Lena Pfäffli ~ There For The Taking
Lena Pfäffli's "There For The Taking" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 3, 2024 as one of 38 AEROPONIC ACTS of CHAMELEON ORBIT curated by Elisa Giuliani & Giulia Crispiani.
Here you will find the documentation of Lena Pfäffli's presentation as filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım. The written report is by Bethany Crawford and it includes a summary of the comments by esteemed guest respondents.
There For The Taking
Lena Pfäffli's question: Is it through tracing that repetition begins to unravel?
Lena's introduction: There For The Taking* is an open rehearsal of 4 performers. A retrace, a scrape in your head.**
Drawing from early 18th-century dance notations, the rehearsal investigates the principle of repetition while searching for the “Sollbruchstelle” in the score – an intended breaking point, a cut allowing for self-organized choreographies.
Tracing back trained movements, guided by seemingly minor gestures or by the unnoticed corners of the room, what will be revealed? Each scrape and each break in the rehearsal unveils the possibility of ongoing repetition or a potential shift.
Imagine learning a 5-minute monologue: you don’t have to perform it fully. You can just go over it in your head to understand it. In movement terms, I can know that the arm is here [dancer gestures], but all I have to do is this. By setting small movements to trigger the already established pathway, you avoid having to execute the whole thing. (Dancer N in interview)**
There For The Taking is an open rehearsal. A retrace, a scrape in your head. Caught in its own repetition, it unfolds until the 4 performers release their locked gaze, shift away from the score, and let their eyes wander.
*The title is drawn from the Obituary for Marina Vishmidt, Marina Vishmidt, 1976–2024, by Andreas Petrossiants (2024).
**From How Marking in Dance Constitutes Thinking with the Body, by David Kirsh (2011).
Concept and Realization: Lena Pfäffli
Performers: Clara von Schantz, Julia von Schantz, Louis Shou-Hansen, Rex Collins
Sound: Sebastian Eduardo
Costumes: Tonie Brunschwiler
Bethany's report: The space is set with three mats, each hosting a pair of performers. One set begins seated while the other stands, their hands intertwined, the weight of their bodies anchoring and supporting one another. As music of remixed pop and ambient tones fills the room, one pairing slowly circles and stretches into one another, their movements shifting between fluid and tense. They push against each other’s arms with trembling strength, a dynamic interplay that echoes an arm wrestle- not as a contest, but as a mutual dependency, a physical dialogue of holding and being held.
The movements evolve into moments of leaning, pressing, and balancing. As the song finishes, all performers rise, pausing to drink, stretch, and casually interact. This transition to care and recovery, smoking by the window, sharing snacks, or moisturizing, is as vital as the performance itself. It reveals the unseen labour of recuperation, emphasizing that endurance and rest are equally integral to the process.
The music resumes and the performers return to their mats Initially, the choreography adopts an intimate, formal quality: linked arms, locked gazes, and the semblance of old-fashioned rituals. Yet, this intimacy transforms as they begin pushing and leaning into one another with renewed force. Arms tremble and lock, legs intertwine in precarious balances, and the line between competition and collaboration blurs. Each pose grows more uncomfortable, yet they endure, their strength visibly waning.
Periods of rest punctuate the performance, as the dancers recline, check their phones, hydrate, or simply lie still. These interludes frame the physical intensity of the choreography, inviting the audience to witness the often-hidden acts of care and recovery These rests, far from interruptions, are moments of recalibration, offering a rhythm to the rehearsal’s ebb and flow.
The final sequence cycles back to endurance. The performers return to their mats, linking arms and holding poses with unwavering focus. The tremor of their muscles speaks to the difficulty of maintaining these positions, yet their interdependence keeps them upright. Over time, their exhaustion becomes palpable, and they collapse into moments of rest again, lying or sitting passively as the intensity subsides.
Ramon Amaro: Ramon expressed that he was profoundly moved by the performance. Initially describing it as aesthetically gorgeous, he paused to reflect on the tendency to reduce aesthetics to superficiality. He noted that this often diminishes the productive and critical impact of aesthetics themselves, which can be both beautiful and deeply critical. He emphasized that something can be fluid yet provoke improvisation and even sarcasm, demonstrating that these qualities can coexist.
He appreciated the performance's exploration of repetition in a rehearsal context, particularly within a canon that often prioritizes the final performance. Ramon critiqued how processes are usually tied to egos, specific styles, or the atmosphere of iconic venues like Radio City. These frameworks, he observed, reduce the rigor, craft, and repetition of rehearsal to something seen as merely preparatory for a singular final moment. In this model, all the effort and intellectualism embodied in the rehearsal process is condensed into a fragile point in time, often judged harshly by critics who disregard the brilliance of rehearsals in favor of a singular performance moment.
He argued that the intellectualism of the body within the performance itself often goes unrecognized or is negatively framed because of how intellectualism has been weaponized historically in art. Ramon traced this back to entrenched and outdated notions of beauty, taste, and form, which continue to restrict the value ascribed to art. However, he found it refreshing to see a space where intellectual practice was reimagined—not relying on old tropes, but instead embracing a more inclusive understanding of aesthetics, process, and value.
To illustrate his point, Ramon referenced Fred Moten's concept of study from The Undercommons, which frames study as a communal act—working, dancing, and even suffering together in a way that resists conventional histories of thought. He linked this to the idea of rehearsal as a "hyperstition," a process where performers draw from the past, enact the present, and project into the future. In this sense, anticipation shifts from being fixated on a single outcome to being part of an ongoing trajectory. For Ramon, this perspective elevates the rehearsal process itself to a study of life, where the final performance becomes merely an utterance of life’s continuum.
He reflected on how audiences often miss the essence of a performance because they focus on the final moment, not realizing that the real magic lies in the rehearsal and the life it embodies. Ramon highlighted that rehearsals allow performers to fail, fall, and explore possibilities—elements that are too often discarded in favor of polished perfection. He drew a comparison to American sports teams, where rehearsals are designed to simulate failure so that athletes are prepared for it when it happens.
Ramon concluded by sharing a personal anecdote from his time in university marching band, where they practiced through hyperstition—imagining their movements and performances, even in harsh conditions. He found this approach resonant with the performance he had just witnessed, which he described as beautiful, impactful, and an invitation to consider rehearsal, not as work in a capitalist sense, but as a rehearsal of life itself.
Inti Guerrero: Inti began by noting an interesting linguistic overlap in Spanish, where the word for "essay" and "rehearsal" is the same (ensayo). He suggested that this connection could offer a meaningful way to think about the outcomes of the two-year process being discussed, framing rehearsal as a type of essay—a space for exploration and expression.
He referenced a show in Paris from around 2016, which, while not directly related to the current work, explored themes of proximity and intensiveness in relation to otherness. Inti acknowledged that concepts of otherness are likely familiar to those with academic backgrounds, as they are often discussed in classes, lectures, and theories. However, he emphasized that this particular show went beyond simply portraying the technologized body and its connection to otherness. Instead, the creators focused on love relationships, using this as a framework for exploring intense positivity and connection. Inti found it compelling how the show suggested that falling in love with someone who is not oneself offers a profound expression of otherness.
He remarked on the artistic choices within the performance, noting that the work featured couples, and many of the drawings and movements were inspired by these dynamics. While the performance involved binary representations of love and dance, Inti observed a deliberate decision to present only fragments or close-ups of the whole. This choice, he suggested, introduced a subtle negativity into something that might otherwise have been perceived purely as a structured score or instruction. By focusing on fragments, the performance highlighted elements like eroticism and desire—qualities that exist in the act of dance but cannot be neatly captured or represented within a choreographic score.
Inti proposed that it might be worthwhile to delve deeper into the idea of rehearsal as an essay. He saw potential in exploring how rehearsals, like essays, allow for the unfolding of thoughts, emotions, and relationships that resist being entirely predefined or codified. This perspective, he suggested, could offer new ways of understanding the interplay between structure and improvisation, between the written and the lived.
Antonia Majaca: Antonia began by reflecting on the significance of the performance's setting, noting how the space brought something vital to the work. She praised the decision to perform in an industrial environment, suggesting it invoked ideas of industrial labor, which she felt were present in the piece. While acknowledging that she might be projecting her interpretation, she pointed out how the opening and closing gestures in the performance evoked a Taylorist understanding of bodily optimization. However, she appreciated how the performance disrupted this notion, breaking away from a regimented, optimized use of space into moments that were unstructured and unregulated. She found these unstructured moments especially compelling.
She connected the performance to a broader canon of rehearsal and open editing processes, sharing her own experience participating in similar projects that aimed to evade the modernist paradigm of polished finality in artworks. Antonia highlighted how the performance intervened in this paradigm, challenging the idea that a work is only ready to share when it is polished to perfection. Instead, the performance embraced process and imperfection, making these qualities part of what was shared with the audience.
Antonia also expressed her fascination with the references to dance history in the performance. She mentioned An Easy Introduction to Dancing (1738) and its connection to earlier notions of choreography, particularly how these texts often failed to account for movements of the hands. She shared an example from Rameau’s earlier work, which provided instructions on how hands should move, merging writing and drawing into one practice. Antonia described this merging as beautiful and emphasized its relevance to the industrial and techno-body themes in the performance.
She observed that the performance juxtaposed industrial music with more lyrical, pastoral moments. This contrast highlighted the tension between the structured, optimized body and the unstructured, liberated body. The manipulation and cracking open of the body within the performance brought attention to the subjectivity of a body constantly pushed toward optimization. Antonia felt this dynamic effectively held her attention throughout the piece.
Antonia then made a connection to the importance of setting in philosophical practice, recalling the late 1960s school of humanist Marxism in Yugoslavia. She described how Western Marxists, including Henri Lefebvre, gathered on a small island called Portola, where they discussed philosophy with their feet in the Mediterranean Sea, surrounded by olive trees and drinking red wine. She found parallels between that durational, embodied experience and the way the performance considered the needs of bodies, both willing and unwilling, within its context.
Finally, Antonia commented on the temporality of the music in the performance, describing how it reminded her of the waiting periods in video games, particularly The Legend of Zelda. The music created a sense of anticipation and suspension, where nothing was happening, yet the act of waiting became significant. She concluded by thanking the creators for the experience, praising their thoughtful choices and the way the performance flowed from the prior work in the program
