Marion Motin
Dancer, Artistic Director & MTV Video Music Award Nominated Choreographer
The Voice of Her Gremlin
‘Are the dancers going to like it?’
My voice is are they going to like it? Not the people watching but the people doing my work - for me it is important that the dancers are into it because they are on stage doing my work and if they don’t like it we’re going to feel it
My first job was so big, then after I was like this was maybe just luck.
Maybe it was just a luck thing
Sometimes it’s too easy and I’m like it’s not good if it’s too easy. It needs to be complicated, I need to feel struggle otherwise it’s not good if it’s too easy
When questioned if she actually believed in that voice:
I don’t know, sometimes it’s because you want to go further and find new things
Sometimes it [The Gremlin] brings you far from your work when you’re trying to feel the energy of others. You have to go to the end of your work and for that you sometimes need to distance from the human energy and because I’m sensitive to the energy of the room I might interpret [negative] feelings that are not there.
My gremlins take me far from my heart and without my heart I can’t create. It makes me too much in my head, too much in an expectation and I can’t create like that.
Gremlins are in the brain not in the heart for me. Gremlins are the ego, all the little fails you have, you want to be recognised and loved.
They’re the ego. They’re insecurity.
When you feel it in your heart, you feel when it’s not right, you feel when it’s right and you just go.
When I work and I’m really listening to my feelings, heart, body and soul it’s :
‘ Let’s push this, hmm let’s try here, no not that but oh! that could be interesting’
When I’m in my head it’s :
‘Is this going to be alright? What will people think?’
It’s not constructive.
I think there is always a moment in creation where I feel like I really like it, and then everything after this is shit. It’s shit, I’m shit, I’m not good at this job, I quit, why do I do that to my self.
Every time I create I have this moment.
For me it’s in my process of creation, I guess it’s like when you have a baby. You have the idea that you want a baby, you have the grain and it grows and just before the birth you’re like why did I not take the breathing lessons, I don’t know how to birth this baby. Then you just go and it’s done, I don’t know how I made it but I made it.
For me if I don’t doubt and question , I’m worried. I need to question things.
In life if you don’t question your self you never adapt and never get better so you have to question your work to allow you to take a step back and say no this is not shit.
I can’t be in a comfortable place, I always want to learn something more. I don’t know how to do that thing but okay let’s try it, then I’ve learnt something at the end and I’m proud of my self. If there is no challenge I’m less proud of my self. Maybe I know I’m lazy and I’m afraid to embrace that laziness. I think it’s so exciting to not know how you’re going to do it.
Always staying in your limit? In the right things to do? No.
Cross the line and break the [creative] law.
When I’m really centred inside my self there are no gremlins because I am connected. I am connected to my body, my soul and energy so my gremlins have no space because I’m entirely full of me - so they have no space. As soon as my soul comes away from my body a little bit, the gremlins come into the empty space
Often the fear is bigger than the instinct and you need your instinct to create. When the Gremlins are too big inside you, you feel doubt and fear and insecurity.
I had it in the past where I have issues with dancers and after talking with them they thought I was thinking they were bad, when that hadn’t even crossed my mind, but maybe I had been sharing my gremlins with them.
If your Gremlin was a being sat next to you right now what would you say?
Please will you shut the fuck up. I’m trying to work.