Coco and Roro work together as female power duo WITCHTITS. They met at Ponderosa Dance Festival in Brandenburg in 2011, where they studied with Stephanie Maher, Kathleen Hermesdorf, Peter Pleyer, Meg Stuart, Hanna Hagenscheidt, Maria Scaroni and Vania Rovisco, Frank Willens, Mary Pearson and Keith Hennessey as participants in the P.O.R.C.H programme. 

The two-way interview. (Roro questions Coco. Coco questions Roro.)

RORO: We often talk about the power of two, can you tell me what this means to you within our working relationship and in a broader sense?

COCO: The power of two is the power of relationship, intimacy, challenge, stimulation and fun.  When we are working together, I feel braver. I feel more brazen. There is a safety in the power of our two and I am ready to take more risks. A lot of our work comes from us hanging out, asking each other questions and laughing together.  Our power is in our dialogue and curiosities. And of course, we motivate each other!

In a broader sense, the power of two is : sperm and egg, Uli and Steph, inhale and exhale, and late nights and falafel.

*Steph and Uli are the wonderpeople who founded and constantly fuel the Ponderosa Summer workshops and PORCH programme. They are radical!

RORO: One of the first performances we did was a “fake-healing session” simultaneous to a contact jam in the room. Participants would volunteer themselves for a session of touch and other forms of attention. With tomato leaves, rocks, oils and other organic smells, steam and sounds... 

How do you feel the fake- healing related to the jamming in the room?

COCO: Firstly, I think it related to the room in that it was almost spontaneous. We had a workshop that day with Keith Hennessy and we did some fake-healing that Keith referenced back to Jennifer Lacey.  Citing this contemporary dance myth, we decided to use the jam as a platform for us to experiment with the fake-healing sessions. This spontaneity is something that the atmosphere of Ponderosa invites and nurtures.  

At the jam, we were also improvising. We were creating an alternative space in the corner with our costumes, blankets and our special ingredients. We  were dealing with similiar principles as those dancing in the room; weight-exchange, listening, surrender and risk-taking. However, our frame was different and our rules were different. Our corner was for fake-healing. WITCHTITS were the fake-healers.  Participants were the fake-patients. The umbrella of fake-healing set up expectations of passivity, control, whimsy and physical/spiritual change of state.

COCO: How was your sense of touch stimulated at Ponderosa?

RORO: Making intentional hours were very important for me during the festival. I liked the compactness of the experience. Knowing that I could fully commit for this one hour and then leave. Goodbye.  With or without residue. It was in one of my first 'dance dates'* up in the top studio. I was preparing to touch and to be touched and it didn't happen. But awakening the sensitivity of the skin/ sensory body in preparation and inviting the possibility was rich in itself. Spending an hour in silence with someone and turning the attention to what lay under my hands as I sat next to them. How the inside of my mouth felt in it's quietness. Eyes closed and finding a body part but not knowing immediately what part. Warm and alive. Yeah, sharing simple tasks like being silent or keeping eyes closed with a partner or in a group gave lots of room for small tactile discoveries.

*dance dates was an idea conceived by Gesine Daniels during her Summer as a PORCHie in 2010. A list is hung in a communal area and those wanting a dance date put their name next to a time and whoever puts their name next to theirs become their date. Each date lasts one hour. 

COCO: How did you use your experience of P.O.R.C.H./ Ponderosa to create performances?

RORO: Oh man, This is a difficult one to answer. I want to say, “well it just happened!”, that's how it felt! There is a dynamic that makes possibilities hover all around us at Pondi, vibrating with the energy of the place. I felt that questions that I had been asking myself for some time, previous to P.O.R.C.H became clearer and not in a logical way. Not through thinking about things at great depth, but by having to find oneself within the wonderful, unpredictable chaos. I also felt like I was ready to perform 97 percent of conscious (non sleeping) hours and this meant that a little trigger would tip me. This is not true in everyday city life. I knew one evening that some other people will be sharing so I decided to join, as a soloist. Then I opened myself up to the fullness of the place, taking in words and images by flicking frantically through books or intensely people watching and with them perhaps regurgitating memories. Overloading myself with information, but always keeping a simple grounded question in mind. Like seeing myself as a speck in a huge Pollock painting. All this happens so fast, there is no time or space to over think it, to feel doubt, so it stays alive all the way up to and into performance. I have since used this technique, which I call “feeding” as a lead up to improvised solo performances.

RORO: Can you talk a little bit about your 'holding project.'? What was your initial interest in this investigation? Did it bring up questions in relation to public/ private?

COCO: I was interested in this project because the politics of touch and public and private space, in a facilitated situation (CLASS) and a "freer" situation (ALL OTHER SPACES of PONDI). The project: A sign was put up on the wall of the kitchen. “ HOLDING SESSIONS. I hold you. You hold me. We hold each other. In my bed.” People could sign up for a 20 minute session. We would then meet at the couch upstairs and we would proceed to my bed in the communal sleeping area. The over-saturation of touch at the festival brought up a lot of questions for me. What is authentic touch? What do I crave? What are my boundaries?  What are actions for private space? or public space? Something I was craving was a  feeling of comfort and safety. But I also wanted to set up some control variables to experience this kind of touch.

 The communal sleeping area provided some kind of eclipsed public/private space.  Anyone could walk in at anytime. Or not. It was where I actually spent my nights sleeping - it was not a set on a stage, or a bed in a gallery.  There was risk of feeling weird, or uncomfortable or even violated. There was also the chance of the unexpected, of delight, of sexiness or of tenderness.  I was able to do this performative research because of this “overloaded” feeling you mention about all the information zipping around at Ponderosa. This project was born out of a necessity to investigate touch.  

What is so special about the TanzLand Festival/P.O.R.C.H. is that the participants there are open, generous and available to engage with each other. Someone will walk backwards with you to Lunow and back. Someone will drink tea with you until five in the morning. Someone will do shiatsu stretches with you on a Saturday night while a party is raging in the Speicher.  Someone will read you a quote from a book they are reading. And someone will sign-up and lay in your bed with you for 20 minutes.

COCO: You had a touch project as well - could you tell me about 'can I touch you?' 

RORO: Hmm, this wasn't much of a project. I wrote 'Can I touch you?' on a T-shirt and wrapped a black cloth around my head and went to queue for the evening meal as usual. It was really impulsive. I had been thinking, thinking, thinking. What is OK and what is not? What is OK for me? What is OK for him/ her/ the group? These questions arose because of an incident that I find difficult to talk/ write about. A female friend was made to feel objectified and uncomfortable by a peer and I had witnessed the act. It was shocking, but not extreme. It was rare and out of context in an environment where most  people are feminists and sensitive towards others. It was also something that I and many others, in particular women, have been victim to countless numbers of times in everyday life. How delicate these things are. How important it is that we communicate with each other. I began to talk to people about trust. How do we ask for consent in Pondi/ contact improvisation environment and how does this transfer to other life situations? When does the dialogue begin? Is it verbal or non-verbal or a combination of both? One friend said we should come right out with “Can I touch you?” The idea made sense, but also made me feel uncomfortable. It felt creepy somehow. Perhaps because I feel like we shouldn't have to ask this question, but also because for me this specific wording of the question is loaded. In 'Can I touch you?' I became a more extreme version of this fictional figure that I had imagined asking me this question. Faceless, wordy and desperate. As the performer, I felt disconnected and I could feel that people were uneasy around me. Nobody sat on the table to eat with me. But with time people softened. One woman took my anonymous head and laid it on her shoulder. A few days after I was wearing the same T-shirt and someone said to me, “I don't think you need to ask that here?” I think we are and should be constantly asking this, but I guess we don't necessarily need to say the words.

COCO: When you look into the future; how do you see the relationship between WITCHTITS and ponderosa/stolzenhagen developing?

RORO: Hard to know exactly and that excites me. But it's definitely gonna happen. I love that place. It makes my organs alive. It makes me care more and be more carefree and feel normal and then totally weird. It's the spirit of it. The core of WITCHTITS is a slither of this. It was born there. What I like about working with you is that we have so much fun. We laugh hysterically  and then we'll get sleepy and take a nap. We sit for two hours eating lunch because we feel we really need to. And then right at the end we will catch a thread and start building ideas. It doesn't feel stressed. If we have planned too much for a deadline we improvise and make it work in a different way. We are fully into it! We don't take life too seriously, but we are sincerely curious. Stolzenhagen is our homeland and Stephi is our Guru. We will be back there to refuel on the magic. It's simple really. A huge amount of love and generosity from Steph and Uli and others start making offerings. WITCHTITS has more fututre offerings. I imagine spending some time there in the serenity of the colder months and see how this generates a different energy. It's not always hanging outside, hearing kids playing, seeing someone dancing on the rooftops out there in Stolzenhagen! We'll call it; WITCHTITS get lonely. You up for?

COCO: Alicia Grant

RORO: Zinzi Buchanan

PHOTOGRAPH: Sebastian Luzzi

caption: Coco (right) and Roro (left) during a workshop with Meg Stuart, June 2011 at Ponderosa