Kiani del Valle is a professional dancer, choreographer and teacher, originally from Puerto Rico, she now lives and works in Berlin. _____________
In Motion – Poem STAMENT
As of late, and for a while now, my mind has been constantly concerned with ideas of leaving and departure, of home, identity, conflict and vulnerability. I find myself once again at a time in which I will leave, looking for what I now need, leaving behind everything and everyone I love in order to be faced with myself, with who I am, in my blessed loneliness. Loneliness is a teacher, it connects me to who I am and allows me the suspended time to dive deep within myself; it offers me the wonderful opportunity of confronting me and seeing who I am today, if only to find myself anew; raw, exposed, light. Here I am, precious golden vessel, decidedly ready to begin. To continue walking in a loving, fruitful, surprising path of beautiful uncertainties. Discovering, learning, unveiling, going past the surface of things. Seeing,perceiving clearly and truthfully.
I walked away from a crowd of loved ones from whom I could feel their love for me as well. And I was reminded, perhaps to a confusing but at the same time clarifying moment, that we must defend our silence, our space, our wants, needs and desires; ourselves. I felt as if I was being released and, however saddened or confused, I understood the motion of things, and felt how life was ordering itself out for me. A blissful split second of pure recognition of what was there, of a newly found wisdom that flashed in front of my eyes, allowing me to grasp it and make it my own. Treading new paths, inhabiting new spaces, witnessing other discourses, other languages, other ways of moving and approaching oneself, others and our surroundings. Taking active part in it and growing from everything I see and experience. Having the wonderful opportunity of touching and being touched, of feeling and being felt. Acknowledgement. Once again, I have the gift of time, time to cross paths with new people, new teachers, mentors and new decisions, always in search of something that is unbeknownst to me but that I can only grasp when I move.
I've been told that "distance is not the quantity of space but the quality of giving and receiving messages", therefore I wonder how can I access this distance by letting go of and embracing my own terror, by welcoming the disorientation I feel at the time of entering. I just allow myself to be, to feel what is being offered. I think of how I give myself to the world, to others. Just let go, of ego and of assumptions. Go inside, fully, unabashedly, with a hand grasping the specific and the other grasping the unknown. It is the only way. Where I am is what I need, what is happening is what I need. I've only to surrender and wonder, wander, fumble, go straight, get lost, come back... listen carefully and calmly and offer what I am right now, what I have.A body, a brain, a soul. With responsability and commitment to create dances, execute them, write about them and be inspired and absorbed by them. With hearts in my feet. HERE I AM.
I have always been interested in other versions of my own body; an animal, a substance, a robot interacting with responsive enviotments etc. Since my experience in the Contemporary Dance Department at Concordia University Montreal, my relationship to choreography have changed a lot. Perhaps because moving to New York means "making money" and without knowing I find myself teaching and dancing for people (between other jobs) but....What about my own work? Choreographing and creating are processes that resume simple and transcendental things in life, and to sumerge myself in this again is always mind blowing. So, I find myself in the studio alone, growing paws to attack space and reinvent myself. From this practice a couple of solos have been born, but it wasn't until now that the oportunity of choreographing a big project was presented in front of me.
The Kinitiras Choreography Lab (and the Professional Development Project) seems to me like the perfect place to develop my creative process, conceptualize more in detail my choreographic concepts and grow within the process of feedback, practical and methodicalpractices. I will like to bring this particular project into the lab platform or use the lab to start my process from a deeper point. Its a project with the greek/german musician Daniel Brandt and his band BRANDT BRAUER FRICK. Brandt had great interest to collaborate and work with artist for this project. I had great interest and need to be part of a choreographic Lab like Kinitiras to get deeper withing my movement language and develope a choreographic material that could show justice to the project. It will be great to have the core of my creative process supported by such well know teachers and mentors in a setting like Greece and to see how this will influence and push my work to a more challenging place.
So as I grip my paws waiting for that release moment of motion I place myself here and now, wanting to learn and grow. An available body and mind open to the uncertainty of tomorrow. A citizen of the world with dance as my engine. The future is now, get your paws ready.
NOW IN GREECE
Ready to Start my process. Starting point for me was worshop with MICHAEL KLEIN.
Notes.....
-Dance as a technology of the self. To bring the dance organic situation into a "commune" ground.
- The conscious process is a very tiny window in the moment of and "intense" body performative experience. In this case most of us question...What is INTENSE? Do we define an effective or successful creative and physical experience by level of intensity? And this also brings me to the question....How do we trained ourselves in relationship to our creative work and aspirations? The body as a sponge.
-Representing is a step away from experiencing.
-To think of dance as a phenomenon of institutionalize arrangements.
- Personal Cosmology: What makes sense to me and what my work, and who i am is absorbed off.
-Finding a strategy:
*Something that gives me pleasure
*Something that bothers me
* Break Patterns
*Surprise yourselve
*Blury Vision
*Repetition
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They speak the truth: FEET
After so much talking about philosophy, Cosmology, choreographic strategies and Ethereal scores. I had to come back to the body, this discussions are still important for me to see and understand my dance stratosphere. They aloud me to see what i agree with, and what i don't bealive in, they definitely give depth to my research and is one of my pleasures to hear the debate between my fellow dancers here in the Lab. But in this case the first window of my research is the relationship with my own body. How do i move? Why do i move? And putting movement as a Subject...Hey Movement!! WHO ARE YOU?
On luch break we were looking at each others feet, and i couldn't help to notice how they showed the history or a map of dance in each of us.
The nails of my pinky toe are some how gone....paying off for my years of point work. 3 Split toe scars that usually open every once in a while.....paying of for my years of modern and dancing barefoot. Burns on the top of my foot. And wide wiiiide dinosaur paws.
This already started to define a fight, a pleasure and a consensus withing myself. And the next day at the studio some material was born.
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Do not use the music to mask or dictate your movement. Take the mask off. Lets see Wat happens. I am still a living experiment of this task.....Though i am a music junkie, my interest is now to find a common ground for this two to meet gracefully at the same point. In my case BODY needs to find her voice and then invite MUSIC for a coffee....
After so much talking about philosophy, Cosmology, choreographic strategies and Ethereal scores. I had to come back to the body, this discussions are still important for me to see and understand my dance stratosphere. They aloud me to see what i agree with, and what i don't bealive in, they definitely give depth to my research and is one of my pleasures to hear the debate between my fellow dancers here in the Lab. But in this case the first window of my research is the relationship with my own body. How do i move? Why do i move? And putting movement as a Subject...Hey Movement!! WHO ARE YOU?
On luch break we were looking at each others feet, and i couldn't help to notice how they showed the history or a map of dance in each of us.
The nails of my pinky toe are some how gone....paying off for my years of point work. 3 Split toe scars that usually open every once in a while.....paying of for my years of modern and dancing barefoot. Burns on the top of my foot. And wide wiiiide dinosaur paws.
This already started to define a fight, a pleasure and a consensus withing myself. And the next day at the studio some material was born.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Do not use the music to mask or dictate your movement. Take the mask off. Lets see Wat happens. I am still a living experiment of this task.....Though i am a music junkie, my interest is now to find a common ground for this two to meet gracefully at the same point. In my case BODY needs to find her voice and then invite MUSIC for a coffee....
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ROBERTO OLIVAN comes to the lab
I survived. The experience was great for my body in terms of given new vocabulary and ways of moving. We worked on release technique, intention, and i differently felt some resonance of Flying Low technique by David Zambrano. He worked us to the core, sometimes it felt like a marathon or a cardio class at your local gym. I found myself many times
