for REUSE
 Thomas Hauert/ZOO: Modify

I chose this performance as it was a very important influence back in the time of my school years, an inspiring direction and approach that shaped my understanding of ‘dance performance’

I don’t have a recording of the full performance but I found this short excerpts: 
https://youtu.be/HxsymU4baYU?si=cg_GwX8iKlGyRyHp
https://youtu.be/Kqong24srqs?si=wgpdqu2KqRa1Vm4d

and the information on their website:
https://zoo-thomashauert.be/en/projects/14/modify

if I start to play with the idea of reusing, what elements would I consider and how? is it an inspiration? if it the reference that is important or the procedure that is inspired by? as I don’t have the information about the exact material and how it is used, there is only an imagination and a reconstruction guided by this imagination that can help me

some elements I can think of: 

• the image projected at the back wall throughout the whole piece

difficult to see exactly what that is but seems like a very messy room
with a certain element of perspective - foreground and background
personal items
maybe flags?
“The photography on the background is by the artist Manon De Boer, forming the set, represents a room. The bed, place of the most intimate and at the same time the most existential experiences, is in contrast with the heaps of objects gathered as souvenirs during our lives.” from description of Modify at ZOO website

• light design - colourful lights, geometric shapes, colours of the rainbow, layers, sediments, red light for a whole scene
• music: Alfred Schnittke, Psalms of Repentance and Georg Friedrich Haendel, Music for the Royal Fireworks and Water Music
• “Then comes the choreographic material: different systems were elaborated to develop movement, often suggesting the idea of forces and the confrontation between internal and external forces. E.g., one of the directions consisted in working on specific mechanics to transfer forces from one body to another. The idea was to see how six moving bodies could unite to form a new entity, using specific mechanics.” from description of Modify at ZOO website

ethical/unethical reuse
if any of the elements quoted unchanged - mention in credits
if an inspiration but modified - mention in the description text
i might be inspired by the approach, the way of moving, organizing bodies on stage… by the description about the use of movement and their choreographic arrangement on stage - but use these thoughts with my intuition and my way of constructing
how much of these thoughts are owned by Thomas Huaert/ZOO? what do I quote if I say per se, that I use intuition versus verbalization in a similar understanding as mentioned in the description of the piece?


1 November development
I did some more research about some elements, mostly about Manon le Boer's work who's photo is used as a background of the piece, and also gathered some information about the music used

 I came up with the idea to stage my encounter, my relation to this work and its elements. I imagined it as a solo work with storytelling that introduces autobiographical elements, experiences of encountering this work in Budapest, Hungary in 2006. As you were mentioning how this is part of the canon, it made me think about how differently this can be percieved from Eastern Europe - maybe it is part of Western canon but it is not that I had an established experience about it, as I watched it from a very different context, where contemporary dance is never part of the canon, it is always something marginalized, especially if it has such a vibrant, living, structured improvisation based choreography. Also this is the only work of Thomas Hauert that was ever performed in Hungary. And even if I know how much it is part of the canon in Western dance, that would maybe never be truly mine and I think there is always a gap and a kind of schizophrenia in this relation. Someone conditioned in Eastern Europe switching to living in Western Europe...
So my solo would be a way of encountering Western canon/society from the perspective of an Eastern European woman (I know geographically Hungary is Central Europe but I am referring to its political and historical position). What I find relevant here is to problematize this relation, and disect the work and its elements based on how I relate to them and what can I resonate with and what I can't. For example the music pieces are introduced in the ZOO webpage as outside forces, namely religious and secular powers that are exercised on Western society. I wouldn't use these music and would find a different soundscape that would introduce a different atmosphere to my relating to the world. I had Robert Ashley's Private Parts in mind as an intuitive decision but not sure yet about what it means.
Basically I can imagine having a layer which is my storytelling, introducing the old and the new elements, and also performing it as a solo dance that is maybe one of the dancers' trajectory in the original piece, having a imaginary relation to the other dancers, who are only there in my imagination but unvisible for the audience.