an attempt

to choreograph

making of the back a bridge

a crack

an insistent question mark 

to suspend

tensing the muscles until detaching from the ground 

resisting gravity by surrendering 

to refuse

withdrawing something from the gaze

holding a forgotten form

becoming a fossil of the future

to surrender

pulling with the fingers the invisible thread 

that unweaves the edge of the insides and the outsides

to hold

digging out

sharing a wound

turning to rock

falling in rapture

becoming a hole

amparo, march 2022

IF EVERY ROCK IS A HOLEemerges from the choreo-political questions of: 

How can we perceive the resonances of what seems invisible, still, or silent? How can we attend to the quiet frequencies of what refuses to come into view?  How can we engage with absences that hold our presence?  In the work these questions are addressed through the notions of resistance and surrender. It is an exploration of curves, tensions, folds, suspensions, setbacks and interruptions. The audience is invited to listen to the forms, to attend to the holes, and to hold them with their gaze;  to suspend for a while.

Kadiatou Diallo 

March 2022

The many generous exchanges with Amparo González Sola over the last several months have opened many holes: rabbit holes and portals, but also safe dens and a web of connecting tunnels. 

For neither of us is English the first language. Yet it is through the English language that we assess the rocky nature of words, their ability to keep us in place; and we also exercise a sort of perpetual translation, in an attempt to extrapolate new meanings. 

A hole is first and foremost an opening. There are, of course, a myriad of those: a trap, a gap, a carrier bag, an entrance, absence, a pore, a pupil, a valve, a cave, a dead spot, a nightmare. The gravitational density of a black hole might be the closest I get to imagining a rock as a hole, but that is extremely literal, Cartesian even. ”A Black Hole is Everything a Star Longs to Be”, the title of Kara Walker’s 2021 exhibition at Kunstmuseum Basel opens other territories. An infinity of unexplored “dark matter” holds the precious little physical world as we know it, literally and metaphorically. They are reciprocal. 

Engaging with Amparo’s research, I have thought a lot about the many meanings of holding. Holding, as in receiving with cupped hands or open arms, holding tight, as in pulling closely together, holding spaces, holding people or animals in a place, holding as resistance, holding your ground, holding out. Holding someone’s gaze. The difference between “holding on” and the imperative “Hold on”, as in wait. As someone whose work evolves around artistic practice approaching  decoloniality, it was easy to read into her work forms of protest and resistance against the persistence of coloniality (among other things!). It was immediately visible to me. 

Amparo’s invitation, however, is another: to resist the impulse to stay with the visible and instead to explore what becomes present beyond. To use the tools of sensing and intuition, rather than interpretation. 

Of love, bell hooks says that we experience its absence more strongly than its presence. There is a powerful longing, a bodily force, that comes from the lack of it, the hole. It is not empty, maybe just suspended. 

When I think of holding as suspension, I understand suspension not as stasis but as holding tension. This is what Amparo embodies in her work. A pulsing that is in motion without moving, like the barely perceptible moment between an inhale and an exhale, floating mid-air on a trampoline, between contrasts, where “it” is neither. A delicious grey zone. One that operates on a different time, expansion by deceleration. Here, a gesture reverberates, becomes multiple. Suspension holds contrasts. In suspension absence and presence collide. There is a gravity to suspension that can pull (lost) fragments in and reassemble them in its contracting field. Extending/Moving in this territory might open up spaces beyond what is already inscribed in a room, in a body, in histories. A hole holding reverberations.

SOUND Nahuel Cano / LIGHT & SPACE Vinny Jones  / ARTISTIC COLLABORATION Jimena Pérez Salerno / ADVISORS Diana Szeinblum & Kadiatou Diallo / TUTORS Konstantina Georgelou & Jeroen Fabius / CONCEPTUAL DIALOGS Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca & Marie Bardet / DANCER & CHOREOGRAPHER Amparo González Sola 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Simone Weber, Lucas Lagomarsino, Thalia Livingstone, Maria Mavridou, Anthony Senior, Sacha Rappo, Nathalie Stirnimann, Stefan Stojanovic, Carolina Bianchi, Jonathan Ospina, Joachim Robbrecht, DAS peers and staff.

SUPPORT: Spring Performing Art Festival (NL), Pro Helvetia (CH), Program Residenties in Utrecht (NL), Institut Français d' Argentine (FR), Próximamente Festival (BE), KVS Theater (BE), Munar Arte (AR), El Asunto de lo Remoto (AR), Young Art Support Amsterdam (NL); ATD-Aart Janszen Fonds (NL), Rote Fabrik (CH), Workspace Brussels (BE), Los Vidrios (AR), Das Choreography AHK (NL).

Amparo González Sola is an argentinian choreographer currently based in The Netherlands. She researches the intersections between perception, choreography and politics. If every rock is a hole is part of a larger research project in which she opens a critical reflection on dominant ways of thinking of presence, gaze and time.

www.amparogonzalezsola.com