Talk Dance: Luis Garay on Maneries

Talk Dance is a podcast series devoted to in-depth conversations with dance artists produced and hosted by local dancer, educator, and commentator Justin Jones. In this installment, Jones speaks with Luis Garay, whose work Maneries will be performed in the Walker’s McGuire Theater April 21-23, 2016.  You can listen to the full podcast on the Walker Channel.  

The title of Luis Garay’s 2009 solo dance, Maneries, is taken from the name of a chapter in philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s 1990 book, The Oncoming Community. “Maneries” is a concept that reconciles, as summarized eloquently by Garay in our conversation, “the universal and the particular, which is a big philosophical problem. The solution for [Agamben] is in the examples. For instance, this telephone. When I say ‘for instance,’ we are talking about this telephone in particular and at the same time when I mention an example of this telephone, I am referring to all possible telephones that existed and will exist. So an example is at the same time universal and particular.”

After our interview I went to Agamben’s text and found this passage which I think speaks to Florencia Vecino’s breathtaking performance of Garay’s solo:

…a manner of rising forth; not a being that is in this or that mode, but a being that is its mode of being, and thus, while remaining singular and not indifferent, is multiple and valid for all.

Watching a shaky documentation of the solo, I sense Florencia resisting the performance of recognizable states of being, and effort-fully inhabiting each second of each movement, in each moment. The movement at once hints to a furiously changing inner life, and is yet devoid of personality of affect. She achieves a performance that, like Agamben states, is singular in its stark presentation of a body in extreme exertion, and yet, like a cartoon face without distinct features, allows for projection and connection. Particular and Universal.

The performance is generated anew each time through a complex series of rules followed by Florencia. Garay gave some examples:

For instance, when you’re getting close to the meaning of one form, you should avoid it… We work with the body as a writing machine. So, when that writing is getting, is making sense, she has to avoid that and turn another way for instance.  But that, its a complex system. ‘Complex’ means that there are many rules at the same time. For instance, at the same time… she has to write information in the space with [her] upper body… [and write] different information with her legs… Another rule could be that she has to contradict herself, whatever that means… So, I think all the building of these rules are just trying to put her in a state in which she’s creating her own problems.

Beyond that, we talked about his love of David Lynch films (“strange, dark, mysterious energy”), his connection to the visual artists in his home city of Buenos Aires, how he started dancing (an inability to read and sing in Finnish), and about the value of Art. It was a fascinating conversation.

Maneries has had a long life for a dance work. It premiered in 2009 and has toured on and off again for seven years. Garay mentioned that he looks back to this piece like an “oracle… a resource to understand my own work.” He went on to say that, “the piece is speaking to me about the things that I wanted to do in other pieces and in the future… I always go back to it to understand the other pieces that I’ve done.” I look forward to visiting the oracle, Maneries, to peer into the future of Garay’s fascinating work.