Strangely, I feel the excitement prior to a performance one is presenting rather than attending. I know that this piace includes no visual input, so I will not be just waiting for something to happen in visual terms. Even after having read a lot on this piece and Ruckert's work in general, I suppose it's about the personal experience and all the theory doesn't really matter now.
The foyer has been transformed into a waiting room and people are reading through the informational sheet on the performance while sipping their fruit juices. I take my number and join the crowd as I wait for my turn to come up. I am already aware that Secret Service is divided into two parts: the first is about haptic experience and is more open to interaction, while at the same time participants are being led and manipulated by performers. On the other hand, the second part concentrates on pain and pleasure and it takes part after a break following part one. This part involves the participant having most of his skin exposed, in order to have more acute sensations. The main element is that all participants are blindfolded for the whole duration of both parts. Seeing strictly prohibited.
Number 8 is on the screen and I go in. We are seated in another small waiting room, with lower lighting. We are welcomed and soon blindfolded, one by one, as we are assured we can interrupt the experience in case we didn't feel comfortable or awkward. A pair of hands take me and and from there onwards I rely on my senses of touch, smell and hearing, on my physical balance and sense of orientation. My feet are heavy on the floor as somebody massages my legs swiftly, preparing me for sightless movement. It doesn't take me too long getting used to the fact that I can not see. I begin to perceive other bodies moving withing the space, even if I hardly have an actual contact with them and after a while it's possible to distinguish the few performers that are interacting with me by their smell, skin texture, weight or style of movement. I find myself walking and changing directions, running till I have no breath left, dancing, playing hide and seek and I even manage to hold somebody on my legs while lying down on my back. Performers are really good at manipulating me and yet I feel my body is free, maybe due to the fact that I am so cautious with it. Every little movement is thought and planned at first, but after a while I feel more confident to move around and it's amazing how complete the experience is given that language and visual input, the most widely used in every day life, are completely eliminated. It seems normal to talk with my body, move with my ears and see with my skin. It's over before I know it, a pair of hands lead me back to where I was blindfolded in the first place. I am back sitting on the sofa and I feel a cool glass placed in my hands. 'Here, have some water'. Before I know it my blindfold has been taken off. I drink the water and stick around for a few more minutes. On my way out I pop a couple of grapes in my mouth and I am again in the foyer.
There are more people waiting to go to part one, and some of them are probably here for part two. As I come out their eyes are on me, probably hoping to understand more about the performance, maybe they are just comparing faces that come out of the performative space, or maybe I simply find it unusual to look at or be looked at right after Secret Service part one. Strangely enough I feel uneasy walking towards them, as I am still adjusting my seeing-moving balance and involuntarily letting go of my haptic/auditory receptive instincts. Walking feels somehow very artificial now that i can compare ti with the space around me. But I start realising why people are actually looking. It's the only way of gathering information, especially from somebody they don't know. But now, to me, seeing is still quite irrelevant. I feel empty looking at them. I cannot smell them or touch them, or feel the way they breathe. My other senses have developed so quickly over the past forty-five minutes (which seemed much shorter) that I actually find it difficult to simply go back to relying on my eyes and shutting down my other tools for perception.
The intimacy of the first part made it feel like a very personal experience, even though audience members were in the same space at the same time. The fact that we would never see that space and the people who interacted with us probably freed us from the preconceptions of worrying how we would look in the others' eyes. Even though performers could actually see participants, it didn't really matter, because eye contact, which is what makes us the most conscious of how somebody else is, was not part of it. Being impossible to judge by the looks of somebody, we got used to recognising everyone through using our other senses in a more acute way.
Unable to see absolutely anything, at the same time, triggered a lot of visual input, which was obviuosly a response of the brain to what the other senses were sending out to it. This may as well mean that seeing with your skin, nose and ears, became just like seeing with your eyes. The very same mechanism was adopted by the human body, only it became evident through experience. Were we provided the luxury of using our eyes, the visual input would have overwhelmed and suppressed any other sense, which, in the case of blindfolding, was able to recreate reality through personal interpretation, making reference to past memories. Although it is true to say that any kind of input, be it visual, auditory, haptic or olfactory affects how we perceive and interpret, since vision is our principle means for perception, we tend to not only trust it most, but consequently share experience with others based upon it, for example describing something by how it looks. This is why I think that the perception brought about by the other senses, rather than vision, tends to be more personal, due its high indescribability.
Soon it's my turn for the second part. The procedure is more or less the same, except from the fact that before I get blindfolded I am asked whether I want to be handcuffed too. I am aware that this part does require the participant to be more submissive and concentrates on pain and pleasure, but it feels strange to set another restriction: movement. Fortunately I have a few minutes to decide, while the other two participants who have come in with me readily accept to be handcuffed. It actually made a big difference that they were there and I am sure that different participants would have influenced me in another way, according to how many went for it or not. The assistant sees that I am hesitant and assures me I can do whatever I want, just as in the first part, letting me know that the handcuffs remain for the whole duration of the piece (I didn't miss asking that little detail). In the end I go for it, after all it's probably the only time I can put myself in this situation without any possible negative results. It's voluntary, it's a game and it can stop whenever I wish. Actually, the perfect opportunity to get yourself handcuffed.
Again, a pair of hands takes me into an invisible space and my hands are clipped above my head, so that I am almost completely immobile. I can only perceive slight movements around me and am expecting something to happen. I start hearing some kind of whipping noises and am ready for a hit coming from any direction. However, it's first a tickle on my back. I am certain that it's going to turn into something harsher as I can hear has already happened to somebody else. And when it does, I can hardly hold my laughter. Somehow, as I knew what was about to happen, the actual happening of it didn't really have much significance at first on a physical level. The performer 'hitting' me also started laughing. With the little movement I was entitled to I start moving and trying to escape the whips and I get some smacks on my feet for that. I experience some horrible pinching around my waist and I am almost sure it's a needle. And here I dare to ask whether is so (and now that I think about it of course it was impossible)...'No, it goes like this' as I get another one on my stomach and I realise it's a peg. It stays there and I have no way of getting it off even though I try flexing and contracting my stomach muscles to get it off. It stays there and I also get one that closes my nose. Here I manage to reach with my hands and take it off, but realise that I was not supposed to as the performer behind me laughs along with me and grabs the peg from my hands. I recognise his laughter from part one. He is one of the strongest guys.
I keep on picturing how I look, something I was not worried about in the first part. The restrictions and the fact that I am being exposed in this way makes me feel awkward. I want to be able to do something about it. While the first part was more interactive, this one tests the participant's feelings of pleasure and pain. My legs are tight together with a rope, then gently untied. By now, performers have probably realised I need a break. My hands are freed at last, and I can feel the blood flowing back to the tips of my fingers. I am covered with a blanket and held and hugged for a long time before I am taken back to where I started.
This was definitely the more difficult part to participate in, because it carried a certain deal of psychological involvement, whereas in part one, reactions tended to be more spontaneous. In part two one was confronted with pain, and for as much as one is resistant, when pain doesn't have a well-defined reason, the way one reacts to it or resists it may change drastically. Probably this is the reason why I got tired of it at some point, I felt trapped in it and there was not a set goal for it. It was a test of pain and pleasure offered, but its anonymity and setting (a safe performative environment) made it hard to realise one's limits of pain. Of course, pleasure is another story. While with pain one is inclined to set his limits according to what the pain brings him eventually, except from if one sees pain as pure pleasure, is that pleasure is enough to feel satisfied with and not ask yourself whether it is going to bring you something because it already makes you feel good.
Another point to be made here, regarding pain, is that not seeing what and how it was inflicted, made it feel much stronger and real than what it really was. I must say that after the performance I hadn't even a suggestion of any kind of pressure on my body, considering the fact that I bruise way too easily. This also suggests that the performers were very well trained in order to be able to give strong sensations when they were not really so significant. Thus, the 'make-believe' effect was not only given by the fact that we were blindfolded but also by the training and preparations of the performers.
What is unique about Secret Service is that it is neither about performers nor about participants. The complex communication created between the two lays in its foundations, making the ephemirality of performance evident each time it takes place. It does, at the same time, hold a clear distinction between the two, making it possible for haptic interaction that is allowed to develop following a certain pattern, thus setting the limits of what can or cannot happen. Further, it makes dance and movement accessible to audiences that may not normally choose a dance performance to a theatre piece for example, or a rock concert. While body language alone, especially as employed by contemporary dancers and choreographers is abstract and thus open for broad interpretation, spoken language is more direct and therefore less abstract. This is why dance often has a specific dance audience, which often has some sort of a dance/movement background. Secret Service however, takes away the visual from dance, preventing an interpretation based on what is seen, so making dance acccessible to anyone through the immediacy of touch.
There are very few performances that have stayed with me for a long time once thay are over, and from talking to people I have found that this is very common. As Tim Etchells has said, if a performance doesn't touch you in any way, your mind going back to it every now and then, then it is not worth it. While this may be considered a very total point of view, which merits another chapter here, Secret Service is definitely one of those worth it. Moreover, its audience circumference is far greater than many other works which have a more specific target, yet remaining truthful to dance theatre and audience participation, beautifully making the sense of touch its main element at the same time.
