«Edelweiss» ©Alexander Meeus
Believing in modernity has become increasingly difficult because the fulfillment of the promise of progress associated with the development of technology is constantly failing. This occurs because techniques do not serve a Humanist program, but they proliferate uncontrollably, their only goal being economic profitability.
Working around the idea of craftsmanship in “Edelweiss”, Alix Eynaudi gives special relevance to dance as a technique for proposing a certain way of inhabiting the world. With this gesture the artist moves away from both virtuous exhibitionism (technique as a value in itself) and the refusal of technique as a source of symbolic inequality between artists and audiences. Putting the craftsman’s technique at the service of a political proposal implies reconnecting technique with ethics. Even though the craftsman is not a modern emblem, paradoxically, it is only by collectively engaging in this endeavor that we might rehabilitate the concept of progress and in so doing, experience true modernity. That is, our society would then be less affected by smartphones and tablets and more by new ways of understanding each other and thinking together.
In “Edelweiss” Alix Eynaudi also explores “rebus” -an allusional device that uses pictures to represent words or parts of words- as a generative tool for the choreography. However, the meaning of these “danced rebus” is never revealed. By invoking signification and making interpretation impossible at the same time, to a certain extent Eynaudi deactivates rational analysis and confronts us with an experience which emphasizes the sensorial.
This gesture resonates with Susan Sontag’s classic essay “Against Interpretation”, where the writer complains about a culture “whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability”. Besides this pre-existing cultural bias, excess and overproduction would dull our senses even further and therefore Sontag affirms that “what is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.”
Although this demand could be understood as the thousandth complaint about the subaltern role of the body in Western culture, it becomes especially relevant because of its political implications. A society of sensorially-dulled individuals turns into a heap of bodies partially isolated from other bodies, objects and the environment. As Richard Sennett declares in his essay about the craftsman, “people seek refuge in inwardness when material engagement proves empty”. On the contrary, the overwhelming sensuality of “Edelweiss” suggests a poetics of connectivity towards the ocean of materials in which human bodies are inserted. It also implies a certain joie de vivre, a celebration of the things which surround us.
However, Eynaudi’s multifaceted choreographic practice goes far beyond a poetics of connectivity and encompasses a wide range of strategies and formal devices, each carrying its own political implications: balance, touch, care…
Balance occasionally becomes a prominent aspect in the choreography itself, but above all constitutes the result of a certain attitude towards things, where everything is given the same amount of attention. This means that all theatrical resources acquire the same relevance. But more specifically, it might also mean that objects become as important as humans and in this material conversation some objects might “talk back”.
Furthermore, the relevance of touch in “Edelweiss” can be associated with the symbolic dimension of this sense. If gaze allows us to compose a hermetic image of the bodies and objects we encounter, tactility tends to blur the boundaries between us and the world. Touch also engages us in a physical negotiation where perceiving the world implies simultaneously trying to understand what the world is made of, how it impinges on us and, even, what are the properties and history of the materials with which we come in contact.
Along with these elements, “care” is one of the most important aspects of “Edelweiss”. Care manifests itself both in the symbols of the piece as well as the movement quality and the way the performers relate to objects. That is, every gesture of the choreography is executed carefully: bodies dance as much as they take care of each other, and great care is also taken in the manipulation of the objects onstage.
In our society, care is linked to female identity and sexism would explain why it is economically and symbolically undervalued. Vindicating care as Mierle Laderman Ukeles did in her “Maintenance Art Manifesto” (1969) remains an urgent task today.
Moreover, David Graeber shows how contempt towards this dimension of care has consequences in the way we understand labor:
“It’s just our obsession with certain very specific forms of rather macho male labor-factory workers, truck-drivers, that sort of thing-which then becomes the paradigm of all labor in our imaginations; that blinds us to the fact that the bulk of working class people have always been engaged in caring labor of one sort or another. So I think we need to start by redefining labor itself, maybe, start with classic «women’s work,» nurturing children, looking after things, as the paradigm for labor itself and then it will be much harder to be confused about what’s really valuable and what isn’t.”
This approach already underlies the political practice of one of the most interesting figures of the European New Left, Manuela Carmena, the new mayor of Madrid, who in her inaugural address declared that she was “going to work with politics of care (…) also known as women’s culture” .
Of course the most common objection to this kind of proposal is that it does not seem to consider confrontation as a tool for social transformation. This objection can be easily overcome by clarifying that it is not about avoiding conflict at all costs, rather about only considering it as a last option.
Another source of resistance towards this approach comes from its lack of epics. That is, ardent discourses filled with heroic resonances tend to be much more effective and seductive both in politics and art.
As the “hero” is the privileged archetype of traditional masculinity, our “spontaneous” inclination towards epics might reveal to what extent we still have work to do in order to get rid of sexist thinking patterns still inscribed in our bodies. Or, to say it with other words, the same binary understanding of the world which sets male and female or body and mind as opposites self-perpetuates itself by privileging conflict – literal binary antagonism – as a way of relating to the world. Becoming aware of this tautology might be a first step towards breaking away from it.