Kent Sjöström’s interview with Tereza Ondrová and Monica Gillette from the dance group Temporary Collective
As a Swedish expat living with his family in Prague, Kent Sjöström loves to explore the part of the local theatre environment that is accessible to people without perfect knowledge of Czech. In the past, he worked with various theatre academies in the Nordic countries, and in particular the Malmö Theatre Academy where he taught actor’s training for two decades. In his doctoral research, he explored the cognitive strategies of acting. Kent Sjöström’s current research is focused on the ideologies of portrayal, as they are present in a discussion about representation, authenticity and identity. These are also the lenses though which he views the performance art he encounters on Prague’s stages.
This time, we have to make an exception: the interview moderated by Kent Sjöström for Podhoubí is published in written form and not as a podcast, because it could not be recorded in adequate sound quality – one of the respondents, dance dramaturg Monica Gilette, lives in Germany. Kent Sjöström visited three projects of the Temporary Collective group: a premiere of their latest show GEO and performances of the post-pandemic projects Call Alice and INSECTUM in… All of these shows feature the dancer Tereza Ondrová, and two of them, GEO and Call Alice, were co-developed by Monica Gillette, who started working with the Temporary Collective recently in projects created under pandemic conditions.
Collaboration with dance avatars
Kent:
I want to start by saying that I’m leading this discussion from the perspective of a fascinated viewer, and not as someone who has a particular knowledge about dance, because that is not the case. I saw three shows that Tereza performed in, and you, Monica, were involved in two of those. I found them very intersting and I’d love to talk to you both in order to dig deeper into the field of knowledge from which they emerged. I’m not part of your bubble, so you have to contribute with your expertise and help me understand why I enjoyed the shows.
So I want to start with the first question: Could you please help me understand why, during GEO, I had such a strong feeling that I need to be very attentive? I usually sit in the theatre in a very relaxed position and just watch the actors, but here I felt you were asking me to do something else, so I leaned forward and tried to understand what Tereza was dealing with. Can you help me explain how you did that, keeping all of us attentive?
Tereza
It’s interesting how you describe leaning forward and not reclining in your seat, and that it wasn’t just me who was trying to be more sensitive, but you as well. In our recent projects, we’ve been trying to work on details and clarity a lot, and maybe that got you charged up.
Monica
During the creative process, we spent a lot of time talking about what past periods in history could have looked like. As part of that inquiry we decided to have an actual geophone on the stage, which is a very sensitive contact mic that picks up vibrations, and it also activates Tereza’s body to make it as sensitive to surrounding objects as the geophone. Because she also has so many memories of working and performing in Ponec, we spent a lot of time talking about how she could be in the space through her body. She was trying to listen and recall all the memories physically, so we paid attention to how her body could act as an instrument and also become a type of geophone, before the geophone itself appears on the stage and alongside other materials such as video. I think this might be another reason why you got into that frame of mind.
Kent
Sensitivity on stage is a very interesting phenomenon. If I compare this to my experience with some actors, if they want to seem sensitive, they dramatize their stage presence. They get into a certain mood and do certain little tricks and exude a certain kind of nervous energy to show that they are sensitive. And I was pleased to see that you didn’t do that, it was something else. When you, Tereza, moved around the stage in your ordinary way, you seemed present, even without sending any signals of this kind. It’s interesting to see that dancers also dramatize their presence on stage, but in a different way than actors do. It makes me a bit self-aware, because during the show, I didn’t feel that you were looking at me like a like a scenic artist would, but rather as if you were another species that was scrutinizing me. You have a very special approach that simply attracts me and causes this constant, incredible fascination. During the show, I’m afraid that if I lose focus, I’ll miss something.
Tereza
Maybe I should say that even though I’m alone on the stage, the result is not just mine, it’s always a collective work. When I said that I focus on clarity and details, what I meant was that we work through them together, which creates this effect where you don’t want to miss anything.
Kent
Monica, do you somehow enter into this process we’re talking about as the dramaturg?
Monica
The way I approach dance dramaturgy requires ongoing dialogue and keeping an eye on the entire process. I also try not to impose anything of myself into the work if it is outside the area where our common dialogue has led us. You were talking a moment ago about how drama actors create their stage presence, and interestingly, Tereza, Petra and I have been recently thinking along the same lines. We talked about authenticity and how it is and is not used, how you handle it and how you work with the feeling of being authentic. And so we tried to uncover and question the mechanisms that are being applied today, so it was interesting to hear you describe the signals that actors send out to make their presence more deliberate and visible. I think Tereza uses a different approach, but it’s hard to describe how she does it in words. Would you like to try to formulate it somehow?
Tereza
As Monica says, it’s rather difficult, because to put it simply, I think it’s about timing and about space and also a sort of preparation, where I need to charge myself up so I get into the present moment before I go on stage. I simply try to stay in the present moment, which may sound a bit abstract, because I don’t have any specific exercises like special breathing, walking or stretching. I just try to send out signals or sensors out into the space to charge myself up with being here in this space. And I also hear the audience entering the space; I try to connect to the present time and space and everything in the theatre.
Kent
We keep talking about “here and now”. Swiss theatre director Milo Rau talks about the pseudo-authentic joy of being here and now. I think this statement is nicely provocative, because the word “authenticity” always makes me attentive, even though I’m constantly tempted to use it. I wrote an article recently, soon to be published in Arte Acta, in which I take a critical approach on the concept of authenticity. Having an opinion like that is probably part of the zeitgeist, but still, it’s interesting that if I said about you, Tereza: “She’s so authentic!”, it would actually be diminishing your artistic knowledge.
Monica
In a recent debate we had, I said that I actually didn’t think Tereza was authentic. Rather, I think that she lets authenticity through; she makes us feel that she’s authentic or that it’s her „everyday presence“ that we are seeing on the stage, as you described. Because she works with parts of her life that are real, that she really experienced, in all of the projects that you saw – from GEO to Call Alice to INSECTUM… She’s coming at them from a very personal position and works with material that’s, so called, non-fiction. But the way she works with it does not try to represent or document anything factual. She can start from these moments, and so can the viewers, but at the same time, these moments can bring other insights and emotions or awareness that we wouldn’t have access to otherwise. I think that a big part of what Tereza works with are these micro-conversations with the audience that run through the whole performance in this constant stream of give-and-take, question-and-listen, as you described earlier about what she was giving you as a member of the audience with such a strong and direct attention. Because I think this is what brings her and all of us together into a different space.
Kent
We shouldn’t forget that Tereza oscillates between common walking or other everyday movements and excellent dance numbers that also have great power. I’d like to move on to the next topic, which I’d call the “layers of time”. There’s an archaeological aspect to this – you’re not searching just the different layers of the Vltava riverbank, but also your own layers of time and experience. I feel that you could go further and tell us more, because in the show you talk about your artistic life, which I find very interesting. What happens to a dancer’s body over the years? You’ve been dancing for twenty years; what happened in that period, if you look at yourself as a document of the time? I know this is a sensitive question, but do you get what I’m asking?
Tereza
If you look into my dance history, you’ll see it’s connected with the specific space of PONEC theatre. I started my career in this building, and I may end it here as well. I did almost all of my projects here. So if I go back into my past, I re-enter certain physical materials. But what was interesting to me is that it wasn’t just physical material opening in front of me, but also layers associated with the works I created here. For example the first rehearsals: was it in the winter or in the summer? I also started remembering who I worked with in the space. Some projects associated largely with the movement material, others with other things.
But talking about the movement material that I created for example twenty years ago, I realized there was something missing in it now, and I had to find a way to re-establish my relationship with this material. And one more thing was interesting in the preparation of GEO – there was a time when I couldn’t move physically, because I was sick. At that point, I invited a friend, a male dancer, who became my body and also went through my dance archive. He learned to work with my movement material and it was interesting to watch someone else become my body. I saw my own movement material from someone else’s perspective.
Recycled dance techniques
Kent
This sounds very interesting – so you made someone into your avatar. Please tell us more.
Tereza
This happened sometime in the middle of rehearsals, when we started to doubt whether we can continue or not. One option was to simply keep going and see where it gets us, which was Monica’s suggestion. And then there was a backup option in case I couldn’t move. In that case, we needed someone who’d dance in my place. We tried to imagine there would be someone other than me on the stage, using my movement material. For me, this was an extremely positive experience, because it let me build a completely new relationship with the material. When I entered it myself, it felt old-fashioned. And as I mentioned, it brought with it emotions from the past. But when I saw it on another body, I thought: “Wow! This is great!” Suddenly the material was interesting, because it was embodied by someone else.
So when I physically returned to rehearsals, I worked with the movement material created by my “avatar”. Or more accurately, there were two of those – the friend of mine, and also myself as my own avatar from earlier. Interestingly, the colleague didn’t just study my movements from video, but he actually saw the projects before, so I also employed his memory – he was performing something he had seen with his own eyes years ago, and not just a two-dimensional image. There was a lot at play inside this avatar of ours. We also worked with the narratives associated with those works, not just the material itself in its pure form.
Kent
You said “old-fashioned”, which intrigued me. What does it mean for a dancer when she says something has gone out of style?
Tereza
I would divide all the dance work I’ve ever done into two parts. Roughly the first half is what I’d call old-fashioned, because it focused more on the outside. I’d say that I focused much more on a form of movement aesthetics that was more connected to music and some kind of narrative. We always picked a topic that we tried to discuss through the perspective of our movements, but the movements were more of a formal component. And then I met collaborators with whom we tried to understand how I could work with movement from within, which was something new to me and something I’m still working on. That’s why I say “old-fashioned”; I can’t connect to the previous period anymore, not even when I see myself on video.
Kent
You use the inside/outside dichotomy, which I think is very problematic. At least in in theatre it’s burdened by the approach of the so-called Stanislavsky method, which leads actors to start working on a role within themselves, using their own experiences and memories. But I suppose it’s completely different in dance, because you focus so much on “external” movement techniques. Maybe I understand this wrong – can you help me grasp the difference between how this dichotomy is perceived in dance and in theatre?
Tereza
For me, the inside/outside dichotomy is connected with the constant switching between delving into myself and resurfacing outside in the sense of establishing contact with the audience and things in the environment. When I talked about the movement material that is out of fashion, I meant certain movements that exist only for their own sake. I’m much more interested in the present moment now.
Kent
I’m very interested in the phenomenon of fading art forms. Like pantomime, which used to be very popular until the seventies, but is rarely seen today. Recently I asked a friend, a German choreographer, which kind of dance style she considers completely outdated and no longer functional. She said it was the Martha Graham technique. I don’t know much about it, but do you have an opinion on it? Is this really something that in your environment, based on your education, has gone out of fashion? Monica, as a dancer and choreographer, is there something you’ve encountered that people now prefer not to work with anymore and leave it to the past?
Monica
I think we’re following a slightly different line of thought today. In the past, there was postmodernism and post-postmodernism, which were often about rejecting or leaving previous dance approaches. But I think we’re in a different period now; for the last eight years or so, I’ve been watching the younger generations, which don’t really reject or judge past forms, but build relationships with each of them and also use them. So I wouldn’t say that Martha Graham’s style isn’t fashionable or that it’s outdated or dead. Because there are many incredibly gifted dancers who can embody this material and bring it back to life, or make it completely viable. This is because of the way they learn it, or the relationship they manage to develop with this material. I don’t know if this is a sign of our times, but I personally think that all these old forms matter. All dance forms that have preceded us in history are something we can study, engage with and activate. It’s about putting them all on the same level and refusing to judge them or have them compete with each other.
I think that we simply evaluate dance differently today. But I also realize I’m speaking from a personal perspective – I can totally understand why someone would call Martha Graham old-fashioned. From today’s perspective, the technique may seem a bit lifeless, just form for form’s sake. I think that the quality of contemporary works is characterized by a great inner vitality; for example, Tereza builds a relationship with her audience and then she brings our focus elsewhere, as a collective experience. We’re omnivores today: everything from dance should be accessible, regardless of what it’s like formally. But maybe you disagree?
Tereza
I find it interesting what you’ve said, because I studied ballet and modern dance, which is the Martha Graham technique. So this is the technique I started to dance with. And of course because I was very young, eight or nine years old, at some point I started hating it, because it was extremely painful and sometimes I didn’t understand why I was doing some exercises at all. It was too painful to feel any passion from the movement. My relationship with the Graham technique is defined by the fact that I used to dance it at the start of my journey, but I’m somewhere else now. But I agree with Monica that it’s still a technique that’s actively taught at the HAMU in Prague as part of the basics. So it’s true that this is something that dancers relate to as a source in the sense that it’s the foundation of modern dance and probably contemporary dance as well.
Monica
I think that all dance techniques are being re-evaluated in terms of how they are taught and how people learn them and live through them. They also learn them as something that carries a certain historical context or has a certain place in the development of dance. Today we live at a time when we discuss topics such as equality, justice and hierarchy, and how we treat students and our own bodies. All these debates then influence our feelings about these techniques and how we can re-encounter them later when our life attitude changes. In fact, we ask ourselves these very questions concerning physical health and the relationship with history in GEO.
Kent
This leads us to the next question: what type of acting is your performance based on, whatever we mean by “acting” here?
Tereza
I would say it’s not acting, because I never studied any acting techniques. I’d say it’s performing with deliberate timing.
Kent
The way I look at it, the shows have narratives; I also know that you can perform a narrative without being an actor. My point is that your dance movements are not free of all references, but rather point at the world around us. That’s why I ask if it’s some kind of acting.
Tereza
Hard to say. GEO in particular contains a lot of text; it’s the first time I’ve said so much on stage. But if we talk about body language, at one point I’m trying to focus on myself just to try to imagine that my body can talk. I try to say a sentence with a certain meaning. Which is funny, because it’s extremely difficult for me to talk about myself and my work; that’s exactly what we talked about with Monica during rehearsals. It’s extraordinarily difficult for me to find the words to talk about all these things… But I try to process them all physically: to use my whole body to say something.
Kent
I’m a big optimist about actors’ ability to talk about their own art. I stick to an idea that Donald A. Schön, the author of The Reflective Practitioner, came up with: he says that while practitioners often say that it’s difficult to describe what they’re doing, generally they all can talk about it if you find the right questions. Maybe I don’t agree entirely, because talking about physicality is always tricky. On the other hand, if we make the effort to talk about these things, it will make us happier…
Dance dramaturgy – a young profession
Monica
When we talk about narrative, we should also mention another important part of the Temporary Collective: Petra Tejnorová, who comes from a theatre background. The dialogue that gives birth to the creation process and eventually the finished work, takes place across several disciplines and utilises various techniques of creation. The way in which tension is built is a gradual evolution and we simultaneously employ several artistic perspectives side by side, not just choreography.
Kent
You, Monica, are a dance dramaturg, which makes me feel curious, because for me, this job is still something quite unfamiliar that I know little about. I first came across the term in 1987 at a Theater der Welt in Stuttgart. One of the dance companies, Rosas, included a dance dramaturg, which was new to me. Could you please tell me what did the emergence of dance dramaturgy mean for dance?
Monica
I come from the United States and the profession of a dramaturg is often more common and important in Europe and in European dance. It has its roots in the German-speaking world where the profession of a dramaturg has a long tradition in drama. In my experience, the work of a dance dramaturg is something very different and doesn’t have such a long history. But that’s also why there are many different approaches to it, which I enjoy. I can talk about my own approach, and not on behalf of all of dance dramaturgy, because it’s far too diverse. But of course you can think about the profession generally on the level of timing, movement, structure, rhythm, relational space and context as material that you can work with and talk about.
But I think that what we do in Temporary Collective is make visible certain things that are hidden at first glance. By this I mean for example how Tereza often works with the motif of a person or history that’s not present on stage with her. The way she works with her performative qualities and the movement material that she uses in her approach to dance, as well as how she uses verbal language, brings into the present moment what is not immediately visible on stage.
Kent
When did you, Tereza, realize that you needed a dramaturg? And how did it happen?
Tereza
It’s true that there aren’t many dance dramaturgs in the Czech Republic. I think that most of the local dancers and choreographers work with theatre directors and dramaturgs who focus more on theatre, like Petra. But Monica’s contribution to the Temporary Collective is unique, because she’s a real dance dramaturg, which is very new to us. And I also think that Monica and Petra each work in a completely different way. Monica also approaches the work in part theatrically, but she also gives me advice on how to work with the material on the physical level. Before we started working with her, I had to deal with all of these things myself. But it’s much easier with Monica, because I can change my point of view very quickly.
Monica
Some practical examples would probably be helpful here – such as the fact that dance sequences often emerge from improvisations, but it’s always difficult to recreate improvised moments. So my role often is to watch Tereza during rehearsals and see how she’s feeling something out, discovering it. Sometimes I help her find a language that reconnects her to a certain moment, or find a way how she could stay in a particular moment of movement so it becomes more concrete and vibrant. It’s about the need to get into the logic of improvisation and how she works with her body at a specific moment. Because I used to be a professional dancer as well, I can to some extent work on the basis of embodied meaning, a physical and sensory perception that helps move things forward or bring them back.
Kent
In the theatre world, people sometimes say that that the dramaturg should represent the audience’s perspective or that the dramaturg should defend the playwright and the text. But what we’re talking about here is quite far from the ideas of Friedrich von Schiller and others. It’s probably nothing overly intellectual and theoretical…
Tereza
During our collaboration with Monica, there was this moment during the preparations of Call Alice when we were a month and a half away from the premiere when my colleague Francesca said she didn’t want to continue rehearsing. I didn’t know what to do, so I called Monica and asked her to help me finish the project. Then we started working together remotely, over Zoom, and she went through all the material we had created up to that point. Not physically in the studio, but through lots of messages sent over WhatsApp. Similarly to a theatre dramaturg, Monica had to go through all that material, listen to all the messages and help me create the narrative of the work. So I’d say that Monica doesn’t focus just on the physical material, but that she can also connect fragments into a message that’s not just about the physical material, but can convey something very complex.
Monica
I should probably also note that I used to work as a film editor in Los Angeles, working on both fiction and documentaries. In the last few years before I returned to dance, it was mostly documentaries, in which one has to become familiar with hundreds of hours of material that will need to eventually be radically reduced. You have to get from, say, six hundred hours to ninety minutes. So the work on Call Alice was quite a natural continuation of that.
When I was offered this situation of an unfinished duet that was missing one performer, so just half of a duet, I felt it was very easy to connect to the process and try to listen to the material long enough until we got to its essence and found an idea that would connect everything together. How will the realities contained within the material intertwine with our desires for a creation? Will we call the result a fiction or not? How can the documentary material that we have fulfil our desires of what we want to bring to the stage, and stand behind it? And because we were doing this during the pandemic, we rehearsed remotely; everything was digital. We were always mindful of relationships – between us, with the audience – we never forgot about that.
Kent
So you simply adapted Tereza’s work to make it presentable, do I understand you correctly? Did you, Monica, ever suggest to Tereza a topic that should be processed? Or is it always Tereza who comes up with new impulses?
Monica
I think it’s a constant dialogue, a constant exchange. It’s the same with Petra; thoughts are always circulating between us. So none of us is in a leading position, I think. Would you agree, Tereza?
Tereza
Yes, I completely agree, and I want to emphasise one more thing. I noticed that before we started working together during the pandemic, we in the Temporary Collective used to start with a clear vision that we followed until it became real. But since we started working with Monica on Call Alice during the pandemic, we have the tendency to adapt projects to the conditions we’re in. Right now, a typical feature of our collaboration is that we put different opinions and perspectives side by side and look for decisions that are in line with what we want. It’s always interesting to compare what we started with and where we ended up.
When we were making Call Alice, we had some difficulties, until we ended up with the great idea to adapt the duet so it remains a duet, but is also a solo. Then during GEO we went through a very similar process of having to deal with some health issues, and while I’m not saying that GEO exists as it is because of them, it’s true that we found its form through them. I really admire the openness and adaptability that Monica showed at a moment when I felt particularly unwell. She supported me by offering various ways how to proceed. I can imagine someone else would have said, for example: “Okay, let’s stop the preparations and find someone who’ll dance in your place, because the premiere is approaching and we’re under pressure,” or something like that. It was very nice of Monica that she did not do that and instead always tried to find a way to succeed and find a solution.
Kent
We’re getting close to the end of this interview, so I’m wondering if there’s something else you wanted to tell me but didn’t come up…?
Monica
I’m still thinking about how we talked about the role of the dramaturg earlier and how you said you see a dramaturg as the mediator between the creators and the audience. I think the dramaturg is a collaborator in making sure the form is readable for the spectators, while also remaining close to the creators and their vision and trying to help them develop their work to its full capacity and scope. I first encountered Tereza in the Dancing Museums project, funded by Creative Europe. It was a collaboration between dancers, museums and the public during the pandemic, so the relationship with the audience had its limitations. These types of international and interdisciplinary projects require you to develop a certain approach to collaboration if it is to be on a truly human level, and to overcome the fact that you don’t know the approaches and ways of understanding the others. You really need to spend a lot of time with your collaborators and make the effort to learn something together and understand each other.
This is how I first met the Temporary Collective, and during this first collaboration I felt that it combined all the things that I had learned from previous projects. I think that projects of this type always bring a very strong human connection. I really appreciate the personal relationships between the members of the Temporary Collective, and how they think about the relationship with the audience also in terms of a human connection. This is something that has come up across all of our collaborations over the years. I don’t want this quality to be underestimated. When we talk about dance or theatre work, it’s not just about the craft and technique and theory, but also about how the artists are processing relations. This can ultimately show up in the works themselves when the care of relationships is placed in the centre of attention this way. I wanted to mention that, because I think that the viewers will feel it during the performance.
Kent
It’s true that whenever I watch you on stage, you always seem to feel very safe. I often feel as if the stage was a kind of stable frame that surrounds you, and that is one reason why you can afford to be generous, and this might also be true on a more general level.
Monica
Yes, generosity is an important ingredient in our collaboration.
interview edited by Barbora Etlíková