The performance collective KAIHO consists of Brandon Lagaert, founder and artistic director of the collective and artistic assistant Sara Angelucci who are collaborating with Marina Cherry, co-director, performer and contortionist along with light designer Thibault Condy on the project AVoid.
Together, they explore the borders and similarities between dance, theatre and all kinds of movement. As part of the 3‑year residency program Moving Identities, which aims to create a more sustainable, diverse and including platform for European Identities in the performing arts, KAIHO has been staying at Kunstplaats Vonk in Hasselt for the past 2 weeks. Here, we sat down to talk about their project and vision, storytelling through movement and what Moving Identities has meant in the development of their practice.
Could you tell me a little bit more about the project you are working on?
Marina: So here in Hasselt, we are working on a performance called ‘Avoid’, in which we explore themes such as solitude and the particular notion of ‘hikikomori’, a Japanese term for extreme social withdrawal. During our time here, we decided to make a short film to explore the ideas we wanted to touch upon, as a supplement to the larger project, and shot some scenes in an Asian supermarket as well as inside the apartment I’m staying in. For me, the short film serves as a prelude to the final performance.
How did you come across the concept of hikikomori and why did it inspire you?
Brandon: I am quite bad at remembering how and where things started, but Marina contacted me with the invitation to collaborate and I was interested in how she, with a background in circus and contortionism, uses her body to tell stories, which is something I very much relate to as a dancer. I think we use flexibility in a different way but both of us were interested in exploring something more narrative and more theatrical. We knew it was going to be a solo and we were looking for ways of dealing with the meaning of the single body on the stage. Somehow, we came across the idea of hikikomori, which inspired us to further dive into the themes of loneliness and solitude.
Marina: We were looking for similarities and this subject touched both of us. I had written down a lot of ideas that were rather vague on the particularity of the solo and the struggle a lot of artists might experience in terms of presenting your internal world externally. Going from there, we were just throwing around ideas and then we came across the notion of hikikomori. Now, I think, it serves as a useful foundation, but not everything we are doing is (or needs to be) connected to it in an obvious manner.
Talking about the search for a narrative and the creation or expression of meaning, storytelling seems to play an important role in your work, in which writing, and the concept of languages are often a recurring theme for both of you. How do you experience the tension between textual and visual – or in this case, bodily — forms of storytelling? And how do you approach movement as a form of storytelling?
Brandon: up until now, we have not really touched upon this as much, even though we are both fanatics of languages. The thing is, language is always tricky and I do not like the ‘preaching’ or Shakespearean type of monologue where you address the audience. To me, it takes away from the immersive experience and I feel like storytelling is much more about the actions and the sequence of things. Photography, for example, can tell a story in only a few images, simply by showing you a picture of someone holding a cup and another one of a broken cup on the floor. So, in that sense, visual languages are something that we can connect to and understand much easier. From there, it is also easier to translate it to movement, which is our shared language. It also makes the story more universal, which is something we have to be very aware of because we are creating something that will eventually tour internationally.
Marina: I think the idea of language is always interesting and it is definitely part of the project; I write a lot when developing my thoughts, I read a lot of different texts on loneliness, which are all inspiring in the development of the project. To me, these texts serve more as a map, which allows me to transform what I have collected into an embodied way of narrating. Like Brandon says, the outcome of the project will probably not use words — as much as we both love languages. Of course, we thought about implementing the different languages we speak or even absurd ones that do not make sense, but verbal language is tricky in any case and it might limit us later on. So I think this is where our physicality comes in, in looking for a more universal way of telling — even though our bodily language is a quite unique one. This is the language we want to explore the most, as well as the visual aspects of light, sound and scenography.
The openness and the search for forms of storytelling that speak to multiple contexts relates to something you said earlier about not necessarily wanting to ‘spread a message’ and trying to leave (at least part of) the process of meaning-making up to the audience. If it is not about spreading a message or a clearly delineated meaning, what are things that you do wish to provoke with your work?
Brandon: Well, I think it is more about opening a dialogue around loneliness…
Marina: That is exactly what I was going to say!
Brandon: Yes, or around social anxiety and how it affects people. But then again, we are not scientists looking at data, we are trying to tell a personal story: this is a person that has struggled with it, let them tell their story. And we try to do that in different cultural contexts, as we are doing now in Hasselt and as we will be doing in Estonia and Spain — and hopefully we can do it in Asia one day. In this way, we try to understand common denominators: maybe there is something we all have in common across cultures? And of course, there are very specific ways of dealing with it, specific to certain cultural contexts. In any case, it is more about making the topic more accessible to people, to get them to talk about it, rather than pointing the finger or judging how people deal with it. I find it difficult to see a show that tells me I am the bad guy even though I am the one seeing your show and paying for you to be on stage — I find that a bit hypocritical. So that is not what we want to do here. I think it is about setting out some lines and giving the audience the crayons to color it in for themselves.
Marina: Yes, I do not think we are trying to propose any solutions to what loneliness is or how to cure it, it is about opening the space and the dialogue for people to feel comfortable talking about it, because it is still a very sensitive subject for a lot of people. And maybe, when we are not actually using words, and we are using our bodies, it will allow people to say it touched them somehow or provided them with a new way to reflect on and talk about how they experience loneliness.
As you emphasized, you are not interested in data, this is not that kind of research. So, speaking about bodily forms of storytelling as a way to open up conversation, how do you relate to the medium specific potential of performance or dance as a form of meaning-making? A form of knowledge production that goes beyond a traditional body/mind dualism? How do you engage with movement research but also with movement as research?
Marina: For me, as a mover, there is something very abstract about ‘just’ going from movement to movement. Sometimes it can be very nice as well and open up a lot of options, but it seems that the way in which Brandon and I have been working together so far has always been about creating something concrete and then seeing how the body reacts to that. We have started with words or with actions, I also like to work with textures a lot or just starting from a sound. For me, it makes sense to try and find my own logic in what we do — sometimes there is no logic at all. We work a lot with improvisation and we try to take small elements and then zoom out, trying to find a narrative that makes sense. I guess it is always a back and forth between body, idea and creation: constantly taking parts of the ideas and bringing them back to the body. It all sounds quite abstract, but it makes sense when we are doing it.
Brandon: I think that is a good way of putting it: it is a dialogue between body and mind. I really believe in the idea that the perfect method is a combination of all the methods, rather than sticking to one. It is like learning a language: you need to listen and read and talk and surround yourself with it, rather than only relying on a textbook and have it exist in a vacuum until the moment that you magically become fluent in it. It is the same with movement: the mind and the body must work together — sometimes one of them might be more present, but ultimately it is about the interplay. Related to this, it is important to accept your state of mind and body: some days you are simply not feeling it — even though you are a contortionist, your back does not want to move in a certain way. Then, we can work on something else, the fingers for example, or think about the narrative — or maybe the voice, maybe it is the perfect day for it. So it is also very much about accepting this interplay and redirecting the flow rather than blocking it in an attempt to ‘break through’ it. This can be interesting too, but it is just not a sustainable way of working.
Marina: In these moments, it is about making the body smaller: if it cannot do everything you imagined and your back does not want to do a certain movement, you just zoom in on the fingers, for example. There are so many interesting things to discover when you cut the body up into smaller pieces and, simultaneously, cut ideas up into smaller bits. It can be intimidating thinking ‘we have a whole show to make about loneliness’, so it is often easier to go back to the smaller pieces and go from there.
Brandon: Yes, as dancers, we train very hard to give the audience the illusion of physical freedom. Within dance education, there are a lot of rules: you are a contortionist because of this and that, or you are a belly dancer because of different things. I think here in Belgium we are pretty good at breaking those boundaries and using what we want to express ourselves. But in general, contemporary dance is still a very delineated term: you do not use your voice, even though it is part of the body, for example. We try to mix all these things and search for the best way to tell our story. It is a lot of trying — trying to find your own freedom within the prison that the school system has put you in and trying to break out of that in order to express yourself fully and freely.
This breaking of boundaries seems to be visibly present in your work, as there is a certain strangeness in your bodily languages that does not really align with traditional norms of beauty or aesthetics. How do you relate to the concept of beauty or the aesthetically pleasing in the ways you move or present the body?
Brandon: Exactly, I find it incredibly boring to see conventional beauty. I do not find it beautiful, it often even pushes me away, whereas something very extreme and weird can be so captivating that it becomes very beautiful to me. Like contortion, for example, some people have to look away, but it can be so pleasing to the eye somehow – and the mind too! So, yes, I am not a big fan of conventional beauty, also because I think I know the pain behind it. If I watch a ballet performance, for example, I just know they are physically and mentally suffering, so I don’t find it beautiful. In that sense, I prefer to see the physical pain or effort, rather than the attempt to wrap it up in a beautiful package. It’s like anti-advertisement.
Marina: That is also the thing about traditional beauty: it can only go so far. We have these conventions and it is easy to watch, maybe, but at some point it is just not interesting anymore because we have all seen it. As Brandon said, we want to go beyond that and explore what is strange and genuinely interesting to us. But as soon as you move beyond the borders of the ‘normal’, you have to be more attentive as people will be much more aware of what the performer is doing and what they are feeling, because they are suddenly confronted with questions like ‘why is this strange? Why is it not beautiful anymore? Maybe it is beautiful? Maybe it is just a different definition of beauty?
Brandon: A lot of staged beauty is also the reflection of a reflection’s reflection or a copy of a copy’s copy — something that was considered beautiful maybe a hundred years ago, but that we just keep reproducing because we are so used to it.
Sara: It is a form of generational knowledge that used to represent certain things but that does not resonate in the same way anymore.
Marina: There is so much beyond beauty, too, you can have something that is aesthetically attractive but not necessarily beautiful and I think we are beyond the age of seeing beauty as the goal.
Brandon: Yes, I think Tim Burton does this very well for example. It is not conventional beauty, yet it is very pleasing to look at, because it fits the story perfectly. Some of the creatures are really weird and you would not want to meet them in real life, but in the films, they are really cute. So there is something that we can do differently and there are other ways of dealing with the body and with beauty — or how we relate to the body in terms of normality.
Sara: And still, aesthetics is very much dependent on cultural contexts: what is aesthetically pleasing here in Europe might not be in Asia and vice versa. I think the project touches upon this, in the sense that we are introducing the same elements in different cultural environments to see how they shift and change while also trying to find the commonalities between these cultures. The residencies as part of Moving identities provide us with the means to explore how different meanings might arise from different contexts.
Brandon: Indeed, that is also why we like to work with people from different countries and cultures, as it helps to break stereotypes and whatever cultural rules and norms we might have. If you put the same thing in a different location, it gains something instead of losing meaning. So, recontextualising, as Sara said, is really important for us – and art in general — to gain a new understanding of what we are doing.
Does this also relate to your inter- or transmedial approach, in the sense that by working with a lot of different media you are continuously putting yourself into different contexts and trying to break the boundaries between different media and their aesthetics? And how does this approach contribute to a critical practice?
Marina: For me, this way of working is really nice, because the idea of breaking out of a certain context gives you a sense of freedom: you do not have any rules when you are out of context. Of course, there are some codes that you will always have to fit into, even if there are different (beauty) standards. Using different media allows you to be very conscious about what you are presenting and to create your own definitions. In any case, you cannot appeal to everyone.
Brandon: I think it is important to stress that we do break the rules with intent: it is not about breaking the rules because we are rebels, but because the medium of dance is simply not enough to tell a full story and there are little gaps that can be filled with different media. The intermedial approach allows us to choose the best form to present our ideas. It is about breaking the rules with a certain understanding: I do spend a lot of time with every single medium before I even dare to say I have knowledge of it, Marina is the same. While people will often use projection and live music etc. because it is ‘multidisciplinary’, assuming that ‘as long as we are going to use everything there is something that is going to work’, I believe it is important to put enough time into a medium, to understand it, before using it yourself.
Marina: This idea of pleasing everyone, especially on stage, is really not interesting. It is like a recipe: you can have the elements for a good show but sometimes you put them together and it does not work anymore.
Brandon: there is a good analogy there: someone can have all of the ingredients of a dish but if they are not following the recipe then it can be a disastrous outcome. And it is not because you are using all of the ingredients that you are going to come to a good result. You need to understand how to put them together, the quantities as well: sometimes you just need a pinch or a sprinkle but if you add more, everything just explodes, you know.
Marina: And maybe instead of lemon someone really likes lime, so you add some lime as it serves the same purpose, but it adds some nuance, for example. But these are all choices you can only make when you understand the recipe.
In the context of Moving Identities, you still have two other residencies left in Estonia and Spain. What do you want to develop further during your time there or what are you still curious about to explore in the rest of your trajectory? In addition, how do you look back on the time that you already have spent working on this project together?
Brandon: In Estonia, we are planning on working more on the performance itself and in Barcelona we will focus on the technical aspects such as the sound and the lighting. In terms of sound, we are still searching: it could become a tiny speaker on Marina’s body, or maybe hidden somewhere? For the lighting, we have done a bit of research into options that allow us to not solely rely on big light sources from above: maybe the light will come from a bottle of water, or maybe Marina will wear something that glows in the dark? We are still not sure, so we need some more research, but we are happy to do it.
Sara: Thibault (Condy), our light designer, will also join us during the third residency in Barcelona.
Brandon: The voice is also something that I am keen to explore further, and we have not had the time yet to work on that extensively, but I am really interested in researching it.
Marina: While I still want to keep it open and leave a lot of room for experiment, I am hoping to have more closure on the technical aspects and the scenography by the time we do the Barcelona residency, so I would love to explore that more in Estonia. We started the project with a table as our only stage prop, serving like a little house and an object that I could use to make my body move in ways I cannot do on my own, but we are not sure what elements we are keeping and adding.
Brandon: I think it is important to underline that our practice is very collaborative: even though we are talking about more technical aspects here, these inevitably impact the larger artistic process. For example, Thibault is going to bring his own flavour to the light design and that might influence the production in a way that we had not thought about. I feel like we are a collective that is very open to any input of the people we collaborate with.
Marina: I very much agree. The trust in this group is the core of our practice. It feels rather funny saying this, because it is so obvious when you are working with people that you connect with this well. It feels like a very harmonious way of working and we all contribute in our own ways. We are like little puzzle pieces that fit perfectly but are still able to shift and take on different roles.
