Text on the performance by Siren Leirvåg
...it’s only a rehearsal was first presented at Scenehuset in Oslo 28. February and 1.-4. March 2003. The performmance by Ina Christel Johannessen and Jens Sethzman, and the dancers Line Tørmoen og Dimitri Jourde, was quickly taken up by stages both in Norway and abroad.
It represents perhaps one of the most interesting and at the same time unexpected works that zero visibility has done so far. In all it’s purity and power it focuses on some of the most important questions in the Performing Arts today both in practice and in performance theory: What does it mean to see and be seen? What part does the gaze play in our constructing or re-creating the world?
There is something theatrical about the performance, not only because of the fact that the coreography also involves text, but also due to its play on the story-making and dramaturgical drive that it shares with most theatre performances. Of course, the story of Artemis and Actaeon is a strong leitmotif here, but there is also a parallel story shared by the two dancers. The question is then, do the stories comment on each other, and if they do, how?
It is tempting to introduce in this comment on the performance the notion of metafiction, i.e. a reading-strategy that involves both the acknowledgement of a longing for an hermeneutic entity (of the world) and at the same time the understanding of its destructive powers. We know that the one truth is a fiction, a construct that we make to comfort ourselves, but still we constantly drift in that direction. The thing is that we see ourselves doing it! We see and are seen in one gaze!
But that is not what causes us pain. Our gaze is limited. It seems that we have hard times trying to see and experience at the same time. This performance provides an example: Half way through a series of sensual and also aggressive encounters, the two dancers are intertwined in a glue-like kiss. When she tears away her lips for a second, she says: “If only you could see this”. (I though for a moment she said: “If only I could see this” but anyway...) It was one of the most melancholic moments I have ever experienced in a performance. Why? Because it made me realise the limitations of my own gaze. I can see myself see, but not experience the gaze.
As mentioned above, one story in the performance is taken from Ovids Metamorphoses: “Actaeon is the hunter who was torn to pieces by his own dogs after having been turned into a stag by Artemis, whom he had seen unrobed.” Why does the hunting-goddess punish him so hard? And what has that got to do with anything? My suggestion, on the count of what I have said before, is that Actaeon has robbed Artemis of the possibility (however fictitious) of seeing her experience as naked. Or he has reminded her of the (unrighteous) privilege of the beholder of the gaze, to put it slightly pompously. A fair repayment is to experience what he himself usually only sees. Perhaps in this way she would restore the balance in the nature of things? In this perspective it makes perfectly sense that the male dancer cannot present a coherent version of the text. Placed in front of this material it can only be a rehearsal....
Thank you.
Siren Leirvåg
Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Oslo