Waiting for the Life of Objects and the Unintentional Effects —The Teaching Methods and Thoughts of Heiner Goebbels

Waiting for the Life of Objects and the Unintentional Effects

—The Teaching Methods and Thoughts of Heiner Goebbels

By Chen,Yuan-Tang

First of all, my deepest gratitude to Heiner Goebbels for making this trip to Asia this past July and August.  It was my honor to participate in the music and dance camp in Hanoi, Vietnam. This workshop was organized by the Goethe-Institut in Hanoi along with The Vietnam National Opera and Ballet (VNOB) and  Vietnam Dance College. Among the numerous applicants from Vietnam,  Mr. Goebbels selected a total of 17 dancers and musicians which included object musicians, electronic musicians, and traditional musicians along with singers, dancers with European experiences and indigenous  dancers. This camp was led by Mr. Goebbels, and Tran Ly Ly, who is the director of the National Opera and Ballet of Vietnam.  The workshop was held at the Vietnam Dance Academy from July 16th to 27th, 2018.

After retiring from Giessen University earlier this year, Mr. Goebbels began to develop art teaching workshops outside Germany. Before the Vietnamese music dance camp, Mr. Goebbels hosted another dance music workshop in CENTQUATRE, Paris. As a veteran composer and a revolutionary thinker, Mr. Goebbels has been a visionary in integrating the music and arts field.  As the Goethe-Institut Director Wilfried Eckstein said:, “Because of Mr. Goebbels influence in the evolution of the Germany’s theater scene, we anticipate he would be able bring a renewed vitalization and a different point of view to the Vietnamese performing arts.”  Therefore, Mr. Goebbels took on this challenge and took his first steps on to Vietnamese soil.

Mr. Goebbels’s achievements and influences are far-reaching.  I wanted to know how he did it.  What is his creative method?  This time I was more involved his teaching process, which led me to explore another realm of creativity.  

In my observation, there is no difference between teaching and creating.  When interviewing him, he mentioned the work of "Black on White", which started from a collective impromptu workshop.  He said during rehearsal, his thoughts are blank and he never had a vision of the work because visions can be dangerous.  The desire to complete the work would limit the current stage of development, so there is no linear narrative in his works.  He lets the textual reference interlaces loosely with semantics and then he develops the music of the text.  Mr. Goebbels’s humble answers filled me with questions and doubts. Is the director’s work really as “blank” as he says?

Just like his works, Mr. Goebbels’s creative thinking is difficult to explain. This time I participated in this workshop which made me understand Mr. Goebbels’s “blank” process a little bit more.  I believe his method is to work without presupposition and expectation.  Because of the depth of his knowledge, he has mastered a rapid thinking in all fields of art and his teaching is meticulous especially in the theater. His philosophy runs through all fields of art and with his comprehensive observation, and he can anticipate potential nuances. Mr. Goebbels first collected a lot of objects in the backstage of the VNOB and the Hanoi Dance Academy. There were several large curtains, long bamboo sticks, cloud props, and large frames. These objects are geometric structures and have potential architectural possibilities.  However, Mr. Goebbels mentioned that many of them were just intuitive choices.

This workshop focused on the cooperation between dance and music and how people and objects improvise together.  Due to Mr. Goebbels’s attitude towards the "life of objects", performers must understand how to work with the structure and deployment of objects together on the stage.  At the beginning, it is a very fascinating and mysterious process of "mutually" observing, confronting, and "mutually" interacting with objects. Objects would change direction, speed and its dynamics based on the actions of the performers.  As everyone’s ability, reaction, and the way of working evolved, he would discuss with the artists and share his creative ideas in their improvisation.  However, in the initial trial,  we found the artists were uneasy with this process and there were some growing pains as they had to break away from their habits and comfort zones.  In the subsequent runs, there were improvements and potential for new discoveries along with a deeper understanding.  Undoubtedly, it was a considerable challenge for all involved.

 Mr. Goebbels mentioned that the theme of this workshop is of unintentional results which involves improvisation.  He cares deeply about the dynamics and composition of the unintentional excavation of the performer which yields unexpected results.  The fresh pictures that have never been thought of maybe an annotation of this method of creation.  Mr. Goebbels attached importance to the process of formation and allows the process itself become a work, an impromptu work stage for performers.  First, the dancer chooses the musician and Mr. Goebbels chooses the object.  Second, the musician chooses the dancer and then Mr. Goebbels chooses the object.  Third, the dancer chooses the object and then Mr. Goebbels suggests the musician.  Before the improvisation, Mr. Goebbels gave the stage a specific light which creates an atmosphere. The dancers took the stage to improvise. The musicians were on the left and right side of the stage while the rest observed. When the dancers started moving, the musicians observed and waited for each other. The blanks on the stage are frightening. The dancers want to express themselves and their body pulls away impatiently. But when their bodies submits and calms down, the stage where nothing happens became a cohesive picture ; at times, the dancers broke through the boundary with musicians and made the musician invisible by covering them with a big bag.  These unexpected moves made the performance full of surprises.  The dancers and musicians turn each other into sculptures on the stage.  In one occasion, a dancer choose the cameraman who has been recording from the side as an “object" and a very interesting dialogue formed.  The cameraman's actions remained as an onlookers and neutral, but because it is placed in the center of the stage. The intrusion of the handheld camera expanded the imagination as the dancers using the traditional instrument started to reverberate electronic music for a long time.  While the audit were gradually loosing its patience,  Mr. Goebbels still waited until the electronic music and dancers achieved a mutually exclusive but harmonious effect, which developed a contradiction and a satire. The beauty of the picture transformed the old into another novelty.  During the observation and mutual discussion with Mr. Goebbels, the artists developed a dance that is not only dazzling but also full of creativity. Some movements seem to be plain, but they became extraordinary in the accumulation of time and atmosphere.

The "distance" mentioned by Mr. Goebbels can be interpreted as follows: 1. The sense of distance between the creator and himself.  2. The sense of distance between cross-domain cooperation is different from the traditional method of demanding harmony. 3. The work can be allowed to give the audience the space for imagination.  As Mr. Goebbels mentioned, when dancers become choreographers, they must understand the relationship between space, time, body, sound and the perception of the audience.  The dancers must be able to see the whole present on the stage.   If they are aware of the image, they are creating a cross-domain cooperation.  Mr. Goebbels believes that we must pay attention to the way the development of the field separately, which makes impromptu creation a new entry point.  Mr. Goebbels requires dancers and musicians to be in progress in order to maintain independence in the creation as they try to contrast against each other.  At the same time, they are both performing and letting the drama tension occur between two different elements.  When I further asked Mr. Goebbels, he mentioned the understanding of an artistic’s independence not only allows for cross-domain improvisation but also a way to create new feelings through new ways of cooperation.  However, this independence of elements also evokes the imagination of the audience, and the cooperation between dancers, choreographers and musicians, and composers also generate a certain degree of independence.  As the music becomes more descriptive, the dance movement is strengthened, and vice versa.

The narrative performance may narrow the imagination space of the audience. When the structure of images and music appears, the narrative will grow richer, but it can also steal the story from the audience. Mr. Goebbels saw traditional and dramatic assumptions inside of the dancers.  For example, Mr. Goebbels asked the dancers to reduce the performing as he observes their expressiveness their views and movements.  Avoiding the skills and concepts of inertia, he believes that for artists everywhere, there is a perception of what the theatre must be, not just in Vietnam, and would likely to become a cliché.

On the other hand, Mr. Goebbels thinks musicians who play traditional Vietnam instruments have different feelings about time, motivation, and sound sculpture because their cultural background and experiences cannot be immediately understood.  The strangeness of this traditional instrument is difficult to describe and of which he found intriguing.  Vietnamese traditional musicians are full of flexibility in blending traditional sound with modernity. The traditional Vietnam instruments are made of bamboo and strings, "Đnbầu", and "Đn tranh”.  In addition, the female singer's voice has a specific oriental sense and it is meticulous. In the composition of musicians, including electronic music and object music, they play together with brilliant interpretation of Vietnam's ancient and modern atmosphere.  This strong  impression connects me to the characteristics of Vietnam-landscape, such as bamboo forest and waterscape, along with the vibrant life rhythm of the Hanoi’s urban areas.  Mr. Goebbels also had a similar impression and he even thinks that it has inspired his composition.

Heiner Goebbels has a pliable and keen mind.  He has a rigorous working attitude and communicate with the performers as equals. The two-week workshop concluded with a two-hour performance.  Mr. Goebbels was very pleased with the presentation. He mentioned that when the participants took the risk of repeating some successful early improvisations, they experienced many disappointments.  But these six scenes were unexpectedly completed.  He saw the dancers and musicians surpass themselves and he witnessed something in them that he had never experienced before.  Heiner Goebbels hopes that these artists will continue to create and learn from this workshop and he will continue to travel and meet artists from all over the world.

p.s. This article was published on performance magazine PAR in Taiwan : http://par.npac-ntch.org/tw/article/doc-%E7%AD%89%E5%BE%85%EF%BC%8C%E7%89%A9%E4%BB%B6%E7%9A%84%E7%94%9F%E5%91%BD%E8%88%87%E7%84%A1%E6%84%8F%E4%B9%8B%E9%96%93%E7%9A%84%E9%A9%9A%E5%A5%87-%E9%83%AD%E8%B2%9D%E7%88%BE%E5%89%B5%E4%BD%9C%E6%96%B9%E6%B3%95%E8%88%87%E6%95%99%E5%AD%B8-f69g9gsdpv