PARASOL Logbook III
PARASOL – a dance group of TQW is a hybrid artistic further training project aimed at young dancers. Each year, two renowned choreographers develop a piece with a group of five young dancers selected by them, for three months each. The PARASOL Logbook provides insights into the group’s working processes at irregular intervals. The texts by Gianna Virginia Prein and photos by Marcella Ruiz-Cruz have accompanied the rehearsals for the performances with Ian Kaler in the spring of 2022 and with Alix Eynaudi in the autumn of 2022. In addition, they document and portray the project and its participants: Alex Bailey, Camilla Schielin, Júlia Rúbies Subirós, Shahrzad Nazarpour, Theresa Scheinecker.
24/09/2022
Someone reads aloud, someone massages, someone moves, someone writes, someone reads in parallel. At a dinner, Alix tells me that the first rehearsals so far with the PARASOLs have taken place exclusively in the library. Then they swap.
07/11/2022
Books from Alix’s private collection are lying on the table in Studio 3, mostly arranged in a system of personal linkages into familles de livres. The PVC dance floor is covered with pink, white and semi-transparent sheets of paper. Sitting cross-legged, with their knees bent or squatting, the PARASOL dancers bend over the pieces of writing they have composed together during the rehearsals so far. They turn them around, leaf through them, arrange them, fold them with their fingernails, in halves, quarters, and tear them. Occasionally, individual words are uttered regarding the sheets’ increased value on account of being processed by hand, regarding an eyelet, a paper clip or a fold. Details should make the careful handicraft work obvious. These are not disposable products. The ephemera are meant to gain longevity on account of their finish, possibly to be included in the next “family of books”. “Would you like to take this away with you?” I read the still unedited texts in layouts that are all over the place, overlapping thematically. Some passages are very intimate, reveal emotions or are observations, others resemble slogans or concrete-poetry puns. I can guess the authorship only in very few cases. The credits are deliberately indicated elsewhere.
After decisions regarding the arrangement of the collected texts have been made, the group put on the costumes. The dancers’ movement improvisations are motivated by the titles of the pieces of writing that discreetly burst with ironic subtlety, qualifying remarks and healthy pragmatism:
“matters in one way or another”,
“parasites in pain”,
“rather boring in studious rooms”,
“one day, get some money back”,
“black ice”,
“alibi”.
Alix puts the finishing touches on the simultaneous solos through short, precise feedback that reinforces the performers’ unique characteristics and individual temporalities. The textual authorship fades into the background, while the special aspect of the overall scenic composition is symbolically underlined. Absurd facets of everyday innermost thoughts are revealed, which were expressed in the associative writing of previous rehearsals. Finally, she announces: “Let’s build up the piece like this.”
I hear the leafing of future audiences, feel them searching for connections between the poetic fragments and what’s happening on stage, or looking out of the corner of their eyes at the hands around them that hold other text fragments, sense their fear of missing something, their relief of being allowed to miss something. And even though I wonder about the exact nature of the relationship between dance and artifact, and to what extent the gift of a handmade booklet might favourably impact the experience of the performance, I would like to have them all, truly, every single folded booklet.