With choreography I wish to celebrate this inner chaos as an affirmation of a living creative drive that no longer can be contained by its confines. I want to manifest a body that no longer wants to be regulated by a unique centre of authority that commands the remaining body parts. Instead, I aim to manifest a body, as a sort of a creative machine that absorbs its surroundings, processes them, and reproduces choreographies of sense and non-sense.
In my work, one can detect the existence of two paradoxical tendencies. On the one side, I desire to restore language to the unity of thought, in which object and sign are entrained as one in the body of the performer. On the other side, I recognise that achieving this unity within the system of representation -theatre- is nearly an unattainable task.
Regarding my first tendency; my performance ideal is to develop a state of concentration in which the dancer is thinking with one’s body, and feeling with the mind. In this sense, choreography should not aim at the organization of the human body reduced to a mere mediator of a concept, but should rather be the space for the exploration of the unity of mind-body space and time, interwoven as a single substance composed of differentiations.
When the performer abdicates from his personal aims for a collective self, operates in touch with his unconscious, he erases the distance between impulse and action. In this way, the performer, instead of remaining reduced to a signifier for conveying a meaning that transcends him, surpasses the limits of representation and finds himself the contents and the form, self transformed and the transformer.
In my view, dance is a tool to create ideas, to obliterate and produce meanings, open channels of perception, and permeate reality.
I try to avoid using the body as a vehicle of an a priori concept – a concept that is completely distinct of the body itself because of two reasons. First, because it is through the body that one perceives and creates reality. Secondly, because the body is who the individual is, and an individual has too much content to just be a mediator. Therefore, instead of approaching the performer body as signifier, I prefer to approach it as a creator and intensifier of states, ideas and images, which can sensitize the audience to new ways of thinking and feeling about life.
In opposition to my previous reasoning, I explore my second tendency in order to present a performer that is incapable of restoring language to the unity of thought, a performer that is not one with his body.
Here, I present a “Cartesian” dancer that fears his innermost chaos, and splits the mind from the body, elevating his mind above it. This feat excites the rebellion of the body, which replies through dysfunctional, fragmented, and uncoordinated actions. Other times, I present a body as if it is being manipulated by unconscious contradictory impulses that cancel each other out.
I also present a performer acting as if the body was disconnected from the mind; dispossessed and disembodied, the performer seems to suffer from depersonalization experiences. These experiences are characterized by one feeling divorced from reality, or, in certain cases, by someone that doesn’t identify with one's own body and feels in imminent risk of vanishing. I can also employ “techniques” of representation in my work as means to create absurd Dadaist choreographic structures, which display non sequential phrases, and juxtaposed images that generate states of dislocation in the audience. In this way, I can use representation techniques to undo representation itself, since it frees choreography from a pinpointed identity.

Bruno Listopad 2006 ©