what you give will remain yours forever

Much is happening parallel at IDOCDE at the moment: the product of our REFLEX Europe Project, ‘Mind The Dance’ is forming as we write. ‘Mind The Dance’ is a compilation of articles, scores, interviews on how to integrate documentation in the artistic process of dance teaching. It will be available online and free, and is meant to support you in your professional and creative development. We have a group of beta-testers who are giving us feedback as I write. And the editing team is getting into a meeting to evaluate all the contributions within the light of these feedbacks. Exciting times for us!

‘Mind The Dance’ will be presented at our next symposium “Why compromise. Mind the Dance.” which is the cue to thank you for putting in your thought and creativity and entering a proposal! Now we are facing the task of finding a great combination of ideas to live up to the expectations created in past symposia.

As our calenders are overlapping with many meetings and tasks, let’s take a breath of break to hear Kerstin Kussmaul’s reflections on this time around.

What you take shall be lost to you

what you give will remain yours forever

–Kurt Jooss

Dear mover and reader,

The word that stands out most for me in this year’s symposium title is the word compromise.

There is no life without compromise. Compromise is provocative, my first intuitive reaction is that compromise is undesirable, especially as an artist. But the origin of the word compromise draws on promising together, giving it a different connotation, by hinting towards collaboration, commitment and vision. Very differently, in data security, a compromised computer is one that has given away sensitive information involuntarily. Compromise is a word often used in politics. One starts to think quite quickly about ethics.

In my stance towards politics, I lately have come to realize that in order to stay constructive, I have to move somewhere against my emotional resistance. My challenge of today is that compromising means stretching, or bending in a direction that I do not want to go: Reading the news, the mixture of fascination and disgust towards the American, Turkish, Hungarian presidents or other heads of states, and their followers, raise my disbelief of how anyone can not see how wrong this is. Yet approval ratings for Trump prove me wrong, however questionnable the polls might be. Do people think he does a good job because of Trump’s unwillingness to compromise?

Instead of alienating people who think differently, however wrong we think they might be, we need to acknowledge that the world is messy by default. And, messy might also mean interdependent (see Nora Bateson’s quote below), compromising, and promising. So, coming back to my challenge of today: what if (thanks Deborah Hay for imprinting these words!) Trump voters are actually right, at least somewhere?

(Take a breath here)

(Possibly another breath)

But there is a fundamental issue where, in my honest opinion, no one can compromise: Which is the state of the earth we live on. It is the only earth we have, and even though with the discovery of new planets hosting potential of life, and the thought of other planets to live on becomes thinkable in the distant future: Earth is the one that nourishes us, loves us, and provides us with the magic of life. Here and now. (It is also very beautiful.)

My plan was to insert another paragraph about where Trump voters could potentially be right, maybe not regarding content, but in assessing of where something is going wrong, or in how to go about finding some true and needed change. I am still at a loss of word, or even thought, about this and therefore let others speak for me in my ongoing internal debate before we connect in this year’s symposium. I would like to hear you, enjoy differences in thinking, dancing, arguing. Finding similarities. Learning from you. Fostering community, and my curiosity, our love for the world and earth’s love for us.

The one simple lesson to draw from President Obama’s legacy: do not start off with a compromise. They won’t meet you in the middle. Instead, what we need is an unapologetic progressive leader. – Chelsea Manning

Even the hatred of meanness

Distorts one’s features,

Even anger against injustice

Makes the voice hoarse. Oh,

We who tried to prepare the ground for friendliness

Could not ourselves be friendly. – Bertold Brecht

Living within the interconnectedness of assholes, we are all caught in a web of deplorables and are all part of the systemic ass-hating of our world. (...) Ecologies are interdependent contexts. There is nothing outside of the processes that are continually forming and informing the ecology. Assholes are not stand-alone entities. Maybe I am the asshole for judging all these assholes? – Nora Bateson

48 % of potential far right voters think in Germany you can’t say what you think. – Survey from 2013

Someone close to me by relation, wanted to vote for the far right candidate in the Austrian presidential election 2016. We agreed upon where matters in Austria needed urgent improvement, but drew opposite conclusions.

In matters dear to our heart, is it not the case that we use arguments to support what we feel? It is not the argument that convinces us, it is our set up as personalities to look for argument feeding into our belief system?

For nothing can seem foul to those that win. – King Henry IV

If the end does not justify the means, was General Stauffenberg wrong to plan an attack on Hitler?

What is a compromise in a complex system? Can you ever not compromise principles? Is it then about a hierarchy of principles?

Being in a band is always a compromise. Provided that the balance is good, what you lose in compromise, you gain by collaboration. – Mike Rutherford, founder of Genesis

Yours truly,

Kerstin Kussmaul

February 28th, 2017

Quote sources:

Kurt Jooss : Program of Rani Nair’s dance piece „Future memory“ at ImPulsTanz dance festival 2015. No further verification.

Chelsea Manning : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jan/25/compromise-doesnt-work-political-opponents-chelsea-manning

Bert Brecht : 3rd verse from the poem: „An die Nachgeborenen“

2013 survey : http://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2013-04/afd-eurokritiker-waehler-partei-umfrage-yougov/seite-2

Nora Bateson : http://www.triarchypress.net/assholes.html

King Henry IV : By William Shakespeare

Mike Rutherford : Unverified quote, found in the depth of the world wide web