Artists’ work is divided between performers performers and creators. Some do both, but I will discuss this in a moment. An interesting aspect to consider is that related to “Research.”.
How often do we hear that young Italian researchers, not finding jobs or adequate pay, go abroad? How often do we hear about a brain drain from Italy? Well this discussion point can also apply to art and dance specifically.
Choreographers, performers and researchers: the hidden side of ( our) artistic work
But what does Research mean, in dance and theater in general? The dancer (let’s use the general for all genres), performer, movement composer normally, apart from the compulsory class, goes alone in a studio to look for a quality of movement, a language, which can be classical, contemporary, performance, so much in recent years in street dance and interprets an idea or music to try new figures.
We do not exclude in speaking those who study “repertoire” in the hall.
These performers, do a form of research in themselves or outwardly in aesthetics, fashion, repertoire to improve their interpretive skills and thus produce or put themselves in a position to produce personal work or be chosen by choreographers.
The choreographer, and even more so the director/choreographer, is faced with situations that he or she must evaluate and develop: have I had an idea, and do I want to stage it? Am I commissioned to do a dance or ballet work? Do I need to direct an opera?
The path is often similar. I have to come up with a general idea of what I would like to do, create a dramaturgy of the work I would like to present, answer the question “why would I want to perform it this way?” and then start working to collimate all these ideas and questions with an end result that could and should go on stage and possibly please the audience.
All these hurdles, steps, questions, are built into that word search. Typically between the “blank sheet of paper and the first point from which a line, a curve, a word, an idea is born and the finished product a year to a year and a half passes if the work is commissioned, much longer if it is a dream of a freelance choreographer who has an insight and wants to put it on stage.
What should be done then? Research. The creative artist is a researcher on par with scientific ones. And on par with those, often as we shall see, he expatriates to other places. It is necessary to get inspirations, how?
Personally, I draw a lot of images from nature, I walk around a lot in markets and watch how people move, act, talk, look at each other, fight, and then I bring it all back to books and image research. I go to exhibitions, museums, movies, but then I always go back to books. Today, I admit, we also have the Internet, which helps us to see images that would be difficult to reach. But then, like Kandinsky whom I have already mentioned, we go in front of a blank sheet of paper and start drawing the first lines, which become curves and then words, sentences, speeches, in which we recognize ourselves and become our basic idea.
From here the research has just begun. All those ideas have to be put into a project that has to be proposed to people, producers, artistic directors who have to approve it and give us funds to make it happen. Look for theaters willing to put it on stage or to produce it into a film, Then you have to look for collaborators, set designers, costume designers, lighting designers to whom it has to be illustrated and who will in turn look for and give us their ideas, which after often very long discussions, will have to collimate with ours. When all this is concluded, the research will begin as with dancers on what to do and why to do a step, a movement, why to interpret a word in one way or another.
Then, by the time we get to the theater, all that has been decided is challenged by the fact that the performers, themselves self-creators, have their own characters, culture, elective abilities, and thus will give us new ideas and possibilities for reflection.
I was in Ancona some time ago with the celebrated Soprano Mariella Devia. We paused during a rehearsal, together withl baritone Luca Salsi at the beginning of his splendid career, on why to get closer or farther apart during a farewell, which in Verdi’s opera La Traviata is repeated several times. We spent about two hours talking about why and how best to develop two minutes of music and the subsequent human and personal outcome, which after four hours of rehearsal, was beautiful.
Today all of this is somewhat distorted by social media. Far be it from me to say that they are negative, but they should be used well. Today, precisely, impromptu producers, artistic directors borrowed from other activities or traded in a “political” way make use not of experience or knowledge of the subject matter in question, but by the number of followers or the cost they are willing to spend, which is always less than those who came before them to show their skills. So those who are better at selling their image, those who have made a profession out of it, or those who come out of TV fantasy programs with a world of likes every time they post, are chosen at the expense of the professionalism of those who have experienced all aspects of the profession.
Performers, therefore, having difficulty receiving work, have now created a second business of creating themselves and advance with that. A great many dancers are choreographers of their own personal style of dance that rightly only they can perform to perfection, and they create specific posts in which they propose themselves on social media first, and to employers later, as choreographers, some times directors and artistic directors of their work.
One more aside, allow me. For some future work I have opened a casting call just these days. Well, I am looking for dancers but in the resumes of those who apply, you almost never find artistic training, only links to their videos in the various platforms, and the vast majority of them are choreographers. Now I wonder, given the dearth of work, but where do all these choreographers find work?
And so “researchers” flee abroad. Sometimes out of sheer necessity, sometimes by choice, but almost always they manage to find a path of professionalism and professionalism. Many of us do not work in Italy, or very little at least, and do our work abroad either as performers or creators.
We used to call the old choreographers the “dinosaurs” because their point of view in our view was obsolete and we were pawing to have our say. Today it is much quicker and more immediate to move from one qualification to another, and perhaps we have become the dinosaurs. But one thing I want to say: i old” Dinosaurs” have taught me that research, curiosity, experience, are the basis of this work and wanting to start too young, without experience in the field, but only on social media does not create a job but burns out stages and burns talents that surely could develop in the future.
