Figure et fond s’échangent. La figure est toujours déterminé, le fond est n’importe quoi, mais aussi ce sans quoi la détermination n’aurait pas lieu, ce sur quoi la figure se détermine. Que cette figure se détermine plutôt qu’une autre, cela est l’événement, la contingence.
J.-F. Lyotard

To start with, an anecdote. In April 2000 I took a friend with me to see a performance of The Mapping of Canada in Leuven. It was his first encounter with the work of Alexander Baervoets. When it was finished he asked me almost casually: ‘Was this actually a homoerotically tinged performance?’ Of course I was astonished that a transparent, formalist piece of work should be so strangely interpreted. When I told Baervoets shortly afterwards, he answered with a laugh, ‘Of course, the spectator is free to think what he likes of the piece’.

However trivial it may be, this anecdote brings up a major problem of which Baervoets has been trying to rid himself in his entire body of work. It appears there is a stubborn need to read dance performances, to attach meanings to miscellaneous details that lend themselves to it. Stories and messages, any sort of content or meaning always wins out over plain looking. This has in the first place to do with the excess theatricality that plagues contemporary dance and so makes the eye lazy. There is a more fundamental foundation for this contamination of looking by reading, however, and it is visuality, the appropriation of looking by a Gestalt theory model that constantly creates the need for something to hold on to, a formal and metaphorical stability.

Anyone who wants to liberate looking from this must work on their terms of possibility, or in other words question visuality. As far as looking is concerned, this basic model of modern aesthetics is founded on art, and painting in particular. In the twentieth century it assumed its most radical form in the modernism of the art theorist Clement Greenberg, and its import was clear to see. In Greenberg’s thinking, visuality was based on such principles as opticality, stability, verticality and unity, principles that make form possible. It is an almost absolute given with which the entire model of Western knowledge accords, because man’s erectness has made visual observation, thinking and linguistic ability possible – which is to indicate the range of the ‘thinking eye’. Supplemented by frontality, the same basic view prevails in traditional theatre – the framed stage as a sort of viewing-box.

Since his debut with Blauw (1994), Baervoets has resolutely tried to keep his dance work away from this framework and claim a place for ‘dance’ pure and simple. It soon became clear that art and theatre have different foundations than dance. This means that looking at art or theatre also has different foundations from looking at dance. Dance is after all a temporal art form that cannot flourish when the requirement of stability is imposed upon it, whereby looking at it would also be deprived of any mobility. The problem is that dance’s awareness of its medium and its self-reflection are diametrically opposed to the traditional aesthetics of the image, which, as already stated, are based on painting. But never mind, with its temporal nature, dance also appears to develop into a privileged partner in ranging over the usual canon. A plea for dance can in a single movement also become a plea for temporality, impatiently opposing visuality.

Blauw is intended to be minimal, with everything done to focus only on the dance. The house lights stay on, and the stage is lit evenly by the working lights. No wings, no costumes, and the music is nothing more than buzzing and murmuring. Apart from this it is primarily the choreography itself that creates space for dance and for movement. As the choreographer, all Baervoets does is mark out a basic outline, a system of conventions and rules. In this setting the dancers (Enid Gill, Rosa Hermans and Nathalie McDonnell) can vary and modulate a number of elementary figures as they like, dancing in patterns. One might say the dance guides itself, acting like a process, a series of movements that constantly drive onward. In this way Blauw eliminates any kind of message or theatricality, and no longer gets hold of the spectator’s gaze in advance. What remains is pure dance, just movement, stripped of all readability. The time-space configurations of the choreography resonate only on the retina, not allowing themselves to be connected to any meaning, presenting themselves as an occurrence.

Although Blauw is able to make time visible, it also counts on the spectator’s commitment. The work is self-centred, and while it asks not to be read, nor, on the other hand, does it ask the spectator to look. It seems that, since naive and open-minded looking is impossible, the spectator is left on the outside. The intention of Blauw is in the first instance ‘dance’ – which was really quite a statement in the Flanders of 1994. The idea that pure dance leads to pure looking has in the meantime turned out to have been an avant-garde fiction. One can only look at pure dance, but at the same time there is, paradoxically enough, no part for the spectator to play. Anyone who has ever seen work by Merce Cunningham – who was in fact one of Baervoets’ shining examples – will probably have felt quite left out – despite the indisputable quality of the dancing itself.

Does that mean that Baervoets missed his target in Blauw? That, separated from its Flemish context, the work has no meaning and is even hopelessly dated? Perhaps. But rather than a realisation of naivety, one gradually concludes that the terms of possibility for looking at dance have not yet really been found – let alone become generally accepted. Not in Baervoets’ work, nor in others’ work. The state of dance in 2000 has everything to do with this twilight zone: looking is the issue, and thereby the viewer too.

Since Alexander Baervoets came out with two solo pieces for Nathalie McDonnell and Sarah Chase in 1998, he has surrendered his comfortable outsider’s position, which had not a care for anyone or anything. In 19:56 and Walden he even openly flirted with the boundaries of theatricality. It was paradoxically enough precisely this move that once again exposed the temporality of the work and the position of the spectator. This is because a ‘here and now’ shared by the dancers and the audience has to be earned over and over again, it is not an acquired right.

In the case of Walden, Baervoets only provided the starting point: a book and a chair. His only choreographic instruction was the direction: Sarah Chase moves from left to right across the stage. We see a video recording of her reading an excerpt from a story by the American Vitalist Henry David Thoreau. About how he retreats to a vast forest and starts to live the life of a hermit on the edge of a lake, a life amidst nature. After this screening, Chase starts to dance to music by Gavin Bryars – violins and birdsong. The dance is not an illustration of the book. It exudes the same atmosphere, but the story evaporates in the movements. By way of an image, the dance unfolds into an abstract movement, after which it becomes purely an incident. Chase listens to the birds, looks at the sun and drapes herself over a chair. She stretches her toes, shakes out her arm. She lives on stage; she inhabits the stage. She floats like a flake out of the theatre into the time-space of the spectator.

In a certain sense, 19:56 works in the reverse direction. As Baervoets’ favourite dancer, Nathalie McDonnell is more than familiar with the abstract movements of pure dance. She is given a flamboyant dress to wear, as a confrontation with a theatrical element. And the result is indeed ambiguous. When she drags herself over the floor, images of a paroxysmal Ophelia spring to mind. At the same time it is nothing more than movement. The image of a young woman drowning is not one of pure dance losing itself in pictures and stories. It is precisely by briefly stepping outside the boundaries of the abstract that the transience of the here and now is made visible. What Baervoets is doing is, as it were, folding down the proscenium theatre, the analogy of the vertical basis of image and visuality as a system of meaning. The images are there, but they do not reveal any meaning, they commit themselves to dance. One might say that the dance occupies the pivotal point of presentation and presence, of performance and pure presence, of images and occurrence, of theatricality and transience.

It is interesting that it is in the solos that reading first turns up in Baervoets’ work. For the first time there is possible confusion for the audience, and the work can be taken over by a great many latent meanings – which does not make these solos any less exciting. This also increases the complexity of the perception. Looking and reading cannot at all be imagined as the two pure extremes of perception. They are not in the consciousness diametrically opposed activities, but are always combined to a greater or lesser degree. In this way, 19:56 and Walden venture not only to the boundary of theatre, but also appear in the heart of visuality itself.

After all, by claiming the primacy of form, Gestalt theory has made interpreting and looking equals. The perception tries to focus on a contrast between the figure and the background, a contrast that is a reference mark for the structure of forms – and thus of readability too. Baervoets’ solos try to unravel the entangled looking and reading by letting images dissolve into movements or evaporate into occurrence. They unmask looking in a fascinating way, at the point where it wants to identify itself with reading, with the detection of forms and meaning and of figures that stand out against a background.

Back to the anecdote. The Mapping of Canada prompted several spectators to start reading, even to come up with all sorts of strange interpretations. So, there are figures in the performance, and in their turn they evoke a background. Why should we not defy angry responses and do the impossible in order to take the edge off the anecdote? By describing the dance in terms of a figure/ground relationship. Impossible! After all, how can transience be captured in this sort of visual setting?

And why not? A title like The Mapping of Canada would seem to lead in that direction. Alexander Baervoets and David Hernandez want to chart a large region – dance. What is a map other than the rendition of a landscape in figure/ground relationships? Or, why not, a floor plan, a two-dimensional plane on which figures can be distinguished. Without visuality there are no maps. But what is then left of the dance? And what remains of the looking?

Let’s start with Blauw, which was in fact revived to act as a counterpart to – and a step towards – The Mapping of Canada in a double bill. As has already been said, Blauw makes time visible, although it is too fleeting to keep hold of. Baervoets plays with chance and improvisation, which makes the result unpredictable and always different. In this way, dance improvisation is like instantaneous composing, and the choreography itself moves too. Perhaps a choreography is nothing more or less than providing a basis that forces the transience of dance to become something tangible.

Whereas, when expressing time, dance wants constantly to write its own immateriality, and draw figures without a background, it also leaves traces. Dance is absorbed into a body, into light and music, into a scenic space, and there becomes tangible – meaning visible to an eye that casts visuality aside: time does not allow itself to be brought to a standstill by coded looking. The description can be even more precise. Dance seems to be born at the point where immaterial time resonates with a material support, where, as a figure, it makes a ground vibrate and forms a timbre. A fragile balance, because if there is too little ground time does not show itself. If there is too much ground time can no longer prove its transience and one can no longer call it dance. Figure and ground adapt closely to each other, become interchangeable and go beyond the contrast between them. Time makes itself felt in this mobility, and dance is born. Oh, how dance does like to be ontologised!

In The Mapping of Canada, the stage contains an armchair and a coffee table, with a sound installation at the back. As children of visuality, let us call a spade a spade; or in this case a living room a living room. Alexander Baervoets moves slowly through this space, letting one sheet of newspaper after the other float to the floor. We see Baervoets in his typical dancerly slowness, slightly languid. At every step he waits, anticipates, to be able to savour time. He lets every movement be a movement. Passiveness turns into receptivity, what Lyotard calls passibilité, to let time pass, to let dance happen. In his improvisation he is absorbed entirely into space and time, and in the here and now unfolds his truth about dance.

The Mapping of Canada is a joint venture with David Hernandez, and that makes a difference. A general course is indeed marked out, but the performance is three quarters improvised, and neither of the two dancers is a clock. The contrast could not be greater: David Hernandez dances rapidly, dances a lot, one might say he rushes through the whole thing with his rigid, rectilinear movements. This combination of characters makes for a thorough disruption of the Baervoets world. As an alien element, Hernandez makes the foundations of Baervoets’ work visible, by demanding a place for himself as a dancer. In addition, he reminds us of something writers tend to forget: dance is more than an event in space and time – it revolves first and foremost around dancers. It is dancers who make time visible, their bodies are the basis of figures and transience.

So Hernandez’ role as a dancer is as a jammer, providing a contrast that pricks Baervoets’ self-satisfied relish for time. At first, Hernandez’ contrasting style supplies foundations for Baervoets’ work. But this does not make his dancing the key that makes The Mapping of Canada more interpretable. The contrast is, rather, a basic figure that takes shape in many figures throughout the performance. This is followed by a subtle struggle, leading to a subtle accumulation, in which Baervoets tries to curb Hernandez’ movements. The two dancers are an obstacle to each other now that they both demand their place. It appears no longer to be a struggle for temporal figures, but for ground.

To stick to our interpretative model: there is too much ground, much too much in fact. In their enthusiasm the two dancers think that the elan of the dance increases with the amount of ground. But more ground does not mean that more time is freed, rather that a residue is left. Fragmentary images, for example, which no longer allow themselves to be sublimated, which are not restlessly absorbed into transience. Images torn to shreds by excessive contact with the here and now. In addition, the residue that remains in the writing of time and space figures is no longer ground, but forms a figure in itself. Figures again, but of what? Indices of the paradoxical process of wanting to chart the dance. Baervoets and Hernandez are not actually involved in cartography. Their game of figures and ground is ambiguous and impure, and is too far removed from its visual assumption. The map is too uncertain to be a map, since it shimmers with temporality.

Conversely, the amounts of ground left over also become literally visible on the stage. By wading through an extensive time-space, the two dancers are, as it were, marking out a landscape, an obstacle course. Baervoets moves like a child from one sheet of paper to the next without touching the floor. Or else he trails paper boats across the dance floor. Hernandez races round on a wheeled board. Then he just walks a little, singing. After forty minutes of dancing all that remains of The Mapping of Canada is a pile of rubbish and junk, left behind by the dancers in their quest for better ground on which dance can flourish. Shreds of newspaper, overturned chairs and that sort of thing. Throughout the performance the dancers overwrite their landscape in various ways. Unlike a map, a landscape does not require distance, but participation. Baervoets and Hernandez make their dancing domestic, one might say, by means of this proximity – a living room is a landscape too. Occasionally smoking a relaxed cigarette or listening to Joni Mitchell fit quite naturally into the performance. If anything happens, then it’s at home, where every ground is ready to be absorbed into transience.

The dancers look for paths, ways present themselves, a landscape unfolds. It is like an essay, where ideas and words are scattered left and right in the hope that figures will take shape. The Mapping of Canada is by nature a process, and contains plenty of dead-ends, starts that have no finish because they are swallowed up by time. The initial essentialism of Baervoets’ work makes way for a new openness that embraces problems instead of postponing them. In compromising between movement, remains of images and meaning, that one dreamed-of point where figure and ground become interchangeable no longer lets itself be located. The initial temporality which we previously attributed to the dance gives way to all manner of transient phenomena that reside on the fringes – a conceptual mobility being not the least of them. Time strikes like a spasm, demolishes the picture of dance sketched above, and smashes the idea of an original relationship between figure and ground, ground and ground and figures among themselves. But does it get the last word just like that?

It is not clear who gets the last word in The Mapping of Canada, and the piece does not even have an end. Or does it? The numerous ambiguous onsets in the dance are after all given a purpose in a mental landscape. It is after all the spectator who is involved in cartography, who testifies to the bankruptcy of stable figure/ground relationships, and thereby acknowledges the downfall of any structure of visual meaning. Without a viewer to search for figure and ground, there is no point to the appropriation and reversal of visuality. When the viewer feels the urge to interpret, he is faced with a landscape instead of a map. He finds himself seduced into focusing away from the focus, to altering syntaxis into parataxis, in a phantom visual construct. His gaze wants to fix on images, but glides over them. No meaning can be fixed, and interpretation is no more than an onset which is levelled out into looking. What remains of interpretation is mobility, which is needed to explore the landscape completely. The gaze dances over a surface, but no longer from left to right, and no meaning lies hidden in the depth. That is why The Mapping of Canada asks one to look, and requires that the viewer has a mobile eye. Complex perception is needed to discover the complex temporality/spatiality of the piece. That might have been the moral of the story, a possible requirement for looking at dance: movement demands a mobile gaze, a mental duplication that tries to connect up to what is happening.

And oh yes, is The Mapping of Canada in fact a homoerotic piece? Too much ground also means quicksand. The spectator does not get the last word, but an aporetic perception.