This text was written in 2007 as the motivation letter for a dance programme in Portugal. --- Dear Ms xxxxxx, Why we are just repeating to produce "dance"? This is my recent huge questions concerning the creation of dance. To describe my motivation to attend your school, I would like to start with this issue which should explain my point of view and my life stage for now. Artists create performances and show it up in a theater. Or we can say: artists create contents and put them in a theater. This is our common system of the dance productions. This is a well-done system to spread out the art (dance) in our society and to reach the people, because people can know the place to find an art beforehand. However, the artists ourselves should be sensitive with this. The system is not the purpose. The conventional way is not the only way. I have been frustrated these years because of meeting with some artists who was missing this sensitivity. I do not say I do not like those artists: in one hand, they were very steady and have a responsibility to realize the art. So they were very nice artists in some ways. Although, since their seriousness of their work, they were very stick to create something and had huge obsession to create well-done pieces. Thus, they do not take a enough time to consider about ways to realize their ideas. More concretely, most of them were just thinking about the visuality of the piece: how to realize a spectacle. The visuality is very important point to communicate with spectators, which becomes very important role to bring the piece on the market. Therefore, the conventional way of making dance piece is usually connected to realize the well-done visuality, spectacle. Also I can say that the system of dance production, which I told beginning and is based on the theater, makes the market itself actually and brings money (from spectators, from government, and so on): the system makes the circumstance (repetition of productions), circumstance makes the value, the value makes seduction to be invested the money. According to that, the artists whom I pointed out then tend to follow a conventional way, to think about the visuality, without any consideration. So the obsession of most of them is because of taking care of and keeping their life in terms of earning the money. I totally understand them, because we have to live in our society where we can not survive without money. However, the problem is that when those artists just start their creation with following the conventional way, their starting point is already on the track of the conventional way. It means, even they had a huge motivation to "do" something as a core of their general activity, instead of to "create" something, they do not place themselves on exactly what they want to "do". Of course what they want to "do" is much more complex than what they want to create, because what we they want to “create” is sharpened from what they want to “do”. Yet, why not they can be more honest on themselves? To explaining more about that, I would like to describe how I have been changing my thought about the creative process and the art itself. When I started to create my own pieces, I also followed what I learned from my professional experiences, classes in the University and other dance workshops/classes. But my thought of creation has been expanding because of knowing a variety of way to create through meeting with a lot of artists, especially since last year I started to work in Europe; I became more objective to see the creative process (of other artists). Then I turned to think more about how the dance piece works for the spectators. Then I noticed that when the artist is not honest to what he/she wants to "do", according to following the conventional way, their works seem to just dedicate to the value of art itself: art-for-art or dance-for-dance. Some spectators who knows well the what is the value of art (even people who can enjoy with spectacles) can accept those works. Bur for rest of them? Some people might feel something unclear -”what is it?”, some people might feel apart from them -”It is not related to me, I do not care anything.” And those bring spectators no connection with out of the value of art, including relationship with our society and politics. Last year and this year, I came to Portugal several times to create and show my pieces with help of my Portuguese friends. I was very touched with people there. For me, a lot of Portuguese artists seemed very honest to what they want to “do”. Hence their work sometime become very experimental, out of the conventional: some of works are very apart from the spectacle, but are very filled with active energies and intelligence. In addition, the spectators and organizers were very open to accept the those experimental works. They receive the arts on their each own perspective, instead of the value of art. There, the art is not only for the art itself. Everybody who consists Portuguese dance scene are reflected each other and keep not to fall in the closed circumstance, art-for-art and/or dance-for-dance. Portuguese people and dance scene attracted me very much and let me start to think about my question, “why we are just repeating to produce 'dance'?”, more deeply. I would like to continue my exploration about this question in your program where I could touch with actual Portuguese dance scene more deeply with represented Portuguese artists' classes in the wide international perspective. I think I would know more precisely how the Portuguese dance scene is made by, through meeting so many people (not only artists but also students, staffs, organizers, spectators, critics and so on), and that would involve my exploration very much. My exploration is either for my personal artistic work and consideration about the whole system of dance and art world which relates to our real society and politics. I hope you would be interested in my interests and motivation. Thank you very much for your consideration. Yours sincerely, Hajime Fujita |