Written by Dimitris Mytilinaios
The following hypothesis has been proposed: if the correct articulation of movement (in this case in ballet) constructs the necessary conditions for an organic body to become apparent and to function – that would be, a body which acts organically, works (with the technique as instrument and the body as a medium) and is consequently productive or of high performance – then the body resulting from the wrong articulation will be inorganic – that is, it will not work? The purpose of the research is to identify the kinetic instructions that the dancer is required to activate with their body in order to achieve the ballet form and to examine what “inorganic” would mean for each of them if we accept the correct as organic. The resulting form would definitely appear as a result of labor but would not necessarily meet the ballet performance requirements.
The question that is being asked is not to be answered. It only helps to ask ourselves what is ultimately that which ballet is trying to make us produce in terms of bodily situation and whether, even when we abandon its form, we remain committed to this performative intention. Moreover, if as ‘form’ we perceive not only the visible shape of the body but also the form of cognition/imagination, can we remain in this last kind of form being freed from the bodily representations that ballet seeks?
The instrument-work-performance triangle is a system through which we can examine the intent of ballet but we can also restate it, miss-articulate it. The ballet space both inside the body & mind and in terms of spatial inscriptions/impressions, both kinetically/technically and synthetically (based on the technical class, not a repertoire) is an imaginary space that can be proposed to the dancers as an improvisational environment.
The hypothesis of ‘inorganic ballet’ is that it deals with the mental form of the ballet technique and not with the forms it seeks or on the basis of which it was built.
* Note: In the language of dance the term ‘inorganic’ (‘ανόργανο/anorgano’) is very often used as the opposite of the organic (‘οργανικό/organiko’). However, this is a linguistic error since ‘inorganic’ is defined as the opposite of ‘ενόργανο’ (in greek it means ‘with instrument(s)’) . The whole case began with locating the above error and imagining what we might mean when we use these words.
