Excerpts
Photo: Masaki Iwana 2013
[All written materials © 2024 Moeno Wakamatsu. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.]
Note from Moeno Wakamatsu ―
“I rarely read writings about dance by other authors, especially writings by artists personally close to me. I confess that I am not a great scholar of acquired knowledge. These writings are very subjective reflections ― simple realizations, encounters, things I wonder about or tell myself ― and they are in no way an analysis or conclusions based on research or study of other knowledge. It is only a self-study of one particular person. However, I believe that the most subjective of our reflections are fundamentally universal, as we are all human. Perhaps not all is about dance, it is about many things…. It is only that, for me, dance is the only thing that reflects everything in this existence, so that every reflection that arises is inevitably about dance. “ 09.02.2024
Excerpts from « The Teaching Notes of Moeno Wakamatsu »
[The following excerpts are taken from « The Teaching Note of Moeno Wakamatsu » ― begun in 2017. The writings are currently being compiled to be put together into book form, with an expected release in 2025.]
— Excerpts from 2023/2024 Entries —
07.11.2023
“Shades of the dream”
I had a dream last night. Many fragments of scenes, visions pass. Some are more real, some slightly disturbed and they change one after the other. But almost it is not what is the vision, but it is the shade of light, the shade of colors. The shades have feelings, if it will console us or make us sad or glad. The faded or golden light, somehow it is the feeling of the dream.
Like that, perhaps imagination is also not about what is the image, but the shade of it, that has a feeling, that gives the feeling to the art.
07.11.2023
“Reality is not only in this level of physicality”
……Inside the dream, I was thinking how one could believe very much that it almost is real, but at the same time, [what one strongly wishes for] it will not come to pass. We do already know that, [physically impossible things we dream for cannot come true] but this is about a certain mechanism of hope and dream — how we believe, even if we know it is not exactly about that. [It is not about what we believe can be physically true or not.] What is it exactly about? — perhaps reality is not only about the physiological reality that can be seen. There is the reality of other levels — and perhaps we are living at the same time there. The physical reality, this world, this mortal life, and then on another level a different existence that is separate but not separate. It is not separate because one is reflected in each other. What we do in the physical life is reflected in the non-physical life. And in the arts, almost we can live this non-physical life. What we believe is reality, and this strange reality manifests somehow in a way through the art, and for that time being, for everyone present [the audience] it seems it must be like that — that it is real.
05.01.2024
“Only as much beauty as we feel in the world is in the dance”
The New Year. The sun and blue winter sky. This winter has been much rain, our ponds are full. It has been many years since our big pond has been high like this, large area of water, the rippled surface reflecting the light. For the first time in a long time, I felt something was beautiful, this scenery. Our cat was going down to drink the water. He came climbing back towards me, the oak tree behind him in the distance towering in the blue cloud sky. They look on each other over the pond.
Somehow a feeling descended, of lightness, something that unburdens. The feeling that yes, one could look forward to die. Rather than to feel the burden of the limit of time. Perhaps it was that, why the world could appear more beautiful, that we could appreciate more moments.
In dance, the beauty of our dance world, its limit is the beauty we are capable of really feeling in the world — the limit and also the limitlessness, the eternity. And it is not so evident how this beauty descends unexpectedly, and might again disappear.
21.01.2024
“Orientation towards dying and freedom”
After a week of very cold temperatures, after snow, our pond frozen. Our cat likes to walk on the frozen pond, and I am very afraid, because the ice is not so thick and he is very fat. I hear a cracking of ice, and I worry, but it is ok. It must be amazing for him, to be able to walk where normally he cannot. He often sits in the middle of the frozen pond, seeming to relax, lost in thought (while I look on very worried). The morning light was beautiful, the long shadows of trees, and again, I realize that since this new year, the garden looks beautiful each time I pass. It coincides with the sense of settlement towards dying. Perhaps, our orientation towards dying, it takes time for us to arrive — like a compass trying to find the direction — and takes many forms, like dreams. But without somehow to have a vague sense of what this means, the way we imagine how we can accompany our own dying, without to have that vague sense be somewhat warm and light, it is not easy to live. If we cannot envision to die in peace, it is difficult to live and experience this moment. Without our engaging to face our own dying, it is not possible to really be free.
I often have said that dance is like a practice to die. I don’t know if I really know what I mean — but perhaps it is related to this.
08.02.2024
“That Which Dwells”
I wonder about what is the “dance” and on the other hand what is the “experience of the dance”. Equally, I wonder what is the imagined world, what is the imagination, and what is the experience of these imaginations — as the experience is real, not an imagination. What does it mean to physicalize the imagination, so that the imagined world fuses with what we normally think of as real.
Then, I come to suspect that my process of dance is perhaps to guide and construct the energetic constitution (constitution including the structure, the conditions) of the imagined world, the dream. This is the process of physicalization. Almost, it is to reconstruct the elements needed for the experience, through the body and consciousness, without the actual physical material that we would normally associate with the experience — in order that the my imagination can be experienced by others, not only by me. What we physicalize, almost, is like the structure of the wiring that would offer the same kind of energetic structure as the environment in the imagination. Without to make this process, I would be the only one who could experience from my own imagination.
Energetic constitution, another words the ways of the consciousness how they are proportioned, colored, scented, their paths… The gradations of quality, without the thing that these qualities might live in. To live in – meaning to dwell in. Qualities, essences, almost spirits – these things “dwell” somewhere or in someone, in something, in some scenery… It is formless, this constitution of consciousness, this which dwells. But how do I affect such qualities into the world…? It is done by my life. It is the life consciousness that affects, and it is itself also the whole consciousness. It is never clear if it is the world or it is me — as in the end it is the same and interchangeable. At every level, the workings of the consciousness manifest in my bodily physicality. The physical manifestations are visible, even if the constitution of the world that it realizes is not itself visible. Yet we would experience, as if we can see the invisible.
I think that many of us often look at these bodily manifestations and mistake that as some kind of “expression”, as if this is dance itself — separating it from the real origin it was part of. It is possible to repeat the physicality and to create another whole (another whole experience), but often we are blinded by the physicality to all the rest of the world. When this happens, we are making a great misunderstanding, subconsciously intentional, to keep our eyes away from glimpses of unknown. We often develop great skills without knowing to avoid seeing our own truths and fears — and even spend all our lives and efforts to achieve and to prove that this misunderstanding is correct.
But if I invest too far into such deception, how could I ever die like that.
[© 2024 Moeno Wakamatsu. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.]
— Excerpts from 2019/2020 Entries —
Excerpts published on facebook page of Moeno Wakamatsu in 2019/2020 as series of 11 posts, aimed to help the dancers by giving recapitulation of some of the materials from the workshop.
Post #1
“Inner Tension”
Inner Intensity, that is always to be retained, but never to show off. (FB RECAP #1)
“To Emit Intensity”
Retained inner tension vs. intensity that is emitted. Emitting by directing of consciousness. Once emitting, we realize that intensity is being drawn from some other origin outside — to let out is to let in, the circulation of consciousness. (FB RECAP #2)
“Gradients of Intensity”
It is one thing to realize intensity — with some training and with some passion, many can realize this. However, it is another thing to realize “gradients” of intensity. The nuances of quality, density, volume, the direction, and speed of how you emit intensity by the consciousness. Direction, how wide, how narrow? One point or everywhere? How fast — seemingly, or like a bullet? Path — is it infinitely straight, or is it curving? How far — 2mm, 30 cm, 10m, 100km, infinite? AND that the gradients of intensity ARE and BECOME what the dance wants to say. It is simultaneous, and it is the same thing as, what you and the world want to say. (FB RECAP #3)
“Outer Tension”
Retaining intensity that resides outside of the body. Exchanging the inner self with the outer world, thereby residing the self in the outside of the body anywhere or everywhere. (FB RECAP #4)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 30.08.2019)
03.09.2019
“Discipline vs Expression”
What is your art (dance) is different for you than for another. For me dance is a Practice and a Discipline ―― rather than Creation and Expression. Engaging the audience in the discipline (that is the work) for me is far more profound than to “give”, “show” or “exhibit” one’s work. The discipline to know one’s own self, the discipline to be aware of being, discipline to be with the audience and to be with the world ― this becomes the experience we share between dancer and audience. Perhaps it is not I “Give”, perhaps I must “Let Go”. (FB RECAP Post#10 / #29)
Post #2
“Moving Space”
Instead that you move through space, you can 1. move the space with you, 2. move the space and you don’t move 3. You move against the space that is moving.
First and foremost, one must know what it means the moving space and the consciousness.
The experience of space moving is equivalent to a feeling as if a current of intention in the world (or sometimes almost like a spirit) is moving. (FB RECAP #6)
“Directions of Moving Space. Distorting / Deforming Space.”
How do you move space? Usually, there is already movement in the space, depending on the nature of the place. Sometimes space is moving in a certain direction like the direction of an ocean wave. Sometimes it is swirling or drifting. Sometimes it is distorting or deforming with different directions acting. A directional force. But one can affect the space by one’s consciousness to intervene into what is there. There will be sometimes resistance, often unexpected changes. How we actually do this technically — because it does not happen just by thinking about it, it’s a skill to be learned –, we had made countless exercises in workshop for this. (FB RECAP #7)
“Speed of Moving Space”
Sometimes we can create a current of space within another bigger current of space. We can narrow a space, we can travel our consciousness like a bullet, or to travel very slowly or stop. We can shift the density. This is a skill of how we direct our consciousness. (FB RECAP #8)
“Move Space, then Skin, then Flesh, then Bone.”
If sensing space move and you will be moved by this, then often the skin moves first, not your bones. Conversely, you can move from anything on the inside — i.e. the bones, the inner cells, the heat — and transform out the skin and transform space, however this would ultimately draw in the outside into yourself. Outside and Inside are in infinite exchange. (FB RECAP #9)
“Flesh against bone”
Sensing the movement of flesh pulling on the bone. (FB RECAP #10)
“Texture of skin, Texture of Space, Texture of Presence.”
Transformation of skin transforms space, transforms presence, and conversely vice versa. All become simultaneously, that they become one transformation, one saying. (FB RECAP #11)
“Weight of the Skin”
Depending on the properties of the quality of the skin you have (i.e. if skin is weightless like light, or if skin is like heavy darkness, if skin is drifty like gas) then the skin pulls on the flesh with the different weight of the quality. (FB RECAP #12)
“Enter Space through Skin”
How permeable is the skin? The space eats into the skin, into the insides. What are the properties of the space? (FB RECAP #13)
“Inside Seeps Out through Skin”
As outside seeps into skin, equally the inside seeps out into the world. (FB RECAP #14)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 15.09.2019)
Post #3
“No Correctness in Imagination.”
We must allow ourselves to be not correct with our imaginations. We throw away the want to be “right”. However, we strive to be precise to our own imagination and perception. There is no “correctness” in dance, but perhaps dance must be precise to the incorrectness to be true. (FB RECAP #15)
“Imagination”
If we desire a world of many colors and tastes and atmospheres, then firstly the imagination must be rich. Nothing comes of “Doing the dance” if the original imagination is brand.
However skilled we are in our abilities, if the imagination is poor, then there is no richness in the dance. (FB RECAP #16)
“Perception and Imagination”
What nurtures imagination is perception. If we take shades of light and color as example, if we distinguish in a green leaf 30 shades of green, the world is different than if we distinguish only one shade of green in the same leaf. Perception feeds the Imagination, and Imagination feeds the Perception. Nurturing forgotten or unforgotten memories and history ― this is also part of nurturing imagination. To enrich our past is to live our present fully with keen awareness. (FB RECAP #17)
“Physical Imagination”
Imagination that cannot be physically sensed and be physically lived in, is often only an intellectual visualization or thinking.
In dance we need both the rich imagination and the rich ability to physicalize the imagination. Often a dancer, because of lack of ability to physicalize, even shrink and limit the imagination. Sometimes, a dancer has rich imagination but is ignorant of how to physicalize it ― then the desire of dancer is far bigger than the ability. We must develop both to heighten each other. (FB RECAP #18)
“Throwing away Ideas, Forever, Repeatedly.”
Imagination is not “ideas”. Sometimes dancers have strong images/imagination and then “act” within and according to these images / imaginations. This is superficial following of imagination. It is not wrong, it is only question of what you desire. However, if you are after truth, then the imagination and dance is simultaneous. The dance transforms imagination, imagination transforms dance. The body becomes the imagination. The body imagines, the space (the world) imagines.
Ideas are “preconceived” thoughts about the past imaginations. It is no longer true in the next moments. It is difficult to let go of ideas. Ideas haunt and It is a daily task to throw them away, repeatedly. (FB RECAP #19)
“Suspending Imagination”
In dance, the imagination is sensory recreation. By recreating the sensations the imagination is physicalized. The recreation must be continuous. The imagination must be re-established every single moment in order to continue. Conversely, the physical and mental status must be re-established each moment for the imagination to continue to suspend. (FB RECAP #20)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 18.09.2019)
Post #4
“Transforming Perception, Transforming the World.”
With a slight shift of perception and some awareness, the world is animate and simplicity awes and fulfills. Certain dance, it can transform the perception of the audience ― then we are not creating dance, but we are creating a world.
My son, working in the field, saw a stone and it was illuminated by flickering light shaded and unshaded by greens above and the passing clouds. Seeing the changing colors, he said “Here’s a precious stone. Why do people want to buy diamonds, when all the stones can be precious?” If each adult can shift the perception like that, wouldn’t it make a difference to this world?
Then, I remembered a text of Kenji Miyazawa I read when I was his age ― 8 or 9 years old ― I had liked it so much that I had memorized it. Perhaps it is not entirely correct, and now I don’t remember which book it was from.
“Even if we have not all the sugar ices we desire, we can eat the pure transparent wind and drink the peach colored light of the morning. I have also seen, in the fields or woods, the tattered old clothes being transformed into the most amazing velvet, rasha (wool), or dress spread with gems.”
わたしたちは 氷砂糖をほしいくらいもたないでも きれいにすきとおった風をたべ、桃色の美しい朝の日光をのむことができます。 またわたくしは、はたけや森の中で ひどいぼろぼろの着物が いちばんすばらしいびろうどや羅紗や宝石いりのきものに変わっているのをたびたび見ました。
If we have such a way to perceive the world, I daresay we will have less want for power or possession, that being in awe with the world, we would not run to ignore the world for convenience.
Such awe I wish a dancer can carry. The kind of dance that we do, it is less about expressing, showing a point of view, to be understood, or to convey a message. No, it is not really so much about these things. It is essentially to transform our perception, and we are able to transform the perception the audience. Then the world that was ordinary before begins to have life we never knew. We come back to being a child. We do not make dance, we make a world visible. (FB RECAP #21)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 23.09.2019)
Post#5
“Composition of Space”
When we dance indoors, we cannot consider composition of a particular space as the shapes and dimensions of the room. What is the composition of the space in its light and shadows, in its materials, in its densities and movements, in its temperatures, smell, acoustic…., in its qualities of presences in all visible and audible and in all invisible and inaudible. Further, the presences beyond the walls, beyond the far landscapes, beyond the floor to the depth inside the ground, through the planet to the other side. The composition no longer is limited inside a room. And what is the composition of the space when there is no distinction of past, present, and future ― composition no longer has limit of time.
Then composition begins to evoke feeling, and your feeling suspended in this composition become the feeling of the space and time. (FB RECAP #22)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 03.10.2019)
Post#6
“Listening”
In my way of dance, first and foremost is the “listening”. We speak a lot of “listening” in the training. The word is not to mean to listen with our ears to the sound. It means to open ourselves to everything in the environment and to ourselves (as we are also the environment, and we are the organism that can sense the world). As we listen with entirety, the senses may begin to merge — as sounds become visions, temperatures become densities…. And furthermore, we begin to notice phenomenons that seem to be beyond anything we are sensing. Listening is not limited to what we can see, hear, sense. Observing what is happening to ourselves, and opening our senses, we begin to exist also with what we “cannot” sense, what we do not “recognize” with our perception — and this is perhaps what one might call intuition. There are things we recognize, and there are things we cannot recognize except through their manifestations. These manifestations are the dance. Such manifestation only can happen in a keenly listening sensitive bodies.
Dance is not “movement-making”, nor interpretation or reaction or expression of what we sense. We do not first sense/listen and then dance “to” or “with” what we sense (that we call “commentaries” )― because how can we dance to what we cannot sense or know? How can we perceive what cannot be perceived?
The dance itself is the listening, and when the dance is devoid of any creating, then the dance might be living with the imperceptible. The experience of listening like this, it may sometimes have feeling as if one does not exist in the sense of normal existence ― as if one disappears ― but at the same time, this experience is infinitely concrete and absolute. (FB RECAP #23)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 22.10.2019)
Post#7
“A Lonely Note”
When I play Bach, often I feel as if with each note I leave myself behind. Though it is the relationship of the notes that come before and after that make the note, each note seems almost lonesome and eternal. Yet at the same time, one cannot linger with this eternity because as soon as one tries to stay there, the eternity is gone. It is like this in dance. Each instance feels infinitely alone and beautiful in its timelessness, but if one contemplates too much upon it, it turns to indulgence. (FB RECAP #24)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 12.11.2019)
Post#8
“Forcing”
First we must know there is difference between force that is behind a desire — an exertion that is one and same with the spirit — and force that is unnecessary effort, often unaware, and is contradictory to the desire, “unskilled”.
When I suggest not to force when making training, I am meaning the latter. The reason I say no forcing is because it does not help us to progress in skill. However, no forcing does not mean to be lazy. It is the contrary. Without force, we need that much more attention and awareness, to develop skill and ability. To go on and endure, we need inner force of concentration and determination. Do not think we can peacefully repose ourselves and hope to become dancers. No, without consistent training, there is no hope of becoming a dancer. We need daily training. Unfortunately, without a capable body, one cannot be a capable dancer. However, we must be wary of unnecessary efforts — the extreme efforts should be in the extreme opening of awareness, to observe who we are and how we are.
There is also certain way of training to go beyond limits, to force, to exhaust ourselves — but this is often motivated by the exertion of the spirit that hopefully brings us to utter exhaustion that we STOP to make any more efforts. It is that the physical struggle of exertion becomes an emotional struggle, then a spiritual struggle. We do not force and give up, but we keep going until there is no longer anything left in us to force. We are emptied out, and then at that moment, a truth will arise. There are times when one feels the need — or the desperation — for this way of training. In my experience, sometimes we feel our body, or even our life itself, is in the way of something important — and we are driven to destroy ourselves. However, I feel that with more and more training, we are able to harness strength and fragility and “sharpen the knife” so to say, rather than to revert to destructive violence of rough quality that tends to lose steam and become a dull blade that is slapped around with great energy but cannot kill. Rather, sometimes we need an extremely precise violence — sometimes of very little effort. Once that we are no longer governed by our unnecessary efforts and tension, we can be nothing and be governed by the intensities of the world. (FB RECAP #25)
“Facing our handicaps”
If we have handicaps or injuries, the work we do is the same — we face ourselves to know ourselves. In the kind of art we practice, there is no rule about what kind of abilities we must have. The only importance is we face ourselves where we are as who we are. Firstly, we do not have to be discouraged or ashamed by handicap — it can be our motivation. Secondly, we must be careful not to make our handicap an excuse — one must be clear about what is the original handicap (for example, you have no legs, you are blind, you have mental disorder), and intensively study how it relates to us and our functions, and scrutinize what dependence we might have on our condition or if we might be using it to excuse ourselves. Whenever we feel we have problems, we must know if we really have problems or if we have problems because they give us excuse to not change. Thirdly, we must be careful not to harbor pride and conceit, and think we are special because of our handicap — in the same way that we are not special because of our talents and we are not entitled because we are born fortunately or unfortunately. We are all unique, and not always are we born fairly, but at the same time non of us are special and we are all equal at the level of being. One Life One Flower — however long or short the flower blooms, however modest or beautiful, one life is complete. (FB RECAP #26)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 07.11.2019)
Post#9
“Pure Dance vs. Dramatic Skills”
Pure dance, in the way I mean, is dance that is devoid of meaning, intention, expression — more close to “pure awareness”. Awareness of course includes physical self-knowledge. In the art of performance, outside of pure dance, often you might see in dance artists other aspects such as the dramatic, narrative, emotional, aesthetic….etc. However, as long as you are a dancer, you must first have as basis the pure dance and know the intensities of awareness that result in the basic foundation of dance.
For example, a beginner dancer might see an experienced dance artist show a performance with strong dramatic arts, and the beginner is greatly impressed and touched. However, if this beginner dancer will try to make the same dramatic expressions, most often it is empty, because he/she does not have the foundation or capacity of pure dance. Sometimes by chance, the beginner dancer might have quite special talents in these ‘other’ skills and has natural charms that is enticing in his/her presence. Then there might be some substance in the performance, but it cannot continue and develop further. Actually, it will interfere in the beginner dancer to strongly develop the base. Cultivating the basic skills of dance first is the only way that the other aspects can later give more depth to the art of the dancer.
Because acquiring of the basic skills is not easy and requires discipline, consistent training, and also (unfair as it might sound) talent, many beginners want to short-cut to have the juicy fruit before to grow any roots. They might desire to have colorful, impressive, personal, emotionally moving performance — and they paint from the outside the colors on a body that has no substance. We need patience to develop and train ourselves. If we put much of our efforts to the embroideries — for example, giving great effort to aesthetics or reverting to show of strong emotions that are not rooted in pure dance, we are getting more and more distant from our true art.
On the other hand, for experienced dancer there is danger to forget the pure dance. If we decline in our interest for consistent and daily training of physicality and awareness, then in our performances we might use more and more our skill of dramatic effects or gestures, heightening of emotions, character/role play, symbolism, aesthetics and such. These are more superficial aspects of dance, but often these are the layers more accepted and praised in general public because it is recognizable even to unrefined eyes. If we are gifted in these, for a while our performances might have some substance. But slowly this will decline because as long as we are in the art of “dance”, we cannot go more profoundly in dance with these other skills without the foundation of physicality, awareness, and dedication to daily discipline — the basis of pure dance. Pure dance is no other than the awareness, physicality, pure direct communication with the environment — without any intention or associations of any kind.
If we play within the human characters and history, then we do not enter a gap of time that is almost devoid of humanity. (FB RECAP #27)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 07.11.2019)
Post#10
“Practice and Discipline”
For me, I consider dance as a Practice and a Discipline. It is not what I do when I feel like or when it is a need. It is true, sometimes when we are in great distress, dance might be a need that pulls us through, or on the other hand when we are in great elation or ecstasy, our joy might move us to dance. However, I do not believe all of our life is great distress or ecstasy — there are all the in-betweens, and this I find is the richness. When we are young, sometimes we need great extremes to be able to “feel”. However, with maturity we are able to feel richness in every non-extreme situations, and we are no longer in need of dramas for our discipline. The discipline comes closer to breathing. (FB RECAP #28)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 03.09.2019)
“Discipline vs Expression”
What is your art (dance) is different for you than for another. For me dance is a Practice and a Discipline ―― rather than Creation and Expression. Engaging the audience in the discipline (that is the work) for me is far more profound than to “give”, “show” or “exhibit” one’s work. The discipline to know one’s own self, the discipline to be aware of being, discipline to be with the audience and to be with the world ― this becomes the experience we share between dancer and audience. Perhaps it is not I “Give”, perhaps I must “Let Go”. (FB RECAP #29)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 25.11.2019)
Post#11
“Orientation #1”
There is not a day in workshop we do not speak about orientation.
How we orient to the outside is the same question as how we orient to face ourselves. When we are too much inside of ourselves, we cannot see or face ourselves — we cannot orient toward ourselves. And equally, we cannot see the outside world, and we cannot orient to the world.
When my father fell into a deep depression, we — his family and his friends — thought a lot what could help. We all wondered how is it that suddenly someone sees no more beauty in anything anymore. For a long time it took up most of our thoughts. One night in times like these, I went outside to get more firewood. It was wet outside but sky was clear with moonlight. I don’t remember the actual moon, but it was the scenery that struck me, breathtakingly beautiful. The moonlight, always with its magical silver making mysterious black shadows behind trees and stones, created a world outside our normal time frame. In a placid strange landscape, I saw the outdoor wooden table, and the wooden planks on the ground, and the wetness of the wood reflected and the surfaces glowed in whiteness like mirrors. Why just a reflection of light could touch a heart so much I don’t know. But I remember to have stood for a while taken in by this glow in this scenery. After fetching the firewood, I turned again, as I wanted one last time to look at the magical scenery around the wet wooden table. But, there was no magic. There was nothing particular about this place — then I realized that I was looking at the table from a different orientation. Of course, from a different angle, the moon will not give me the same reflection on the wood planks. I remember later writing to my father about this, how simply changing the angle of how we see the world can transform what it is.
Dance is like this. A dance that from one angle seems to have nothing in it, put in a different orientation can reflect the light of the world, reflect the thoughts and feelings of an audience, and have completely transformed scenery. Similarly to the states of human mind, if we are too much inside of ourselves, then we can neither orient to the world nor to ourselves. We can reflect nothing, we cannot glow, we cannot become a revelation. (FB RECAP #30)
(From Teaching Notes Entry 10.02.2020)
[© 2020 Moeno Wakamatsu. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.]
— Excerpts from 2021/2022 Entries —
These excerpts were published in 2022 (in Italian translation) by Teatro Akropolis, as an article in the following title:
« Discipline of Precision of the Spirit »
(Excerpts from the manuscript “The Teaching Notes of Moeno Wakamatsu”)
18.01.21
“Direction of Affinity”
Your affinity to a certain (particular) direction in the corporal sense can be felt by quality of sensation on a certain side of the physical body. Certain side is opening to listen (by all senses, including hearing) — the nerves in state of attention. Whether the cause/source of certain affinity is inner or outer environment (inside yourself, or outside), this is not the question ― as there is no necessity to separate inner and outer.
Recognition and awareness of the sensations of affinity in a direction promotes a particular movement of consciousness and attention in a specific direction. When the movement of attention begins from the center of your physical entity towards that particular direction and continues in that direction, this movement of consciousness already begins to pull in consciousness from another (often the opposite) direction ― then your own physical center is no longer the starting point from where consciousness emits outwardly, but it is only a passing point. What comes in must be the consciousness of the world.
While we can sometimes place the center of the world at the center of the physical body, this center is not always necessary to be at the physical body. However, when we place the center at our physical body, often this physical center becomes a cross road for many kinds of passages, because when we send something out of this center, inevitably there is something coming into this center.
When we place ourselves at the crossroads of consciousness of the world, the physical body can manifest these passages — to be able to allow the body to manifest physically, this is the work of the dancer.
Very often, the sense of direction of affinity is related to something we care about or has significance to us in the environment. So, the sensation on the body (very noticeably on the skin the nerve endings are activated) is in relation to that concern. We do not know the cause ― maybe it is some considerable mass or energy in the physical universe (like the sun/moon) or it might be the direction of the epicenter of the earthquake, or the direction of the storm gaining power, or it could be a human situation or someone’s thoughts. It does not seem important to name the cause, because even if the real cause might be the direction of the black hole, my imagination might make me have a strong belief it is my Mother, or some divinity, for example.
Outside of a principal strong affinity, there are many smaller and temporal affinities that come and go and transform the attention in various directions as the environment shifts all the time ― the wind comes, or there’s sounds from different directions, someone calls you. However, what I find most drawn to is the very fundamental affinity that is at the bottom line before the other shifting affinities. It is a calling that feels more absolute. Almost, could it be affinity from birth or even before birth?
If you will turn the body, usually you will notice that the sensation of affinity on the body will continue to shift along the body, the sensation always activated on the side of the body that faces the direction that is calling our attention.
Now, try to turn yourself, staying with that existing sensation you feel on/in your body as affinity ― keep the sensations at the same places of the body ― and actually try to pull that affinity around with you. It is like to move the direction (not to move “in” the direction) of the affinity with you.
This is an attempt to move space (the world) itself.
This can create great conflict, as the space is also pulling on your physical body, as you attempt to move the entire desire of the space with the orientation of your physical body.
It will be interesting to know if the source of the affinity will feel your pull…if one could ever ask the world. Perhaps the world will not answer, however what we could do is this — this same phenomenon we can study with smaller and closer affinities like another person, or the audience. When we explore this, we find that affinity is not one way, it is always mutual.
What does this mean? Just as the moon can affect me, can I affect the moon?
When I say that it is not of importance to know if the cause is inner or outer, perhaps what I am trying to say is that distinguishing inner and outer creates limitations. There is a great divide between work (dance, art) that is founded on belief (or understanding of, or desire to) differentiate inner and outer, and work that does not question or place great importance on the difference between inner and outer (that the difference does not exist between inner and outer). In the latter way of perceiving the world, one can be here and now, and at the same time exist everywhere in any time.
Belief is a personal way to approach one’s truth, and it is not the truth itself. However, without one’s own belief, one cannot meet with another. Belief for each person perhaps is something that just inevitably seems that way….belief is not something that is given to us by others or that limits us.
18.01.21
“Life as Mechanism of Consciousness”
I said to my son, before his father died, after his father had a father to son talk with him about his dying. I said to my son after that: all of us will die, you know that, but perhaps when we die we don’t become nothing.
When we are born, and when we have our physical body, consciousness resigns in this body somehow, but when we die the consciousness remains without body ― the being simply is part of the world if being is consciousness. We simply stop to become a self entity. But perhaps consciousness is already this way (not body bound) even when we are alive. It is that a physical body takes much of our concerns of life (because what we call our life has a physical body) and we know not very much of being and consciousness.
We don’t come from nothing and return to nothing ― but maybe what we call nothingness has some kind of a mechanism that makes the thread of consciousness of the world — the being that is the world — twine onto, and formalize/materialize. It is as if the reason of our birth (reason of life) is to twine and weave the world into a certain quality of consciousness, from chaos to some kind of sense, and when we die, perhaps this organized consciousness, this pattern, this quality, remains intact as part of what makes the world ― somehow. I don’t know for how long before it untangles, merges, or be twined into all other consciousness (or does it ever) as all consciousness continues to create new patterns. when it can no longer be called that previous pattern, that previous entity. There is no means to hold onto one pattern — maybe when we are alive we feel that we can, at least for the period of our lifetime, sustain a certain pattern which is this life form and the life force. Life itself seems like a miraculous mechanism to formulate a very particular way/pattern of consciousness in a particular place, in the vast ocean of consciousness.
Maybe it was my son who once asked, if we’re going to die anyway, what’s the point of being born? Maybe it is that the birth weaves the consciousness of the world, each life, all lives, weaving this universe as if our life forces are the twining of the thread, the cloud twining into strings, coloring, vibrating, pulsing. When we have no more life to gather the clouds to twine, we die. But what we have twined remains. The consciousness continues.
26.02.21
“To Toss Life Beyond Death“
Hope is perhaps the most incredible mechanism in order to live, and live until there is no more life. Where there is hope, there is no death, because we try to live till the very end of life.
There is no such thing as “last days before death”, because as long as that you are alive, there is no death. Death, I wonder it can only be perceived by someone else.
Hope is something to keep burning, not something to hang onto. Hope is not something that we have once and then it’s good for a while. No, hope is something that has to be renewed almost every moment. And at the same time, we are making resolve to let go.
It is like that in dance, as it is in life.
06.04.21
“Blooming while Withering”
I feel that in life many things are simultaneously occurring, and at the same time they are one thing. Consider to bloom a flower or to wither a flower. One could simply bloom. or wither ― however life does not seem simple like this, and often there is great struggle. One wants to bloom but it is withering as we are blooming. Same for withering, while withering we are continuously trying to bloom another flower, another flower, another flower.
Until yesterday, the magnolia in front of our house was in full bloom. Each time passing by it gave us a lot of joy. This morning, I wake up to find all the flowers brown and sticky, dead from the cold of last night. Then snow was falling. Spring was supposed to bring so much joy, and now I was heartbroken.
I wrote to a friend about this. And in her response:
“These times are very strange and hard, with the snow at the beginning of April. It is very sad for Magnolia’s flowers. I don’t know if there will be new flowers this spring, I hope so… it make me remembering your dance proposal (in the workshop) of the woman with a baby in her belly, another flower, who died, another flower grow again, and died, and grow again… we need to put a lot of forces in our own flowers, day by day, each moments, to fulfill pure strange beauty. “
Reading her response I was thinking how flowering is like hope. We have to keep flowering new hope, because each hope dies each moment. Each moment we have to grow new hope. When hope is dying faster than we can bloom it, I feel it is when our life expires.
I remember saying once: “I feel like sand is seeping out of the hands. We are trying to fill it all the time, but it keeps seeping out. We keep losing. And the rate of filling at some point cannot overtake the losing. But we must renew courage and strength to fill it more, somehow to mend what is losing. But eventually it cannot catch up.” And I wonder, in the emptiness there is the absolute. Even this emptiness our mind uses to “create hope” and to fill it.
My aunt said to me, “perhaps Hope is what is given to us as a salvation.” Emptiness is not lack of hope ― lack of hope is despair, this is not empty at all.
21.04.21
“A practice to Die”
Dance is a practice how to die. To resolve life, to be able to resolve life when we are dying.
27.04.21
“The Closest Metaphor”
When I try to explain something, I often use metaphors and images. This does not mean that what I am trying to describe is some unreal metaphor. I try to approach towards what seems to be the origin, what is real ― however this, the origin, is not something that can be touched or seen, and even the closest to origin might be a “closest metaphor” of the truth.
03.05.21
“Withdrawing the Flower”
Sometimes the plant buds, then without flowering, withdraws the flower. Sometimes the flowers die before they are finished blooming. My father, he was born after his brother who came before him died. His sister, she was born after her sister born before her died. My grandmother had 6 children and 3 survived always alternatively, one died then the next lived ― it is like the death before supported the life after. Nature withdrew the life because it will not survive, and put the energy to the next one. Almost with every death I am looking for what life it will support.
This spring with the climate changes, the cold spell came in April after an unusually warm March. Everywhere flowers died. In front of our house is the magnolia tree, as every year it was full of buds and gloriously they all bloomed in March. So beautiful, everyone who visited the house would stop for a long time to stay near it. So beautiful it was also very sad, because I wished Masaki could have seen it. But when the cold came through, when I woke one morning and opened the curtains, the whole tree was brown and soggy, every single blossom had died in a few hours. Unexpected loss often is shocking. Loss, even small, is not just about the thing that is lost, but it relates to many things, it relates to your entire life. It relates to if it can be recovered. It relates to if it can be replaced by something else. With the whole tree covered in soggy brown dead blossoms, it was heartbreaking to go out the door or to look out the window. It was curious then, how the mind began to work. It began to look for a replacement. It began to look for something positive out of this heartbreak. As the beauty of when the blossoms were alive and glorious gave sadness, in the death of these blossoms I was trying to think that it was good that my husband didn’t have to see this, that if still he was in home hospitalization I probably would not be able to support this, it is too symbolic. The mind begins to find some kind of consolation in “fortune, within misfortune”. Immediately I was thinking to Pandora’s Box. Why humans would come up with such a myth ― because it is so fundamental how humans look for some kind of hope, and hope is fundamentally salvation.
10.05.21
“Resolution”
Most entertainment has a certain resolution. For example in many sports, people compete for win and lose, and people have pleasure from such emotional resolution.
What is the resolution of each dance? This is one of the great subjects in dance. Do you wish for resolution in the dance, or is resolution only a concept? Is where it ends without recognition or knowing of the end, can we accept this place of end? Or, even if we are suddenly cut to end, do we take that last fraction of a moment to seek a sense of resolution? Do we try to find meaning in this end in retrospect? In a sense, to be able to end anywhere at any moment, we must be aware at every moment, so that any moment can be an end and a resolution. It means that no moment is valued higher or lower, no moment is a preparation for the next moment, that there is no expectation of the end. This is not about what is correct — it is a question we must face.
In life it is not so easy to understand how we can have resolution — what is the greatest resolution at the end of life. This end is personal, because nothing really ends except one’s life.
Dance, as long as it is a performance it looks for a resolution. However, I question my conventionality of resolutions. Each end is perhaps a certain struggle. I don’t know how to end the dance. Like life, it is not easy to find what is resolution in dance. Perhaps each dance is like a practice to die. But dying is not an event. We speak about dying, but really I do not feel there is any death ― until we are dead. Until last moment, there is no death. True, there is the process of dying, that we age, or our body is not supporting life, and we all know all life dies ― but the death itself does not exist until the life is no more.
Or in the dance we almost want to transcend beyond life or death. Like all human history, all religions, to transcend the reincarnations, to transcend the inevitable cycle ― to leave all. But as long as there is this life, dance never ceases to be the conflict of life, but between the gaps we might find some transcendence, some emptiness, and in the glimpse of that gap there is what humans probably call the feeling of eternity. Perhaps, that, is the resolution itself.
My work is mostly improvisation. Always, when I am dancing I hope to keep going, keep going, I don’t know if I can end like this. I am saying to myself “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know” — and sometimes the technician will bring the lights down and I was not ready to end. I think that I will die saying “I don’t know.”
05.07.21
“I Listen. I am The Listening.”
When we enter listening, often it is “I listen” to the world. However, as we continue to listen, what we want is that we become the listening itself. “I listen” becomes “I am the listening.”
You exist where you listen. You are not only here in the body, but you are all the places that you listen.
This is similar in “I move” and “I am moved”, but what we want is further “I am the moved” ― meaning I am not only moved, but eventually I am the phenomenon of moved ― I am the world that is moved.
If you listen (sense) to the movement of the space, for example, you are still apart from the space. On the other hand, if you place yourself as part of the space that is moving, you disappear and you are the space itself. You do not “relate” to space. If you “relate”, “you” still exist and is in relation to space. What we hope, rather, is that there is no relationship and there is no “you” and “me”. There is no “me” and “other”.
07.08.21
“Crystal Flower”
Each dance is like a new crystal formation. A crystalline flower. Dance is the manifestation of the invisible origin ― like the crystal, the origin is invisible, only once that there is manifestation of formation we have a glimpse of this invisible seed, this invisible design.
31.10.21
“Desire of TimeSpace”
To exchange your heart with the heart of the TimeSpace. Then the desire of the world is our desire. Our desire is the desire of the world. We realize our own real desire through how the world manifests in us.
18.01.22
“The origin of Images”
I wonder that the origin itself might just be emptiness, nothingness. In daily life, I feel nothing wrong to enjoy or to sorrow in the flowers of manifestation of this origin. In dance too, this is true. Although as we age, more and more perhaps we can no longer be satisfied only with the flowers, and feel the necessity to sense more precisely where the roots of these flowers connect. Sensing the presence of these connections, this sensation is close to that of emptiness that fulfills. We are reminded that there should not be forgetfulness when enjoying the flowers and fruits that arise from where the origin is as they are not the origin themselves. We ourselves are perhaps but manifestations, the images, the flowers and fruits of invisible origin ― yet what is so important is that there is no denying that we are “originated”, we are woven and connected with and from the origin. We are blossomed from the origin that encompasses whole and nothing.
So what, I might ask, what to do with this origin? I don’t know. Nothing. There is nothing to do, there is nothing to search, nothing to answer, nothing to reason ― it seems it is just about “knowing”. But to begin to “know”, it requires a very precise and fine awareness. This is the practice, the discipline of life, of art.
The mechanism of how images arise has been one of the foundations of my dance work. To gaze into the origin of images is like gazing into nothingness, but the depth of this unknown void perhaps feels almost intimate, and there is no obligation except to stay present. Images are like disappearing threads of smoke that, only by the tug and sense of the resistance and direction and quality, there is a hope of “knowing” the unknown existence on the other side of that line ― and there, where the threads start, I feel there might be an origin.
25.01.22
“To Stay with What We Cannot Grasp”
You had experience of seeing a very faint star in the night sky in the corner of your vision, but when you try to look at it you cannot see it. So you keep the star somewhere in the periphery of your vision without focusing on it and stay with it like that.
I find this is similar to images and presences that exist and we perceive. Many things, as soon as you try to focus and grasp on it, it is gone. But, we can keep all things somehow in the periphery of our perception and still try to stay aware of them without focusing on them.
26.04.22
“Physicalization of Images”
Images and imaginations stem from physical real sensations of the environment. It is one way for us to understand the environment, the world. (Environment could be of all things immediate and far, inside you and outside you, living and non-living, past, present, and future.) However, if we begin to formulate and control the imagination intellectually, it no longer has direct channel with the environment and becomes limited and misled — it will go away from what is true, what is the origin. It is not wrong but perhaps more false in the sense that it is more close to an illusion.
When desire and imagination coincide, imagination begins to transform into physicalized manifestation and into action. Without the physicalization of the imagination and consciousness, the dance cannot appear. However, physicalization without any development of imagination or consciousness is empty action, and the dance cannot appear. It is when the inhalant images, reality, desire, and physicalization become one whole, then the separation of us and the world is less and we become physically more pure image or pure consciousness, and our body and world will have a sense of being one. We exist in the body but also outside the body at the same time. I use the word “more” or “less” because not many probably arrive so completely to such wholeness. The moment that we think we have arrived, it means we have lost it.
“Texture of Consciousness”
Rather than giving meaning to the consciousness, I prefer to sense it and be with it as textures (nuances/qualities/properties) of consciousness. As humans we often judge different qualities of consciousness as good or bad, we evaluate them by feelings, or justify by personified significance. We might call something malicious, or something godly. We might say death is bad and life is good. This is not wrong, it is possible, and each of us are different. However, our personal feelings and wishes have nothing to do with nature. We might wish to not die, when naturally it might be the moment to die. For nature everything is natural and equal, our death and life, our sufferings, our joys.
As a dancer, I avoid to react, or interpret — this is for the audience to do. As one who becomes the dance, the art, I feel reluctant to give already judgements to what exists in the world. Although it is difficult for us to give up judgements (we do it without knowing). It is not “bad” to have judgments in dance, it is that I prefer to become more aware of my judgments and perhaps not to act on them or falsely presume they are true.
The world (the space/time, the environment that includes us and everything) includes certain substances, energies, qualities, properties, and the absolute emptiness that holds them all. Consciousness I often imagine as the directions, the guides, the circulations of awareness of these things in the world through me as the medium. We could consider the self to be the pure awareness of consciousness. Awareness has no intentions. We have bodies, but the bodies have almost no separation from the world. There is intense awareness that exists in the body and outside the body. Some might call this awareness (or consciousness) by different names like the soul, or the core, or presence. Even non-living things seem to have this awareness — in some sense more absolute and precise to the property than the awareness of what we call “living” things. I find often that life intentions create dualisms between the absolute and life, but this is about being human. We often suffer in these separations and dualisms, because we are human, and even though it can be suffering I hope that sometimes it is also great joy.
Through awareness, I hope to transform suffering to courage. To know that death is nature does not mean we sit and do nothing to help us and others to live and to have joy. For this action we can exert great energy if we keep to the heart.
04.05.22
“Differentiation of Sensations”
Differentiation of sensations means that you could sense the body (and through the body, the environment) in many (infinite) different ways. The sense of body and environment, ultimately, these 2 things are one.
Differentiation of body sensation is very clear — a simple example would be something like: someone can sense the tip of the little toe, and the tip of the third toe precisely. More differentiated, someone can feel one hair hole, and the next hair hole — and to move this sensing in many speeds and sequential directions (then it becomes circulation) or in multiple points / areas simultaneously, in differing degrees of intensity. An example for differentiating the sense of the environment might be: one can sense the slightest movement of air, the presence of matter in the distance, a shift in light quality, differences of temperature or humidity or density in the space, the sounds, or perhaps even many unseen energy waves.
When we are very insensitive, we can only distinguish the sensations generally and roughly.
To understand what this means in dance, we can make a simplified example. If we give a subject for a dance to become a tree, someone who has a high degree of differentiation of sensation will have very precise body sensations and therefore a very vivid imagination. For example, this person might feel the strands of growth through very particular paths of the body and environment, or the qualities and textures distinguished and transforming physical status and nuances of the body of the dancer. The sensation of direction of circulation might give rise to passages of water or wavering of light, or the process of growth or decay of the tree. The person might also sense very acutely the height of heaven or the depth of the earth. If traveling into the earth, the density, the circulation, the elements — the sensation and images shifting, the person might travel even to the other side of the planet, out to the universe — then what kind of roots would this tree have? A tree becomes not an ordinary tree, it becomes a tree of the imagination. The dance becomes unpredictable. Multiple dimensions of time might give experience of passing thousands of years in one moment, see the birth and end of the world. These are only examples — there are infinite images and sensations that might arise in a person. But these images are physical imaginations, not mental images.
On the other hand, someone who has not yet developed fine sensations and has very little differentiation of awareness of the self and environment might not feel very much. If there is no physical sensation, it is difficult to feel to become a tree — there is no quality or paths, no density or direction, no desire in the sensation, then the tree that the person try to accomplish has none of these elements. If there are no precise nuances of sensations, there will be no physical images that will arise. The dance becomes banal. This kind of person would have a vague experience of this subject, and also might begin to imagine the tree by their thinking — visualization in their mind — which is not wrong but it is not the way in the art of dance.
Cultivating imagination is essential in training, but this is done by training sensitivity and differentiations of sensations.
23.06.22
“Being There, Not being There. Emptying the Self.”
One of the important differences in the way of being with the audience is 1. There is a relationship — Me and You (audience) 2. to have no relationship and become “I am You” and “You are Me”.
It is not that one way is right and the other way wrong. However, one must know the difference and be able to perform both ways.
The first way, to create a relationship, is a more common and ordinary approach in performance. It can be powerful, but we still keep our linear relationships and in a sense, we do not go beyond being human(animal).
The second way is not so common, it is less familiar to the audience thus they will struggle for comprehension (this is a positive struggle). It is to lose the relationship between performer and audience — not by cutting the circulation between the two, but by removing the separation altogether. It means, I become You (audience) and You(audience) will become me. How to achieve this is simple but not easy. It is to empty the self, to displace the self somewhere else.
“Displacement of Self”
There are many ways to displace myself, so the place I was (the vessel) is left without the self. Where I was (the vessel), without the self, is pure consciousness and awareness. For example:
I displace Me to the Other (audience), and the Other exists in my usual place (normally, my body).
I displace myself to anywhere in the universe, in any direction, in any distance, in any volume of “self-ness” and can witness Us and the World.
My Breath is Your Breath, and Your Breath becomes My Breath. The Breath of the World is My breath and Your breath.
“Displacement of the Gaze, Becoming the Gaze.”
If I, with the self, look(gaze) at You (audience), I create a relationship. I am here, you are there. We have some communication by the quality of my gaze. Perhaps the communication is profound, but we are still separated, because I am creating the separation by creating a relationship. Can I take in Your gaze? Instead of Me gazing at you, it is more important what I receive from your gaze. This is one way to shift my place of gaze from Me.
Another beautiful way is that I gaze, then I become the gaze. It means, the gaze almost goes through me. Then, the gaze is almost the gaze of the world. Gaze is a direction. Direction is desire. We become the desire of the world. For this to happen, I must place myself in the Way of the Gaze. If the gaze is frontward of me, then I must open the door behind me in the opposite direction, so that the World’s gaze can look through me and beyond. Through me, through my eyes, through my breath — and on this current of the Gaze, I can float and let ride my consciousness to journey to the distance. I am exchanging myself (interchanging myself) with what I see. I become the outside world.
“Displacement of the Listening. Becoming the Listening.”
I often say to the dancers to listen intensely with all sensations to the environment (the world), and this is the dance. Without reacting to or following what we hear (sense), we observe already what is happening.
However, we come to the same subject as what we spoke about creating relationship with audience. If I am Here, and Environment is There, and “Self-ful I” am listening to the environment, this is good attentiveness but I am creating a relationship between Me and the Outside. This is honest and focused, but it remains in the ordinary perception. The shift we ultimately must make is that We Become the Listening. Same as in the gaze, we can displace the self out of our physical place, and the listening is in the outside world. The world can listen. It is not “Me” listening. I exchange myself with what I listen to. I interchange with what I hear.
We already discussed the subject of “Unifying the Self with the Outside”. About placing the body each moment in space where the self is not felt as separate from the outside (that the self is unified to the outside). In the end, this is the same we are discussing now, in the subjects of Becoming the Listening, Becoming the gaze.
12.07.22
“Dancer as Artisan”
I like to think of dancer as an artisan. What might sound like philosophy or poetry is in reality extremely technical, and they are skills we develop all our dancer lives. There is no end to the study and discoveries of the workings of the perception, our physicality, our consciousness. In modern society we have divorced many things from our daily living. Gods and spirits no longer live in every corner of our houses, many of which have been built in mass production. But these days more of us are beginning to realize what we have come to…and I think, I hope, that artisans are returning.
02.02.21
Let us gaze
From the perspective of one who will pass away
The world to which life weaves in the consciousness.
[© 2022 Moeno Wakamatsu. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.]
Archived
— Early Writings —
“The basis of my dance is quite simple. It is an attempt to be true to the environment at each instant, and thereby to let the environment to manifest itself in the body as presence, physicality, and movement.
I found that this requires at first two principal elements.
The first is to be able to sense the environment concretely. This requires certain reducing of noise coming from one’s own self, opening of oneself to the outside intensely, and giving up of one’s own want to express.
The second element is to be available to be moved by the environment. This calls for knowing one’s own body mechanism, strength, limit, center…., to be able to distinguish the subtle gradients of one’s presence between black and white in one’s nuances of properties such as texture, weight, density, and light/darkness, and lastly to be able to give up following movements that come from one’s own motivations and impulses.
I came to believe that, through this basic attempt, one comes closer to the expression of true-self. ”
(© 2008 Moeno Wakamatsu)
Approach to Dance
When something that manifests through dance is experienced in a moment of profound exchange (with the audience), we feel we have touched upon reality that has always existed, yet have never been revealed. To make visible the invisible– whether successful one night and failure another, this is one of the continuous work that dancers face every performance.
For this purpose, dance is a status of mind and body that is ready to perceive time and space directly, a status that exists in and beyond the consciousness. I use simplified words such as “time and space” to mean the underlying entirety that contains all that exist and their phenomena. I cannot see what is the origin of this world. However, through dance, one can become transparent to it – as if the invisible forces can reveal through our transparency. I call these invisible forces “the desire of time and space.” By allowing my being to be a vessel for this invisible desire, I believe that I can be in more direct and ‘vertical’ relationship with the origin.
We have, in our modern society, created many ‘horizontal’ relationships that do not have direct reference to the origin of reality, and therefore our behaviour and what is revealed through ourselves is superficial, less concrete, and more relative. By giving great value to horizontal and relative relationships, our truth becomes less visible, less clear.
If we have a vertical relationship – if we position ourselves always to face the original source of all manifestations — then we are closer to a direct relationship with all things. True nature can become more manifest in our being.
I believe that dance must strive to exist in a vertical relationship with reality. Dance is not a self-expression — but an expression of all things. As a dancer, I try to offer myself in the state of close listening to the origin. Dance is an act of active listening.
APPROACH TO DANCE
• Beforehand
• Dance as Stage Art
• Source and its Manifestations
• Vertical Relationship
• Importance of Audience
• To go outward in order to reach inward.
• Materiality vs. life-force. The human consciousness of materiality
• Direction of Desire. Paradox between desire and co-existing contradictions
• Some Definitions — notions about existence vs. life / notions about dance and movement
Beforehand
To speak about my approach to dance, it is necessary that I describe my perception of reality. My dance draws entirely from my world-view and my fundamental beliefs.
I state no truths. What I will say will be a very subjective — yet concrete and precise — description of how reality appears like to me through my dance. I believe that the more subjective we are – and if we can be concrete in our subjectivity — more universal we can be.
Like any belief, my belief is my own. Another will have a different belief. It is not important that we all share the same belief. Clearly, what I will speak about is not a discussion about the right or the wrong perception, belief, or method.
However, it is important to realize that how one acts, how one dances, or how one is, is based upon fundamental beliefs of each person. This fundamental belief cannot be compromised, because it is a certain truth for each person. It is also important that the belief comes from oneself, not from another’s teaching.
Source and its Manifestations
Dance is what passes through me. What passes through me is a force invisible. It is like a will or desire of all things of the universe. It is not visible, it is not tangible, it has no name. It can only be sensed through how it manifests itself through me.
Out of many experiences that influenced how I dance today, there were, in particular, two experiences I remember well.
The first experience was when I felt, physically, the space flowing through me like a river. This is the closest description to what it felt like. It was on one evening, in my room, when I was very sad. Without any warning, suddenly I began to feel as if the universe was running through me. It seemed the most natural occurrence and, as I felt this, I knew that the world is always like this – that only I had never noticed it clearly. The experience was so singular, curious, and energizing, that I was not sad any more but was in joy. I felt that I perceived reality in clarity.
The second experience happened while on stage in one of my early performances. Suddenly, I felt as if there was someone (something) behind me. It was a very strange feeling, because I knew that there was nobody there. IT was moving me, and I observed myself being moved without my own will/intention to move. I noticed that the lights have become bright and clear, all colors vivid, and I could almost see each particle in the air. I noticed that some parts of the space were heavy, some parts light. Some parts of space were dense, some sparse. Some parts cold, some hot. There were currents in the space. I do not mean air currents. It was as if they were currents of space itself. I noticed that the space itself chose for me where I will be, how my body will be moved. The densities and the currents of space became manifest in my body. I did not dance from my own self. I was danced by something else. I felt again the keenness of perceiving reality. Things were in clarity, and I knew this is how it is to really dance. It is very simple, and one has to do nothing from oneself. One simply needs to “listen” and be moved.
These experiences of moments of clarity did not happen often. However, after these experiences, I began to dance in a way of Listening. Rather than “to do,” or “to create”, I spent my time to try to listen to reality. This listening happens with whole of our body and soul. I listened to this invisible force. I trained in order that the mind and body can allow easily to manifest this invisible force. I begat to call this force ‘the source.’ This listening and allowing the source to manifest in my body – this was for me dance. It is not so simple, but it is actually very simple. Clearly it was the one reason I continued to dance – because in this way of dancing, dance became impossible to separate from my life. To enter into the state of mind and body of intense listening, and to be ready and be available for the source to manifest in us – this means for me to have a concrete relationship with reality.
I believe that this Source is the origin of all things that exists. We are all manifestations of it in various physical forms. (When I speak of physical forms, for the moment I will speak of “all that exists” –matter and energy that physically exist. )
Yet the Source is not a cause of all things, nor is it a maker/creator of things.
When I face the signs of the source, it is like to face “absolute reality”. It is like an invisible will, an invisible design. It exists outside of me, but it exists everywhere. All that exists resides within it. It is like Time and Space itself – the Desire of Time and Space.
To know the Desire of Time and Space is to know its manifestations in us. Perhaps, “to know” is not the right word — because at least for me, I do not know if it possible to ever “know” — I could only come closer. To come closer, I sought towards self-study — not to study the self itself (as I believe it does not have much) but to study it to know how “all other things” are manifesting through the self.
Vertical Relationship
Then what do I mean “Dance is what passes through me”?
It is to face all clear signs of manifestations of the origin.
I use the metaphor that our relationship between us and the source is a vertical relationship. We have, in our modern society, created horizontal relationships, many of which do not have direct reference to the origin. We begin to have a horizontal and relative reality, that is not rooted in the origin and therefore less concrete. We acquire many relative behaviours. As a result, our true origin is less visible, less clear. It is as if we begin to be reflection of reflections – we become more complex and indirect in our existence.
If we have a vertical relationship – if we are rooted in the one original source of all manifestations — then we have a direct relationship with all things that exists. Our being is more clear, and our origin is revealed in our being.
In vertical relationship, there is a sense that there is no difference — there is no boundary –between one and the other (individual and the rest of the world). There is no sense of the “I” in this being, but our conscious minds, which do live also in a horizontal reality, can observe its own being in this vertical condition, and live with and learn from it. This is one aspect of self-study.
For me, dance must strive to exist in a vertical relationship with reality. Dance for me is not a self-expression. We ourselves are “expressions” of one original source. As a dancer, I try to offer myself in the state of close listening to the origin. Dance is to listen – when we listen, something passes through us. Thus, I say that dance is that which passes through me.
This “something,” is what I call the Desire of Time and Space. Time and space is the place of absolute reality. The desire is its invisible design, the original intension. We are the crystallization of this invisible design.
I feel as if my truest soul desire is the desire of Time and Space, the origin. In this sense, I have a belief that “soul” exists outside of me, inside, and everywhere. It permeates all, and all things reside in it.
Materiality vs. life-force. The human consciousness of materiality.
Our nature is complex. I feel Life complicates existence. Human mind has a unique privilege to observe that condition. Human mind is a unique phenomenon and a unique tragedy.
Material with no life-force has a simple and pure existence, but it has no privilege to observe its own purity. It has no consciousness to view its own truth.
I often envy the clarity and beauty of non-living beings.
They are not complicated by life, and their existence is absolutely true to each nature. A stone is truly a stone, a leaf is a truly a leaf. It tries to be nothing other than what it is, and it acts according to its own properties. A human, when dead – while still keeping the human form – is truly a material being.
Certain life-forms, for example plants, are closer to a material being than certain other life-forms, like animals.
What I mean by the purity of properties of material, I mean that it has no other will than its own materiality. For example, if you throw a dead wood or dead animal into a rapid river, it will be moved by the condition and its environment according to its form and materiality. It is pure movement. When you throw a live animal into the river, it will try to swim with it, or to swim against, to preserve its own life.
Humans are unique in that we can be conscious of our own material (made of matter) existence apart from the life-force that is its volition. Hence, humans have often sense of separation, or co-existence (duality) of, material body vs. immaterial soul/spirit. Our mind can also control our life-preserving instincts – in a river, a human can choose to let our material be, and drown, while it observes its demise till death. Our consciousness can realize the state of our own materiality, which will exist even when we are dead (though it may decay and reform to other forms than who we are). We are able to have a premonition of death, when the body will become devoid of the life-force. Because of our ability to have this premonition, we have also the possibility to view and treat our own materiality like another entity apart from ‘us.’
By observing our own materiality, we have the key to perceive the world from the purity of a material.
Some definitions.
We have different definitions for words, depending on our perceptions and the time we live in.
For the purpose of my writing, I clarify the words that often have different meanings.
• Notions about Existence and Life.
In the way that I use the word “existence,” it is anything that “is.” Life is not a requirement for this “being.”
I stress this only as some people believe that when one dies, one does not exist. Their use of the word “existence” is, I believe, a particular and singular, way of existence: an existence where we have a feeling of “continuum” within our individual entity throughout a certain period of time that we can be conscious of our existence.
This is a limited way of perceiving sense of existence — and it is in a linear perception of time — as we, the living, only have this sense of continuity of existing because of certain operating mechanisms that we have as humans. We can still live without these mechanisms, as we see in different cultures and in individuals who are often marked as having disorders of this mechanism.
How would one perceive the world in the lack of this mechanism? This becomes closer to a “vertical” sense of time – the state of no time (or only ‘now’) of any matter that has no conscious mind. This is closer to how I use the word “existence”.
In dance, I utilize “existence” in the non-continuum. Each moment has a sense of being infinite, When a performer lives in this perception, audience too experience this perception. It is my cheif mode of communication.
• Notions about dance and movement.
Not all dance exists as a vertical relationship. Not all dancers’ aim is this. Some dances exist as horizontal relationships – within the social behaviour and within the social perception of time and space, which is in a relative reality.
Not all dances are aimed for an audience — there are collective dances where there is no audience.
My approach is toward a vertical relationship. In my dance, I deal with time and space in a way that differs from usual social perception of time and space. I present my work for an audience.
There are several common notions about dance by a general public, that do not relate to my dance.
One notion is that dance is a self-expression. — It is not.
Another is that dance is about movement or shapes of the body and the composition of the bodies in space. — This is only as a result. It is not the essence. All bodies, dancing or not, are in movement, and they are situated within a space.
We cannot deny that today, the public is more concerned for categorization (essentially futile) and what the events stand for in social context. The trend is more toward superficial appreciation of dance to gain cultural or social status, or to be diverted by something a little different, but not understandable (not uncomfortable.) I venture so far as to say that the public now enjoys more the superficial, and is content with being presented with what is visible with the eyes and what is easily comprehensive logically or impressive emotionally. In response to public demand, more and more dance has moved to simply series of movements, visual aesthetics, or intellectual concepts, put on the body from the outside – completely “decorative or conceptual” – and in truth, they are complete lies.
A situation that demands the audience to listen to themselves has become rather undesirable for majority of public. The trend is more or less severe in different countries, but exists throughout most of ‘civilized’ nations.
In spite of this, or because of this, I continue to believe that all people, at the very bottom of themselves, desire to listen to themselves. To be with reality, and to look to our own selves, we are very often in the dark. It is my work in dance. If one person can be touched, then there is a reason to dance again.
(2009)
[© 2009 Moeno Wakamatsu. All Rights Reserved. Unauthorized use prohibited.]