Interview: Ximena Garnica of FRANTIC BEAUTY

The multidisciplinary duo Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya and the LEIMAY Ensemble return to BAM Fisher with FRANTIC BEAUTY, the newest evening-length work representing the mid-point in their BECOMING pentalogy. Combining the LEIMAY Ensemble's signature physicality layered over vivid visual landscapes, this world premiere reflects on society's pursuit of and relationship to beauty. The piece features an original score by Emmy-winning composer Jeff Beal (House of Cards).

Following in the tracks of BECOMING CORPUS and borders - the previous installments in the BECOMING series (both premiered at BAM Fisher) - FRANTIC BEAUTY emerges after a year-long studio collaboration between the lead creative duo and a group of international multidisciplinary collaborators. Equal parts dance theater and media-infused visual installation, this work envelops spectators in a minimalistic yet immersive environment.

Performances will take place at BAM Fisher / Fishman Space (321 Ashland Place, Brooklyn, NY 11217.) Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased online at http://www.bam.org/dance/2017/frantic-beauty].

Broadwayworld Dance recently interviewed Ximena Garcia via e-mail.

Q. Where were you born?

A. I was born in Bogotá, Colombia, a city traced by mountains in the East with an eternal fall season. I lived there until I was sixteen years old and then came to New York on my own, right before my seventeenth birthday. I had just graduated high school and wanted to learn English.

Q. When did you begin dance training and where?

A. Since I was eight years old up, and until I moved to New York, I worked as an actor back in my country, so performing was something very close to me. It wasn't, however, until I was sixteen that I attended a serious dance class. Still, dance has always been present in my life. Social dance and dance parties are important parts of our culture.

Q. Any early dance instructor influences?

A. There are two artists who have had a deep influence on the way I think about dance, both coming out of the Butoh lineage. Butoh emerged in Japan in the late 60's as Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Darkness), the dance project of Japanese choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata. The artists I am referring to, Ko Murobushi and Akira Kasai, were close to Hijikata and are considered by many to be the pioneers of Butoh. They both have very different styles and technique, but share the transformative power in their approach to physicality. Ko used to have a mercurial quality, always searching for an event, a moment of sudden change. Kasai dances like a hummingbird, carrying beauty through time, will, and matter.

Q. When did you become interested in performance art?

A. My mom took me to a small marionette theater as a child. It was magical, I remember the lights and the colors and a floating dream-like state. From early on, I was lucky to be exposed to many legendary directors and companies, such as Robert Wilson, Pina Bausch, Peter Brook and many others, which were presented at Bogota's Festival Iberomericano. Immersed in the world of the performing arts as a spectator and an actor, I lived my life as something of a large character study. A few years after I moved to New York, I found myself working with the artist Shige Moriya, my partner and artistic collaborator. He was running an art gallery in Brooklyn, surrounded by creatives from various disciplines, some working in the visual realm, some doing performance and other ephemeral actions. The concept of performance in the context of the visual arts was new to me, and I was curious and excited to learn its history and meet more artists.

Q. Describe your choreographic philosophy?

A. I look at choreography not as the setting of crystallized forms but as the triggering of transformative power inherent in the performer's body. I listen to the space and to my collaborators and look to tune into certain states of harmony. I don't have to create it myself but to facilitate the potential for new connections to emerge.

Q. Go into detail about your collaborative works: music you use, dancers, presentation? Describe each one in detail.

A. My collaborations range from works contextualized in the performing arts, as well as in the visual arts. The LEIMAY Ensemble, the group I lead jointly with Shige, consists of five dancers working continuously throughout the year to create body-rooted works and to contribute to the development of our practice, which we call LUDUS. One of the main bodies of work with the ensemble has emerged as the BECOMING Series, a pentalogy of multidisciplinary pieces set in immersive environments, integrating dance, theater, video projections, and music. The LEIMAY Ensemble core dancers are Japanese Masanori Asahara, and Americans Andrea Jones and Derek DiMartini. For the upcoming premiere of Frantic Beauty at BAM, ensemble members also include Krystel Copper, Mario Galeano, and Omer Ephron. The BECOMING series deals with a constant state of becoming through growth and decay, beginnings and endings. Shige and I design and conceive the pieces together, and we both work in the studio with the performers and other collaborators. Original music is an important aspect of the piece. In Frantic Beauty, we are collaborating with a wonderful composer and very generous human, Jeff Beal. He is best known for his music for several TV shows, including House of Cards. Although he lives in LA, he has traveled to New York several times a year to be in the studio with us during intensive periods of rehearsal.

For the works in the BECOMING Series, the integration of visual, sound, and movement is paramount to the process, so a great deal of effort is put into growing all the elements simultaneously. Usually, the composer collaborates with us at different periods of the year, participating in the studio sessions with the dancers and performers. Video projections are the only light source for this work. Instead of using lighting to create an ambiance for the stage, we make it another dancer/performer. In fact, a lot of the work is built around the interactions of the bodies with the light. The work develops organically over a year-long process. Besides our regular work sessions, we make four retreats a year to immerse ourselves fully in the project with all the elements of the work present.

Q. When you go to see a performance of another choreographer's work, what do you look for?

A. I focus on the dancers and the space. Do the bodies have power? Is there harmony in the space? I am moved by the power of human bodies to transform and allow transformation to happen. It does not matter what style of dance it is. If the physicality is more about power than technique, I am touched by and attracted to the work.

Q. You have received commissions from a number of foundations. Could you describe what you did for each one, if it's not overlapping the previous question

A. Shige and I have created works on the grounds of Robert Wilson's Watermill Center on several occasions. These works are part of a series titled Qualia, which alters pre-existing spaces, structures or objects to reveal the observer, the observed, and the process of observation. This practice invites the viewer to reconsider their seemingly ordinary surroundings and listen to a realm of perception that is unquantifiable, internal, and subjective. One of the pieces was a series of kinetic sculptures made of strings and activated by dancers' bodies, which was later presented at the Brooklyn Museum in their beautiful Beaux-Arts Court.

We had a three-year residency at the NYC downtown theater HERE. We created a work titled Floating Point Waves, an environment of strings, water, a solo performance, real-time video, and live electronic music that unveiled the relationship between the human body and natural elements. Movement, water, and light responded to one another, echoing our own natural world.

The New York Restoration Project, in partnership with the Museo del Barrio and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, has been giving us an annual commission to create a work for community gardens. We have made three works under the In Illo Tempore series, exploring bodies suspended in time, revealing the echoes of memory, alienation, and exile.

Last year, at the gallery of the Czech Center, we presented Qualia Transcendence, which also had a performative element. We dedicated this work to Václav Havel, the former president of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic and a playwright.

Q. Describe your collaboration, the give and take, the meeting of minds. Go into detail.

A. The practice I developed with Shige is fully interconnected. We believe in something we call "generative confrontation." That means we accept the moments in which collision may occur and try to capture the sparks that result from it and then have them funnel into the work. There are sometimes crashes between our bodies and our minds, our thoughts and our actions, our desires and our limitations.

Q. What traits do you look for in a performance artist appearing in one of your works?

A. I look for people who are ready to question everything they have learned so far and everything they will be doing; who have great power of imagination; whose bodies have a potential for the physical demands of the work; who are willing to be uncomfortable; who love their bodies for what they are; who are sick of a world of dichotomies; who want to embrace the simultaneity of light and shadow, of music and silence.

Q. Do you yourself perform in any of your works?

A. I do sometimes. But recently less and less, although I might be changing that.

Q. What can we expect from you in the future?

A. More creations. Currently, we are in our second residency at HERE. Our next work there is in the very early stages of development and is due to premiere in 2019. We are also looking to continue our collaboration with composer Jeff Beal in the creation of a new opera.

Besides our ongoing collaboration with LEIMAY ensemble, we hope to work with other companies, universities, and artists. We look forward to bringing our art to other places in the USA and abroad. You might expect a large-scale stage work and a community garden piece, a solo show at an art gallery, and an impromptu performance at our live-work studio in Brooklyn. A dance film and an article in an academic journal. A collaboration with a scientist and with a chef. I am open to the universe, to new joint projects and to what is yet to exist.

Photo: Jonas Hidalgo

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