BENGALURU: German filmmaker/media artist/dancer Michael Maurissens will be hosting a masterclass at the ongoing Bengaluru International Film Festival. Hosted by Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, he will hold talks and a session on movements and will also be screening his documentary film, The Body As Archive.
The film, he says, tries to seek answer to the question, ‘Can body store information and does it have a memory?’ The film has 11 interviews of experts from different fields, including scientists and architects. Maurissens says, if you ask a dancer if our body stores information of our movements, they would say yes, but the scientists say otherwise. “When I interviewed a scientist, he told me it’s the brain that stores all the information.
The sensations we feel and our movements are all stored in our brain. But we dancers believe otherwise,” he opines. He collaborated with architect Michael Steindusch for two years at his dance company, Michael Douglas Collective, which he co-founded with his colleague Darko Dragicevic 10 years ago. He observed movements in space. “He introduced us to the concept of distinction. The concept explains how it turns into two different entities when you create a wall in a room. It can then be explored for interaction. In our dance company, we collaborate with choreographers. When we collaborate, we exchange ideas and perspectives. It develops a new body of knowledge,” says the contemporary dancer.
He says he started working on his film towards the end of 2015. He got the idea to make one during an open call for a project on dance history in Germany. “Many explored the revival of dance and dance companies for their projects but I wanted to portray how dancers carry information. I wanted to look at different contexts but also, stay focussed. I decided to collaborate with Dragicevic, after which we wrote the script,” he says, adding that the challenge was to have an open mind.
“I didn’t want to have any pre-conceived notions. The film is not preachy, it’s a discussion if people think memories are or can be stored in our entire body,” he says. But he was quite surprised with the response from one of the choreographers, Fabrice Mazliah. “Usually, an artist tries to preserve their work but he said he doesn’t mind if dance is forgotten. He said dance is an experience you create with your audience. With every dance production, you create a different experience,” he says.
Maurissens was introduced to ballet at the age of 14 and since then, there has been no looking back. “My father wanted me to join some sports in school. When I was given different categories of activities I could participate in, I saw ballet and I just took it. Until then, I had never seen a ballet performance. My father was confused too,” he says.
Maurissens, who has come to India for the first time, says the country is a beautiful chaos. “There is a lot of noise and it can be extreme sometimes. It gets overwhelming. But there is a beauty in it which fascinates me. There’s a proximity when people interact. You see people holding hands as they walk or put their hand on each other’s shoulders. It’s so organic,” he describes.