Robyn Jordaan
The Present Continuous
Through dance and improvisation in a fictional scenario, the video The Present Continuous aims to portray the body’s comportment in partial escape from its morals/belief systems ingrained through upbringing. When the body sets out to characterise itself, it falls into a trap of disillusionment, where we can be conscious and fully functioning under the gaze of character, but not one we have knowingly found ourselves brought up to be. The sharp division between private and public has become partial. Often to find ourself loosely tied to an image in person we don’t move as. The Present Continuous offers an immersive image within which someone might nonetheless experience difficult self-reflection as much as room to breathe, the body of the viewer in equilibrium with those depicted. It shows displacement of hierarchy between bodies and objects that become apparent and the interplay of performativity between the observer and observed unravels itself through distractions, misunderstandings, unexpected associative relations, suspense or disbelief.
My exploration has involved the production of a series of three video works, that all explore relationships between camera, room and body. They have built on one another to discover strategies for the presentation of amateur dance sequences.
The movements of the untrained performers allude more and less consciously to genres of dance, from contemporary to classical ballet, making visible programmed ways of holding the body. It is this making visible that holds liberatory potential. Combining the fundamental conflict of ontological hysteric theatre and rendering it through a phenomenological lens inspired by a moment-to-moment reality of thing-in-and-of-themselves, I believe theatre still plays a role in affecting its audiences. My interest is in the way that the resultant works might allow young people a protest against technocratic development in everyday life, against the loss of sensual qualities.
