MindScan 2004-05

These thoughts are written out of my notebook, in which I write what I am doing and what comes into my mind.

Second Rehearsal Week of Compass for Fools
I rehearse every day in the Korzo Theatre in The Hague with four dancers: Cyril Baldy, Isabelle Chaffaud, Martha Krumennacher and Mohan Thomas. The premiere of my dance piece will be 3 November 2004 in the Korzo Theatre.
31.8.04.
For the different quality concerning the four cardinal points (North, South, West, and East), I came up with these four emotions that can trigger the qualities of movements: joy, angry, and manipulative, dreamy. These qualities came out being in a good relation, dynamic wise, when we put them in a form of exercise. I tried different possibility of formation: one behind the other, a trio with one in front facing the trio, in a square all facing in, always with different qualities. The image of unity of a group is strong when all the protagonists are following one person.
1.9.04
The recurrent question came again: What does an artist want to communicate through his work?
I found out this morning that I couldn’t choreograph with jeans. The scene behind the decors of aluminium is interesting. There is another space behind it and the use of the aluminium to shape the faces is really nice. There are like traces of beings, like ghosts, semi-real. What about the four corners? Shall I choose four hanging special lamps?
2.9.04
This morning I found a new formula. What I want to communicate can be defined in three parts: aesthetical, theatrical, and spiritual. Aesthetical for forms, sounds, movements, rhythm, dynamics. Theatrical for interaction, communication, humanisation. Spiritual for energy and concentration, tuning, channelling each other’s energy.
3.9.04
Disorientation and acceleration are the target for the phrases of today. What are the different meanings of the word ‘art’ in different periods and different places around the world? To define yourself, the question seems to be: Where I am, and not: Who I am? In order to know who I am, I need to know where I am, according the surrounding. The Arnhem module ‘mind map/body models’ raises those questions. I think those are good philosophical questions.
4.9.04
Is there a kind of fundamentals in theatre composition and dramaturgy? For instance in the physic fundamentals there are seven forms, which all the others are made of. I am wondering if such a thing exists, like a possible form of theatrical structure.
I saw in the movie The Passion of the Christ (by Mel Gibson). What strikes me the most is the perfection of the plot and the dramaturgy. One against all, the doubts, the traitor, the sacrifice, the resurrection.
One basic model could be the structure of the day, from sunrise with its rhythms, activity, acceleration, then siesta, dinner, till sunset. In a theatre, after the black out comes the light on the stage and a new world appears. I think this is the starting point of the magic of theatre; a lot is in this moment of expectation, in this silence and black out before the curtain opens. The emotional contents of what is expressed through the performers are also expressed by the structure of the work. Structure-contents-communication. Dance is a medium to be experienced in the here and now as a whole and is allowing the visible and the invisible to coexist, letting a little miracle to happen.
5.9.04
We are now two weeks into this work. We touched a lot of things. I try to tune the group into a common awareness of the body. To say common is wrong because, thanks God, we are all different. But I am passing tools that are there to help to explore the movements, and the idea we have from them. We need to shape the emotional content of each scene in the next weeks.
To find a mood and to know in which situation we put ourselves seems to help. I wanted to use paintings of Marc Chagall as a starting point of exploration today, for its colours and poetry, but we didn’t make it.
How much body does dance need? I went to the workshop and forum organized by Krisztina de Châtel in Amsterdam. I like the idea that the mind is the body. The audience is not only a pair of eyes and an analyst, but a whole body. To demonstrate that the idea of the soul from Plato is only a concept, an entity, which is not the body and therefore immortal, was really interesting. The same for René Descartes who had to solve the problem of God and science. He introduced the body-mind dualism with his ‘I think, therefore I am’. This ‘I’, which is an analyst, is disconnected from the body. I guess, it was good for the development of science in the 17th century, but today it creates more problems than it is solving them. Regarding this workshop I will read perhaps The Feeling of what Happens (Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness, New York 1999) by Antonio Damasio.

Third Rehearsal Week
6.9.04
Here are still some notes about body and mind. Until the 1980s abstraction was the main stream before witnessing the re-apparition of the body, like Miss Orlan, French performer artist, who has since May 1990 undergone a series of plastic surgical operations to transform herself into a new being, modelled on Venus, Diana, Europe, Psyche and Mona Lisa. The body gained again visibility, but which mediated body are we talking about? The body is a mediator; it expresses the meaning you want to give. We produce bodies, what ever it is; then your mind sees a body, whatever it is. We can be obsessed by limitations, but we can also celebrate them. Virtuosity is a response from our will to the limitations of our body. Too much freedom is probably counter productive.
With Compass for Fools I am now to the point where a lot becomes a question of frame. Frame and not freeze, that is my point for now. Did we create a separation of mind and body to experience a feeling of synthesis or unity? My reaction to this question of the philosopher Henk Oosterling is: my experiences of feelings of unity or synthesis are coming when my whole being feels good, when everything makes sense, when I feel in harmony with myself, my town, my country, my world. On purpose I put the ‘my’. Is that a projection of my mind? No, somehow I do experience it through all my cells. This is not rational. I see a lot of things irrational in our world. Why this true feeling of this irrational thing should not be rational for me, as a real experience?
Body and mind, bound together in the movement, in the physical action with dancers, athletes or actors always fascinate me. There are many ways to connect to your own body, but I come back again to the importance of awareness of our own body. The lack of it is widespread in our society. My body is full of history.7.9.04
Today I want to explore a new way of communication. That means to find a sort of conversation, a sort of codified language. For the qualities I thought of joy-seduction, anger, manipulation, being dreamy-receptive. About the range I thought of big, small, fastissimo, slow motion. The frame is always within the idea of communication: angry to find each other again, happy to see each other again, manipulative with one other, being spiritually connected.
Another idea is the focus: looking for an external object that you cannot grab and by opposition looking for something inside yourself, to find it, and to rebound on a new orbit. The idea of orbit is part of the idea that we are in a web or field of different energy and that we can connect to any of the strings or fields. It is like come into the traffic; you have to adapt you own speed in order not to crash. This adjustment is made very quickly. We did rotation movements, and the key to do it is to loose your focus continuously.
8.9.04
Yesterday I spook with a physician/chemist (Ugo Lafont) to find out what could be the links between physic and chemistry and choreography. The geometry of the molecules is interesting, but the quality of their connection is even more: the five different links go from super tight to super loose. There are four fundamentals forces in the universe. We can also call it energy: gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear strong, and nuclear weak. This is great for imaging different fields of gravity, not necessary the one of our earth, and to play with different magnetic forces. The atom has seven orbits where the electrons can move. Those orbits are always there and they are the only ways or places to travel. I liked that very much because it is like the web I am describing above. Every electron that moves between those seven orbits is bouncing from one orbit to the next one, instantaneously.
9.9.04
What matters is the “happening” between at least two persons, objects, or souls. Starting from the idea that we are going somewhere. The matter is not where I go to, but what the relation I create with my future destination is. In order to know ‘who I am and where I go’, I need to know where I am now related to my surrounding. So this relation, communication, discussion with my surrounding is providing me the ‘who I am and where I go’. The “happening” in between is one key; this exchange is a real thing. Can I replace “thing” with energy?
10.9.04
Today we experienced physical manipulation of ourselves. I think we should put our attention on the meaning of the word ‘fools’, since we did it already for ‘compass’ and ‘the number 4’.
11.9.04
I want to do the scene of the boat, a tight scene with my choreographic phrases. The idea is to be stuck together in a reduced surface and wanting to escape or to influence the group to go into the direction you want to go. I have been busy with all kinds of ways to generate material and qualities until now, but starting tomorrow I have to add clarity of what I desire to develop. I think that it is about shifting my way of thinking a scene, to make a previsualisation of the finished scene, even if the result is at the end different. It will help me to communicate my idea to the dancers.
Sixth Rehearsal Week
27.9.04
We dropped the word ‘showing’. We replaced it with ‘open doors’. The fear of Cyril is to have to show something, and to have to freeze the creative process. I agree completely with him, but in the other hand it is healthy to organize yourself to be able to show a sequence of scenes. When do I want to freeze the process of research and make a statement of what I want and what feels right? Never actually! My dream would be that we are continuing experiencing the here and now on a performance level without freezing anything, just playing with intentions and cues and energy.
28.9.04
Leo Spreksel, Stacz Wilhelm and Johanna Korgel, director and production manager of Korzo theater, came for the internal open door. I realize that we have about one hour of material. The piece should be around 50 minutes. What came out seems to be high energy, Martha got Billy Forsythe’s style out of here body, the boat scene looks like an alien in this work. We need to find rest and an empty moment to let grow the wish of the next scene, in another sense more poetry. When a scene has its rights to exist, you can accept it as it comes. We have now about fifteen scenes! I have to be ready to drop probably some ideas/scenes. I need to open the work, the dancers to the spectator. I cannot escape this question. You put things you do not know yourself and it grows on its own. I will have to look further in the articulation and the development of the scenes. Isabelle needs this exchange of mutual attention during the work; she calls it an exchange of energy.
29.9.04
As warm up I felt today that we have to come back to the basics: breathing, t’ai chi energy, copying exercise. It is about time to work with Isabelle. We need to do here solo. The starting point is a fading memory and liberation. Again she does not want to move just to move, without intention. We will find something superb for here. It is already here; we just need to discover it together. The ending idea where the dancers are coming in the audience and take a seat just to watch together an empty space, is popping out of my mind again.
30.9.04
I saw the premiere of Ton Simon (Blue Dance) and it is illustrating perfectly what Bianca van Dillen in the composition module is teaching. I saw some very nice floor work, a lot of lights cues and a good sense of using the music. When I see an evening like that, I see tradition and history. This ‘savoir faire’ will probably survive and in fifty years from now I surly see some works in this tradition, because it does work. The duet work is very Kylián like, if I can make such comparison, with complicated grips and freezes. The use of plain colours for the backdrop showed again the strength of the colour itself, like a painting of Yves Klein or Mark Rothko. So I enjoyed this alternation of read and blue with a pink floor. The dance itself was lyrical. Some like it very sweet! I could see that the dancers were creative during the creation and also motivated. The first part (Sleepless Night) was a mix of Merce Cunningham, Maurice Béjart, and George Balanchine, an octet with all the different possible combinations, with 1970s music and finishing with classical string music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, coming after an annoying drum; well done.
1.10.04
We tried the Plexiglas sword in the real space for the scale. The so-called swords are two meter long, but I think that will work. We will put a halogen lamp on top of those four tubes, hanging in the four corners. We shifted from the first idea, but I think it can be beautiful.
It costs 400 Euros. If you want to try an idea you have to invest and if we do not use it, you will get probably some blame. These are all questions concerning the set designer. Well, we are the set designers. Questions about the costume came out: skirt, no skirt, short or long sleeves and so on. I leave that for Asalia Khadjé, the costume designer. For Isabelle’s solo at the end, she could leave some cloths behind, to leave here old skin behind here.
We had also an evaluation about the composition course of Bianca van Dillen. It is delicate to teach and interfere in the making of, to show new views or help someone else, but overall it has been a rich experience, involving different aspects of the human nature. My request was to work at the dramaturgy. The piece I did, Expectation, was about six minutes. The time was not stretched enough to work the dramaturgy in this time frame. Dramaturgy is a question of timing and elements combined together. The element I had, but not the length of the time.
2.10.04
Today we had meeting with Asalia, the costume designer and Saori Kakizawa, my music adviser in a café, one after another. We agree for the costume design. Saori came with a lot of work to be done. We made today with Amos Ben-Tal two tracks of music: some nice bass and guitar sounds. I am thinking about this table scene, the boat scene. Shall I keep the table? How can we integrate this new element in the piece? What about lamps under the table? We could put the LED technology lamps (small strong lamps working with battery) and also a circle under the table. It is funny how in the process the circle and the LED lamps are coming again but in a different scale. The first idea was to make a circle of four meters of diameter, but then what to do with it? These little lamps were also in the focus and the question was where to put them: behind the aluminium wall or on the four cables supporting the four lamps? Now it is all back: under the table. We keep the table.
Seventh Rehearsal Week
4.10.04
I wrote for today: dramaturgy is about timing. Is that right? I think dramaturgy has to do with the contents and how we choose to express these contents and of course then, how we time it.
5.10.04
We start from a so to call hypothesis of work. We are creating a space where the possible and the improbable can play together and blossom out. We are looking now for an opening, to welcome the public on the stage and make them do simple things, to let them touch on what we are working during the piece. Overall, in Compass for Fools the relations are rough. I am missing some moment of simplicity. My copying exercise is about energy and not about copying movement. One thing we did not touch is how we enter and exit from a scene.
6.10.04
I need to come more prepared in the studio. We start first with the exercises and then we go for the scenes. One question coming from the dancers that stresses me is: What do you want here? I shall understand it as: What can I do here? At one moment in the process the dancers should feel what they need to do and so they can find themselves their answers. I would like to enjoy all the stress, confusion and insecurity during the rest of the project.
8.10.04
We tried to find a ritual; after the walking section, a ritual.
9.10.04
We made music with Amos Ben-Tal; we got the teenager duet and the overdrive/feedback Jimmy Hendrix guitar.
Eighth Rehearsal Week
11.10.04
We are leaving for our residency of two week in Bourges, France. We are all excited. We will stop in Paris and go to the Louvre to see the original painting of Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools.
12.10.04
Ship of Fools was really beautiful. I thing it has been restored, because I did not remember all those bright colours. The balance of the composition is extremely fluid and open. It is a little treasure. I am looking for the text I am going to write on the table. It should be about acknowledging the fact that we are alive, beside the projection and the set up you do for your own life. The second statement is that we are connected; we need each other. Transformation of warrior energy into service for the other. I need you to experience myself.
13.10.04
All this week I come in the theatre at 8:30 AM to work on the sound in a real six phonic system until the dancers are coming at 11:30. It is overall long days of concentration. The video projection of bodies on the aluminium backdrop is interesting. I feel I need to support Mohan, to encourage him.
14.10.04
Wim Vandekeybus came yesterday in the Maison de la Culture with Les Porteuses de Mauvaises Nouvelles. I was blow up. There were seven scenes; three big ones. The connections between the people were there, because of necessity, because of the physicality.
We are having discussion about the tension and the connection between the people on the stage. Cyril raised a box from an audio interface with a text as advertisement: ‘connection with integrity’. That was it! Connection with integrity, mainly be yourself, here and now, with no make up.
15.10.04
Yesterday we went to a philharmonic concert, directed by Zoltán Kocsis. His play for the piano concerto was full of character, but I realized that I was really tense, constantly thinking of my work; I could not go into the music. We had two injuries: the head of Cyril into the arch of the eyebrows of Mohan, and Marthe falling in the stairs by here own. Jean-Paul Sartre said: ‘or you write or you live’. This week with the coming together of the music and the light my head looks like a puzzle of thousand pieces. The sense of time when we do improvisation on a high physical level is very unstable. With the demon scene it goes between seven to three minutes and not noticing the difference.
16.10.04
We rune 60 minutes of material with some lighting. I feel spoiled to have this opportunity to do that. There is no better way to go through the work with light and decors to see and learn what works and what does not. I am really outside, meaning I do not feel the pulse of the work from inside. Welcome Jérôme to the other side!
17.10.04
It is Sunday morning and I am looking forward to work tomorrow. The first scene, especially the demon scene, does not work. The demon scene is an improved scene where everybody challenge the others and the rhythm of the action. I cannot impose my voice, because my choices depend on their actions. It is not a choice of reaction, but a practice of the idea that you make me discover myself, meaning what I want. Writing from my notebook, I do not really understand what I mean here, but it seems that I want to let things happen.
Ninth Rehearsal Week
19.10.04
I feel incredibly good this morning! Gilbert Fillinger, director of the Maison de la Culture in Bourges, came to see a run. He pointed out what does not work. His remarks were: too long start, the lighting kills the mystery of dance, and after the solo of Cyril the piece dies. Of course, the end is not done! As a methodology it is good to have an external person coming to see some raw material after five weeks, then to have another fresh eye to see how scenes are connected in the seventh week and hopefully someone coming next week. I will cut some scenes, reduce the work from 65 minutes to 50 minutes. The two words that came out during the improvement were: influence and musicality.
21.10.04
Yesterday we had two meetings with students, public and press. I enjoyed presenting my work. The reactions were positive. Here is the text I made up to put in the French programme:
“ Nos voyages et nos errances sont nos rêves éveillés que nous partageons ensemble afin de faire la pleine expérience de qui nous sommes. (Our travels and wanderings are daydreams, which we try to share, so we can experience fully who we are)
23.10.04
Tension has risen between Isabelle and Cyril. My analysis is that they are impressed by each other, so they feel insecure and because of that they fear to be judged. We had a good talk and I made also my mea culpa: I keep the in-between and the blur a bit too long before taking a decision and that makes the dancers frustrated. In other words, usually if I get a clear question I would not be able to answer straight away. That made me think of my attitude. Maybe an answer even if it is meant to change after, is better than no answer or a ‘well I am not sure yet’ or ‘we will see’. Some public came again and enjoyed it very much. I got some positive feedback about the music.
29.10.04
We are back to The Hague. My head is everywhere. We had this week what we call “the montage”. My way of working is complex. Let’s say the way I structure my work, is making always little stories that follow each other. The more stories there are, the more transitions. That is exactly where everything can go great and beautiful or everything can collapse. Concerning the dance I have nothing to say; the dancers are in shape; they are great. The music is not incredibly strong, supportive, accessible or present, but we are getting there. The costumes are too clean yet. The lights are too cold, but we are missing the ramps lights; they should do the job.
The real problem I face is the same we had a few weeks ago: how to go into something and how to go out of it? This is one question that is really important for my work. One way is not to make a transition, meaning to go casual from one situation to the other in a natural bare way. The other way is to blend situations together and then to have a real evolution and a so-called story line. My other concern is that the dancers do not have a lot of physical contact anymore. This is the raison I want to bring back the skin section. Again it is good to have new eyes one week before the show. I feel that I need help to structure and to pull out what really matters. In other word to bring my own specificity, my own voice. Isa is a great help for that.
About the question: What do you want to say? It is highly relevant and at the same time it means little. I will get the question again in the future and this question makes me aggressive. A pair of eyes looking heavily at you and a mouth asking: What do you want to say actually? The question is fundamental and worth being asked: especially among artists! Certainly a lot of us are concerned about that. If I had a straight answer, it would be already on paper, and maybe then I would not feel the urge to choreograph and express myself with this medium. The question we raised with this work was: How can we put together physicality, movements, sensuality, virtuosity with a sense of humanity, where we can see persons and not dolls interpreting something? What I do is raising this question: Can we combine dance and humanity? Do I tell a lot of different stories that finally are saying one thing? Can I tell different stories and put them in one evening?
It seems that as an artist (from the point of view of the public and critics), I have to be defending an idea that can be recognizable by everyone: Jérôme Meyer’s work is funny, surprising, dramatic, different, consistent, or I cannot put a label on. Label, did you said label? If someone would say: “Jérôme, I felt close to what you are saying, close to what was going on the stage and close to myself while I was watching”, I would be really happy. What does that mean? I want to communicate something personal, something that is said by the one to one formula, but to a bigger audience. Special, crazy, human, normal, interesting, corny, stupid, generous, against, angry, forgiving, beautiful, simple: all different kind of emotions and states of mind, which are part of you, part of humanity. Clever, clear, dramaturgically strong is the ultimate chirurgical formula from a western, art educated critic.
We have been working now for more than eight weeks and my work is to stay now focused on developing better what is expressed and how it is expressed. We are not far away; it is a question of tuning. I stick to the idea of little stories. I do not have one starting point; I have thousand of them. I do not have one story, I have thousand of them. “Houston, do we have a problem with it?” This is my genetic legacy. I can see my father’s paintings: thousand of stories, colours, perspectives, forms.
About the amount of information I like to refer to the line of Joseph II in Amadeus by Milos Forman:
“ MOZART: So then you like it? You really like it, Your Majesty?
JOSEPH: Of course I do. It is very good. Of course now and then, just now and then, it gets a touch elaborate.
MOZART: What do you mean, Sire?
JOSEPH: Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say? How shall one say, director?
ORSINI-ROSENBERG: Too many notes, Your Majesty?
JOSEPH: Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.
MOZART: I don’t understand. There are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required. Neither more nor less.
JOSEPH: My dear fellow, there are in fact only so many notes the ear can hear in the course of an evening. I think I am right in saying that, aren't I, Court Composer?
SALIERI: Yes! Yes! er, on the whole, yes, Majesty.
MOZART (to Salieri): But this is absurd!
JOSEPH: My dear, young man, don’t take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It is quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that’s all. Cut a few and it will be perfect.
MOZART: Which few did you have in mind, Majesty?”
30.10.04
I like to drink and to be drunk, I like to smoke and to be smoked.

31.10.04
I have a list to do of three pages for the dancers and the music. It is one of those days where you are taking a lot of decisions at once, where you know what to do, where things are becoming evident.
Tenth Rehearsal Week
2.11.04
It seems that I carry some insecurity towards the dancers. I dreamed that Marthe and Cyril said that the rehearsal period was becoming long. I was touched in my flesh, it hurt me.
Today is the build up day before the premiere and I feel like a lion in a cage.
3.11.04
Today is j-day! Yesterday we had a smooth and quiet general rehearsal. The dancers, concentrated with themselves and the new environment, were taking their marks in this new space. I like the final result, the work that comes out after all those weeks. We struggle with Peter Lemmens a lot with the making of the lights and finally I surrender most of our disagreement. The light reshaped the piece and finally it was good to let someone else take decisions. I compromised also with the six channels output: I went back to four channels. These surrounded four channels are good enough for this work, especially for this theatre: the reverb is around three seconds!
5.11.04
The second show went very well. Absolute satisfaction, today I am flying. The music, light, and costume work together; this is always a little miracle when it works. For the logistic we need to prepare the invitations three weeks before the premiere and not three days. I also want to have a massage the day of the premiere and the day after. It sounds silly, but it is what I feel. For the music, if I still want to compose, I want to start far before the beginning of the rehearsals. It was tough to make and to take all the decisions about the music. The idea of the costumes should come also in the very beginning of the process.
About the process of this piece, I think my way of letting things happen. Taking decisions in a blurry way can be hard for the dancers. When the work is done, everything feels evident, but during the process decisions can be a struggle, particularly at the end. With Compass for Fools all the timings have being articulated around the connexion and the physicality of the dancers. It is almost an organic way of organizing connection, a balance between the need of the dancers and the need of what wants to be expressed. This is a piece where dance is at the heart of everything. I think, looking back at my last works, it is there where I could loose myself by being in love with the breath of the bodies. I also put myself in the situation where I am looking for something I do not know myself, and often technique or even movement does not interest me at that moment. A choreographer should find his answer in the movement, meaning in the concrete and the action, but when he is looking somewhere else, this can be confusing for the dancers, even provoking frustration. When I see the final result, I always think I could have gone further. This is my third creation this year. It seems that I feel shy in the process that I do not want to go inorganic or inharmonious in the process and maybe that is good the way it is.
I get more secure with time, step by step.
One thing is great about the performance of the dancers: they all look on their top form and that was one of my goals. They really inhabited their roles and dance. The trust of the dancers really touched me and it seems they had a great time working together.

14.11.04
We are going back to Bourges to perform the French premiere. Here are some ideas for the conference we have to give in the Beaux-Arts: Compass qualities, We are a part of the other,
Communication-physicality-connection, Poetic sensibility, Humour, Characters, Haikus, and
Eternity of the painting-time frame of dance.
Eleventh Rehearsal Week
16.11.04
I am changing the beginning: everybody hand up with a presentation of themselves with closed eyes. The piece will get changed every day for the better. Sometimes really little misses for something to work.
17.11.04
I am in bad mood today. The flue is here all around and it does not help the general feeling of a kind of exhaustion. Isabelle has serious pain behind the knee. The fact I have to dance in Kenzo Kusuda’s piece put on me some stress. Is there a raison for being physically and emotionally exhausted? Tiredness and pressure does not let easily joy blossoming! That gives me this inner conflict, because I should be happy and proud to have my work for the first time shown in France. You are just wondering how the public will react here, is not it Jérôme?
20.11.04
I am now taking more distance with the work; I see the weakness of it. I want to add a twist at 30 minutes; this is around Cyril’s solo. Tonight we cut the mini demon helicopter scene and that was much better. The performance was really amazing. Gilbert Fillinger said that the piece found itself. The concentration, the joy, the structure, everything came together really perfectly. We started with a low energy performance on Thursday because of a lack of oxygen in the first place. The piece was like paralyzed, without any peak of explosion; in other words flat. We kept on working and changing and tonight was the absolute grace. It is incredible how differently a work is received: one minute is someone saying how much he loved it and the other minute I hear exactly the opposite. This is really a mystery.
22.11.04
We are in Tours now by the mother of Isabelle and we are resting. Actually we are working everyday on Corps à Corps, a duo we made two years ago and that we are going to present in the Petites Scènes Ouvertes, a platform where we are invited. Dance, dance, dance. I am dreaming of dance every night and Compass for Fools is still growing and making new things, changing old things. In other words it is still alive, like an alien, living on its own.
25.11.04
Perfection, the urge for perfection, let’s talk about it. Things are perfect in the imperfection, and imperfection is in a world of perfection. The fact is that the feeling between adaptation and being adapted is highly subjective. We are constantly adapting ourselves to the surrounding, and sometimes things are happening in a natural and harmonic way. To look up at perfection creates tension; now it is up to you to tell me what perfection is in your eyes.
24.11.04
It is the gift of ourselves that makes us really existing.
30.11.04
I feel like a bird again after this presentation that was like an audition. The Salle Jacques Brel was not full but presenters came and finally it was like a real show. I enjoyed very much dancing Corps à Corps. The important thing was to show our faces and what we are doing. Spontaneity is not fashionable in this field. People look at you with some distance and have more the attitude of wait and see. If I would be a presenter and see Isabelle and Jérôme dancing Corps à Corps, I would invite them immediately! We got a list of email addresses and names; this is networking and it is part of our job.
We travelled to Lille to meet the director of the Maison Folie Wazemme. We are getting a residency, meaning coproduction of Corps à Corps, for making part two. This will be fall 2005. Leo Spreksel is also interested to have a show of it.
31.11.04
It is still difficult to let go Compass for Fools. It is still metamorphosing somewhere in my head. I think I made again a big step with this work, but I can do much more. I feel now more secure, going from the internal feeling to go out again. I had to go true those phases of insecurity in the creation time. If that would not happen, would I have the feeling today that I challenged myself? What I realize is that my way of thinking, doing, feeling, calculating, and analyzing is in constant evolution. Diffusion in the world of contemporary dance is a jungle. There are different circuits, tastes and although it is a jungle, it is pretty small. Christophe Martin, from the “Etoile du Nord” theater was saying that what dancers and choreographs need are people who do only dance programming or put dance people together.
3.12.04
We are combining our forces with Yasmine Morand to propose a full evening in Switzerland. We send files of our proposal to ten different theatres. This tour will take place at the end of 2005.
9.12.04
Leo Spreksel proposes me again to tour the piece or in February or April 2005. I am deciding to do an almost full second cast of Compass for Fools with me as a dancer. If necessary I am ready to pay a half salary for the working period for the newcomer; it seems that Leo is willing to pay the other half. We are preparing ourselves to go to the Monaco Dance Forum. We got a list of the presenter and we are doing a lot of office work. After that we are directly going to Verona to dance a part of Corps à Corps for a sort of gala.
16.12.04
Since I saw some of the performances of the Monaco Dance Forum, a thought came up clearly: What you see needs to be sold and is there to be consumed by you, without side effect. They are bright, dynamic, accessible, and sometimes entertaining. This market doesn’t change rules compared to any other market. Nevertheless, a strong work attracts its audience. Jir¹í Kylián, William Forsythe, Jan Fabre, Wim Vandekeybus, and Lloyd Newson understand and are really good at that. Kylián in one of his last works (Last Touch) made barely move his dancers, and Forsythe is also coming back to more intimate works. We need to explore all sides of humanity.
Held by Garry Stewart of the Australian Dance Theatre, nicely taken with multitalented dancers, did a great crossover work with photography and dance: entertaining, gymnastic, and well staged.
17.12.04
Working on myself, I observed that feelings of destruction, of negation and of emotion are coming back and back. I need to identify this process, although I see now that I brought it with the lines I say in Compass for Fools: “Did you ever gain something by losing something?” Some of the last days, the idea of dead was present in my mind. The title Maybe That’s a Lie, the work I made in 2003, is coming back like a boomerang in the perception I have of myself and my surrounding.
I do believe in things and some other times I feel schizophrenic, meaning I don’t believe in what I feel, or what I think or what I perceive. I should be able to recognize this state of mind and this feeling and what it means for me. In an extreme way I would say that I redraw inside myself, like becoming a ghost. Let’s say getting cut off with my emotions, or not being part emotionally of what is happening around and inside me. In the other hand I have extreme feelings of being part of an action, being part of anything, identify myself with others, connect with what I experience in the present moment, by recognizing that they are part of myself, being part of my identity.
18.12.04
This Monaco Dance Forum was tiring. A real place where we could meet in this big building would have helped. The coffee shop was actually the best place: food, drinks, and a nice view. Nobody had the real user manual to connect with a programmer, with a director, with a choreographer and vice-versa. So it seems that we were all there to check out the forum without knowing how to implicate ourselves with the others.
To present our work we got a little corner with a screen, some chairs, and some people just passing, taking some of the fifty flyers different choreographers arranged on the table. That was our presentation. The funny thing was to meet Dutch people of the profession in Monaco. We had the full Monaco package: the “people” experience. In the same day we saw Karl Lagerfeld coming in his Rolls, Charlotte Rumpling, Prince Albert and Princess Caroline. It is not a joke; here people are rich and some famous!
Some thoughts about my research:
- Making connections.
- How to make connections with codes.
- What is the role of the codes in the perception of an action?
- Can dance answers philosophical questions?
- When does the movement meet with thoughts?
- How to learn out of your own work?
- How to synthesize ideas?
- Necessity of an action: where does the artificial start?
19.12.04
Two of my ex-colleagues and a dancer of Monaco are seeing a shrink. It seems like it is in the air. Is life tougher? Or are we more self-centred? Or is it coming from a self-discipline and responsible attitude?
The joy of the child is gratuitous. A child goes from pleasure to sorrow without transition, without having question. This is one of the strength of childhood. The emotions and the energy are direct, experienced fully, and total. As adults we combine pleasure and pain. Pain can become pleasure and vice-versa.
26.12.04
Can I take as a hypothesis of work and base of experimentation the idea of the divine nature of human kind? What do you mean by divine? Made of energy, invisible, where the body is the temple of the spirit, the centre where the soul connects to the world? This is, connecting or not with this idea, a high image, an immaculate image of the human kind.
Nevertheless this idea of container, which can contain energy, life, power to move, is close to eastern philosophy, which its martial arts and yoga. What I want to say is that if we have access of this unlimited energy, contain by the body, it would be like winning the lottery; it is like being rich for the rest of your life.
But instate we are experiencing war for sources of energy. Water is an energy people are fighting for, information war, economic war also. We are all fighting for energy, a form of energy. We like to accumulate it, probably remain of prehistoric survival instinct.
It seems hard to be generous. Is it hard to be generous?
31.12.04
After the devastating tsunami, Isabelle is sleepless and is thinking of her trip to Japan she will have to do in ten days. In this fearful atmosphere, I have a lot of flashback and emotional images from the past. From this chaos I wish us an emotional harmony, a peaceful year 2005.
That might be my challenge for 2005.
6.1.05
French interlude. Cinq heures du matin. Je ne tiens plus en place. Nous attendons la réponse pour la tournée de mars pour Serie new theater makers avec Compass for Fools. De notre côté tout est en place: le temps, l’énergie, la satisfaction de voir ce tour se réaliser. Néanmoins j’ai cette boule dans l’estomac, ce désir et cette peur en même temps qui sont là, 360 degré autour de moi. Quand l’excitation est un moteur, tout me réjouit. Lorsque l’attente devient peur, il y a un phénomène de repli, de mal être, de rapetissement des sens, de sa propre vue mental qui se cloisonne. Le sourire s’est enfuit, le sens des événements disparaît, l’échelle des valeurs se déboussole, une souris devient un éléphant en un clin d’oeil.
Le sort nous met en compétition malgré nous. Les décideurs choisissent! Pouvons-nous influencer le cours des choses? Nous pouvons dans ce cas là faire une chose. Notre devoir est de parfaitement se préparer. C’est avoir cette attitude zen où c’est l’effort qui compte et non le résultat, où comme dans le sport c’est le surpassement de ses propres limites qui comptent.
Mais nous ne faisons pas de sport. L’art, les gens ne se comparent pas. Chacun est unique, chacun a sa place.
10.1.05
There are many ways to ask questions. Concerning my own research, I should put down the first stone. Is my research directly connected with the history of dance, or connected with the social context, or is it personal, like my own way to organize elements? What kind of communication is established between the public and the performance? How my dance is communicating?
12.01.05
Showing images is telling a story.
13.01.05
After a no and all the disappointments, we got from the committee from the “Serie nieuwe theater maker” a yes two days later for touring Compass for Fools. I don’t need to underline that this experience was a nerve breaker. That is great news for this work. That allows organizing performances for the full version of Corps à Corps in December in stead of Compass for Fools
19.1.05
Anne Karin ten Bosch gave a lecture on scenography in Groningen. Time and space was the main subject and I find it highly interesting to see the development of the scenography since Adolphe Appia (1862-1928), who introduced the three dimensional element in scenography. I find this quote of him relevant for our time: ‘The more we cultivate and affirm our individual differences, the more we isolate ourselves. The one and only method of taking part effectively in the concert of life is the intense search for points of contact, for affinities.”
24.01.05
We had an evaluation of Compass for Fools with the whole crew, including Leo Spreksel.
Strong at creating structure of possibility but not really strong to transform them into a necessity in the work was a good observation from Leo. By doing the music, scenography and choreography, did I overload myself? I wanted to do the music at the same time as the choreography and that was too much work for a 50 minutes piece. But I managed. I had a really fast start, but had some difficulty to compose. In fact I never did a piece of this length and maybe a dramaturge would have been a good thing. I trusted Isabelle and the dancers to have also a feeling of the breath from the inside of the piece.
By having now a new cast for the tour for eleven dates in the Netherlands, Guilherme Miotto, Evrydiki Manassi, Isabelle and myself, I get the possibility to adjust, tune, redo some parts of the music and that is exiting.
27.01.05
Today is the commemoration of the liberation of the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. I visited these camps in 1994. Sixty years ago we discovered the unthinkable in these camps.
Reality is often greater than our craziest dreams. The tsunami killed first 20,000 people and one month later we have 200,000 dead bodies and still bodies are hidden under piles of wood and destroyed houses. The 9/11 was much stronger than fiction when I saw the second tower being hit it live on CNN. What did we learn, what and how this Machiavellic plan of destruction, affected our way of seeing the other? Europe was mostly democratic in most of the countries, but by the will of one man, one nation, terror and fascism ruled again for several years. To rule, to dominate, and to humiliate were the fundamentals ideas of the ideology of Hitler. Today we are still humiliating, we are still dominating.
The South-North, poor-rich, illiterate-literate: do we have a real political will to go further?
George Bush is asking for the second time extra 80 billiards for his war for energy. The first time was two years ago. I didn’t forget it. Food, education, structures for energy, communication and culture, we can do a lot with this amount but, well, it is a question of priority. Reality goes far beyond fiction!
28.01.05
What is the artist’s strategy to deal with competition? As a maker, I enter automatically on a new market. This forces you to define yourself in the today world of performing art.
29.01.05
How to sustain your power of judgment towards your own work? Leonardo da Vinci took a mirror to see his own painting. Watching at this reverse angle, he could see his work as one of someone else. Another trick used by painters is to go away, let it rest and then come back. Much easier to do it with painting. Why is that? Because you can disconnect yourself much easier from the work, while with the work of choreography your mind is constantly busy with it. Would it be possible to split rehearsal in three parts like three time two weeks, and having one month in between each session?
31.01.05
Some new meaning of what I call my healing t’ai chi, opens doors to balance the inner male/female. It allows synchronizing the body-mind energy. With a simple concentration a new power and a natural balance appear. Thoughts are clearer and I feel ready to take the next step. Using the qualities of the healing t’ai chi with the different shapes and directions of the Laban movement analysis, like rising, sinking, advancing, retreating, open and enclosing.
We have the six major directions in space. By combining them with the qualities of slicing, pushing, pulling, caressing, dabbing, we obtain great tools for generating movement qualities.
1.2.05
We wrote an application for the first time to the municipality of The Hague. Let’s see what will come out.
4.2.05
The group dance of Jacopo Godani (Anomaly one), performed at Lucent Theatre with NDT 1, was really good. I liked the complexity, the musicality, the shape and the dynamics. His dance is very much head-tail and peripherical oriented, using the term of Bartenieff technique.
Tom Willems did again an impactful music. The decor with the shiny reflection of the panels was great, well constructed, and well used. The light work was just excellent: quick changes, different angles, and different colours.
5.02.05
Tonight we are having an impro with Isabelle in the swimming pool space at the Regentesse Theatre in The Hague. Impro means freedom, taking the moment. My first question then: what about the meaning, the message? On what level do we want to give a message? How are we sharing our experience with the audience?
6.2.05
The impro of fifteen minutes went really well. The energy was excellent, powerful, here and now, touching and sensible, physical and spiritual. The audience liked it and for us it was an initiation. We never did an impro without a frame. We came one hour in the afternoon, and another hour when we knew on Monday that we would take part of this evening. We were just feeling the space, discussing some ideas and that was it. I enjoyed very much the kick of it and doing it with Isabelle was a pure bless. Those are really unique moments that just existed for a few minutes, and will probably never be repeated.
Most of the preparation is in the head. It is all about preparing yourself to experience the moment present. That’s it. It does boost your confidence, knowing that you can play with all what you learned about movement, composition, texture, dynamics, and expression. That is called improvisation!

9.2.05
The class of Laban movement analysis is highly interesting. Peggy Hackney is a wonderful teacher. Her reputation is justified. She has something of my grandmother: she is delicate and precious, intellectually very active, and she is going through the class with a constant concentration, a great vitality and enthusiasm.
10.2.05
Caja van der Poel confirmed that she needed my service for here theatre piece Alice. I am happy to participate to a different kind of project: working with actors.

14.2.05
Before taking any action, know where are you rest moments!
16.2.05
The sky this morning is going from a vivacious orange to a strong electric purple and is inviting me to be devoured by my eyes. Actually I would like to eat those colours with my mouth and to feel them going down to my stomach and spread through my whole body. Brrrr..
My way of seeing how to use my mind is changing. I have been always sceptical about how the mind is used by people. I could always observe that each of us are using a structure and a system, with more or less logic, but ignoring that each system has its own limits. Looking at my own complexity, I would like my mind to become a friend, a nice collaborator, a helper. Unconsciously I was seeing the mind as a tricker, as an obstacle, a troublemaker, as a censor, untruthful mirror, labyrinth, and manipulator! I would like to blend the dichotomy of the improvisational-instinctive-intuitional-faith-subjective side and organized-conceptual-calculated-mental-objective side of my mind. An ambitious project but more crazy is, after all, to think that my mind is a stranger who is tricking me, who is unpredictable, with who I can understand only some parts of the world.
Why that? In a way I always thought that a too elaborate mental process could kill the real vital energy, poring out from ourselves, that wants to be expressed, shared, and given away. So, why couldn’t they work and function nicely, friendly together?
17.2.05
I believe in body-mind integration, but nothing is there once for ever. It is a daily work.
18.2.05
I think, deep inside I am sceptical. I mean by that that somehow, something in myself doesn’t believe the way people live and organize their lives without thinking that life is a gift, life is energy, life has magic, life is about communication and adaptation. By saying that my mind is becoming a friend, I allow myself to go into a rational and mental approach, by using this tool in a friendly, efficient, cooperative way. It is probably time to make peace with myself again.

21.02.05
A performance is like a pool of energy. It is loaded with energy when all the performers are well prepared. Then the energy is given away to the public, where a real communication takes place. The public responds differently every time. As a performer, I need to be perfectly cantered, in order to appreciate and enjoy the performance. If not, I have to spend too much energy and the result will be to feel exhausted and unhappy.
3.03.05
Today the landscape is completely white; as long as I remember, it never snowed so much. The sun is shining in a blue sky and through the windows of the train, the Netherlands look like a different country. The reverberation from the light on the snow doubles the usual amount of light; it is breath taking!
The new premiere of Compass for Fools went extremely well. The new cast is fully into it: great generosity and interpretation. To dance in the piece was a real challenge for me, and I really enjoyed it. Let’s see how it grows!
5.03.05
Here are the remains of an old time: a classical class given by a caricature of an old woman teacher in the Dansetage_who will remain anonymous. No breathing, stiff, illogical. She did probably here best and I have respect for that but her class is all what I do not want to experiment. It is strange how we are unable to see by ourselves our own limitations. It is so much easier to see them on someone else!
I see also that I am constantly busy with what my body needs and react immediately by trying to cope with what is asked. This process is incredibly clear; it is what I have been doing for the last twenty years in class. As a young dancer it is challenging, as a grown up dancer you are proud of your technique, as a mature dancer you need to find other ways to warm up. This is why we are since three years developing our own training and methode.
7.03.05
“ There are no strangers, only friends you don’t know yet!” This is the line of one of the dancer/actors (Nigel Charnock) in Strange Fish by Lloyd Newson. This scene about non-communication and rejection one individual from the group is very strong. I can really enjoy it now, more than ten years ago when I saw it first.
Isabelle is going through a difficult time: up and down, feeling of being lost, not recognizing herself, seeing all in black, projecting future action with fear, panic attack. This is a challenging time for us.
9.03.05
The theme I came with for the blind date project is: “Trying to connect to some fragmented parts of our life, which were not successfully integrated as a positive experience, and trying to connect with them in the present moment with movements and physicality.” This is directly inspired by Isabelle’s experiences.
I wanted also to challenge their ability to improvise by connecting with the same kind of physicality and awareness. I liked the feedback of Beppie Blankert saying that she would like to see an accident. She found it too organic and maybe not radical enough.
14.03.05
Isabelle is still in a difficult situation. It is like a part of herself died and now she is left with something she does not know. I guess it is good in the sense that there must be a meaning for what she is going through. She does not sleep at night and she cries a lot. Raoul, our neighbour, says that he lost his wings, angel wings around the age of thirty, and that after it is up to you to construct them again.
Bob Lockyer is at the shool for a week to give us a camera workshop.
15.03.05
A performance is about opening new spaces. If the public respond to what they are seeing, they will carry the show.
16.03.05
Isabelle woke up crying again. This is really hard to see her so painfully sad and tired. And I am going forward with my activities. I am like a kid who likes to play with his toys and does not want to see that the house is burning. What does life want to teach us? Talk and keep on talking together to be supportive. To be there as much as I can is what we need at the moment.

22.03.05
The show in Amsterdam went well. It was the first time I showed my work there. There are always two places were the pressure is the biggest: in your home town and in the capital. It seems that the audience was part of the dance field and they are not necessary the easiest audience: dancers, dance teachers, and choreographers. Each show feels different: same structure, but different experience.
We are preparing a version of Corps à Corps of eleven minutes, Corpus Incantatum, for the Hannover competition, where we have being asked to participate.
26.03.05
Probably the last time I will make a competition, although every time I show my work in public the pressure is there. This means that it will be like that for the rest of my life!
Competition is to make a choice of the best. But is there a better and a worse, when you are talking about different things? I get the feeling that I saw only cliché until now: one Mats Ek, one Jir¹í Kylián, and one Amanda Miller.
29.03.05
The Hannover competition is behind us. We went to the final, but no prize. We almost got the third one some of the jury told us, but there was a fierce battle going on. Of course the piece was not made for a competition. In a competition you have to make in a short time a strong impression. We had good feed back, from the audience and from some jury members, but at the end we still would have like to win something, no doubt! At the same time it is good to know that we still have to work on it and the best remarks we had was that it was really original and special.
We are now starting the C-scope project, a three days work with a performance. The theme of the evening is glass. Cutting, sharp, dangerous, transparent, weapon, cold, fragile, and reflection are some definitions we came with.
30.3.05
One musician, a glass artist, four dancers and Cora Bos-Kroese who still has to define her role. We came after the first day with six sections: mirror, domino, a group dance, the cage, transport of the piano in a cage with the dancers on it, swords, dancing with pieces of glass, crystal city, a construction of piles of pieces of glass, labyrinth, going through the hanging glass
31.03.05
Today we had to “cleaned the air”. Some frustrations have risen. There are coming from the different expectations everyone has in such a project. Who is taking decisions? And how he or she does it, is really important. To build up tableaux extremely quickly was actually a good move from Cora, so that allows the technicians, the musician and the glass artist to have a frame.
1.04.05
The glass impro evening went well. It was a good atmospheric performance without super high picks or devastating accidents. People seem to have enjoyed it. With that format, as a performer, fifty minutes is really easy to make. We had a lot of elements and with them the actions were shared among us: glass, rolling cage, mirror, shoes, and all the tableaux that we called mirror, domino, cage, movie, microphone, crystal city and end.
Finally we took a lot of time for the technique, mainly the lighting. Coming back to the notion of energy-spending, characters, timing awareness, four dancers, one musician, the glass artist and a big round stage, it seems normal that I had the feeling of just having touched a few things. I thought I would find a wired character, something particular but at the end it was ok without it. I brought other elements, like the amplified stethoscope, putting a mirror so each of the members of the public could see himself, my shoes solo, dancing slowly on a pile of broken glass, and use of some text in the movie section. The rest was listening and being aware of what was happening in the arena. We danced qualities and not quantities with Isabelle together, because we have been told that we were to present in the process, imposing our own ideas.

3.4.05
Deuxième interlude en français.
Hier le pape est mort. On pourrait presque dire finalement mort, pour retourner vers la maison du Père, comme il est exprimé dans les médias. En tan que non catholique, il est surprenant de voir toutes ces larmes versées dans le monde entier. C’est une forme de catharsis. Jean Paul II a véritablement oeuvré pour la paix, le dialogue interreligieux, pour le retour de la démocratie en Pologne. Sa vie se veut un exemple et il l’a accomplit avec brio. Je reste étonné par le besoin si profond de figure paternel et de chef dont les chrétiens ont besoin. Les liens directs avec Dieu, avec la vie, avec son propre maître intérieur, avec son âme, avec sa propre essence, sont semble-t-il en quelque sorte déresponsabilisés par cette figure paternelle qui lui déclame les vérités universelles et le fait pour nous. Espérons que l’église aura le courage de faire ses propres réformes. Mon éducation spirituelle a été axée sur la recherche de sa propre âme, la recherche de son propre maître intérieur. Compass for Fools, c’est aussi la recherche de sa propre foi.
4.4.05
The speed of events and successions of moments are really fast. I have to force myself to look back this last month. Reprise of Compass with a new cast, eight shows, a blind date project with five meetings in different towns, four days of rehearsals with one show, a competition in Hannover for two days, a week of camera module, coaching actors for the play Alice, and three days of impro for one performance of fifty minutes.
Why and what? Why I am using the dance medium and what I am saying? This question is coming to my mind again, probably because I am missing being committed to a cause, to fight for an idea, to be radical in my approach. The public is responding by saying: I like it, even very much, I love it, but I don’t raise any questions. Or do I?
Is my work about creating tension and interests and then release it?
Is it about tuning the energies?
Is it about captivating the attention of the audience?
Is it about opening new spaces?
Is it about sharing time and ideas together?
Do I need to raise all these questions and answer them?
7.4.05
Gentle! Gentle. This was the ultimate criticism coming out of the mouth of my father, talking about another painter he disrespects The tone of the voice saying “it is gentle” was maybe more meaningful.
The talk we had with Claude Ratzé, programmer of the Association de Danse Contemporaine in Geneva, was actually overall not bad, but the fact is that he does not like my work: too gentle. I gave him the first VHS I ever made for my promo about two years ago, and forgot how awfully I designed it. The contents of the tape were works done in the workshops of the Netherlands Dance Theatre. What are you looking for, as a choreographer in the young choreographers evening? You just want to do something and of course do it well. When I think of that I can say that I moved forwards since.
This “to do something” is not enough for us anymore. And this relates to the next step which is: what do I want to say and how do I express it? Here are the different layers. There are layers that can be expressed with words and there are layers where words are hard to use. We are in the “human comedy” and no matter what we see, we do it with eyes coming from the human comedy, the real one. We are reproducing, faking, experiencing, playing, performing, sharing, communicating: a lot of information.
English has this perfect word, which describes what it is: a play. Performance, dance, ballet, dance theatre; what we do has or more connotation or it can involve anything. My background is coming from a sort of neoclassical ballet education, with a certain idea of aesthetics about the body, about how a performance should look like. It is time for me to accept that and to move forward: knowing where I come from. My goals can become clearer. In that sense the talk with Claude Ratzé was positive.
19.04.05
Facts. I am writing down the most boring facts and I keep the most interesting mental journey for myself. These almost two weeks of holidays was a good step to do. My advise for myself: I you want it, just do it! I mean the break.
Coming back yesterday we were already performing for American presenters. To make a performance is a sort of recipe; we are going to cook for real for twenty-five persons for four days: the real challenge is to cook together with Isabelle, trying to fight as little as possible.
20.4.05
We got the money from the municipality of The Hague for Corps à Corps 2. The premiere will be 1 December 2005. We sold 21 performances already. This is very impressive for the me; it is the idea to sell something which is not done yet, it is a projection in the future. It is also saying that we are doing good.
24.04.05
I like to meet Jonathan, the healer of our neibourgh, because he always speaks about our true nature. Take a break, connect to yourself, it is about accepting and receiving the present moment. Actually I like this new- age vision of ourselves, I like this dimension, which I believe needs to be integrated in my own landscape. The spectator takes exactly what he needs to take, and the more we are well tuned with ourselves the better we communicate. There is a sort of clarity, which communicates directly on an unspoken level. Things are unfolding themselves. Why do I think that there will never be enough time?
25.04.05
Although we have two casts for Compass for Fools, we will not perform it in Frankfurt: Cyril and Guilherme can not do it. It would be nonsense to find another dancer to replace them just for one show. In a way it is a release, because we had to perform Corps à Corps 1 half an hour later: a marathon never killed anybody, but I prefer in these circumstances to dance only Corps à Corps 1. How thankful and trustful can we be by letting things get organized for the best?
28.04.05
Excellent performance! I was nervous to do this performance after almost five weeks of not doing it. I took really good care of my warm up, I contented very well my energy during the technical rehearsal, feeling and being focus only on the chi. A standing ovation always feels good for the interpreters. Strangely I was also projecting to have a nice audience to night, but the main thing was that I was hunger to tell a story, and I felt comfortable by telling the story. The whole group had a really good awareness of each other.2.05.05
We are starting a new creation for the festival of Dutch taped music, Cain and Abel. Henk Badings made the music Cain and Abel in 1956. I think the interesting question is: why God chooses Abel knowing that Cain will not understand it? There is a notion of an arbitrary choice. That is our starting point.
5.05.05
This number is special. So far we have in mind for Corps à Corps 2 a starting point based on writing to generate text for the characters. I had in mind a box for myself. We know that it will start with solos only and we have the video projected on fine material. We want to know before we start what we want to express. We need to achieve necessity in our work.
9.05.05
Tous deux peuvent n’être conscient que des mots mais pour tous deux -l’auteur puis l’acteur- le mot est la petite portion visible de tout un univers caché.
Dans le théâtre vivant, nous aborderions chaque jour la répétition en mettant à l’épreuve les découvertes de la veille. Peter Brook “Espace vide”

12.05.05
Now it is the beginning of a new period: we had a great finish of Compass for Fools in Plaza futura in Eindhoven. Looking back at this year I would say that it was boiling and exciting, I have learned a lot and this scan of my mind with this diary, as limited as it can be, is helpful to have an overview of my research and preoccupation. Isabelle is doing fantastic again, and was mention in these pages often in pain or when a struggle appears. She is always on my side, and the work I am doing is constantly challenged, nourished, supported by here. It is important to define you own mind but even more important to find points of affinities, points of contact with others and it is what we are developing with Isabelle.
QUI-GON
You won't be, Annie....I'm not allowed
to train you, so I want you to watch
me and be mindful...always remember,
your focus determines your reality.
Stay close to me and you will be
safe.
ANAKIN
Master, sir... I've been wondering...
what are midi-chlorians?
QUI-GON
Midi-chlorians are a microcopic
lifeform that reside within all living
cells and communicates with the Force.
ANAKIN
They live inside of me?
QUI-GON
In your cells. We are symbionts with
the midi-chlorians.
ANAKIN
Symbionts?
QUI-GON
Life forms living together for mutual
advantage. Without the midi-chlorians,
life could not exist, and we would
have no knowledge of the Force. They
continually speak to you, telling
you the will of the Force.
ANAKIN
They do??
QUI-GON
When you learn to quiet your mind,
you will hear them speaking to you.
ANAKIN
I don't understand.
QUI-GON
With time and training, Annie...you
will.
I’l like to finish on these lines of the Phantom menace of the first episode of star wars that resume metaphysical view of the connection of the body with the universe , the idea that our focus determines our own reality and the master-student relation which is in a wide angle the school of life.

Compass roses
from the sixteenth-century

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