Ghostly Gestures
Und es beginnt im Nacken des Publikums: Ein Song, eine Stimme, eine Karaokenummer erklingen von hinten. Hälse drehen sich um, aber nicht alle können sehen, woher die Musik kommt und nur wenige können in den ersten Minuten von into (quickening ground) ein paar Blicke auf Camilla Schielin erhaschen. Doch die suchenden Kopfbewegungen machen klar: Etwas kaum Sichtbares ist im Raum, etwas aus der Vergangenheit, das noch nicht ganz abgeschlossen ist. Der Song mit dieser bitteren Melancholie könnte von Lana Del Rey stammen, ist aber knapp 30 Jahre alt: Little Trouble Girl von Sonic Youth. Verspielt und verspult singt Camilla diese Coming-of-Age-Story über rebellische Außen- und Selbstwahrnehmung.
Kim Gordon, nicht nur wegen Sonic Youth eine Ikone, deren Aufgewecktheit und musikalische Abenteuerlust mit dem Alter stetig gewachsen ist, teilt ihren Nachnamen mit der Theoretikerin Avery F. Gordon. In Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination untersucht diese unsichtbare Dimensionen des sozialen Lebens, die sich als „Geister“ und Hinweise auf Leerstellen manifestieren. Imagination, das Fantasieren, ist ihr zufolge notwendig, um diese unsichtbaren Dimensionen des Sozialen erkennen zu können, um mit diesem Nicht-ganz-Vergangenen leben zu lernen. Eventuell ist das auch eine der größten Stärken von Tanz: Unsichtbares flüchtig wahrnehmbar und vor allem vorstellbar zu machen.
Während Kim Gordon verklingt, schreitet Camilla nach vorn auf die Bühne und blickt ins Publikum. Was bleibt, sind Vogelgezwitscher und das Rascheln von Bäumen. Wir sind in einem Garten oder auf einem Feld, auch die Schürze mit detailreichen Prints, die Camilla trägt, deutet darauf hin. Dann auf einmal absolute Stille. Richtige Stille. Wie in der Schlüsselszene des Films Memoria wird jedes Hintergrundgeräusch ruckartig entfernt. Alles liegt brach, wird porös. Allein der Körper und seine Präsenz füllen den Raum, starren zurück. Erinnerung an verloren geglaubte Zukünfte bahnen sich in dieser Leerstelle langsam an, während Camillas Finger allmählich über den Boden streifen, vorsichtig den Sand der Zeit aufwirbeln. Vergangenheit, Gegenwart und Zukunft vermengen sich unscheinbar, brechen Linearitäten auf, werden auf dem Rücken wie ein unsichtbares Baby hin und her geschaukelt. Für Avery F. Gordon sind Spukerscheinungen oft mit Fragen der Macht und der sozialen Ungerechtigkeit verbunden. Sie deuten auf kollektive Traumata hin. Geister bedeuten also Trouble, aber auch Widerstand.
And it starts at the audience’s back: a song, a voice, a karaoke number sound from behind. Necks turn, but not everyone can see where the music is coming from and only some are able to catch a glimpse of Camilla Schielin in the first few minutes of into (quickening ground). But the searching head movements clearly show: something barely visible is present in the room, something from the past that has not yet entirely come to an end. The song with its bitter melancholy could be by Lana Del Rey but it’s almost 30 years old: Little Trouble Girl by Sonic Youth. In a playfully and haphazard manner, Camilla sings this coming-of-age story about rebellious external and self-perception.
Kim Gordon, an icon not only on account of Sonic Youth, whose astuteness and musical adventurousness have grown steadily with age, shares her last name with theorist Avery F. Gordon. In Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination, the latter explores the invisible dimensions of social life that manifest as “ghosts” and references to gaps. According to her, imagination is necessary in order to be able to recognise these invisible dimensions of the social, to learn to live with this lingering past. Perhaps this is also one of the greatest strengths of dance: making the invisible palpable and, above all, conceivable for a brief, transitory moment.
As Kim Gordon fades out, Camilla walks to the front, onto the stage and looks at the audience. What remains are birdsong and the rustling of trees. We are in a garden or a field, even the apron with detailed prints that Camilla is wearing suggests this. Then, all of a sudden, absolute silence. Proper silence. Like in the key scene of the film Memoria, every background noise ceases in one fell swoop. Everything lies fallow, becomes porous. Only the body and its presence fill the room, staring back. The remembering of futures believed to be lost looms in this void, while Camilla’s fingers start brushing the ground, carefully stirring up the sands of time. Past, present and future merge imperceptibly, break up linearities, are rocked back and forth on the back like an invisible baby. According to Avery F. Gordon, hauntings are often associated with issues of power and social injustice. They are indicative of collective trauma. So ghosts mean trouble and at the same time resistance.
There is a hint of guitar sounds somewhere far away, partly played backwards and carefully blanketing the scene. A slow rhythm seems to spread throughout Camilla’s body. Something that is hard to grasp and yet familiar: “phantom dances”. She seems almost weightless in these moments, before approaching the stalls. Reaching under the rows of seats for something waiting to be unearthed. A tool belt made of fabric materialises. With a heart printed on the pocket and the logo of Courtney Love’s band “Hole” written in the centre. Perhaps she is this choreography’s spirit animal, reminding us that it shouldn’t just be the same activities and characters that remain manifest in our memory. A little later, a spade is removed from its hiding place and slowly drawn across the floor to turn over the fallow land. What lies below the surface makes itself felt, demands attention.
A metallic clang sounds from afar, as if played on a smartphone. The movements, which were hinted at early in the piece, are polished now. They refer to tecktonik, a dance style that combines elements of voguing, breakdancing, waving and glowsticking. It originated in France and became an international YouTube phenomenon in the 2000s. One hand often follows the other geometrically, brushes over the head in circular motions, rotates hypnotically around the wrists. The name of the dance refers to the shifting of the Earth’s plates; the tectonics that cause continents to collide, mountain ranges and new landscapes to form. But the layers move on top of each other very slowly, barely perceptible to us, as if by magic. The motif of layers is reflected in the stage space, with the hiding places under the seats and the setting that is reminiscent of a landscape despite the minimal use of props. Made up of various patches, the apron could equally be a band shirt-as-dress. It, too, refers to these layers that are always manifestations of overlapping temporalities as well.
A fast bass joins in the rhythm, passing cars are playing Madonna – another icon – on their radios, shoelaces are repeatedly being adjusted. The outside space enters the theatre space and, with it, everyday life. The places Camilla visits are hinted-at non-places, places you only touch on, that you pass by. The tecktonik movements get more expansive, broader, more intense while Camilla dances on a small platform – the next layer. Elizabeth Fraser sings. The voice of the 60-year-old musician, who became famous in the late 1980s with the Cocteau Twins, sounds almost girlish. The references to all these women who refuse to subject themselves to expectations regarding their age, who undermine them instead, are coded: these icons have resisted time, have pointed out alternative images of women by punk or pop or other means and have, almost incidentally, opened up fresh perspectives on gender roles. Playing with femininity breaks it open and turns it into fertile ground for new, nonconformist identities in the future.
Camilla looks at the audience almost stoically, her arms circling as if in a trance; golden earrings shine through her hair. Into (quickening ground) interrogates the connection between occupation and obsession and, by extension, about possession. Questions concerning inheritance and heredity arise. Questions concerning power relations between genders and also concerning the untold biographies and legacies that shape our own (hi)story. Our grandmother’s life, her unpaid and unacknowledged care work become pieces of a jigsaw puzzle in this ghost story, which isn’t a collection of purely individual experiences but is embedded in social structures.
At the end, Camilla approaches the two curtains, one black, one white. They hint at something beyond, a space that is as yet undiscovered. Where there are curtains, there is a stage. They indicate the specific place where we are at the moment. Poses, glamorous and diva-like, both hinted at and explicit, emerge. But the icons, too, are being caught up, gently beset. Everyday gestures reappear briefly, making themselves felt in larger-than-life moments. They remind the body that under each gesture lies a different one, that the gesture can only be a gesture because another one is absent at that precise moment. Not only the fallow land but we, too, are haunted.
Lewon Heublein is a curator, writer and Co-Editor-in-Chief of PW-Magazine. For Tanzquartier Wien he curates the festival Rakete and the music programme.