The wake-up calls of Emio Greco and Pieter C.

Scholten On the making and the revival of Fra Cervello e Movimento Prologue Dualism. According to the Shorter Oxford Dictionary: twofold division. A system of thought which recognizes two independent principles. Emio Greco and Pieter C. Scholten constitute Emio Greco | PC, the name that recognizes two independent names. Their meeting in 1995 resulted in a collaboration that has lasted for nine years to date and has led to more than seventeen productions, including ten dance pieces, a theatre piece, an opera and two films. Noteworthy productions to be loved or loathed that have the power to dazzle and awe, repulse or attract, but that never leave you indifferent. Perfor-mances with the effect and impetus of an alarm bell, a fire alarm, a distress siren. Wake-up calls, present in each performance in the shape of strange twists, shock effects and contrary scenes. And in fact all those performances together, the collected works today are one major wake-up call. A wakeup call to dance and to the theatre, to theatre and dance makers, to the audience, to Art. With Emio Greco is dead, whispered into the microphone by a blond wigged dancer, the duo set the opening of their eighth production Rimasto Orfano in 2002. An ice-cold shower for the theatre production system with its ever higher expectations, but also a mene tekel for the creative duo themselves. A warning to stay awake and not become paralysed by the artistic paradox which each artist sooner or later faces: the dread of having to reinvent oneself at every new production; the danger of becoming repetitive. For they invented themselves during their very first collaboration: Bianco, the ultra-white, the blank page, the first part of what was later to become, together with Rosso and Extra Dry, the dance trilogy Fra Cervello e Movimento (between brain and movement). In two solos and a solo-for-two Greco and Scholten presented their credentials; their artistic programme and their vision. The reprise of the complete trilogy, in 2004, on an invitation by Romaeuropa meshes with the reflection on their own work, as initiated by Greco and Scholten in Rimasto Orfano. It represents a return to the source from which they still draw inspiration and to the starting points that they still work with. Meeting Brain and movement. A dualism that has existed since the very first collaboration and is a constant founding factor in the works they create. A duality, individually and as a duo, The dancer/choreographer and the theatre director/dramaturge. Italian and the Dutchman. An embryonic primal scream searching for words and a vision of theatre and dance in search of a muse. Wasnt the meeting of Greco and Scholten in 1995 a meeting of Cervello e Movimento? Nine years and seventeen productions later: Emio Greco (EG): No, because there has always been a lot of brain in the movement. Pieter C. Scholten (PC): And a lot of movement in the brain. EG: I sensed I needed words. To me dance has always had the significance of a commentary. On ones self, on humanity, on society, on art in general. And I knew that I needed someone with whose help I could translate that commentary and that primal scream into something that could be communicated. Through anthropological and philosophical discussions about what dance can be, I might become better equipped to

harness that energy. Pieter was experienced in writing about theatre and dance. In him I recognised the aversion to artificiality, the narrative, the anecdotal. But also his desire to dig for the essence: the vulnerable presence of the dancer. At the time I was not concerned with the matter of making of choreographies, but with understanding the question: what does it mean to be a dancer? PC: Talking about it now, its as if there was a certain logic in our meeting and initial discussions. That was absolutely not so. We had no idea what the future might bring. Emio had left from Jan Fabre in order to find his own path. But what does that mean: finding your own path? He was very critical of the dance he saw around him, but did not have a ready answer. I worked at Theater Cosmic in Amsterdam, had initiated the series Dance Instants, was frustrated with the continued absence of funds with which to make my own theatre productions and asked myself what turn my artistic ambitions could take. Then all of a sudden there was Emio standing before me and we got talking. Manifesto In February 1996, Bianco premiered. A scratch on the history of dance. A primal scream, indeed, but mathematically harnessed, analysed to the bone, divided into seven scenes by analogy to the seven points of the manifesto that they had drawn up. For from the outset, Greco and Scholten have been in search of an intellectual as well as instinctive approach to dance. They accompanied their debut by a specific credo composed at a specific moment. Saturday 3 March 1996 at 00:00hrs they completed the final touches of Il Manifesto. The Seven Necessities. 1. Il faut que je vous dise que mon corps est curieux de moi. Je suis mon corps. 2. Il faut que je vous dise que je ne suis pas seul. 3. Il faut que je vous dise que je peux contrler mon corps et en mme temps jouer avec lui. 4. Il faut que je vous dise que mon corps mchappe. 5. Il faut que je vous dise que je peux multiplier mon corps. 6. Il faut que je vous dise quil faut que vous tourniez la tte. 7. Il faut que je vous dise que je vous abandonne et que je vous laisse ma statue. EG: The relationship between body and mind dominated our early discussions. We understood that it is necessary to critically reappraise what is known in order to discover what is unknown. What we had learned could at best lead to a reproduction of what existed already. In that case, what is the meaning of creativity? Then we began improvising. By carefully observing and interrogating my body as it was at work in the studio we arrived at new insights. We tried as honestly as possible to recognise where the movements stemmed from. Where did the body follow the commands of the will, and where was it speaking for itself? Sometimes I purposefully brought the body into confusion by going straight against its habitual ways, sometimes I gave free reign to those habits and placed them in a different context. Those seven points of the manifesto are linked to intentions of movements, representing the things we are working with even today. PC: The manifesto was not written with the idea: we work with this for a few months, then discard it and write something else. This is to remain. With every performance we create we rewrite the manifesto. Every piece refers to The Seven Necessities, sometimes directly as in Bianco, sometimes in ways that are only recognisable to us, as with

Rimasto Orfano. In all those years The Seven Necessities have lost none of their force and validity. Perhaps they are a little naive, but that is how they were once conceived. And in a way I cherish the naivety that speaks from them. Bianco EG: At that point in time we wanted to break through the wall of the dance world with a new vision of dance. Bianco was a happening, a 65-minute piece in which everything is laid bare. There is nothing to fall back on or hide behind. There is only one element at work there: the maker, himself. For 65 minutes he displays a way of making dance. The reprise can never have the same impact. Now I may dance the statement, at the time I was the statement. PC: We couldnt make another piece like Bianco now. Impossible. A reprise of Bianco will automatically be a commentary. One of The Seven Necessities states: Il faut que je vous dise que mon corps est curieux de moi. Je suis mon corps. With Bianco and Rosso in particular, the solos by Emio, it leads unavoidably to a new look on the materials, simply because Emios body is no longer the same as it was then. Rosso A continuation of the collaboration after Bianco was not self-evident for Greco and Scholten. They had made the statement they needed to make, there was little to add to it: Bianco is Bianco and thats it. It was Johan Reyniers, director of the Klapstuk Festival in Louvain who offered Scholten and Greco a studio space to work in for some time. Without the pressure of having to produce a new performance, perhaps as an opportunity to elaborate on Bianco, or maybe just as a chance to continue the collaboration. That is how Rosso came about. Mysterious, mystical. The white cloth was at once drenched in red, innocence lost forever. PC: That was indeed the intention. The red also stood for the expectations that had grown up around us. They were highly charged. Red is the most highly charged colour. Passion, love, blood, hell; you can project anything onto it. Our concept was to have one perpetual, continual flowing of energy. In contrast to Bianco, where the structure was based on seven, and there were consequently seven states of lighting, we took a single state as our starting point for Rosso. The music was not to be conceived as music, but as a continuing tone that is already there when the audience enters and also when they leave. EG: I wanted to overcome Bianco by surpassing it in terms of effort, heroism and movement idiom. All the same it had to be completely different. In that respect I am a purist. Actually, I had not wanted to present Bianco. I was flabbergasted when Pieter proposed to show the work. I was primarily concerned with our collaboration and with the things that arose from it. Bianco was so new, even to ourselves, I felt quite insecure about it and I had major doubts about showing it. The fact that Bianco did come about happened dispite me. It took us almost two years after that to make Rosso. I wanted everything to be felt anew, the necessity, the conviction, the motivation. And then things slowly began to move. Rosso was an interminable tour de force; it is about an unen-ding current, the dance has been developed on the idea of a monotonous stream. An endless force. Even for me, that is. Extra Dry It was only after Rosso that the idea of a trilogy began to form; Bianco and Rosso

belonged together and the thought occurred to have them followed by a third part. On a request by dance festival CaDance in The Hague, Greco and Scholten first created the performance Double Points: Two. For the first time there was another dancer besides Emio, for the first time a duet, for the first time a choreography. It marked the overture as well as the preliminary investigation for Extra Dry. PC: It was never determined beforehand: lets make a trilogy, starting with white, then red and concluding with gold. Every piece brought on its own consequences. After the red of Rosso we found it impossible to use any other colour. Moreover, we realised that Bianco and Rosso could never be danced by anyone else. Nor are Bianco and Rosso choreographies; they are statements. With Extra Dry it was clear from the start that we had to investigate new things. To put ourselves into perspective, we needed the communication with a third person, another dancer. We had developed a desire to let others in, to share. EG: Extra Dry is one of my finest experiences if we talk about working from intuition. The title, the concept of space, the gold. The scenery stands midway between a cathedral and a steppe desert. And then two people journeying around the stage. After Rosso we became conscious of our quest. We could reflect on the elements that were working with. We first took up the contrast between the sacred and the profane while working on Extra Dry. Likewise we then consciously developed the notion of a space inbetween, an interspace. PC: In Extra Dry everything revolved around the core notion of syn such as synchronicity, syncopation, synergy. Still a breakdown according to The Seven Necessities, but with an added twist. Synchronicity came into focus naturally through working with a dancer alongside Emio. The doubling, the simultaneousness. Someone who managed to stay standing beside Emio without becoming his double. Unisono synchronicity Two entities juxtaposed to see what may happen, what may be possible in the way of cross-overs, where the specific loses its outline and where it unmistakably distinguishes itself from its counterpart. In Bianco and Rosso the body of one dancer spanned the duality of body and mind and took up the space between the two, the interspace, the twilight area between the poles. The duality of the I and the not-I, subject and object, consciousness and existence, body and mind, the profane and the sacred. Extra Dry marked the beginning of multiplication: the duality made visible by the two dancers on the stage. And even when a complete unisono synchronicity in dance and movement seems to occur, there is never complete unity. The more synchronicity there is, the more the individuality of the dancers is emphasized. PC: When it is performed well, as a synchronous unisono journey of a set of dancers on the stage, then it becomes like a single breath, but with a clear-cut view of the characteristics of each individual dancer. Unity duality multiplicity Besides being a given fact, duality is also a basic precondition for the creative process of Greco and Scholten. It is in this interspace that new things are created. PC: There is constant friction between the elements. Dance and lighting, lighting and music, music and dance. Unity does not exist, though you may reach for it. If unity were

to be achieved, the work would cease to be, in which case life itself would be impossible. That aspiration and that friction are recurring elements in our work. Neither Emio nor I constitute a unity. Our collaboration is based on friction. EG: Duality marks the first fission of the entity. That very first division, that first great separation, that is gigantic. Unity is broken and fragmentation has set in. What follows is multiplication, repetition. We are programmed to aspire to unification, in the knowledge that we shall never accomplish it. Such is life. The desire of oneness is the driving force. Epilogue EG: After Bianco I expected we would stop. Everything had been said. And similarly after Emio Greco is dead in Rimasto Orfano I thought that we could quit. But new opportunities keep arising, new areas to investigate, like working with other theatrical disciplines. The juxtaposition of dance and textual theatre, dance and opera. Apparently it never stops. PC: Apparently you may return from the underworld more than once. Just like Euridice. No strategy, no course. One thing follows from another. A continuing investigation of how far you can go. After Rimasto Orfano there was a desire to leave the path of dance. Double Points: Bertha The Bermudez Triangle came about, a portrait of dancer Bertha Bermudez Pascual, developed together with dance critic Helmut Ploebst. Teorema followed, an adaptation for the theatre of Pasolinis book and film of the same title in collaboration with Toneelgroep Amsterdam. Then came Orfeo ed Euridice the opera. And now the reprise of Fra Cervello e Movimento. A return to the source in order to set out again from there. A new dance production is on its way. The title is already set: Hell. Gabriel Smeets - Amsterdam, August 2004 Translation from Dutch: The Loft v.o.f. This interview was commissioned by Emio Greco | PC for the programme of Fra Cervello e Movimento Bianco, Rosso and Extra Dry at the Brakke Grond theatre in Amsterdam, 28 September to 5 October 2004.