It’s no secret that artistic research takes place at the Academy of Theatre and Dance (ATD), but what does it actually entail? In this interview, part 25 in a series, we take a peek behind the scenes, in conversation with dramaturg Marijn de Langen. Founder of the Embodied Knowledge in Theatre and Dance research group, she is an academic researcher and core member of the ATD’s research department. Marijn also teaches theory at the Mime department of the ATD.

Part 25: Magician and Tai Chi godfather

Are you saying there was an Eastern influence on Dutch mime?
Yes there was. Phoa first came to the Netherlands when he was 22. He belonged to the Peranakan Chinese community in Indonesia, where he was already a martial arts master. It’s important to me that my students know that Dutch mime is not the product of white male thinking alone. I’ve also got a strong hunch that Decroux himself drew on Asian influences – in fact I believe they permeate all his work. But he never refers to them in his book Words On Mime, so it might have been some form of cultural appropriation. 

Why do you think that?
Well, take for example zero, the key concept in Decroux’s work. In this context, zero is the search for emptiness through which the mime performer elevates themselves from the mundanity of the everyday into the universal. Decroux had a big focus on eradicating the ‘I’, one’s own identity. This search for emptiness within oneself, has for centuries been central to Buddhism and Taoism, both of which are deeply connected with the origins of Asian martial arts. 

I discovered that Asian culture, arts, philosophy and performance have been a major influence on mime performers in the Netherlands since as far back as the 1960s. Ellen Uitzinger, for example, a first-generation mime performer, became a sinologist in Leiden. Rob List, who was director of the Mime department for many years, is strongly influenced by Zeami Motokiyo, a 14th century Japanese playwright who wrote incredibly beautiful pieces about the art of performance, particularly Noh theatre. Ria Marks, Jeanet van Steen and Frits Vogels took study trips to Japan. And the Mime department’s current martial arts teacher Erwin Dörr – who took over from Jon Silber, who in turn succeeded Phoa – trained intensively in China for many years at various monasteries. In 2018, Erwin was even initiated as a Shaolin warrior monk, which is truly exceptional for a non-Chinese person. 

The mime duo Boogaerdt/VanderSchoot are currently engaged in a series of research trips and exchanges with Japanese artists. I recently wrote an article about this project for Theaterkrant [the Dutch theatre sector magazine]. They told me that in Kyoto they’d joined a Butoh workshop, during which they scuttled like lizards and explored the location of the movement ‘motor’. All this clearly reminded them of classes they’d had at the Mime School with people like Luc Boyer and Geraldine Brans, where, in a similar way, they learned to play the body as an instrument. 

Boogaert and Van der Schoot also visited a monastery in Kinosaki. While they were there a monk struck a sound bowl and asked them to listen for the end of the sound. To their surprise they couldn’t discern it. This immediately reminded me of a phenomenon Decroux called the ‘gong effect’, whereby the performer makes a movement whose effect lingers on even after it’s complete. Decroux poses some really thought-provoking questions, I think — like: ‘Where does the movement begin and end?’, ‘In what ways could we play with that notion?’ and ‘Is there a way of showing movement through stillness – and vice versa?’ More and more the Asian influences on mime felt very present to me. Despite this, Decroux’s only reference to Asia in Words On Mime is a mention of Chinese masks. 

Was there really no other mention at all?
Well he does describe how during his studies in Paris he got classes in Noh theatre, but he doesn’t go into any detail about what he learned from them. And then there’s his former student Thomas Leabhart who tells of how Decroux visited the Paris Colonial Exposition in 1931, which, highly controversially, focused on art from ‘the colonies’. Decroux was much impressed by the sculptures from Angkor Wat temple in Cambodia. He said ‘These faces have the perfect expression for a mime corporel performer. They look outwards and simultaneously inwards, and despite possessing a deep spirituality, they express nothing in particular.’ So, the question remains, from what sources was Decroux drawing? The theatre practitioner and teacher Eugenio Barba described Decroux as ‘the most Asian of the European masters’ because of his profound stylisation of movement and gesture.

Is there something that makes this research into the sources of Dutch mime particularly relevant in the here and now?
For sure. Under the artistic direction of Loes van der Pligt, the Mime School has become increasingly intercultural since the 1990s, and in recent years students from Asia have been joining the study programme. In 2022, Singaporean student Melyn Chow had a big impact with her graduation piece Shaking Shame, and this year Zipheng Guo from China will be graduating – he’s a magician too, just like Phoa. In these times where there are growing calls to decolonize art education, students are increasingly focusing on their own cultural background and re-examining their relationship with mime.

We have to have the courage to take a critical look at ourselves. Decroux was misogynist, and that wasn’t the only gap in his awareness. His technique is really rooted in the white male body. He aimed for a muscular, slightly angular form of movement. It means that other forms of movement, ones that are rooted in relaxed states, sexuality or pleasure – which many students are exploring nowadays – are diametrically opposed to Decroux’s ideas. So I’m drawing inspiration from the students’ questions to identify the influences of other cultures in Dutch mime.

Where are you currently with your work on Phoa?
Most of the information I found in the Phoa Yan Tiong archive concerned his conjuring act. There were photographs of him performing shows with doves and a piano, and there were receipts for an order of Japanese swords and a kilo of birdseed. I also came across a small sheet of paper with his teaching timetable at the Mime School – it also revealed that he was teaching at Pauline de Groot’s studio of modern dance and at the mime company Carrousel. I’ve already contacted Pauline de Groot, and soon I’ll be visiting Anne Walsemann, another important figure in the modern dance scene. Phoa used to give classes at Anne’s summer school courses in Bergen. She’s 83 now and for years she’s been teaching Tai Chi to a group of former mime and dance performers. Before we talk together I’ll be joining one of her Tai Chi classes – along with those great mime artists! That would be worth a documentary all by itself.

Text and interview: Hester van Hasselt

The complete series of  interviews Artistic research: New pathways to new knowledge? you can read here