weird wacky wonderful
If you put five individual dancers on stage, and let them do their own excellent thing,
the performance you see is in some respects (when you just focus on one individual
dancer) sublime. But if you watch all five perform on stage together, to most viewers
the performers cease to be human. Audiences associate the performance with war,
with a lunatic asylum—a disturbing, disorientating and desolate environment. They
report disgust and other negative emotions.
What intrigues us is that individuals who act out their individual desires, individuals
who do not fulfil social expectations and do not meet standards of what is “normal”
end up being less recognizable as individuals–a process of dehumanization that may
be related to the audience’s desire to relate to them.
This paradox is the subject for the research week. Can we find ways of making this
fully liberated individual socially acceptable (perhaps even valued) member of the
community? We are interested in exploring the questions this phenomenon raises
about individuality and innovation, about human perception and social categorisation,
about social exclusion and the construction of deviance. The research week will try to
develop these questions into a focused theme that Random Collision and RUG want
to address in a future series of performances. (Tom Postmes)