, where I would like to invite you to follow and climb with me, all the way up the red zig-zag line in order to reach at each extend one of the chapters mentioned above.

Did you know that zebras, when in the stressful circumstance of being chased by a lion, their flight response is to run in a zig-zag line as a tactique to confuse their hungry predator.

While being high on anxiety myself during this journey, many times I found myself wanting to run away also, yet as it turns out, I seem to have happened to run in a zig-zag line myself, having reached this destination now. 

 

Through the deconstruction of this research and rehearsal period, practice led research and the construction of this Exegesis, I aim to share with you how this nonlinear, personally stressful journey evolved and how I managed to push myself for opening my inner raw curiosities into dialogues, embrace chaos, trust my instinct, celebrate the unknown and came to decision making throughout.

It was a journey of true surrendering. 

 

                                                                                      . . . 

Elisabeth Lambeck, self portraits of stress in research & creation process SALT // COMMA // November 2022 <> March 2023

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FOLLOW THE RED LINE, AND CLIMB ALL THE WAY UP

Charlie Chaplin in his film The Rink from 1916

Chapter 6.

WHAT´s FUNNY?

 

The studies and respective theories on humor and laughter are numerous. Scientists searching for ways to grasp this wonderful capacity that we, the human species, came along with, which is; the pleasurable feeling of making laugh and experiencing any form of joyful amusement that can: 

  •  increase your oxygen intake,  

  • stimulate your heart, lungs, muscles,  

  • release endorphins; the feel-good chemicals our bodies produce,  

  • and potentially relief pain or stress.  

Our understanding of the relevance of humor has evolved through time.Today, one phrase that is frequently quoted as humorists Mark Twain´s ultimate statement on the relevance of humor: “Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand.” Twain, 1908. While this phrase was removed from its original context and story line, it got a life of its own and fondly has been interpreted to see humor as a social corrective, which reinforces the fact that we human beings recognize and like to defend that laughter, is powerful. Hence for the same reason probably that it can be seen as such a threat. 

Plato (428-347 B.C.) is regarded to have been the first philosopher to have commented on comedy, humor and laughter in a meaningful way while proposing the Superiority Theory of Humor; reviewing humor predominantly in a negative, potentially threatening angle; 

by taking a hierarchical approach to why we laugh. Plato proposed that we find humor and laughter in the misfortune of other people's inadequacies or ridiculousness, which he considered to be morally objectable.He did identify some positive benefits associated with comedic performance, one being the potential for humor to communicate unpleasant 

truths and with that, exposing undesirable behaviors that others could then learn from. 

Only in 1709 did scientist Lord Shaftesbury take a more positive approach on the consideration of humor, proposing the Relief Theory in his writing An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humor. He presented laughter as a form of release of pressure /nervous energy. Thinkers such as Herbert Spencer and Sigmund Freud would later on revise the biology behind this theory, reinforcing this idea of laughter as a relief of tension. Freud particularly analysed three laughter situations through which release of energy would occur: Der Witz (the joke), the comic and humor. In Der Witz he proposes laughter to repress feelings, comic to be laughter to think, and humor to be laughter to feel. 

During the same century, the Incongruity Theory was developed by philosophers such as Emanuel Kant, James Beattie, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Soren Kierkegaard.This theory on humor proposed that it is the perception of something incongruous, something that violates expectations that could therefore make us laugh.

It is said that today it is this latter Incongruity Theory, that is most used while questioning humor and laughter, yet to my understanding of the three theories now, I could also see that these three theories are very complementing to one another, each validating and enhancing our understanding and the power of humor from a distinct perspective. 

Fascinated to try to understand why, how, and what makes human beings laugh, scientists have expanded their studies even beyond the human species and suggested that also "the mammals of the animal kingdom have some form of funny bone." Mcgraw & Warner, 2014. Zebras surely appear to laugh as they raise their upper lip to expose their teeth, revealing a humorous grin-like grimace. While this expression has undertood to have been used for aggressive response and a response to smell, one might also be amused to conclude the third reason being their "wild ass" nature, which literally is the explanation of their name derived from old portuguese zevra, with this attitude they manage to escape many predators, confusing them with their dizzy making black and white striped coat and running in zig zag pattern as also the name explains their untamable nature, as humans have tried to unsuccesfully tame this animal for domestic use. It is amusing to conclude that it might also be that they raise their upper lip because they are laughing at their predators unable to either eat or tame them. 

One of the most grotesque accounts of the applying and the power of humor might be from Austrian neurologist Viktor Frankl, who survived the horrors of Auschwitz and other concentration camps during World War 2. In his autobiography he explores the human mind amidst the horrors they lived in and what helped him, and others fight for preservation. He writes how, during his stay in Auschwitz, he incentivized a friend to tell each other one funny story a day and how; even though the horrendous of circumstance of daily survival, torture and death that surrounded them, cabaret evenings were organized amongst prisoners. Revealing how people would exchange a ransom for their bread and some precious hours of sleep for some moments of (critical) laughter, he concludes: “Humor is one of the souls' weapons to transcend despair. It is well known that humor, more than anything else in human make-up, can afford an aloofness and an ability to rise above any situation, even if only for a few seconds.” Frankl, 2020.  

 

FREEDOM OF LAUGHTER?

A couple of months ago comedian Will Smith slapped his humorist colleague Chris Rock in the face, while the latter was hosting the Oscars. In front of the entire world, televised live; Smith responded his discontent about the hosts joke, that highlighted 

Jada Pinket's (Smith wife) medical condition; in a physical attack.

It has been a hot discussion ever since whether either that joke or that slap was crossing the line, and opinions have been remarkably diverse. 

Ricky Gervais, the master of comedic insult and critical wit, reflects on freedom of speech, defending the importance of mockery, while writing on his twitter on January 2020: “If you don’t believe in free speech for people who you disagree with, and even hate for what they stand for, then you don’t believe in free speech.” Gervais, 2020. Provocative, subversive, controversial and in your face, entertainment is known to fondly and frequently test our commitment to the belief of this what we can also refer to as the: United Stated First Amendment – Freedom of Speech.


The talk regarding what we can say and laugh about today has been and will be an increasingly hot topic. In a time and space where everyone is allowed to speak out, in the many ways that that now is possible, there are many factors that blur the lines of this US First Amendment: facts, truth, and fake news. The search for truth is ancient, it is primitive in terms of the human intellect; but misinformation, disinformation, and cancel culture are real and truly diffuse the way we interact and navigate information with each other.  

While trying to understand arts and humor in the current state of affairs, this research and creation wanted to travel to a sensitive space, where I touched a critical hence sensitive issue, in this case stress and mental health in todays society, with as motif to, through laughter; revolt against, release and potentially subvert. 

 

Developing my Manifest for Laughter, I was inspired and excited about a performance titled: Laugh, created by Antonia Baehr in 2008. In this performance, she works around the physical aspect of laughter and interprets a partiture of laughter that her mother wrote for her. Reflecting on her own work in an interview, she mentions: “All emotions, can be expressed through laughter” It was these former aspects that brought me to the desire to

- Create my own laughter partiture, and invite people to interpret it, donating their laugh as if an alternative crowd funding, to the soundtrack of possibly my final performance and or research report.

- I also invited people to donate me selfies with a grin-like grimace, as the bare teeth horizontal smiled smiley, or the "aggressive zebra", using them to build my Haha Wall, an essential part of my Manifest for Laughter.  Each picture would be another brick in my wall, and having so many people participate in this invite to ridicule, proved also to be somewhat therapeutical  for myself, creating besides my wall, a sense of foundation of trust in the work I was developing. 

In the studio I understood while searching for laugher, the last thing I needed be doing was: try to be funny, forcefully try to achieve laughter (even though in the concept of Antonia Baehr´s performance that did work wonders). Valuing the power of my own sincerity and vulnerability, as many stand up comedians also do, it was the following quote of Charlie Chaplin that really allowed me to surrender to my playground, firstly and foremostly not be concerned about laughter but before that exploring my most honest personal truth: 


In order to truly laugh, you have to take your pain and play with it.


-Charlie Chaplin 


                                                                   . . .

Follow the red line

Animal humanoid sculpture, by Alessandro Gallo in

his exhibition Strange encounters, 2014

Chapter 2.

BIRTHING ZEBIE 

 

 
Humor has always been present in my works, yet, it was only throughout this journey of the master's degree, that I started taking this characteristic more seriously. Each creation that I have made has had a strong presence of the taste of irony, ridicule, satire, and even slapstick in it. But while laughter many times was an important part of my decision making, building my ironic universes, I always was mostly focused on the serious intentions behind each of my works, driven by feminism, equality, refugee crisis, environmentalism, and such. 

 

During May and June of 2022, I directed myself upon an artistic research journey, in which I aimed to deepen my knowledge about public space performance. This opening up of my artistic practice to the public space was only the second time, and a response to the Covid 19 Pandemic, in which -to my personal frustration and concern, especially in Portugal where I currently live, communities had been restricted from each other for prolonged period of times. Because of that, I felt the urgency to bring and question my practice outside of the safe and hidden space of a black box, studio, or theatre, and closer to the communities that I hadn´t met for so long, to reclaim and question the streets, together. 


Visiting parking spaces, boulevards, bike roads, a public park, we also started playing and became intrigued by a zebra crossing. At this zebra crossing, we first searched physical ways to embrace, bend and contradict the written and unwritten rules of this organized public space. While playing, I remembered and instantly became amused knowing that a friend of mine: Iria Tria, had a zebra mask at her home, I giggled at the thought of it, and I decided to listen to this giggle. 

 

Having managed this mask from my friend and integrated the same while staying on the zebra crossing and felt inspired and driven by the following observation of Nato Thompson, in his talk Out of time Out of place, Public Art, White Chappel Gallery. 

 

´People think of cities as compromising places, but smart cities are aggressive with the way they allow thinking in public. If you want to look like an amazing bad ass city, then you need to have a bad ass public sphere, that is aggressive, critical, and thoughtful and you talk about sex, and you talk about race and you talk about class and you are not like …  Disneyland. If we are not in it for dreams and ideas, then what are we doing? ´ Thompson, 2015. 

 

Intrigued by the ironical image of a half human half animal; animal humanoid figure standing in front of a zebra crossing, questions, and thoughts that at that moment emerged were:  

 

A zebra standing in front of a zebra crossing refusing to cross. 

 

Identity crisis? 

 

A demonstration? 

 

A statement? 

 

Is the zebra white with black stripes, or black with white stripes? 

 

Where does she come from? 

 

Why would she cross or why would she not? 

 

I understood it was a comical image, but it could tell something beyond this ridicule and somewhat evident joke. Searching for the deeper meaning behind this situation, I found out that in Switzerland the use of masks in any type of public space, except for the covid ones, are forbidden. It is said to disrupt the sense of safety for the pedestrians on the streets. Masking ourselves in public space in a carnivalesque way at the echo of the pandemic restrictions, seemed to be resonating a sense of irony and rebeliousness that I wanted to embrace and dive deeper into. The result of this short journey was shown in my prototype presentation at the end of the first year of COMMA, titled: Zebra, Crossing. Yet at that moment though I did not have any intention to use this initial idea for my final research and work.  

 

At the end of my prototype presentation, I still had the idea to focus my final research in the second year on public space, a field in which I recognized I could highlight my social political questions and drive within my works. Yet, while I continued developing artistic interventions on the streets, I also started to recognize that while engaging with these spaces with serious at times activist intentions, irony and humor were often the undertone or the pillars of my way of digesting and both aesthetic and dramaturgic decision making. So, driven by the enriching experiences I had had on the streets, I recognized the urgency of questioning not the streets, but firstly, my way of critically addressing, through laughter, and I decided to take a U turn, diving straight into my first attempt of the Haha wall, a short prototype of a solo created in the second cohort of Year 1.  

 

At that point I thought I left the zebra behind at that infamous crossing, where we had been applauded during the day by joyful passengers, and been harassed at night by strange men that, as we discovered, feel sexually provoked and invited by zebra-humanoids on the streets after 22u.  


In retrospect I love how ideas can be born way before they come to the surface or fall into its right place at a right time, and that is what happened then to Zebra, she came back to me, while I was contemplating how I was going to make a creation about humor & stress.  


                                                              . . .

Chapter 4.

Stress, Zebras & Lecture Performance

- Confirming my Playfield

 


// STRESS 

 

Stress is the so-called black plague of the 21st century. Due to the excess workload, rapid societal development, capitalist, product driven society, I feel it daily in my own reality. 

 

While I did not go into a deep research about stress in psychological studies during this research, I had listened in the last two years to hours of mindfulness podcasts, 5 minute guided mediations, 10 minute morning mediations, 30 minute sleep meditations, practicing gratitude, listening to my breathe, finally ending up with the podcast Therapy in a Nutshell by Emma McAdam, whom I listened to almost all 2022, while driving a 40 minute journey back and forth to work on a daily basis. Presented in different chapters, she would address issues such as:  

 

- How to deal with your anxiety, 

 

- How to identify emotions, 

 

- How to be more resilient, 

 

- How to stop overthinking,  

 

- How to regulate your nervous system, and so on... 

 

Words such as fight flight freeze and fawn became more familiar words for me while dealing with moments of increased anxiety. Having searched desperately for ways to manage my feelings of stress better, in this creation, I wanted to allow myself to digest the same, letting my overly tensed body tell me what she wanted to speak/scream about now so desperately. 

 

In my closer circle of friends and family; stress, anxiety and burn out had become increasingly familiar terms, and on a broader perspective I understood that the deterioration of the human mental health, because of stress, on a global scale is certainly a critical issue to address.  

 

 

// ZEBRAS (animal humanoid) 

 

In the initial phase of this creation period, not having decided anything beyond the topic of stress yet, during one of my improvisations, I randomly put on that zebra mask that had been laying in my workroom ever since the artistic interventionist playAgon for my prototype in May 2022. While watching the video, I reconnected to my intrigue in this animal humanoid, that had come into my existence a year ago and I thought to have said goodbye to. Attempting to deconstruct my own fascination, I encountered the work of Alessandro Gallo renowned for his anthropomorphic, hybrid sculptures, consisting of human bodies and animal heads, as was the half zebra half human figure. His exhibition Strange Encounters and the written reviews about it made me understand better the power of this animal humanoid that was coming to the surface in my own research.  

 

At that same time, artist and pedagogue Marta Jurkiewiz, my sister-in-law, coincidently was actively searching to release stress also and was reading a book called: Why Zebra´s don´t get Ulcers by Dr. Robert M. Sapolsky, 1994. Before even reading it, I was sold and landed into the potential of my dramaturgical playfield: Stress, releasing stress and zebras.  

 

Having listened to hundreds of hours of talks about stress, anxiety, and mental health; the irony of a man successfully selling his book about stress on the relaxedness of zebras, resonated for me perfectly the neuroticism and capitalization of the mindfulness industry today. I started reading the infamous book about how relaxed zebras are, as also researching about zebras, and came to understand that I was intending for the performance to become my honest yet tragicomic attempt of trying to release this undesired tension, together with a zebra.  

 

 
// LECTURE PERFORMANCE 

 

I was concerned with finding a certain format of performance in which I thought I would be able to play with comedy, text integrated driven moments balancing physical virtuous choreography. 

 

The first suggestion from my research mentor Jochem Naafs was to think in the direction of a late-night live show type of circumstance, such as SNL, or the Daily Show; popular American night-live television variety shows which contain sketch comedy and political satire. Appealed by this idea, I also played with the thought of lecture performance for which Jochem Naafs recommended to see the lecture performance Pichet Klunchun and Myself (premiered in 2004), by Contemporary Dance Artist Jérôme Bel and Thai dancer and Artist Pichet Klunchun. This work is a duet performed by Bel and Klunchun, in which they engage in a 120-minute (about 2 hours) dialogue about dance, with as starting point their completely diverse backgrounds and worlds. Beside the wonder of the story that evolves and the delicacy of text in harmony with choreography, I was so appealed by the rich informative aspect of this performance, as also, how Jerome can do so brilliantly, the beautifully nuanced presence of irony yet seriousness all throughout. 

 

Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion, two dance and music performance artists, show the mastering of critical wit in lecture performance also very well. In their works such as Body Not Fit For Purpose (premiered in 2014), and The Cow Piece (premiered in 2009). Takling at times critical issues, they achieve a playful manner between informative in-depth speech and choreographed movements, that with their presence and energy empower them in mastering both

lightness in depth,

critique through ridicule,

seriousness in combination with moments of release of buildup tension through laughter.  

 

Assisting live the durational 2,5-hour performance Hopeless (premiered in 2022) by contemporary dance artist Sergiu Matis, the audience finds itself the first hour in a sound installation and lecture performance. While Matis and his two other interpreters deliver large dense informative texts about endangered species of birds, in combination with embodied bird like movements, I was excited about the level of concentration that Matis managed from his audience that was trying to absorb all the words that were thrown into their lap so generously. The circumstance felt as if not only watching but having landed in an absurd nature documentary of sorts.

I recognized that in SALT, without having had defined it yet as such, I also had been developing a somewhat absurd nature docomentary. Encouraged by this approach of Sergiu Matis, I felt more confident to keep on following my instinct and become even more playfull while developing speech and embodiment of zebras and releasing stress, assuming and potentializing a taste of this silly species narrative.

 

Searching for ways to be able to construct a preposterous universe in which a human, a zebra, and an animal humanoid contemplate and attempt to release stress, I became decided that the format of this choreography would be lecture performance based as a starting point. Recognizing the potential to transmit, through a lecture performance setting, a rich source of information, informative performance, as also creating a certain baseline of irony that I felt empowered to work around then;


in between seriousness and ridicule,

critique and laughter,

lightness in depth. 


                                                            . . . 

Annemei Lambeck, Zebra, Noah Ferreira and Halina Lambeck in The Haha Wall - Manifest for Laughter // Manifesto // Year 2 // COMMA // April 2023

Mercedes Quijada and Elisabeth Lambeck in Zebra, Crossing // Prototype attempt 2 // Year 1 // COMMA // May 2022

Monty Python´s Flying Circus premiering on BBC tv in 1969

Chapter 8.

Critical Reflection // Gibbs reflective cycle 

 

 

// DESCRIPTION 

During an intense period of four months, in the “spare hours” of my life as a full-time working mother of two children living in Portugal, I had to take responsibility for this master's degree and the challenges I had signed up for, conducting a first time academic artistic practice led research, leading up to a final performance / creation of 30 minutes named SALT. 

The final creation was intended to be a one woman show, made and performed by myself, but halfway through the process I invited Sara Santervás, an artist I had been working with for a couple of years already, to collaborate with me and substitute myself as a performer. This allowed me to be more focused on the choreographic and research aspects of this journey, while Sara truly engaged and went on a journey of embodiment with the topics we were tackling.  

The research and creation process took place in Portugal -Espinho, with rehearsals at my own place, GAD dance studios in Espinho, and Corpo Raiz in Porto. Even though growing roots already a year leading up to the premier, the officially focused research started from of Januari 2023. The last week leading up to the premier I was in Holland,finalizing the work in Energiehuis in Dordrecht, and premiering in the Conny Jannsen Danst Studios in Rotterdam.  

  

In this journey I was facilitated collaborators by COMMA:   

  

  • Soosan Gillson, as my study facilitator,   

  • Jochem Naafs, as my research mentor;   

  • Giulio D´Anna, as my artistic coach,   

  • Frederico Dalpra that took care of the production of the COMMA Festival  

  • Maarten van Dorp as the light designer  

  • Dirk Dumon and Keith Derrick Randolph as critical feedback   

  • And by personal initiative I had encounters with artists Marjolein Frijling, Mafalda Deville, and circus clown Pedro Santos.   

  

Jochem and Giulio have accompanied the journey on the most consistent and regular basis, Jochem keeping track and helping me both expand and focus my research intentions, and Giulio giving me artistic and dramaturgical support while searching for the red line in this work.Two weeks before I had a coincidental meeting with circus clown Pedro Santos, whom I then invited for a meeting in which we spoke for two hours about his craft and critical humor.   

  

// FEELINGS 

Right now, a month after the premier, I feel positive about this experience. I recognize the lessons that I have learned, am proud of the struggle I worked through, enjoyed so much and am grateful for the people that I met, opened to, and that collaborated with me so generously.  

I can feel content with the general draft of what was shared on the premier, the aesthetic, the framing of the work, the deeper layered critical meaning behind the work, and the potential that was shown and that I want to build upon now. The feeling is exciting, even though I have not found the courage to watch the performance back yet, because some of the mistakes that happened in the last moments can still feel somewhat painful and disappointing to remember.   

During the journey I was struggling with anxiety and stress, something that is in my nature, nevertheless also surely enhanced by the multilayer tasking of the circumstance of my life, feeling difficulty responding adequately to all the responsibilities of being me in 2023. My initial decision to make the performance about stress made me more relaxed, because the subject was so close to me, I felt as if I was buying myself a little bit of extra time. Ironically, because I was researching humor and comedy, I initially felt a certain neuroticism to try to be funny, which when I failed in that, made me again more stressed, which then made me again happy, because the same stress was surely somehow fueling my performance in one way or the other. I cried many times during this journey, while truly surrendering to it, I also felt a sense of loss of control; partially because I assume it is part of a creation process, also partially because I felt very scared about the limited time I knew I had in combination with the minimum of expectations I had of myself and wanted to be able to respond to. Often, I felt as if I was standing in front of an impossible puzzle I needed to solve in too little time, not even sure if all the pieces in front of me belonged to that one puzzle I was longing to finish so much.Inviting Sara Santervás to step in as my collaborator and performer gave back more sense of control and allowed me to be more present on those sides of making and researching that needed my time and attention.  

This creation was important for me, sharing my craft in my home country for the first time in almost 20 years, as also speaking about something so close to me was nothing light. I really wanted it to be of a minimum of quality, to feel right and not seem, even though playful; childish, potentially just a (stupid) joke. I really was concerned with finding this fine line of critical humor that allows an audience to travel beyond their first laughter and engage with a deeper meaning, creative and critical thinking.    

My last week leading up to the premier was a true rollercoaster of emotions, being challenged by circumstances that reminded me to make sure I have a producer on my side anytime next I oversee a creation. But in these last moments, my artistic coach Giulio D´Anna, helped me to keep on being grounded, enjoy the moment for what it was, stay playful with my pain and take some precious final decisions that benefited the result. There is no doubt that I truly surrendered to this journey of making and, as Dirk Dumon – Core team of COMMA, said in a feedback moment in April, “you are almost going through the eye of the needle,” and I was, and I did.  

Before this journey, I was afraid to, while researching laughter, zooming in, and trying to unravel comedy: that I would eventually do something not funny or boring. 

After this journey, I understood that while searching for and celebrating humor, there needs to be a space in my practice in which I am not concerned about that, to always nurture the most honest meaning behind the joke or irony in the first place.  

I think the people working with me might have felt unsure sometimes how to help me in my lost-ness even though they made me understand that being lost was to be celebrated, and the fact that I pushed myself to open during even my most vulnerable moments, resulted for me to fertile dialogues that were very precious to me. The people that were new to me, we took our time to get to know each other, the research and how we could navigate and potentialize this encounter within the same.   

In retrospect, this was such a profound learning journey exactly because I allowed myself to get lost and have moments of losing control. So, I am thankful that I did, surrender, and did not play safe. I think also though, that while allowing myself to surrender, I will not expose myself to lack of time creating circumstance anymore, because a certain degree of the stress and anxiety I felt because of the time pressure, is useless to who I want to be in the first place. While not being afraid at all to work hard and passionately, I really do not desire anymore unnecessary stress or anxiety in any future work. Celebrating cooker pressure capacities, I also want to rebel against this fast product focused society and make sure I am always celebrating firstly, my own pace.  

  

// EVALUATION  

What was good in this experience was the fact that I surrendered, the playing with pain while searching for laughter -quote, truly resonated with me, my own vulnerability being at the foundation of any type of potential comedy in the first place. 

I am truly humbled by all the people that shared this journey with me so generously, and I can recognize that because of these encounters, the level and depth of my work has been in fact enhanced.  

What was bad was mostly the lack of time, partially due to my own life circumstance, partially because of some delays in documents and guidance that I needed, as a student, to tackle this journey in a timely and qualitative manner. 

While normally enjoying last minute challenges that you must respond to, such as sound problems, projecting problems, building up a stage and light plan of a work that hadn´t premiered before, 2 hours of setting up a premier seemed and proved to be a mission impossible.  

Things went well because it was such an honest attempt of myself in trying to search for this tragicomic world. Things went well because the people I collaborated with nurtured such fertile dialogues that allowed me to grow truly considerate to the subjects I was diving into. Things went well because I decided to listen to my instinct, my intuition, allowing my initial ridicule to be deconstructed and develop to something beyond. Things went well because I had my family supporting me. Things went well because I had my work facilitating me in my final month. Things went well because my parents are amazing and so joyous while receiving me and Sara in the last week into their home and taking care of us as if we were royals. Things went well, because even though I wanted to at times, I did not give up. Things went well because I pushed myself to take the initiative. Things went well, because I really believed in the potential of this work, and I really want to build it further now. Things went well because it just had to.   

Things didn´t go well because at times I was overly stressed, and I lacked the leadership qualities to somehow create a better circumstance that would have enabled me more quality time and space for this journey.  

  

// CONCLUSION  

I learned to reconnect to my vulnerability within my artistic practice and trust my, as I like to say it, giggle. The key word that really stayed with me after speaking to clown Pedro Santos at my current hometown Espinho in Portugal, is deconstruction. While he explained that his practice is mostly about deconstructing an image or an action that he perceived comical, it clicked with me in a way I had not been able to conclude for myself yet; To construct the zebra humanoids universe, I needed to deconstruct what it was that she was then all about. And I recognized that looking back at all of the artistic interventions I had done in the last years, many times I managed to create intriguing, poetic and comical images at the very early stages of a creation, questioning myself what I should be doing if I had found the working images already; realizing now that this might be a way that I work, appealing images coming in rather quick in the process, and then entering into a phase of deconstructing while constructing. 

I also learned to open myself up to have critical dialogues all throughout the process, something I had avoided until now, or something I felt uncapable in. 

This could have been a more positive situation for everyone involved if I had had the financial support needed to work with time and quality on this research. I feel ready now to approach stakeholders, residencies, theatres, fundings, defending my drive behind this work as well as being able to contextualize the same.   

  

// ACTION PLAN 

If I had to do the same thing again, in retrospect, I would have decided from the start to have a collaborator, interpreter on my side. My decision to perform initially was merely a financial one, in fact, already for some years, even though I believe and quite enjoy my capacities as an interpreter, I also feel "fed up" and bored with seeing myself on stage. Being an artist in Portugal, performer, or maker, always has made me feel as if I present every work immensely compromised, and institutions have grown accustomed to give compromising circumstances to its artists; not understanding that their very way of operation, is at the base of creating instability for the arts world. It being a reality that is hard to go against, especially because I have kids and need to manage financial stability for them, I must accept this aspect, and it makes me question sometimes if I would really want to continue with this work. Ten years ago, I had the energy and fire to deal with this circumstance, but sometimes it is hard to connect to that initial patience, passion and ambition while trying to deal with "this shit". So, if I had to do this again, what would I do? I will try to see if I canarrange some good funding for this work, that by now,Iam able to better defend.  

Through that, I want professional and personal quality time, for slow cooking, no cooker pressure.  

Yes, dream big.  

  

                                                              . . .  

REMEMBER THE RED LINE

 

Elisabeth Lambeck in Wasting Time // Prototype presentation attempt 1 // year 1 // COMMA // May 2021

Chapter 5.

METHODS OF RESEARCH AND PLAY

 

Initial statement as I reconnect to my body in the beginning of this research and creation: 


My body is overly educated. I need to let my body tell the story it needs to tell now. No imposed form or physical line and restrictions. Just listening, I need to de-educate my body. The westernized world taught me to frame myself, to align, to breathe, neurotically... Time to unframe, time to let my breathe decide for itself, goddammed. That 60 minute warm up of nothingness and just tuning into whatever that is present into me now, has a touch of authentic movement, yet for me, travels beyond and before that. Just move. Move. In that precious first hour, I have discovered lots of thoughts come through my mind and heart.  I am reminded of my body, of my existence that is time framed, on the moment of right now, I am reminded of my pace, on the pain that I carry, that privileged pain, stress and anxiety, I am reminded on what it is that my body wants to speak about now. My body is speaking, I need to listen, and let her guide me.


// For this process, I worked with methodologies both familiar in my practice, as well as methodologies that were new to me: 

 

1. Knowing from the beginning that there would be text in this work, I took a first shy try at Stand up comedy Punch Line writing, as also researched and assisted Lecture Performances

2. Seeking to develop, what I like to call the critically funny body, I used guided improvisation inspired by Gaga from Ohad Naharin, as well as Authentic Movement, from Mary Starks Whitehouse. While reassuring the variety of physicalities we were interested to bring to the final work, I also gave ballet and floor work, as warm up. 

3. In order to reassure my capacity of contextualizing, I engaged in many critical feedback encounters or sharings with both my research mentor, artistic coach, members from the core team, as well as had an arranged encounter/sharing practice dialogue of two hours with professional theatre, circus and street clown.

4. I also planned an open rehearsal guiding the invited artists through two DAS art feedback methods. 

5. Supportive methods that I could always fall back on where: reflective writing, mood boards, and mind mapping. 

6. While inexperienced, and not having assumed coaching in this journey, we became sensitive towards puppeteering, and the way in dealing with this mask. 

 

                                                                 . . . 

 

Chapter 1.

SALT

 

 

 

The months leading up to the start of my second year of COMMA co-creation of movement master of Arts, I grew stronger aware of my, somewhat, impulsive, yet furious, nature while throwing myself, often uninvited, in the midst of, possibly none of my business, heated discussions about sensitive topics.

Questioning the same, I started connecting this essential aspect of my being to salt and the way I like to throw it into, and in others people food, so passionately. And somehow, I started connecting this metaphor, also as to how I also perceive stand-up comedians to be driven and tackling their craft. Hungry, convinced, slightly irritated, ambitious, strongly driven and longing.

 

And while giving this symbolical way of self-addressing some consideration, at the age of 44, I finally became quite amused by the following - always evoluting - conclusion of myself: 

 

 

I am salt.

 

Not a diamond,

 

Not a silver fox,

 

Not a good old red Porto wine,

 

No, salt.

 

You can also of course, instead of declaring that, say that I am basically, a pain in the ass. In the same manner as some declare certain critical comedy to be annoying.

 

And surely that is at least partially true but, since the moment I have had that salty reference in my mind, I have grown quite fond of that somewhat poetic and metaphorical way of humoristic and self-referencing.

 

- both salt and humor have the potential to hurt, but heal, 

- both salt and humor have enhancing power and characteristics, and 

- You must be careful to measure the right components of both to achieve the most effective taste, or laughter.  


Salt, because I have sweat, and laughed, like a maniac to come to where I am today.

 

Salt, and imagine all of those salty tears I dropped while doing so.

 

Did you know that salt, in many ancient civilizations, symbolically stands for purification? According to Vastu Shastra, a pinch of salt in the house can work as a catalyst in removing negativity from your home. 

 

The history of salt traces back to as far as 6050 BC, it used to be part of religious offerings and to preserve mummies in Egypt. In Japan, salt is considered sacred and as part of everyday life, believed to be purgative and a preserver of purity. In Roman times, and throughout the Middle Ages, salt was a valuable commodity, also referred to as "white gold."  Soldiers in the Roman army were sometimes paid with salt instead of money. Salt made it possible to preserve food as also make it tastier and, while it literally is one of the most common substances on the surface of Earth, it's really important for survival and life in the world.

 

While too much salt increases the risk of high blood pressure and heart diseases, a decreased amount of sodium intake can prevent many deaths. 

Animals living in wildlife get their natural intake of salt through the elements of their natural habitat, animals in zoos, such as zebras, need extra salt sticks as a supplement to their unnatural diet,

in order to be able to survive. 

 

                                                                . . . 

Sara Santervás, Elisabeth Lambeck, in Research,  creation and set up process SALT // Year 2 // COMMA // March,  April & May 2023

Oficina Zero artists edition 2022 in POTERE // Integrated Assignment // Year 1 // COMMA 

// March 2022

Chapter 3.

DADAISM // ARTS & HUMOR IN TIMES OF CRISIS

 

In the Netherlands there is a saying that I always enjoyed: “ Lachen als een boer met kiespijn.” "Laughing as a farmer with toothache.”. It refers to a variety of laughter's such as:

You are laughing out of politeness;

you have no clue what you are laughing about;

you are laughing but you are disturbed;

you are trying to suppress an inappropriate laughter;

you are laughing because you personally think that either ethically, morally, socially, politically or otherly, you should not be really thinking that that is funny, but you do.

My favorite emoji expresses this exact human emotional state also very well, the horizontal happy but painfull smile. I imagine the first audiences that saw Marcell Duchamp´s Fountain (1917), or the people that listened to Hugo Ball´s Dada Manifest (1916) at Cabaret Voltaire and, I can´t help but imagine those horizontal smiles on spectators faces and how those grins were at the starting point of changes that triggered huge evolutions that brought us to what is and can be subversive comedy and art today. As an artist I have come to recognize that while I am driven to make socially engaged art, it is at this exact moment, when I laugh as a " farmer with toothache,” that I feel triggered, and my decision making is at its most sharp. 

 

Dadaism was a short-lived European avant-garde art movement that used humor, nonsense, and artistic freedom as some of their main principles to challenge, revolt, protest, and question ways to mirror the absurdity of the world around them. Through all registers of humor and satire it used nonsense and irony as a “weapon” to confuse, irritate, disturb, and shake up the existing beliefs on common social values at the midst and backdrop of World War I. While "Dada saw itself as a collection of individuals united by opposition to the same causes (war, nationalism, etc.)" Bishop, 2012., their anti-aesthetic, anti-ratio-nal and anti-idealistic art, also sought to push the boundaries of what was seen as artistic amusement and artistic practice. As David Hopkins stated, Dada "sought to overturn traditional bourgeois notions of art." Hopkins, 2004. By opposing all established sets of protocol, their often absurd, paradoxical, and opposed harmonious works intended to create a certain effect of shock value. Often referred to as “nonsense” art, non-art, or anti-art, this artistic movement was meaningful and empowering as to how people could engage, digest, distract, focus, and critique on the world of its times. With that, became revolutionary and instrumental in changing existing believes as to what was and what could be accepted as art.

 

This artistic, literary, and intellectual movement is considered to have started with the launching of Cabaret Voltaire, an artistic night club in Zurich, Switzerland, by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings. From the start of its launching, Ball and Hennings intended a place where artists such as Tristan Tzara, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Marcelo Janco, Richard Huelsenbeck and Jean Arp, would have the possibility to meet, experiment and share their practice in the diverse output of poetry, music, photography, sculpture, painting, collage, and performance art. This avant-garde art movement quickly became known worldwide and triggered groups of independent artists around the world to identify with their philosophy. Even though Dadaism was short lived, it dissolved in 2022, it had a profound effect on modern arts history, the broader entertainment industry and became instrumental in defining Modernism.

 

In Dadaism, HUMOR & SATIRE was used to subvert. A joke that was not just a joke but that intended to travel beyond laughter and engage with a deeper layer of critical thinking. Humor provided an empowering way into heavier material, using any extent of hilarity as a tool for breaking through the audience's emotional boundaries. With humor, silliness and creative wit, Dada often portrayed a sense of lightness while implying a deeper meaning. Laughter, surprise and excitement were often one of the first reactions to Dada art, other underlying emotions being confusion and anger.

 

Charlie Chaplin, the master of slapstick and critique, was fondly called part of the Dada movement by Tristan Tzara, that in 1921, in a classified ad in Emil Duharme´s: Le journale du people, enthusiastically proclaimed that “Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin” to be joining the Dada-movement. Tzara, 1921.  According to Haakenson, 2021, a surprising number of intellectuals focused on the figure of Charlie Chaplin and his slapstick comedies in the early twentieth century. The variety of Groteskfilme by Charlie Chaplin proved commercially and critically successful both in Europe and the United States. Chaplin´s juxtaposition of humor and estrangement as a critique of modernity made intellectuals see in the grotesque style"something quite different from merely amusing or humorously strange." Haakenson, 2021.


Artists of Dadaism were also searching to - not make sense -, which was a unique and different approach to making art. This urge to create nonsense, was driven by the thought that one must confront the world with exactly the absurdity of which it is made. Marcel Duchamp’s groundbreaking works The Fountain (1917) as well as his mustached Mona Lisa L.H.O.O.Q. or La Joconde (1919), initially caused public outrage but proved to be a point of no return, subverting normative expectations as to what was admissible in a museum or not.

 

 

Other principles of Dadaism were

- Audience participation, satirizing and challenging normal theatre conventions by making audience not only onlookers of but participants of art.  

- Chance, up to the introduction of Dadaism, arts were seen to be extremely pre-calculated, where artists controlled the excellence of their craft until the very definitive version of any work. This innovative approach to making art was the start of the development of systematic exploitation of the chance in arts. 

- Dadaist engagements in political activities reinforced the already developing arts as activism, while embracing a philosophy of rejecting societal views of progress.

 

This year makes exactly 100 years ago that Dada ´Died´.

Today the world encounters a whole new set of global societal challenges, the concerns of a century ago seem to potentially have been enhanced and,

as we are living in a post pandemic society,

and the ongoing war in Ukraine seems far away to be resolved,

global warming seems to have become unstoppable by the kapitalistic society that is fast speed up and running,

mental health seems to be passing challenging times with stress called the black plague of the  21st century;

it is not pessimistic to say that it feels as if we are living in apocalyptic times. In her article Why 2021 will see a resurgence of the Dada Art movement, Idalis Love righteously argues: “How could people not seek to escape it all? For many, life has become ambiguous, much like the people of World War I.” Love, 2021.

 

In comparison to the times of World War I, the landscape of how human beings interact and connect to each other has drastically changed. Today everyone has access to oceans of online resources of information and self-expression; having any type of real, fake, mis/dis-information at your disposal with a click and swipe away, at any place at any time.

 

Dadaism was an important movement in art history that broke the rigid boundaries and bourgeois notions of art of its times. If you consider the principles of Dadaism and how they have been ingrained in today's approaches to art and art making, one might question if Dadaism ever disappeared, "Dadaist cabaret formula has been incorporated in the work of some contemporary comedians. The Dada cabaret's melding of performance art, standup comedy and music is evident in the improvisations and apparent spontaneities employed by comedians." Forbes, 2017. 

 

During the pandemic, standup comedy became increasingly popular and, television platforms such as Netflix and HBO, quickly responded to their audiences likes. In popular television programs, such as SNL and The Tonight show, you can see comedians mocking political issues, sometimes searching, very evidently, for subversion of the political status quo. Standup Comedians don´t shy away from mocking and ridiculing within controversial topics, their exact craft evolves around putting yourself on a sensitive topic, creating a shock effect while navigating your critical wit around it, knowing that your audience's laughter is a direct result from having put yourself on that thin line and your capacity to balance and time yourself there perfectly. During long extended periods of lockdowns, comedians, with the lack of theatres and live performances at their availability, sought to practice and developed their craft online, and the way we engage with each other through virtual reality quickly evolved. "Social media has become a large part of how people perceive the world and those around them. It is not hard to bring up the resurgence of the Dada art movement without talking about meme culture. A TikTok video seems like an unconventional example of Dada, but Dada is both big and small actions." Love, 202.

It does seem important to realize that, while Dadaists main principles were humor and nonsense, if we look at online content, people of 2022 seem to have become experts of celebrating meaninglessness, participating in all types of online self-expressionism, mastering the ridiculing of the urgencies and neuroticisms of today's society.

 

One of today's most popular and referred Dadaist artists is the anonymous graffiti artist that goes under the name: Banksy. Known for his surprise pop up appearances of controversial graffiti's revolting against societal norms, one of his most controversial acts was him shredding his Girl with Balloon at the famous auction house in London, Sotheby´s, after it was just auctioned for 1.3€ million euro. Shredding his own artwork was an act of revolt and subversion against critics, dealers, gallery owners and museum curators whom artists depend on for their livelihood. Ironically, after the initial shock of this act of shredding the Girl with Balloon, the market adapted and the hype around his work only grew, leaving his work with an even more enhanced value of 2€ million euros.

 

So, why should the Dadaist movement return today? What could and should laughter subvert for us? How can satire and humor bring relief and critical reflection on issues of society and freedom of speech amidst the challenges we are facing? Or as Joana Rutter proposes: "How can creators today draw inspiration from their goofy perspective on rapid societal change and crusty institutions in desperate need of mockery and change?" Rutter, 2022.  

 

You might say that one of Dadaists' reasons behind its understanding and celebration of the principle of humor and nonsense was exactly, as Bakhtin proposes, to turn some of the fearful aspects of the society of its times into something grotesque and, with that, revolt against issues. One of the goals of subversive comedy and art touches on exactly this desire to address issues that it wants to rebel against. It is truly inspiring to see the bravery of the artists of 100 years ago, while revolting against the society of its times, not proposing arts necessarily firstly as a problem solver, but in the first place yes as a continuous research and development of the human voice and the importance of it to be always speaking out, express, execute artistic freedom, to digest and help digesting the absurdities of life on planet earth.

 

 

                                                                      . . . 

Chapter 7.

PREMIER // sharing outcomes

 

Program // Sinopse text: 


"In order to truly laugh, you have to take your pain, and play with it." -Charlie Chaplin

 

Salt is a journey and research on choreography, pain and critical laughter.

It is a solo, but it is also a trio. 

A tragicomedy, about a zebra, a human and a zebra humanoid trying to make sense out of each other´s presence in the same space at the same time, questionig stress, and ways to release / escape it. 

Stress is the so-called black plague of the 21st century, 

have you suffered any undesired nervousness lately?

In this absurd universe,

the presence of the different transformative characters on stage -in one body-,

is both funny yet grotesque,

and will make you travel in a celebration of chaos and order

to awkward uncomfortable corners

of an overly challenged mind. 

 

// Title of the Piece: SALT

// Name of Choreographer: Elisabeth Lambeck

// Performer & co-creator: Sara Santarvés

// Lighting Designer: Maarten van Dorp

// Costume Design & Set design consideration: Elisabeth Lambeck

// Production Staff: Frederico Dalpra (through COMMA), Elisabeth Lambeck, Sara Santérvas

// Artistic Coach: Giulio D´anna (through COMMA)

// Research Mentor: Jochem Naafs (through COMMA)

// Study Facilitator: Soosan Gillson (through COMMA)

// Music: Johann Sebastian Bach – Orpheus Chamber Orchestra – Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major, BWV 1068: II air, Goldberg Variations, BWV 988: Var. 20 a 2 Clav. & Var. 18 Canone alla Sesta a 1 Clav., Queen & David Bowie –Under Pressure

 

// Premiere; 26-May-2023, Conny Jannsen Danst studios, Rotterdam – Holland

// Duration of Piece: 35 minutes


// With this I state that the maker-choreographer of this research and work is the sole producer


// Throughout this process I have been fortunate to have rehearsal space provided by GAD, directed by Carolina Freire and Eva Ramirez, and CORPO RAIZ, directed by Catarina Feijão


// With special care and thanks to my husband, my children, my brothers and sister in laws, my very supportive friends, and my fantastic parents: Tonny and Si-Ling Lambeck

My children, Noah & Leya Lambeck Ferreira, grocery shopping; acompanying their mothers ridiculous attempts for seriousness through laughter, celebrating life, May 2022. 

TEXT DEVELOPMENT // 


Something I had intended, but have not managed fully, was to elaborate a set of five minutes of stand up comedy through a guideline of punch line writing that I had found online.

While working with overload of text, this punch line writing was always on the back of my mind though, and somehow surely must have influenced my decision making throughout.

Steps to follow while punch line writing, building up towards a standup comedy set:


1. keep a journal of funny things
2. collect the ideas after a while
3. take one specific story or happening
4. write it down what is funny about the story
5. write down what is critical about the story
6. write the happening down in details
7. start scratching what you don´t think belongs to the story or does not add to the joy
8. practice the set in front of a mirror and or with friends
9. keep on deconstructing

While I didn´t follow clearly these steps in this order, in the text development of the work, we were searching for information related to the subject that nurtured the irony of the dramaturgical development of the work, and we did experience working from a rough draft of improvisation towards defining and fine tuning, in this fine tuning it was first about taking out words, finding less words to say the same, and then finding the right timing within the pronouncation of the texts.

 

The formality of the lecture performance, allowed me easily snap bacl into text driven moments. 

 

While working with sound, it was without microphone, hard to navigate well her speech with the background soundtrack. For a continuation of this journey, I would invest in integrating a form of voice amplification. 


// INTERVIEW

Chapter 10.

CONCLUSION

  

  

To come to a better understanding of the humorist intentions within art works, I related my research to: 

 

- The Avant Garde art movement Dadaism;  

- Supported by a consideration on humor studies; 

- Freedom of speech, expression & laughter.  

 

While diving into the universe that I had marked out for myself, I allowed myself to become more knowledgeable and contextualized on subversive comedy, one of Dadaist´s main principles that, as an official movement, ended 100 years ago and has been argued is resurfacing today. 

Connecting to standup comedy, slapstick, lecture performance and visual arts, to artists such as Ricky Gervais, Charlie Chaplin, Sergiu Matis, Jérome Bel, and Alessandro Gallo, I could appreciate and nurture myself with different approaches to my craft, critique and humor; questioning, reconfirming, studying and pushing this research at service of my final performance creation, a one woman show titled: SALT.  

Salt, as in the salt of pepper, started as my symbolic reference to this research, relating it as a metaphor for myself and for humor. During the process, SALT more than a symbolic reference, became my constant reminder of this desire to use laughter as a tool to address and tackle critical issues with my work, as SALT also told me to be bold and not be afraid or ashamed of my ridicule.  

While the actual creation and more focused research process took place from February 2023 until May 2023, it was only possible to flourish as it did because it grew roots already a year before, when I was deepening my intentions and drives as an artist in public space. Through that journey, I finally confirmed and embraced the ironic undertones that always had been present in my works.

The dramaturgical playfield which I considered had both comical and critical potential were  

Stress, Zebras and Lecture performance.

Through these topics, I underwent a journey of deconstructing, that zebra humanoid that had drawn my passionate attention already since a year before. I brought her from my artistic interventions on the streets, into the studio and black box, playing with different methods all at service of seriousness and irony. Through improvisation, writing, mind mapping, coaching, interviews and playing with slapstick and standup principles, I shook up my essence, surrendered, connected to my truest fragility, and celebrated what Charlie Chaplin had taught me: 


"In order to truly laugh, you have to take your pain, and play with it." Charlie Chaplin
 

Four months is a very short time, while also contemplating the road up to this research in this RR, I realize that this research on subversive humor is only at its very beginning, looking forward for example to finally take the dive and challenge myself for standup comedy, tackling the critical circumstances of my privileged life, or studying more deeply the embodiment of a “critically funny body”, seeking to sharpen the performative qualities, that will make a work both critical and funny, or not much. I think for example, that SALT as it was presented at the premier, was not in its sharpest state yet, and needed more time and fine tuning to really go to that critical corner or edge where it could actually be called subversive comedy. 


Practicing the act of revolting against, in an artistic way and through laughter, especially in times of crisis, might be, to my opinion, one of the most challenging, yet honorable, things to do in life.   

Comedy is a powerful tool that can work through the emotional boundaries of an audience, and while pushing for creative and critical thinking it can shake up existing beliefs and touch uncomfortable, even painful truths.    

Playing with principles of Dadaism today, we celebrate the road that has been opened to us 100 years ago, and give continuity to questioning artistic ways of laughing and revolting against, practicing freedom of speech, freedom of laugher, being activists of an expressive life, celebrating humor, satire and nonsense. 

                                                   

                                                                                                     . . .  

   

   

Oficina Zero artists in Diving into Public Space - POTERE // Integrated Assignment //  Year 1 // COMMA // March 2022

Oficina Zero artists in Shop till you Drop // Project D phase 2 // Year 2 // COMMA // November 2022

Sara Santervás in SALT premier, 25 May 2023, Conny Jannsen Danst Studios, Rotterdam, Holland 

MUSIC // SOUNDTRACK of the work


The considering of the soundtrack of the work developed throughout the initial month, in which I was warming up with different types of playlists. Here I started becoming interested to work with classical music, the barok period. Classical music being a representation of western privilegism, was something that I also found appealing, and ironically representative for our neuroticism and stressed evolved society. During one of my initial rehearsals with Sara Santervás, a composition from Johannes S. Bach popped up in my playlist, and it allowed a quality in the space that I really enjoyed.

My husband, who is a classical piano teacher, explained that the Goldberg Variations had officially been written by Johannes S. Bach, to be played at Count Kaiserling´s home by Goldberg himself, during his insomnia nights. Experiencing periods of insomnia myself, due to stress, I took some of his tracks by the hand.

While in the final month leading up to the premier date, I felt very stressed, I started listening to David Bowie & Queens song Under Pressure, and hearing in this amazing song the presence of criticism and irony, got me through those last moments that I thought I was not going to be able to solve this puzzle. The decision was to use this song at the end of the performance, when the audience would be leaving the space and be contemplating what they had just seen. As if influencing the echo of their perception a little bit. 

 

Having the audience coming into a space which resonated somewhat of an exploded laboratory, I also balanced the presence of the zebra on stage with a continuous very soft nature soundtrack of chirping birds. 

 

Mariana Diroma in Diving into Public Space - POTERE // Integrated

Assignment // Year 1 // COMMA // March 2022

Sara Santervás in Agon // Prototype attempt 2 // Year 1 // COMMA // May 2022

DESIGN // STAGE & COSTUME

 

At the initial phase of creation, I was not concerned yet about the exact surrounding of this zebra humanoid character.

As the journey evolved in Februari, I connected to the idea of lecture performance and was searching to construct a performative universe that could assume a certain feeling of formality.

Seeing a lecture performance from artist and poet Jochem Naafs, I was appealed by the simple fact that he was standing part of his performance behind a lecture table on the right front side of the space,

which then made me propose the same as a possibility for mine, giving my zebra humanoid a lecture stand behind which the zebra could stand and share her speech. While playing with an improvised lecture stand at the rehearsal space of GAD, I put one night while finishing rehearsal by myself, the zebra mask, on top of a bottle of water, on top of the lecture stand. It looked at that moment as if the zebra mask had become a piece presented in a museum. I hadn´t anticipated that possibility, and really enjoyed it. This made me search for so called sokkels, that i rented in holland to  be both the lecture stand as well as the object on which a museum piece could be displayed.

 

The second prop we brought in space, very small but integrated within the work, was a mindfullness cube. I brought this cube because I had used the same over the last months, rolling her around every time feeling in need of some positive words when feeling stress. At the beginning I had actually found this cube quite enjoyable, telling me to breathe, commit, don´t give up, drink water... But at a certain moment, when in a high sense of distress, I started to feel irritated by this cube who I just wanted to tell me that I was allowed to stop, quit, give up, and drink a bottle of champaigne. I gave her to the zebra humanoid to see how she would react, turned out, she had exactly the same feelings. 

 

During play, we integrated a long bench that was in our rehearsal space, and it became meaningfull as to how it could make us travel to different circumstances, such as:

the zebra laying on a therapist coutch,

the zebra standing on top of a building ready to bunjee jump,

the zebra sitting simply in a bench. 

The bench became integrated in the performance. 

 

I had played with the idea of creating a zebra crossing in the space, and spoke about the same with the technician Maarten van Dorp. I was hesitant untill the last week to integrate the idea, mostly because of time availability for myself to actually construct that zebra crossing; but while contemplating with my artistic coach Giulio D´Anna, who showed me some of his works and his special passion to play with different types of floors, I was encouraged to pull this idea through, that afterwards became a big part of reassuring the aesthtic of the space and universe, as also the presence of irony within the set, as I made out of one linoleum dance floor roll, shiny black provided by Codarts, a zebra crossing that at a certain point faded over into a bar code. 

 

Towards Maarten van Dorp, the light designer, I had spoken about tube lights, while contemplating with the formalizing the space even more with laboratoric like lights. Maarten his enthusiasm and availability to facilitate that, resulted to me arriving one day to the performance and have 20 tube lights available to play; and together with the technicians, for the short time we had, I asked to be playfull and install the lights through the space, with the idea of an exploded laboratory.


The last intuition and giggle I allowed myself to listen to, was the presence of a doormat, that was green and looked like a square piece of grass. Because we had a couple of scenes of going in and out of the room, through a door connecting the right side of the stage, every time she re-entered, through the rapid dissociative physicality, it became unclear wether the zebra was whiping her feet, or having electrical choques. And sometimes you just don´t have another explanation then: I thought that that was incredibly funny. 

 

For the costume, inspired by the animal humanoid scultpure artist Alessandro Gallo, I understood that I wanted to work with pedestrian clothing. I had visited the premier performance space in Januari 2023, and had understood that it was a very large grey toned performance space. Within that my fluorescent pink trousers came out very well. While I was rehearsing in my hometown in Portugal, I had managed to actually be in a space where the visual and colours were quite similar to that of the premier location. Here I combined a red top of mine with my fluorescent pink trousers for the open rehearsal. Red and pink are apparantly scientifically explained, a stressor for the eye. Just that fact made me conclude that this costume would be the best to fit in. 

An important aspect is that I agreed with myself to only work with recycled materials.which in terms of props and costume was managed. 

Andrea Valenti, in Diving into Public Space - POTERE // Integrated Assignment // Year 1 // COMMA // March 2022

José Ferreira in Diving into Public Space - POTERE // Integrated Assignment // Year 1 // COMMA // March 2022

 

EMBODIMENT // THE CRITICALLY FUNNY BODY


The dissociative body

“ To be in a constant state of departure, while always arriving. To be in the future, and past, but never in the now."

 The dissociative body can also be called the stressed or fragmented body, a mind that is always in anxious anticipative mode as also in constant digesting of the past, never able to land in the now. That is, according to self-help guru Ekhart Tolle, one of the results from a stressed state of mind. I identified with this observation and felt it nurtured the physicality that I had already found but needed to deconstruct, for my performer to have the delicacy and refinement I was looking for. While diving into this physical quality in the studio, first by myself, and then halfway through with Sara Santervás, I connected to other artists that had similar qualities of movement within their works such as: Sergiu Matis, in his work Hopeless (2022), or Company La Veronal in their work Pasionara, as also Marco Goecke in one of his latest works In the Ducth Mountains; has shown this interest in fragmented, scattered, rapidly isolated, sometimes repetitive movement like state of mind.

While all the choreographers mentioned above, have clearly set their movement sequences, I immediately understood that we would not have time for that, so we prepared for being able to define a clear the state of mind of dissociative body, and improvise within the same during the performance. I was also not interested in copying their movement qualities, but looking at their works, was helpful in unravelling the possible approach I needed to achieve my specific state, and it was also encouraging to see other choreographers have an interest that was taking place in a similar universe.

Video 1:

will show you how I recognize it came to the surface the first time, while rehearsing slapstick scores, with myself in the moment I still intended the work to be performed by me. In this slapstick score, I had put myself to, firstly without mask, play a simple scene in which I would be standing at the supermarket at the Cassier and I would have forgotten my wallet. While searching for my wallet, I started making repetitive movements, back and forth, as I recognize happens, when you are confused about in which place you thought you put your money, trying to both go back in time remembering, feeling the urgency and stress of the moment because you have a line of people waiting behind you. This image had a comical potential to me as well, while diving into this moment, it became poetic and absurd, as if we could see an embodied version of stress.

 

Video 2:

will show a prolonged improvisation in the already questioned state, of Sara Santervás. Key words at that moment had become fragmentation, dissociative, always ahead, always behind, never landing, never in the now. We played with the idea, while moving, play with going backwards, and forwards, or amplify; revisiting the frame that you had just created.


Video 3:

will show you a moment I am trying a different approach to see if it might be useful for us to tackle this physicality. While feeling Sara had beautiful moments during her improvisations, we needed to find out how to hold on to that right quality, because Sara, logically, was not yet always able to nail down that right state. So, in this video, I questioned if we could be working from a clearer frame, which was a set sequence of eight pedestrian movements / moments. I wanted the character to be in a more recognizable circumstance, as had happened already in video 1, and then deconstruct, fragment, scatter, dissociate that circumstance.

 

Video 4:

will show you a moment of an excerpt from the premier, in which Sara is after a moment of laughter, overtaken by this physicality, for the first time in the performance with dissociative physicality. This dissociative physicality returns a variety of times throughout the performance, during an insomnia scene, a slamming the door scene, crossing the zebra crossing scene; intending to give a somewhat suffocating feel of never landing in the now.

 

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The sharing of this physicality was done between video 2 and video 3 while inviting artists where I live, to come watch an open rehearsal; two musicians and four dance artists. Before this open rehearsal, I was uncertain whether this physicality, within the dramaturgical line and format of the work that it was placed in, was functional and understandable, or something that the audience could engage in. While listening to the viewers feedback, I understood I had found something that was working for me. They reflected an appeal to this nervous state with which they could identify with. They said that throughout the sharing, this state became increasingly somewhat suffocating, giving the sense of longing for the interpreter to just land in the moment and stay there for a while. I personally was quite pleased with a certain sense of suffocation but became aware that in some way I needed to find breath in the general line of the work as also I needed to reassure the level of feeling of urgency that Sara needed to be in, while deepening the embodiment: while interpreting an overly busy body, she didn´t need to be concerned with showing us that she was stressed, her mind needed a rather calm state, as if her body was telling us more than her expression would reveal. I recognized that the moment she raised her eyebrows and tried to enhance the sense of stress through her expression, it did not work for me. We touched on the aspect of being and not showing, living the moment, and not overacting, tasting, and not coloring; things I find particularly important while reassuring your interpretation is honest, vulnerable while reaching different extends of virtuosity.

 

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The idea of this physicality was to find a way to allow my stressful brain to come to the surface. While during the final performance the movements could be called improvised, we had been questioning strongly how to manage this right state and right approach to the embodiment of this fragmented physicality. While the zebra humanoid was searching for ways to release stress, this approach to movement became a red line throughout the piece. During the premier I was still itchy to the delicacy and energy level I thought that needed to sharpen still, and I recognize that when continuing this journey, one of the first things I will tackle is this exact physical state, going further, going deeper, allowing the true potential of this quality to come to live in the critically funny universe I am trying to reassure

 

Zebra Laughing: 

The idea for the zebra being in a prolonged laughing state, surged from an exercise I remember I had while studying bachelor degree at Fontys, more then 20 years ago. We had been presented with a workshop of CLOWN. As a starters of the class, he made us stand in a circle, to do an exercise of laughter. Reconnecting to humor now, I revisited this exercise. I had done this exercise over the years on specific occasions, in classes, workshops, for a creation process. Finding it a joyfull energy to open up, relax, become vulnerable and courageous in the same time. I related the exercise to this research in january, while sharing my journey with my peers and core team, and proposing for them to do this exercise with me. During rehearsals I was searching for a prolonged state of laughter. Laughing, as a practice, is not easy. In her performance Laugh, by Antonia Baehr, she shows an impressive capacibility of executing the sound and embodiment of laughter. 

My first idea was to do this exercise with the audience at the beginning of the performance. Having tried out the same in my open rehearsal end of April, even though it was an incredibly joyfull moment, I also had to accept that for a general audience, this might be very intimidating and would not be of service of the work itself. 

The idea shifted to Sara / Zebra humanoid, doing this exercise in the simplest version as it is, by herself, at the beginning moments of the performance. 

Steps of exercise of laughter: 

1. Stand and open your legs in a comfortable and stable position, softly bend your knees

2. Put your hands on your lower belly

3. Breathe a couple of times to fully engage with a relaxing sensation of your body

4. Start softly bouncing, and when you feel comfortable you can give into the same a bit more

5. Release your voice while bouncing, making somwhat of a: AHAHahahaHahaha -sound Don´t force it, allow the bounce of the body and your relaxation to bring out that sound naturally

6. When you feel ready, you can increase sometimes softly the speed and see if you can engage with laughter, you can force it a little bit or it might come naturally

7. Try to continue laughing, every time you feel your sincere laughter fading out, reconnecting to the physicality, bounce bounce and release the voice. 

Mercedes Quejada in Zebra, Crossing // Prtototype attempt 2 // Year 1 // COMMA // May 2022

Oficina Zero artists in Diving into Public Space - POTERE // Integrated Assignment //  Year 1 // COMMA // March 2022

VIDEO 1 // PRESS TO PLAY

Elisabeth Lambeck in research & play // dissociative body 1 // SALT // March 2023

The tragicomic story of a premier // echoes of a restless mind

 

  

  • I wrote this part as if a vomit, in three hours. It has 3000 words. This is my most honest description of what happened on that famous day. But it is a vomit, and I didn’t allow myself to clean up the same.  

  

25 may of 2023. 

The presentation of my final performance, SALT, the supposed flourishing of my journey on trying to be smart about subversive comedy.   

SALT is a one woman show that I initially intended to perform in my birth country, the Netherlands and in a place 15 minutes away by car from where I was born, for the first time in the past 20 years. But, throughout the process, I needed to accept reality of multitasking I wasn’t able to respond to, and invited Sara Santarvés, a very talented young dancer and performer from Spain, to take my place as an interpreter, and let me focus on all the other aspects involved, that, as my mother says, I should not be acting so difficult about.   

 

Sara is excited because it is her first time performing in the Netherlands yet, on this premier day, she shows an over confidence that everything will turn out great, which, as a wanna be optimist but essentially pessimist, makes me worried. I tell myself that this is probably the next generation of artists and dancers right now: not as stressed as their ancestors, not freaking out and going over the material over and over again before finally presenting this fresh universe to its deserved audience. Sara is relaxed, and I am trying to be happy that the next generation knows better. A friend of mine, and amazing performer, said that her pre-performance nerves disappeared as soon as she had her first child; I remember performing for the first time since I had my son some years after I had received that wonderful and hopeful information, and as a shocking surprise to myself, I was extremely nervous.

  

The day prior to the premier had been a chaotic day, and I had surprised myself with my calm behavior. Sometimes I have this, when things are extreme I zone to baseline and act Zen. Just like my mother, when we were in the car driving home from Christmas Eve in 1993, with my parents in the front, and me and my brothers in the back of our Volvo. The temperature below zero in combination with snow had made the roads incredibly slippery. At a certain point, our car just started slipping around, amid the highway, and while we were turning back and forward 90 degrees, as we later counted four times, we could notice other cars doing the same, as if we were in some kind of incredibly expensive attraction park. But at that moment, when we all understood that we were probably going to crash into other cars, my mother, famous for her loud voice and an ambassador of screaming pedagogics, was silent. I might have never experienced such a silent moment before in my life. And in retrospect, I find that quite concerning, because apparently our first instinctive reaction to a moment where there is a good probability that we will get hurt, we didn’t tell each other how much they were loved, no, we just shut up. We all came out without a scratch and were granted time to improve. 

 

That’s how I was the day before the premier. Managing the buildup of my own set design, giving support to my peers who, as like myself, had been scheduled two hours of set up, meeting the technician Maarten van Dorp who was in charge of setting up the stage, lights, projectors, microphones, boxes, wires, props, while we communicated and spaced our dancers, reviewed the light plan, assured the soundtrack and do a run. 

 

I love last minute difficulties; I have had a couple of happenings in my life that I was proud of my reaction and behavior while in enhanced moments of pressure. One of my proudest moments must have been while dancing in Conny Jannsen Danst, the production Vuil & Glass, a site specific performance. It was the third or fourth performance, and my parents had come to watch. The day before, three of my good friends were there to come watch me, I say good, because they were the only ones who ever told me honestly about my true value in Dance. After the performance, their non Das Arts feedback was that I was looking all the time around, and so insecure. But Conny had told us the day before that we should look more around to reassure we were dancing at the same pace as the others. I find myself preparing for another performance, my parents are in the audience, and I am contemplating how I can look around, but also not. The performance is in the entrance hall of a big disposal/trash factory. It is an impressive space, and Conny has used all corners of it, we even use the big entrance door. By the way, did you know that you can get used to any kind of smell, no matter how bad, except for the smell of a dead body? That’s what we heard that week leading up to the premier, from the people working in that place. I didn’t have so much to dance in the performance. It is logical probably; I was a apprentice, who looks too much around. Midway through the performance, there happens the most unfortunate of things, Yuri, Conny´s jewel dancer, crashes into another dancer and is laying down backstage on the floor with his head bleeding. Things happen quick, but I see that the performance is continuing, and understand that if Yuri does not stand up quickly, there will be an important empty place in the part where there are five duets dancing at the same time. I wasn’t normally in that part, I had been rehearsing it a bit in the back of the studio. And at that moment, I decide to just run in. My colleagues excited and supportive to see me in Yuri’s place, as I dance his part with Inken, she talks me through the dance reassuring I can accompany. This is not a rehearsal: “yeah, that´s it, now go right, left, ok down, my leg, yes! Jump! Run away, I´m coming, watch out, and flyyyyyyyyyyyy”. My parents after the show were delighted, “You danced so much! And that ambulance that came into the space through that back doooor, how amazing!” Conny was also very content, but she didn’t offer me a contract after. I still don’t know why the performance didn’t just stop.

But tonight, I am in Conny´s house, again! After 20 years, I am back to where I left a hero, without a contract.   

 

Maarten looks very bad. He is in physical pain because there is a big problem with his knee, and he is pushed in further mental distress because he feels incredibly overloaded with all the logistics he needs and wants to respond to. I am Zen. I don’t like to give people a tough time, and I can really empathize with people feeling stressful, my performance is about that. So, I tell Maarten that everything is going to be fine. I tell him to take a break, he hasn’t had lunch yet. And when he comes back refreshed, we set up my work and are excited about the result. The lights look great together with the zebra crossing, the grass mat at the door and the other objects. While running the work he tries to instantly create the light plan, and I hear the other technicians who are helping and are sitting in the audience seats watching the rough draft of the performance, laughing very loudly. That is good. This is supposed to be a funny piece.   

 

So, this has settled me in for the day of the premier. I am also feeling confident, not as much as Sara, but I am calm and have time to buy fruits, nuts, and sweets for everyone present. I printed the 50 programs in the morning, and the FPDD, an important document for two other peers. I take my time to review the spacing with Sara, but I decide to not give any further corrections or reminders, she has heard enough. She just must settle in and allow this journey to become also truly her own. I can be a bit of a control freak. 

  

While asked by my peers if I can be the one talking with the videographer that will come to film our work, I talked with her and her apprentice through every performance about the placing of the cameras, the angles, and the timing of the performances during the night. After the whole explanation, the videographer asks what will be served for dinner, because they will be taping during that period. Now, I am originally Dutch, so I can totally understand her question as also, of course, I am a big defender of employer's rights but, having lived in Portugal for the last 15 years, dinner is served, especially in the weekends, after 21h. So, it is a surprising issue. But I make sure I act in what I believe, good employers' circumstance. One of the technicians, the one with the great sense of humor, tells me that there is some Roti Chicken left in the fridge from the day before. And as I am running to the kitchen ten minutes before the first performance, I am happy to see that there are enough left for two hungry videographers, and make sure to put it aside with their names on top of it.   

 

Running back to the theatre, I can see that the audience is already aligned for the first performance. Mine is the third. I join Sara backstage, give her a big hug, and forget to give her the Toi toi toi that I screamed to my mother to buy and bring me straight before the performance this morning.   

 

I am nervous now. Zen is gone. Stomach is bubbling. 

From behind the side door, I can hear that in the second performance, there seems to be a party going on. The audience is screaming and cheering. I hope I can consider this a good warm up for mine.

 

Once I was asked to warm up the performance of a blues band, when I was working in Dancetheatre Nurnberg. It was a concert by a good friend of mine, and he had shown me how in blues, they have these speakers that come on stage before, a bit like standup comedians maybe, and they cheer up the crowd, having them all pumped up before the band comes on. I had watched those videos many times, and my friend was sure I would do great. All I needed to do was just to scream to the audience: "EVERYBODY HAPPYYYYYYY! We were all very excited to be able to welcome to the stage today…" And I forgot the name of the band... I blocked. Totally blocked. I forgot the name of the people I was invited by to announce them to their enthusiastic audience. The face I remember the most in the crowd, was of another good friend of mine who, while I was blacking out on stage and having what must have been 30 seconds' silence, also froze with me. We just stared into each other's eyes. That is the second most silent moment of my life.   

 

Back to my premier. The audience keeps on sending out amused sounds from the other side of the door and then, all of a sudden, we finally are set for my performance, all the audience leaves the space for us to set up SALT. 

Set up goes smoothly and quickly. I make sure all is double checked, and when Sara sets in, I say the audience can come back into space. When walking to my place, I see another person sitting on my seat in front of the sound, next to Maarten. It is Rodrigo. I had already seen him in the afternoon, he is the today hired sound technician, but he wasn’t there yesterday, and he didn’t tell me he would be sitting in my place, to run my own soundtrack that he didn’t check.

He is actually an ex-student of mine, who after finishing his studies with me, continued his studies in Codarts and after having graduated as a dancer, also started working as a technician. I know he is smart in technical stuff. When he was 17 and under my supervision in the dance school where I worked, he hacked the school informatics system and managed to enter it, a story I will never be able to tell about myself. 

I am the opposite of technical and technological. I get nervous from the power button already. Essential information that I would like you to settle in, as you appreciate this online research catalogued version of SALT that I created all by myself. You might be unimpressed with how interactive I made this all be, but doing this for me, is like a fish trying to walk on land, or a bungee jumper trying to jump off a low building, or cat trying to attack an elephant. You know, my ten-year-old son knew earlier than me how to make a power point. I hope this information settles in well as you are contemplating the value of this work.   

 

So, Rodrigo, the sound technician that knows much better then me how to deal well with technological equipment, quickly is hired as my sound technician button pusher. I will give him the signals for when to change or stop tracks to play. Not having to touch a computer is one less worry for me.  

 

Sara is sitting on her place, and I see the audience walking in, first my parents, then two of my very tall uncles. Even for Dutch, they stand out of the crowd. I am touched they come to see my final performance, it is truly kind, but I am a little bit concerned that they will enjoy and appreciate it.

I sincerely am worried if this performance will go well, the danger of playing with an evidently ridicule image of a human with a zebra mask, is that it can quickly become not much more than just a bad joke if not executed in delicate manner. All I worked for this period was to travel beyond that. That joke that is not just a joke but pushes further critical thinking. 

As I am contemplating this, I see Sara who is sitting on the sokke/lecture table with the zebra mask on her head, and she is waving at the audience. What is she doing? I look again, she is waving to the audience that is entering and sitting down and looking at her, and she is also making peace signs. I got nervous because I thought that was not what we had agreed. We spoke about, when the audience enters, you calmly sit on the table, and you shift your position a couple of times, looking calmly around you, rather an introspective mood. In the last rehearsals before the performance this worked perfectly. Now she is a bit over the top. We can call this in retrospect also a lack of leadership from Elisabeth Lambeck, that needed to reassure her interpreter that she really knew what I intended. 

But Sara, she is such a generous interpreter, that she will always be concerned with handing you out new ideas, running just the extra mile. It is not illogical, she has literally been problem solving with me throughout the last week, brainstorming to last minute decision making that I felt was really needed to get this work up to the level it was worthy of. Sara is in the state of mind of problem solving, but she should not be solving any problems anymore, everything is fixed, it is a done deal, but I forgot to tell to remember her that. The last audience walks in, it is my older brother. He is a tax lawyer but was supposed to become a brilliant filmmaker. I take his opinion very highly. He doesn’t like contemporary dance at all though.  

 

As everybody finally sits down, the performance starts. 

“Don’t press play immediately” I whisper to Rodrigo. 

“The sound, for now, will stay the same..” 

Sara gets off her table and starts walking around to throw the mindfulness dice. 

During rehearsal I told her it is funny if she walks once maybe a little bit sexy. Now she is walking sexy all the time. Zebra-humanoid is acting like a diva, she came out of the closet, but I wish she would be just a little bit shyer. 

 

Then the performance goes reasonably. I am feeling the nerves quite high though because I am aware that because the energy of the beginning was differently pitched than I had intended to, the audience is on a different track. She starts with an important scene in which she has to start doing a laughing exercise. A difficult moment because Sara, needs to release, bounce, naturally led sound come out of her bounce, release her diagram and then smoothly slip out any type of giggle and exploring the physical and vocal act of laughter. We have been trying to find ways to reassure the right feel, and at times she manages to find the right softness needed for this moment, the nervousness challenging her to calm her voice down. The performance continues, it is going reasonable.

Another important moment, a penis joke. 

Had to put it in, I read an academic article about penis jokes a long time ago and although I can’t find it back, it had something to do with a penis joke combined with a highly sensitive political issue, and how the standup comedian in that moment managed to surrender all of its audience, the part of the audience that come for the easy laugh and loves penis jokes, and the part of the audience that wants to be challenged and likes to laugh about critical issues. 

My penis joke is unfortunately not political. Zebra is taking a zip off her bottle of water, after the laughter, as if watering her mouth before starting her speech. 

But then, as the bottle goes deep into the throat of the mask, reaching the mouth of the human hidden under, it looks as if the zebra is giving an oral stimulation to the    water bottle. And as any dirty mind would, she explores that idea just a little, and starts laughing again. 

It works, people are laughing generously, even, one of my colleagues daughter, as she later told, thought it was incredibly funny to see the zebra drinking water so passionately.

 

Laughing gives confidence to the performer. I experienced a couple of times performing funny performances or scenes in front of different audiences, and laughter is addictive. Once laughter has been your response, you kind of don’t want anything else. But I had audiences super silent at moments that in other countries the audience was breaking the house. Germany is my favorite performing country. Lisbon is the worst. From personal experience… No, programmers are the worst, it takes a circus or a brilliant political penis joke to make them move.

 

I am satisfied with the delicacy of the dissociative body that Sara is managing. 

Her energy remains a little bit high, but that is normal, it is a premier, and she has a lot of last week decision making to deal with. 

We almost come to a scene I am very fond of. It landed perfectly during the last week of rehearsal. 

It is a scene where Sara sits on the bench and speaks about how zebras sleep very light, while standing, because of safety. Only when there are many other zebras around, one might lay down. I link this story to the insomnia story of the Goldberg variations. How J.S. Bach composed the Goldberg variations, to be performed by Johann Gottlieb Goldberg, in the antechamber of Count Kaiserling, while he was having insomnia nights, wouldn’t you have want to be there to see that happening? 

Maarten, at that moment, designed the light for the first time in a spot, only Zebra humanoid and the bench are now visible. Then, there will appear the only extended silent scene in which we see the zebra humanoid in dissociative physicality changing positions to sleep, as if having an insomnia night. This is one of the few moments of the performance that the audience has space to breathe, and really falls into an extended image, while listening to a calm and soothing heartbeat. But before this can happen, as soon as Sara is lying on the couch/bed, the light goes on and the music for the next track is put to play. I shockingly look next to me whispering sharp but not hearable for the audience sitting 50cm away from me as I can: 

“No no, Maarten, not yet not yet! Rodrigo, no stop, stop, go to the other track!” 

And as they are pushing many buttons of the computer because it is not so easy to go back, I see Sara problem solving as she jumps along with the music into the next scene, where she is going bungee jumping. She is screaming her text, which is correct, but 5 minutes to early. They manage to find the button, and the music shifts to the scene before, but Sara has her zebra mask on, and I think she doesn’t realize that they went back to the former track because she is screaming. I look at it for five long painful seconds and then tell the technicians that they had better go forward again with the performance, next track…should I have stopped the performance?

“Is it bad?” – asks Rodrigo when Sara is finally aligned with the music,

“We only erased five minutes of my final performance” – I say. 

We don’t speak, just look, at Zebra. 

I can’t be angry with Rodrigo; he was not there yesterday. I can't be angry with Maarten; he was in profound pain yesterday and still today, and he had too many tasks to tackle. He has done a wonderful job with the stage; I really like it. 

But the rest I see in Zen mode. I am silent. 

The rest of the performance continues. Sara saves herself very well, and there are still some beautiful moments. In the end though, Maarten forgets the order of lights that he needs to black out. Instead of blacking out everything around Sara first and then Sara;  

Zebra humanoid is the first that he makes disappears, 

and then the zebra crossing, 

and then the bench, 

and then the lecture stand, 

and then the pile of tube lights, 

and then, 

while we still hear Sara singing a Spanish lullaby, 

we see there is only one light left, 

on the green grass foot mat at the right back door of the stage. 

... 

Everybody is looking at it. 

 

What is she trying to say with this? 

Is she trying to say that we should always wipe our feet when we come home? 

Does she want to tell us we need to become more natural? 

Wiping feet on a green grass foot mat releases stress? 

Is there going to grow a green flower out of that grass matt now? 

 

What do you think? Ever had a premier that went so tragically? 

  

At least I don’t have a professional video taping of this performance, because the videographer forgot to check if her apprentice put her camera on the right focus, which it didn’t because they did not have much time to set up, because they were eating their Roti Chicken.   

  

I am profoundly proud of Sara and hope she will continue this journey with me as I aim to project SALT into the future now. 

She has been profoundly generous, a very talented young performer and collaborator, and even though the story that I am telling here might not reveal the most flattering moments of her journey with me, 

I hope we still have many more years to come to work together, 

and laugh about this wonderful day, 

that we were trying to tell something incredibly special 

 
 

about  

 
 

 
 

 a green grassed foot mat.  

(next research?)

 

VIDEO 2 // PRESS TO PLAY

Sara Santervás in research & play // dissociative body 2 // SALT // April 2023

GO   BACK   TO   THE   RED   LINE! 

VIDEO 3 // PRESS TO PLAY

Sara Santervás in research & play // dissociative body 3 // SALT // May 2023

VIDEO 4 // PRESS TO PLAY

Sara Santervás in premier //

dissociative body 3 // SALT // May 2023

LINE

// REFERENCES 

 

  • Kramer, C. A. (2015). Subversive Humor [Doctoral Dissertation, Marquette University]. 

  • Twain, M. (1915). The Mysterious Stranger. Harper & Brothers. 

  • [Situations]. (2020, May 7). Out of time Out of place, Public Art NOW [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSmcW87JuAI&ab_channel=Situations 

  • Bishop, C. (2012). Artificial Hells, Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship. Verso. 

  • Hopkins, D.(2004).Dada and Surrealism:A very short introduction, Oxford University Press Inc., New York. 

  • Love, Idalis (2020). Why 2021 Will See a Resurgence of the Dada Art Movement, The Collector. https://www.thecollector.com/dada-art-movement-resurgence/ 

  • Forbes, A. (2016). Nihilistic light entertainment and metamorphic linkages: Dada and contemporary comedy. 

  • Rutter, Joana(2022). Why we are due for a Dadaism Comeback. Web flow, blog.https://webflow.com/blog/dadaism 

  • Frankle, V. E., dr. (1992). A Man´s search for meaning. Beacon Press. 

 

// RECOURSES 

  • (2012, November 20). Philosophy of Humor. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/humor/ 

  • Bakhtin, M. (1984). Rabelais and His World. Indiana University Press Bloomington.  

  • Sapolsky, R. M., dr (1994). Why Zebra´s Don´t get Ulcers (3rd ed.). A HOLT Paperback, Henry Hold and Company, New York. 

  • Scranton, Roy (2020). Why do we cling to Art in apocalyptic times? Art in America 

  • Haakenson, O., Thomas (2021). Grotesque Visions, The science of Berlin Dada. Bloomsbury 

  • Klein, Barbara (2020). Art in The Time of Crisis. https://carnegiemuseums.org/carnegie-magazine/summer-2020/art-in-the-time-of 

 

CODA

 

SALT is ongoing research about choreography and critical humor.  

 

While this report is a marking point that can be represented as a certain ending, I see it mostly as a launching place, having the moreprofound contextual, theoretical, and methodological playfield and findings become the fertile soil for my ongoing questions and excitement about  

subversive comedy and art.  

 

SALT was,in the simplest explanation of this journey, my search to  

become both funnier and more critical in my craft. 

 

Examining Dadaism, humor studies and freedom of speech, gave me more confidence, in the first place; to become bolder inallowing humor, ridicule, and sarcasm to be present in my intuitive decision making, while Charlie Chaplin helped me to reassure the seriousness and honesty of my work, by celebrating my own vulnerability:  


“To truly laugh, you must take your pain and play with it.” Charlie Chaplin 

 

 The dialogues with my artistic coach, research mentor, and an interview with a professional circus, theatre, and streetclown, allowed me to take my seriousness and ridicule by the horns, tackle and deconstruct: 

Stress, zebras, and lecture performance. 

 

Connecting toslapstick comedy, some of its methods, made me become more sensitive in finding forms of embodiment, delicacy, and exaggeration.BothStandup comedyand my assistingof lecture performances, encouraged me to become sharper, truly focus and take out noise in the texts of my final performance.But also connecting to artists from other visual art forms was essential, especially the work of sculpture artist Alessandro Gallo, who creates animal humanoid figures, made me be able to fully embrace and trust that the main character of my piece,  

a zebra humanoid,  

had a story worthy to explore and tell.  

 

Through Research Catalogue, I designed a universe in which all the different layers of this process could be experienced textually, visually, and by listening. Research Catalogue allowed me to take some of the playfulness and boldness that I had nurtured into my artistic practice, onto the screen, and be able to invite my guests to a more immersive, hopefully joyful journey of the tragicomic, absurd universe that eventually became known as SALT.  

 

 SALT was born in a time of crisis; 

Did you know that stress is the so-called black plague of the 21st century? Have you experienced any undesired tension lately? Salt is an absurd universe, that will make you travel in a celebration of chaos and order to the awkward and uncomfortable corners of an overly challenged body and mind, trying desperately to find ways to

release stress, ... 

through laughter? 


        

 

 

. . .