Much like the ballet Nomads, <\/i>which preceded Stamping Ground<\/i> by a year, it is <\/i>inspired by the ritual dances of the Aborigines who reside in present day Australia. In the summer of 1980, choreographer Ji\u0159\u00ed Kyli\u00e1n visited the Aborigines while engaged in his personal search for renewal, “a rebirth\u00a0 of dance”.<\/p>\n
On Groote Eylandt, an island off the north coast of Australia, he experienced a ceremony in which almost all Aboriginal tribes participated. This provided a unique opportunity for Kyli\u00e1n to study their various dances. While each tribe has its own idiosyncratic movement vocabulary, they also share a common foundation or motif, that of stamping. The nomadic Aborigines initiate each new camp site with a kind of stampede dance intended to ward off evil spirits.<\/p>\n
Dance conceived this way then has a spiritual and ritual dimension, while also being a means of personal communication. A dancer can be playful or challenging, but he never at the expense of their fellow dancers. This dance is firstly a group act, providing as it does enough flexibility for each individual to express their personality.<\/p>\n
Unlike many forms of Western dance there is no one central soloist, profiled persona or character, or role division for the sake of hierarchy. Another striking feature of the aboriginal dances is their seemingly natural movement.<\/p>\n
Although they are challenging and complex to perform, the dances have aself-evident logic and appear unmistakably clear. For example this is true of the sequences of mirrored movements, whereby some body parts move in the opposite direction to the others. Much like the Aborigines themselves, the traditional dances are intimately bound together with nature. The dancers often imitate kangaroos, emus and other animals. There is a complete balance between human, animal and natural ecosystem. Aboriginal rites of passage are earthbound, the dancers performing their movements close to the ground and with their backs bent backwards. And when they jump, they do so without first bending their knees and without a run up or approach.<\/p>\n
“Just like a feather spirited away by the wind,” as Ji\u0159\u00ed Kyli\u00e1n put it. It is a strange sight when you get used to seeing something or someone dash away as we normally would. Stamping, jumping, animal imitations, mirrored movements, and the expressive power of the Aborigines in general, all inspired Ji\u0159\u00ed Kyli\u00e1n in the making of Stamping Ground<\/i>. Yet Kyli\u00e1n has not copied their movements\u00a0expressly. They regard their rites, rituals and dances as personal property and would never accept that they be plagiarized. And so while Kyli\u00e1n based the work on his impressions of their embodied practices, the idiom he develops is in his own choreographic signature. “Stamping Ground<\/i> and Aboriginal dancing are two completely different things,” he says. “I did not travel to Australia to copy the indigenous people.”<\/p>\n
A number of Aboriginal organizations have since accused Kyli\u00e1n of cultural appropriation writ large, a claim he firmly rejects. “I believe that different cultures can inspire each other. Although we could not speak each other’s languages, we could communicate through dance. And it should be possible to do so without adverse political implications. I am extremely well aware of the situation of the Aborigines. I know how they have to fight to defend their culture and their country and I do not hesitate for a moment to support their struggle. But I believe that a choreographer is a choreographer and not a politician. It is the choreographic, the dance that is my task. And that was the starting point for my work in Australia.”<\/p>\n
Kyli\u00e1n\u2019s encounter with the Aboriginal tribes marked the beginning of a longer search for a type of primordial power, for the core of his own personality.<\/p>\n
Embarking on this journey via Stamping Ground<\/i> and Nomads<\/i> led Kyli\u00e1n to the insightful, self-reflective themes that are the hallmark of later pieces like Hearts Labyrinth<\/i>. Kyli\u00e1n regarded Stamping Ground <\/i>as an experiment. It is an exploration of the movements and patterns of communication emanating from each individual’s primordial instinct, the animal at the center of our human being.In Stamping Ground<\/i> each dancer examines their surroundings and then marks their space in much the same way that animals mark their territories. It is only after the fifth solo that interaction between the dancers begins. They investigate each other with playful challenges and advances, a sort of morphology of horseplay. These power games are treated lightly in Stamping <\/i>Ground<\/i>, not intended to represent serious struggles for dominance.<\/p>\n
Stamping Ground<\/i> premiered on February 17, 1983 at Nederlands Dans Theater. Cullberg premiered the work in January of 1992 at Dansens Hus in Stockholm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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