Interviews

Donna Miranda is an independent dance artist from the Philippines. She received dance training as a national government scholar at the Philippine High School for the Arts, pursued professional practice with Ballet Philippines and Myra Beltran’s Dance Forum, and received specialized training in contemporary dance through the DanceWEB Europe Scholarship Programme in Vienna, Austria.

Her solo Beneath Polka-dotted Skies won the Jury Prize Award at the 2007 Yokohama Dance Collection R Solo x Duo +. Now working extensively in Southeast Asia, she seeks to initiate a creative framework for cross-media action among a loose collective of artists working in contemporary dance, performance, experimental sound, and video, via collaborative, process-based art actions. Donna is Programme Director of Green Papaya Art Projects and founder of The Lovegangsters, an open collective of “artists, autodidacts, hangers-on and talkers” working in contemporary dance, sound, new media and performance.


Artist Statement

"I used to say that contemporary dance is dancing the truth of our bodies, but what is this ‘truth?’(...) We can easily put on as many disposable identities according to what is fashionable and trendy and this is what interests me: how we continually shape and re-mould our bodies into what is either normative or edgy. As a choreographer, I do not choreograph solely to ‘express’ myself, knowing that this notion of self is both fragile and malleable but my agenda is to communicate these ‘complexities’ to an audience/public."
Donna Miranda


Portrait

Re-examining art’s position in daily life: the choreographer Donna Miranda

Pixie-like choreographer and dancer Donna Miranda remembers the disbelief of the audience and the subsequent heavy criticism she received when she participated in the first Wi_Fi Body Festival held in 2006. Her piece consisted of a projected video composed of 800 animated images, shot frame by frame, of the 20-minute solo she had created. During her live performance the video was played, accompanied by text and live sound, while Ms. Miranda smoked a cigarette and did little else.

Re-examining art’s position in daily life

“There was more movement coming from the musicians on stage than from me. Of course, some people were perplexed because they expected to see a ‘moving body’ on-stage,” she said, adding that if the audience had focused on the projected video, they would have seen the dance in magnified proportions. “To me this was clear choreography: to write and design all the elements that make up a performance, including the silent reaction of everybody in the space.”

Dance for Donna Miranda is no longer a question of style or genre, instead it is a forum to research what it means to live in the human body, in society, and re-examine art’s position in daily life. (…)

Waiting without the pressure to move

When she creates a new piece, her starting point informs the entire process: words, relationships, or bizarre images which she has spotted in the city, such as a truck transporting construction workers in much the same way as animals are hauled to the market. “Movement comes eventually. To me, it’s not so easy because I will always have to confront my dancing past and transcend the language I have learned from previous mentors and teachers in order to give way to ‘my’ voice. Rather than moving a lot in the studio, I actually spend a lot of time waiting and doing nothing — waiting without the pressure to move, but just taking notice of the subtle shifts in the mind and body,” she said.

Most of Miranda’s works are collaborative not only in terms of working with artists from varied artistic disciplines — such as sound, photography, literature and video — but also in terms of allowing things to develop organically. She is much more interested in how each person works and responds to the material than in imposing her own views on others.

“The mind is a muscle.”

She has been misperceived as “anti-dance” or plain “rebellious” because of the experimental nature of her choreography and her tendency to challenge old-school hierarchies, but Ms. Miranda is untroubled by these misconceptions. She loves to quote Yvonne Rainer, her favourite dancer: “Don’t forget that the mind is also a muscle.” She says that she hates the idea of the dim-witted dancer who can do all sorts of physical and acrobatic tricks that push the limits of the human body without ever saying a word or giving an opinion.

Performance as contract across the forth wall

Right now, she is preoccupied with a group she founded called The Lovegangsters, a free association of artists currently working on a project that reflects on the idea of performance as a promise or contract between artists and spectators. The work will have two open studio viewings and a final showcase at Green Papaya Art Projects, another of Ms. Miranda’s babies, in March 2009.

"It challenges us to think outside the comfortable box of art and continually search for the idea of what art can be. It’s like creating a little crack in a wall that blocks communication between people because it’s not solely about watching something beautiful unfold in front of you, or being moved to tears by the eloquent emotions of the dancers’ body, or being awed by the virtuosity of his or her turns. No, it’s about participating and breaking down the fourth wall that divides the artist and spectator. It’s about breaking all the walls that alienate us,” she said. /Sam Marcelo


Selected Works

We Will Be Waiting At The Turning (2008)
Of Course Not This Is A Bathtub (2008)
I Will Think About It (2007)
Summer Begins And Ends As You Wish (2006)
Beneath Polka-dotted Skies (2006)
What if I fall flat on my face again? (2006)
Anatomy of Humiliation in Desire (2006)
Make Me A Child’s Outfit In Adult Size (2005)
Manila 12hours (2005)
What if I fall flat on my face? (2005)
Resistance is Beautiful (2004)