BALAM
is in the Merriam-Webster; it is our company name, but the dictionary says it
is the Mayan deity of agriculture who has a long head, a nocturnal supernatural
who whistles as he walks on air. For us
though, BALAM is the Balinese American Dance Theatre and represents a
blend of Balinese and American aesthetics. We are also inspired by the European Baroque,
Spanish, Japanese Noh, and those dance traditions are very likely to appear in
our performances. We are drawn to
diverse movement-techniques, and we do not recoil from the European thought-patterns so deeply ingrained in our bodies such that an easy walk across the floor turns into a
long and winding assessment of Effort-Shape, positioning in space-near and far;
the Balinese taksu that is a
spiritual stage-presence; the problem of reconciling the energy of balletic,
athletic partnering with the Balinese dancing face of discreet smiles and
flickering eyes. 
The
work of movement analysts and therapists, who were actively promoting the
principles of Rudolf Laban and embellishing upon his methods of analysis and
notation, profoundly influenced BALAM’s founder, Islene Pinder. She truly enjoyed their pointillist reduction
as a method of self-comprehension, whether in the everyday or theatrical
context. Converting their weighty analysis
into her own appreciation of each dancer’s Effort-Shape patterns and
idiosyncratic style, Islene practiced “on the body” choreography as the pathway
for Balinese movements to come to the professional modern-dancer.
Of
all the Laban-influenced concepts Islene loved discussing, Neutral Flow seemed
the most important to her. It is best
understood as existing in between Free and
Bound Flow on the Tension Flow Scale. She saw how slight moments of Neutral Tension Flow
in the Balinese dancer’s movements were contrasting and thus accentuating the
movements gravitating between Bound Tension Flow and Free Tension Flow. She associated Tension Flows with elasticity
and the regulation of continuity and discontinuity in movement. So she was fascinated by how the child,
learning to master his/her small body in the world, inevitably is resolving
“the great internal affair of the temperament and feelings, matters of safety
versus danger, feeling tones and needs”; and the child’s personal patterns of
resolution would come forth as “rhythms of Tension Flow (which) would become
appropriate to specific tasks and become functional” such that we shall see
“rhythms of excitation, gratification, and relaxation” as the “child achieves
mastery over initiation, continuity and stoppage.” For Islene, Laban’s Effort was clearly
impossible without the underlying rhythms of Tension Flow which “reflect our
bodily needs and…are guided by our wishes”, and once those rhythms become
“preferred patterns of tension-flow”, they become “the substrate of a person’s
temperament”. In her personal notes,
Islene kept a yellowed, typed cribsheet of these important statements; these
pearls of wisdom influenced the way she interacted with students and
professional dancers.
Neutral
Tension Flow was a concept originally developed by Dr. Judith Kestenberg
(http://www.kestenbergmovementprofile.org/home.htm). Dr. Kestenberg formulated the Kestenberg
Movement Profile as a method for analyzing and notating the interactions of
mother and child, those non-verbal expressions beginning in the womb. Muscle lacking tension and being in a state
of de- animation was an essential factor for describing the inter-personal
dynamics of the unborn child’s and the mother’s physicalities.
I
like to think that Islene may have associated Neutral Flow with floating in
water or the fact that once upon a time, in the 1960s or 1970s, she was in a New
York University workshop that involved standing still on demi-pointe for long
periods of time, say up to 45 minutes or so.
Islene laughed over the memory of her reflex reaction—hopping around
like a kangaroo—when the instructor told the students to let go. Was he the
legendary Alan Wayne attempting to induce the sensation of Neutral Flow through
prolonged static posture? There is the
Alan Wayne Technique that trains the body to move with subtle expressions by
totally exhausting the larger muscular parts; but having never experienced this
technique, I wonder how it recruits all the soft tissues—muscles, tendons,
ligaments, fascia—whether in tandem or altogether in unison.
There
is the biomechanical fact that a kangaroo can bounce with minimal muscular
effort in its lower legs when the soft tissues are acting like springs
receiving/releasing kinetic energy. We
can relish the divine playfulness as we follow that kangaroo bouncing down a
laboratory treadmill; it is needing less and less oxygen as it gains speed,
rebounding into longer hops. We can only
wonder if the kangaroo’s lower legs ever have moments of Neutral Flow and if
such moments drag upon velocity because the scientists recorded a higher rate
of oxygen consumption when the kangaroo was ambling along upon 4 limbs and a
tail. [Dawson,
T.J., and Taylor, C.R. (1973) Energetic cost of locomotion in kangaroos.
Nature, Lond. 246:313-314.]
Carlos
Fittante has had tinier releases of Neutral Flow performing European Baroque
dance. In his opinion, aristocratic
courtiers would have resorted to Neutral Flow as they stood for hours (chairs were
the privilege of the royal family), backs against the wall and supported by
stiff corsets (worn by women and elderly men), dozing off as they waited for an
audience with the king. His picture of
subliminal, fatigued anticipation is actually based upon historical
documentation of court protocol, so we may reasonably suppose a great deal of genteel
de-animation, tempered by courtly self-control, transformed into moments of stillness
as self-preparation.
I
saw the white-gloved hands of Carlos, who danced a Baroque chaconne to music
composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully--a favorite of France’s Sun King, Louis XIV. His white-gloved hands were larger than life
as they vividly put into motion the Baroque sentiments eloquently interpreted
by the Hartford Symphony Orchestra. I
saw momentary points of Neutral Flow contrasting and thus emphasizing whorls,
flicks, commands and rhetorical flourishes of hands and wrists, all necessary
to offset the heaviness of the court costume and tall, plumed headdress.
Another
way to apprehend Neutral Flow would be the ending of an Iyengar Yoga class--Ṥavasᾱsana,
the corpse pose, which according to B.K.S. Iyengar, is the most difficult pose
to master but can be the most refreshing of all. In his book, Light on Prᾱnᾱyᾱma, Mr.
Iyengar provided immensely detailed instructions, with photographs of himself,
so that we have landmarks and signposts to practice Ṥavasᾱsana as the
culmination of vigorous asanas. Because it
involves so little Effort, and replicates Neutral Flow, Ṥavasᾱsana has allowed
me to experience the ebb and flow of tension and where it is concentrated; it
seems similar to the aristocratic, resting composure that Carlos engages in
during his moments of stillness, anticipating an audience with the Sun King.
Whenever
I feel the tension dissipating, nearly gone, I enter the subjunctive state of
trailing away and returning elliptically inside a poem by the American poet and
dance critic, Edwin Denby. I glide into
Denby’s impressions of New York City commotion and panoramas as the familiar timing
of falling asleep, upstairs perhaps. How
pleasant to lie back and mentally snap my fingers at the great pronouncement--I
think, I am—to Denby’s poem “Standing on the Streetcorner”, a very hushed and
private paean by someone who just realized the connection between himself and
humanity is only one more dynamic confluence of shifting, urban perspectives.
Any
movement analysis includes that statement—I think, therefore I am—originally
argued by the French Baroque mathematician and philosopher René Descartes in
his eloquent essay “Of the Principles of Human Knowledge”. Yet we must carefully consider Mr. Iyengar’s
proposition in his book, The Tree of Yoga, that the dance is directed to
the world outside one’s inner being while yoga’s “tremendous” implications lie
within one’s inner being. It is true
that the asanas do not propel our bodies across the dance floor; they are a
confluence of small movements by body parts fitted together into spiritually
determined shapes which test our understanding of where we are in life. It is almost the same thing every time we
stand at the barre and go through our warm-up routines; we are asking ourselves
if it is the mind controlling the body, if they are two distinct things, if it is the
body shaping the mind.
Carlos
reminds me that we can simply rely upon our dancing, our years of experiencing
kinesthestic connectivity, then tap into the psychological effect it has
wrought upon our bodies—serenity and connectivity; simply performing the
movements tells us how much more delving into the physical sensations and
analyzing is needed to attain the artistic quality we desire; performing the
movements also reminds us of the goodly sum of lessons learned through
observation, practice, and immersion in the dramatic role. In other words, we should use our malleable minds
to support our dancing bodies. We should
inhale acquiescence to exhale the performing art. We should, as Carlos has learned in aristocratic
fencing classes, find the proper mindset for the physical art.
As we enjoy the alchemy of combining different
worlds, different heritages and civilizations, the convergence of the East and
the West, we are calmed by the tempering effect of Neutral Flow upon the
magnificently conscious drive to create.
BALAM likes Promethean power coming forth from our innermost being, but there
is this other problem--dancing the role of Lord Hanuman who is the mischievous
problem-solver in the Ramayana epic and the inspiration for the Balinese Kecak
dance…He who is as swift as the wind and the human mind, He who subjugates
Himself to Lord Rama…Geeta Iyengar reminds us to think of Lord Hanuman as one
who has mastered perception and bodily senses, to remember how His name invokes
the Protector Lord Vishnu (ha) and the Destroyer Lord Shiva (nu) and the
Creator Lord Brahma (ma). Prashant
Iyengar cites Patanjali as he reminds us to aspire to perform the asana with decreasing
prayatna (effort) and increasing saithilya (effortlessness), to fully
sense ourselves going into the asana, staying within it, and coming out of the
asana. [Yoga Rahasya, vol. 11, no. 2, 2004]
I would also think of it this way—sleep and
inactivity allow for a blurring of movement boundaries. The subliminal is our staging ground. Then
when we push off from the self-readying stillness, we start sharpening the boundary
edges between the inner being and the world outside. By dancing through whatever boundary edges--between
ourselves and our present worlds or between our inner beings and our distant
muses--we acquire a body-consciousness, a sensation of being different from
that slight moment ago (or that one we just shed after an eternity of
self-improvement). For Carlos, Neutral Flow is the dancer’s gateway
for emerging, coming into being. Certainly, we will inhale stillness to exhale our
movements whenever we rely on Neutral Flow to provide for resting, for
self-composure, for letting the artistry come of itself and into its own.
