Photo: Street Action, Greene Street, NYC to protest the war, in 1970. Yvonne Rainer, Douglas Dunn och Sarah Rudner främre raden/in the front row (Sotomayor, 1970)
In English below.
Detta är en fortsättning på tidigare ställningstagande för fred.
Den 24 januari återskapade jag tillsammans med dansare, danslärare och koreografer (ej namngiva i denna blogg) en fredlig aktion från 1970: Street Action.
Street Action gjordes ursprungligen som en protest mot USA:s invasion av Kambodja.
Koreografen Yvonne Rainer var då lärare på School of Visual Arts och upplevde vanmakt att fortsätta undervisa som om ingenting hade hänt. Hon samlade kollegor, bl a Douglas Dunn och Sarah Rudner, vänner och studenter att gå långsamt, vajande från sida till sida med böjda nackar genom gatorna på Lower Eastside, Manhattan.
Jag upplevde samma vanmakt nu.
Mitt förslag var att vi skulle återskapa Yvonne Rainer’s Street Action inomhus.
Instruktionerna jag gav var följande:
Stå nära varandra, axlarna vidrör varandra
Börja vaja tillsammans, med huvudena sänkta.
När gruppen hittar en gemensam rytm,
börja vaja långsamt framåt.
När alla hade vajat från sida till sida och långsamt framåt ett tag,
läste jag upp min uppmaning för fred
med fler historiska exempel på fredliga motstånd:
This is a time of increased anxiety and stress and violence in the world.
What happened before can happen again.
We are all potential victims, potential perpetrators, potential bystanders.
The dominant request globally seems to ask for violence, defence and boundaries,
attached to a binary world view.
Wars are about resources, money, religion and ideology.
I refuse to act upon those stories.
Performer Boori Pryor, from the Kunggandji people from Yarrabah, in Melbourne, Australia
explained that his aboriginal ancestors had many strategies for care, for co-existing,
but almost no strategies for defence, that is no army.
This has followed me as a wayfinder. War is the ultimate collapse of the world.
I will never support it.
Antisemitism in the world has increased.
More children die in Palestine than in any other war.
Russia is attacking Ukraine and at the same time Russian artists are fleeing their country and no one wants to receive them.
I want to do this swaying walk with you to remind us of kindness and peace.
And as much as we learn critical thinking here, I believe it is a human right to be naive.
We are a diverse group of people, we celebrate differences rather than sameness.
We value multiplicity. We can empathize with more sides than one. We can opt out of hate speech.
We can take a stand against violence, against all wars.
We can follow Yvonne Rainer, we can follow Anna Halprin,
we can follow the Standing Man, the dancer Erdem Gündüz in Turkey,
we can follow the Tank Man – the Unknown Protester at Tiananmen Square, Beijing.
We can walk out in silence, stand still and clap our hands as people did in Belarus.
We can form a human chain, like the Baltic way.
We can do this together.
We can do this.
Yvonne Rainer’s svar till sin samtid var en koreograferad vandring involverad i fredlig protest –
samtidigt var det en manifestation för det meningsskapande med – och i – koreografi och dans.
En uppmaning och påminnelse om att det vi gör i dans och koreografi är viktigt.
Som ni ser på fotot ovan höll alla varandras händer men jag valde en friare kontakt, enbart genom axlarna.
Den tysta, vaggande gångaktionen kunde bära vår förtvivlan, frid, tårar, sorg, men framförallt tröst – axel mot axel – och den gemensamma rytmen.
Vajandet blev en meningsfull reaktion på en förvirrande tid.
Efteråt talade vi lågmält, delade tankar mellan hopp och förtvivlan.
De bad mig dela min text. Jag spelade in den till dem.
De ville fortsätta återskapa vajningen tillsammans med andra.
Själv återskapade jag den tillsammans med konstnärer på det internationella residenset Björkö Konstnod
och kommer att forsätta erbjuda vajning närhelst det går.
Nu delar jag den här på Bloggen om Dans men skriv gärna din egen text.
Min förhoppning är att den kan göra något på den plats du själv är.
Ljudfil till vajande för fred. Sound file to swaying for peace, written Jan 23,2024:
In English:
This is a continuation of previous stances for peace.
On January 24, together with dancers, dance teachers and choreographers (not named in this blog), I recreated a peaceful action from 1970: Street Action.
Street Action was done as a protest against the US invasion of Cambodia.
Choreographer Yvonne Rainer was then a teacher at the School of Visual Arts. She felt powerless to continue teaching as if nothing had happened. She gathered colleagues, including Douglas Dunn and Sarah Rudner, friends and students to walk slowly, swaying from side to side with bent necks through the streets of Manhattan’s Lower Eastside.
I was experiencing the same powerlessness.
My suggestion was that we recreate Yvonne Rainer’s Street Action indoors.
The instructions I gave were as follows:
Stand close to each other, shoulders touching.
Begin to sway together, heads lowered.
When the group agreed on the same rhythm,
start moving forward slowly
When everyone had swayed from side to side, and slowly forward for a while,
I read out my call for peace, with more historical examples of peaceful resistance (see text above).
Yvonne Rainer responded, in her contemporary time, through a choreographed walk
involved in a peaceful protest.
At the same time a manifesto of meaning-making with – and in – choreography and dance was created.
A proposal and a reminder that what we do is important.
As you can see in the photo above, everyone was holding hands,
but I chose a more open contact only through the shoulders.
The silent, swaying walking action was able to carry our despair, peace, tears, sadness,
but above all comfort – shoulder to shoulder –
the common rhythm in silence.
Swaying became a meaningful response to a confusing time.
Afterwards, we spoke in low voices, sharing thoughts between hope and despair.
They asked me to share my speech, so I recorded it for them.
They wanted to recreate the swaying together with other people.
I proposed it again to artists at the international residency Björkö Konstnod.
I will continue to offer swaying whenever possible.
Now I’m sharing it here, on Bloggen om Dans.
My hope is that it can do something in the place you are yourself.
From Ami Skånberg
Bloggen Om Dans 