Talk 11th Dec 2008
Pravdan Devlahović
Marjana Krajač
Pravdan Devlahović is a dancer and choreographer. He has been a permanent member of the collaborative performing group BADco for many years and choreographed performances such as “Walk This Way” (2003) and “State Nr. 2” (2006).
I would begin with some brief notes on your beginnings as a dancer. How does it work when you have an informal dance education, or rather, how can you be a self-learned dancer without the framework of institutional systematisation?
Having graduated from a high school specialized in chemistry, I decided to study chemical technology. At that time, two new festivals emerged on the scene of Zagreb: Dance Week Festival and Eurokaz. I frequented those festivals, saw many performances, and simply fell in love with the performing bodies and the ways performers were using them, how different they were and what they could do... Soon after that, I joined the dance studio “Studio Mare”, which was directed by Mare Sesardić, and I began to take dancing lessons. Since the number of male dancers was much smaller than that of female dancers, just as it is today, it was not long before I got my first chance to show what I have learned – Mare invited me to dance in her new show “Parasols” and that was my first performance, in 1992. Soon afterwards, I broke up with my chemistry studies and decided to dedicate myself to dancing. I took part in various seminars and workshops and then Kilina Cremona* came to Zagreb. She raised an entire generation of Zagreb dancers, since she held classes for everyone, regardless of whether you were a beginner or a professional. I spent four years with her, learning the Cunningham technique. First at the Zagreb Dance Ensemble and afterwards as well. After that, I came to all my further knowledge through (self-)critical reflection and by analyzing my experiences.
You have been teaching for quite a while at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, where you are a teaching assistant at the chair of stage movement, Acting Department. I can presume that, in that type of knowledge transfer, self-education must eventually get systematized and your self-learned insights anchored in some sort of plan and programme. How do you approach your students?
Even though the Acting Department at the Academy of Dramatic Arts functions as a master workshop, there is still a general plan – the theme of the course programme. During the first two years of studies, the course on stage movements aims at developing a general awareness about yourself and your co-performers, your own body and movement on stage, and at making you aware of bodily tensions, breathing, and nonverbal communication. The method I’m using is based on the principle of dance training. Thus we have warm-up exercises and bodily preparation, followed by a combination of simpler forms of dance exercises and sequences, all with the goal of developing what I’ve just mentioned. One of the essential things was to encourage authorship in students, in the framework of their assignments, and to encourage their involvement in independent creative work.
On one occasion you said that many people considered you stage-oriented and that the reason might be the long list of tasks that you “do” on stage as a performer. I think that it must be your strong dedication to performing and your primary motivation, but also the special way in which you perceive your role. Which forms of stage production are you using?
Yes, it is about my strong dedication to performing. The question is: what does it actually consist of? Very often, while performing, I don’t think of what is seen, but of what is heard. And then I differentiate between objective sounds, subjective sounds, and noise. Objective sounds would be those real sounds that the audience can also hear, for example the sound of hand clapping against the body or that of the body hitting the wall or the floor. Subjective sounds would be some internal sounds of mine that serve to translate instantly what I’m doing into a sound recording. Here you must be as inventive as possible. You can’t see yourself on the stage, but you can hear yourself. If I hear varied and rich sounds, it means that I have performed some equally varied and rich movements. And vice versa, of course. They don’t have to be great movements, on the contrary... You find art in small things. The third sort, noise, I use as something that aims at sustaining a constant imbalance in regard to the first two categories – something that estranges all that. I find it crucial to concentrate on the sound of performance. There are many more associations, analogies, and imaginations in my head while I’m performing. All that makes my performance more complete and it keeps the attention of the audience, forcing it to reflect upon what they see.
What can you say about your problem field in choreography? Let us mention “Walk This Way” and “State Nr. 2” as problem solutions – is there something that you would still like to research?
I’m not quite sure whether I would call myself a choreographer. Which doesn’t mean that I will not become one in the future. As for now, I’m primarily interested in performance as such. Those choreographies that you mentioned are actually solos in which the entire performance derives from the field of desire that I’m trying to incarnate on the surface of my body. Isn’t that the basic motive of any performer? And yet, the procedure in “Walk This Way” is very simple and transparent; in that solo, I’m translating the motor movement of walking to those parts of the body that are not commonly used for that: hands, shoulders, chest, etc. I was primarily excited by the task to keep the rhythm of walking present in my thoughts during the entire solo and to create dance out of it without stepping out of the space of walking as such. In “State Nr. 2,” I wanted to be perceived as pregnant. That solo seemed to me the only possible way to be perceived that way, as much as possible, so I was investigating the idea of pregnancy – of something that contains something else – besides that which is manifest. In my work, I’m interested in playfulness, fantasy, and the ways of linking things.
What makes collaboration in collective projects different from choreographic or performing activity? How is the author’s responsibility divided between the members of a collective and what makes this mode of functioning specific?
Co-authorship has its good and bad sides. The bad side would be that you must be ready for some sort of compromise. In BADco, there are dancers, choreographers, dramaturges, and a philosopher. In such collective work, you reach your results, your performance and form, by talking into account the knowledge, interests, wishes, reflections, and expectations of all members of the collective. To be sure, we all work with the aim of obtaining the best possible result, but then again, it is seen as different by everyone. It is a question of risk that comes with participating in the system. How do various people function within the same system? The good side of a collective, supposing that there is a common wish to work together, is that in each moment you can be sure that (mis)understanding the other will always inspire you to keep on working.
And the last question: What do you think, what will remain beyond the reach of dance activation?
I’ve never thought that way. I experience dance as something affirmative, something that can change the perception and the way you think about things, about life... I will dance as long as I can think that way. What will come later, I don’t know.
*Kilina Cremona is a dancer, choreographer, and ballet pedagogue. She started dancing when she was six. In 1963, she went to the US, where she danced and taught at Merce Cunningham’s studio. Seventeen years later, she returned to France and co-founded a new dance school and dance company at Lyon, with which she travelled all over the world. At the same time, she was teaching in many countries, among others in Croatia. She began collaborating with Croatian artists in 1988. Satisfied with this collaboration and her participation at the Contemporary Dance Festival, she moved to Zagreb in 1994 in order to teach, choreograph, and organize various events that promoted contemporary dance. In Zagreb, she cooperated with ZekaeM and &TD theatres and founded ATHENA (International Centre for Contemporary Dance and Performing Arts). Late in 1999, she became the ballet director at HNK Split. In 2001, she resigned from that position and left Croatia soon afterwards.