Choreographer Michael Klien is using the coded musical language of Bach in his new Daghdha production, he tells Michael Seaver.
After reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code we are all casually au fait with codes, symbols and systems. A conversation with Daghdha Dance Company's artistic director Michael Klien, however, reveals a fascinating obsession with choreographic systems and codes. His latest work, Once Beneath The Skin, which premièred on Wednesday, has been set to Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations, a choice that has given him a head start in the world of numerology.
"I've been listening to it since I was a child," says the former Ballet Frankfurt guest choreographer. "So when I decided I might use it for this piece I listened to lots of different recordings and bought a book - the book, in fact. Unbelievably, there is only one written about the Goldberg Variations."
Even a shallow exploration of the score can cause mental indigestion. There is not just the complicated and systematic counterpoint in the variations, but, in the first printed edition, Bach appends a further set of 15 canons that are not scored but written as riddles. The final canon, a canon triplex, uses the numerology of the figure alphabet around his own name: the sum of Bach is 14 and J.S. Bach is 41. And although there are 15 canons, they are numbered 1 to 14 (the tenth is made up of two canons) and are placed into groups of 4-1-4-1-4, a further play on Bach's "14, 41 signature". But isn't all this number-crunching at odds with the unthinking, instinctive dancing body?
"Not really," Klien says. "For some time I've been hunting for ways to choreograph the mind as well as the body. I'm trying not to create this distinction between the mental and the physical but bring the two together. I like to think that a thought is a physical action."
Rebelling against his formal ballet training, Klien was drawn to performance art via a contemporary dance degree, but always retained formal choreographic structures. Now he is beginning to loosen these formations to create less defined instructions for the dancers. "It is like football really," he says. "Although there are rules and a standard playing pitch each match is different because there are all sorts of different tactics and styles. The dynamics of football are similar to my choreography. You don't quite know what to expect. I want to create a structure fluid enough to give the dancers space for expression and rigid enough to sustain itself as a piece."
Although dancers must have the intellectual curiosity to engage in this way of working, he still demands a strong physical technique. The company's recent advertisement for dancers probably articulates this best: "Daghdha are looking for two extraordinary performers. They must have left an immaculate dance technique behind (ballet and contemporary) to concentrate on more immediate things".
Klien's dancers are recognised as artists in themselves rather than tools for his artistry, and collaboration is essential to this task of choreographing the mind. "I pose questions that they go off to explore, both mentally and physically. About half of my choreography is done over coffee, talking, investigating ideas and setting parameters."
Memories emerged as an important theme in creating Once Beneath The Skin, so he asked the dancers to choose 50 memories from their life and lose all other memories. "The idea was that after choosing these memories they could explore them to such a depth that they could actually reconstruct themselves," he says. "They did things like read old letters and tried to completely immerse themselves in the place and time. And interesting things came up, like, where is the edge of a memory? What can't I remember? Have I re-invented a lamp on the table, or was it really there? Then we find physical ways for the dancers to explore those memories, although these physical manifestations of a memory can change over time. Through this process the dancers will discover more, so the piece will actually be different in a few months than it is now, because it actually allows forgetting. There is no real rehearsal process. We just keep running the piece."
The effect is relaxed and understated. An onstage live piano alongside the two dancers means the two compositions - Bach's and Klien's - are given equal status, and there is a sense of co-existence rather than competition for attention. The careful dynamics of Klien's relationship with the dancers is applied to his directorship of Daghdha Dance Company and he sees building the company as an act of choreography.
"You have to set the right relationships between people and create the right frameworks for people to work together," he says. "Just like my choreographic systems, the battle is between being rigid enough to be sustained and flexible enough to allow individuality."
To illustrate this he gave a masterclass to managers in Vienna on complexity management. "I'd never studied complexity management but I had choreographed, and so I explained how these fluid structural systems can be applied to management," he says.
Already this fluidity has been applied within Daghdha with the breaking down of roles. Davide Terlingo spends as much time in the office as in the studio in his dual role of dancer and research officer. Organising informal open presentations, called "Mamuska Nights", Terlingo has increased contact within the artistic community.
While there was some disquiet about former Daghdha director Yoshiko Chuma's decision to commute between New York and Limerick during her three-year tenure, Klien is firmly placed within the Limerick community. He is living in Limerick and is adamant about the need for Daghdha to engage and interact with not just local artists but the community around its new home in the Church of St John of The Cross, which is being converted to a studio/performing space.
Strategies include what he calls social choreography. "An example of this would be the piece we are working on for Cork 2005," he says. "We will give out 10,000 custom-designed stainless steel rings and each comes with five instructions. These are simple instructions to tell you what you do if you encounter someone else wearing the ring. So we will create a structure, a social structure, that cannot be observed, and yet people will be performing it every day."
With the Mamuska Nights, monthly talks at the Rowing Club and an apprenticeship scheme in 2005, Klien has made his presence felt. But he appreciates the resources he has at his disposal, particularly with the new space, and is determined to maximise Daghdha's impact, not just locally but internationally.
"I really think the potential is there," he says. "With dance in other European countries suffering and companies closing down it is great to be in a place where things are growing. It feels good here right now."