Still point
At the still point - there the dance is

Raewyn Whyte talks with Jenny De Leon about her MA research project

Still point is a dance work created as a choreographic research project in part fulfilment of a Master of Health Science degree. It will presented in a public season 26-28 April at Hopetoun Alpha in Auckland, marking the choreographer's 50th birthday. Researcher/choreographer Jenny de Leon responds to questions about the project from Raewyn Whyte.

What is special about this project?

Jenny: My field is psychotherapy, and for my Master of Health, the research component is comprised of a choreographed dance work and a required 45,000 words of written work - equal parts of a whole. Together the dance and the words speak the theme of the thesis. The dance amplifies, embodies and reveals the words, and vice versa. This is a radical project because in the Health Science faculties of the universities of New Zealand, choreographic research and its performance have never before been considered as components of a Master's degree.

What is your research/choreography focused on?

Jenny: The question I began with was this: In a world going (gone)? mad, how do we find that place, that moment - of stillness, the stillness that keeps us sane and keeps us whole? The research is into the specific stillness that occurs in the midst of movement, turbulence or chaos - and which is also that which frames, or holds the movement. A principal focus of the thesis is to distinguish the therapeutic value of this stillness.

What theoretical support do you have for your notion of "the stillness that keeps us sane and keeps us whole/the redemption of stillness "? Are there other people who work with this notion?

Jenny: As I did the literature search for my thesis I was astonished at the number of writers and thinkers I found who have investigated the notion of stillness. My research has taken me to the fields of mysticism and religion, neurophysiology, medicine, philosophy, classical literature and poetry and dance. The theoretical support I have found is mostly to do with the stillness within one's own being and how that may be achieved / discovered through the practices and disciplines I have mentioned above. It is the ability to reflect and also fully engaged, to be intimate and also observe. Authors included mystics Merton (1958) and Eckhart (1994), bio-physicists Maturana & Varela (1987), psychotherapist Kohut (1971), phenomenologist-philosophers Heidegger (1995) and Hillman (1975) dance researchers Kaplan (1973), Chodorow (1998), Laban (1966), Tuccarro (1599) and Foster(1986) - and many more.

How did you come to conceive this project?

Jenny: The idea of stillness within the chaos, within movement' is a concept that is quite autobiographical for me. There has been all through my life a lot of stillness. I was born with a hole in the heart so as a child I was not able or permitted to move energetically, and I had rheumatic fever when I was eight and I was again unable nor permitted to move very much. I started ballet at 12 to help me walk again. Later, in my adult life, at the time when my mother was killed, I lay in a coma for 5 weeks and it was uncertain whether I would 'come back,' let alone dance. Then 10 years later, I was in a serious motorbike accident and the verdict was that I would not walk again. Seven years of operations and crutches followed.

In the still times I have had time to think, dream, pray, see visions - and by God's grace (and some bloody-mindedness) to find the will to dance. I have learnt that these two states - movement and stillness - have an inevitable and necessary coexistence. Without them both in my life, I would be mad.

Similarly, in my professional life as a psychotherapist, my clients have made me acutely aware of the predominant drive to fill every moment with doing and producing. There is a frenetic rootlessness and drivenness to get motivated / get moving / get noticed / get accepted / get ahead / get. From my clients I hear the plea " I don't have time! I have too much to do/too much I must do." In my psychotherapy work I come face-to-face with the outcome of that pressure - tormented people, with an inner chaos matching their outer life. I ask, for myself, for my clients - what is it that enables a person, in the midst of this busy existence, to find and live the redemption of stillness?

The concept of the stillness within movement, the still point - is a beautiful paradox. Dance suggests movement but you are at the same time aware that something distinguishes the movements one from another - something frames them, allows them to actually be seen. It is a subtle, unannounced something. It may be unthought of. Yet without it the dance becomes an incoherent blur. For me, this something which I call "the stillness within" is a healing and spiritual concept. The paradox of stillness within chaos / movement is a metaphor for grace within craziness, redemption within damnation.

You sought to find the essence of stillness through choreographic research -- what has your process been?

Jenny: My thesis title is: DANCE and STILLNESS - A phenomenological hermeneutic inquiry into the experience of stillness. Presented through the medium of dance performance and written exegesis. The themes I am working with are Chaos - Turbulence - Hysteresis - Equipoise - Stillness - Healing - Transformation. This sequence, or passage is archetypal, it's timeless. For me it's the story of the human condition we experience now. We don't experience these phases sequentially, and we don't 'arrive' at Transformation at some end point: the sequence occurs throughout life. For psychotherapy clients the sequence is arrested at chaos, turbulence or hysteresis, at which point they enter therapy.

My choreographic process was informed by my research into aspects of the various themes, and a decision to use a phenomenological hermeneutic approach in which [informants/respondents] report on their actual experience of the choreography they have performed or viewed. I chose a theme and created movement that epitomises this idea of stillness caught! in the midst of chaos. Working and reworking the movement gradually brought the dance to completion. After presentations of the choreographed movement, I extensively interviewed dancers and 'watchers'. Through a series of interviews that followed multiple viewings of the choreography, I gathered data based in the experiences of the dancers and viewers. This data was analysed to identify themes, points in common and other unique aspects. I grouped the findings into categories that had a common quality. I called these common experiences 'approaching the essence'.

Working with the data became like the unfolding of an heraldic script, guiding my thought as I endeavoured to make a way with the task I had set myself. Rather than trying to manipulate the data into predetermined constructs of meaning (as neither did I manipulate dance steps into pre-set combinations) I endeavoured to place myself into the context of the data and of the data provider. I challenged myself to openness. I did not wish to surrender to manipulated regurgitation of ideas in just the same way as I do not wish to surrender to choreographing movements I have done before. I allowed myself to be "Approximate, incomplete and changing, trusting at the same time that this diversity is both uncertainty and strength (Geanellos, 1998, p. 160). "

Placing my findings into essence-truth groupings was a carefully-considered choice. This way seemed a way of clarity, simplicity and refinement - mirroring the qualities with which I aim to create my work, and wish the choreography to epitomise.

What were the choreographic challenges in making the performance work?

Jenny: I had to grapple with the paradox of stillness within movement, and to make dance which does not move all the time, which lets the movement and stillness share space and time. I had to create movement which allowed me to share my experience of stillness amidst chaos, and share thoughts about the themes I'm working with Chaos - Turbulence - Hysteresis - Equipoise - Stillness - Healing - Transformation. And I had to produce an examinable dance work, one which would reflect, embody, and reveal the written work and engage the examiners' attention.

How has your research affected your choreographic process? The performance process?

Jenny: In using two mediums - dance and the written word - my intention was that the choreography express and epitomise the essence of my research question. The product of this union is this, the exegesis explains the dance: the dance reveals the exegesis: and these together are equal parts of the whole. Creating choreography for a thesis means there were certain aspects of myself that I noticed came more into play than when I make work for performance alone.

I was heavily guided by the necessity to stay true to the written material. I could not permit myself deviation for the two sides needed to reflect and echo each other. I was equally bound to stay true in the written work to the choreographed dance. In this sense the work epitomises what is known as the hermeneutic circle (Galleanos, 1998). As the dancer-artist-psychotherapist-hermeneuticist-researcher I have had the opportunity to walk (dance) closer to my own personal meta-goal: to be continually open to the winds of imagination, fluid before fixity, available to the fusion of horizons and willing to partake in the communion (Grenz, 1996, p.110) in which I may no longer remain the same. (Thesis, 2005, p. 59).

In terms of performance the same truth to the cause has been a powerful incentive to dance with clarity; something akin to serving a greater goal. Right through the choreographic journey the work has been shown to university academics, thesis interviewees, and lay people for feedback and research data. To communicate effectively, honestly, clearly and without unnecessary affect has required myself and the dancers to let go of self-concern. My dancers have been exceptional. Committed, dedicated and singularly true to the cause.

Who is going to examine the dance, and how / in what terms will they evaluate it?

The three examiners have been chosen with intense care. They need to be able to evaluate the project in four specific areas: academic, artistic, psychotherapeutic and spiritual. Persons with these four dimensions were not easily identifiable. But in the end the University has chosen one overseas examiner, one person from Wellington and the third from Auckland. In terms of knowing that I will be judged by people perhaps not familiar with all four areas I also trust that there is wisdom that crosses boundaries and that these three people have that kind of wisdom.

What have you learned? How will this experience affect your ongoing choreographic process?

Jenny: I have learned that everyone's experience is unique. What is still for one may not be so for another. It has been exciting to listen to my dancers' experiences of stillness within the movement and notice how they capture that quality in their dancing. In terms of my ongoing personal choreographic process I sense it has more to do now with listening and watching rather than putting my body into as many different places as I can find! I have grown deeper into a line from a book I read 28 years ago, in my hippie days on the Pacific West Coast of America. You can't push the river. It flows by itself.

Public performances
April 26th, 27th and 28th at 8.00pm, Hopetoun Alpha on Beresford Street, AucklandCity.
Tix: $20.00 and $10.00 Booking is recommended. Phone 3761.671

References
Geanellos, R. (1998) Hermeneutic philosophy. Part I: implications of its use as methodology in
interpretive nursing research. Nursing Inquiry; 5 (pp. 154-163).
Grenz, S. (1996). A primer on postmodernism. Cambridge: Eerdmans

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