Based on the live performance ‘Endless Box‘, in which Japanese jiutamai choreography is deconstructed by the spatial constraints of the box, this short film takes this approach a step further by choreographing the box itself.
The starting point for the exploration of Choreographies of the Gaze is the video strategy that I developed as part of the process for ‘Rapeflower’ as a gesture of the subject’s empowerment and a metaphor for regaining agency after the experience of rape. The fan – which is a carrier of meaning, an extension of the body as well as a dance partner – acquires its own gaze here. Choreography viewed from the perspective of the fan fragments the body and aligns it with the space that hosts it. This process continued with attempts to displace the gaze and question how individual interventions affect the nature of the choreography. All the videos are based on the jiutamai dance ‘Nanoha’, which was the choreographic base in ‘Rapeflower’. Thus, the following videos show: the fan’s gaze; the outside gaze on the fan’s gaze shown by torchlight; the close, potentially objectifying outside gaze on the dancing body; the persistent returning of the gaze; and the perspective of the ‘third eye’, which in jiutamai practice is located at the top of the chest, and which here shows the gaze on space dictated by traditional choreography.
This on-camera performance deconstructs the classical Japanese Jiutamai choreography through water. The resistive quality of movement in jiutamai is reinforced by the density of the surrounding water, while the grounding typical of this dance technique is impossible to maintain.
Special thanks to Jan Tomza-Osiecki and Monika Osiecka