PETER, dance with...

PETER, dance with Matthias Sperling

• PETER • Season 3 • Episode 36

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S3 Ep1  PETER, dance with Matthias Sperling
Today we danced with Matthias Sperling. To follow and get in touch with Matthias Sperling visit, http://matthias-sperling.com or on instagram @matthias_sperling.

In Stockholm in early October 2025 Matthias will give a two-week series of workshops and performances https://www.fylkingen.se/en/events/no-how-generator-matthias-sperling-and-katye-coe#title of No-How Generator , thanks to support from Fylkingen, Uniarts and Dansalliansen. 

Special thanks to Efrosini Protopapa.

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TRANSCRIPT:


PETER:

Hello, Today we are dancing with Matthias Sperling. 


Matthias Sperling:

Hello. 


PETER:

It's such a pleasure to have you here to be in the studio with you,


Matthias Sperling:

Yes. Very nice to see you too. Very nice to see you in the UK. 


PETER:

Yes, yes, so we met, actually, 2018. I mean, at least the first the time I remember us meeting. And that was at a PhD Practice Week in Stockholm where I had a practice of no questions only answers, which I think you probably participated in. which was lovely. And this was the first time I met you and I remember because I knew of you, you were already very successful in the UK when I was studying here, and I'd heard of your name and but unfortunately hadn't got to connect. And then I got a taste of it in 2018 of your genius or your brilliance.. But very, I feel very fortunate to be able to continue this conversation and exactly as you say. To meet here where you are more or less based, right? Yeah, yeah. If people don't know you, how do you introduce yourself? Or how would you introduce yourself today, perhaps? 


Matthias Sperling:

How would I introduce myself today? Um, I am an artist, a choreographer, performer, researcher, I guess I sort of increasingly describe myself as a researcher because I am often involved in research. I was born in Canada, in Toronto, and I started dancing there. And I moved here in the mid/late 90s. So I've been in London for a very long time, based in the UK. And yeah, most of my work has happened based here, where I danced with a few companies in the beginning and I then started to make my own work more. And I, yeah, I've done various things, various ways of like, learning along the way. And then the more recent things for me have been that I did a PhD here in the UK and some of the practice that I proposed to share with you today is related to that. It might even be a little bit related to if we did anything together that I led in 2018, then it would be.  It would be more of that. 


PETER:

I think we did, yeah. Great. Well, that's great. I'm not a beginner..


Matthias Sperling:

Evolutions, evolutions of that. And, yeah, so I finished that in 2022 and also, I've been co-leading a research project that is an interdisciplinary collaboration between artists and scientists, specifically dance artists and cognitive neuroscientists, and that's a five year project that is already coming to a close this year. So, yeah, that's also what I am involved in. And I guess a way to introduce the kind of things that I'm interested in, maybe I guess through the kind of lens of my PhD research is looking at relationships between choreography and knowledge generation and connecting that with ideas like conjuring or, well, I would say magic and science at the same time. So ideas about, say, the biological basis of embodied knowledge generation and the way that that might be described in a neuroscientific context, but then at the same time, what I call magic. So these ideas about, say, conjuring, perhaps divination, yeah, that kind of direction, which I'm sure we can go into more. 


PETER:

Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's super exciting stuff. And very interesting. I, yeah, I already feel like there there are threads to be pulled and I think I think it would be nice to get a sense exactly of that conjury magic world and how it relates to dance and choreography. But what are we specifically going to do today? What have you brought for us? 


Matthias Sperling:

Well, I've kind of considered slightly different versions of the same sort of main materials that I'm interested in. I think what I'll introduce is something specific and then what we can do might be a bit looser around the edges of that. Maybe it's just a more sort of clear way to talk about it is to start somewhere specific. So in my PhD work, the sort of site of that research is a choreographic work called No-How Generator, which is spelled NO HOW, which doesn't come across very well in audio. No-How Generator is the name of the work, is the title of my PhD. And within that choreographic work, the sort of nucleus of the score is something that I call back-and-forthing. And so I wanted to share that with you. 


PETER:

Fantastic. 


Matthias Sperling:

And also, I guess, some sort of ways into that, and then also some ways in which that has evolved a bit more recently for me. So obviously with the PhD, I have sort of lots of writing around that and like a dedicated website to that. I also wrote like a written version of the choreographic score, which is part of my written PhD. And so in that I have these words that I can share now, which are, yeah, sort of an introduction to back-and-forthing as a choreographic material. 


PETER:

Yeah, please. 


Matthias Sperling:

Okay. So this is sort of slightly adapted from the written choreographic score of No-How Generator. And it introduces this sort of as it comes into the score. 


“Back-and-forthing unfolds through a rhythmic yet changeable, rocking motion. While the rhythmic rocking of weight remains a constant, the specific form of the movement is always evolving and adapting in relation to the perceptual feedback that you experience from your moving body and the environment around you. Your weight shifts back and forth in space between body parts and/or spatial locations that emerge as what lights up in your felt sense perception from moment to moment. The rhythmic pendulum shift of your weight between a back and a forth remains a constant presence in space, regardless of smaller and sometimes larger changes in the shape of the movement. The work is on insisting on the possibility that your whole body at once as your teacher (a phrase from Deborah Hay, among many phrases from Deborah Hay, that I quote in this score) can accommodate. So, sorry, the work is on insisting on the possibility that your whole body at once as your teacher can accommodate within your back-and-forthing what you are reading in your felt sense experience, including the curiosities or appetites that you notice emerging. While the degree and frequency of change starts out small, it can grow larger later on, once the regularity of your back-and-forthing has become established enough to remain a continually felt presence. Back-and-forthing settles into a momentum that feels like it takes care of propagating itself, something like a perpetual motion generator. So you don't have to do too much, but can rather keep enlarging your experience of its unfolding.”


So that's a kind of introduction to this particular material back-and-forthing in No-How Generator. And so No-How Generator is a work that was first performed in 2019 and that I'm still happily that we are still performing now. And a couple of things that I want to say about this that I think are, yeah, that are important to me about this are to do with the idea of taking a reading. 


PETER:

Okay, yeah. 


Matthias Sperling:

So that's something that I feel as a sort of umbrella for me about that many of the materials that I'm working with are, I'm interested in the idea of, yeah, approaching, dancing as a process of taking a reading. 


PETER:

And taking a reading, you're taking that from Tarot? Yeah That's why I associate to when you say that the word taking a reading. 


Matthias Sperling:

Partly.  What I like about it is that it has, like I mentioned magic and science before, that for me, taking a reading can have both of those kinds of connotations. So the scientific connotations would be like a measurement device that takes a reading of something. And so I can we can think about like my biological being or my cells as these sort of measurement devices, or perceptual devices. And then from that more divinatory perspective, yeah, taking a reading can be taking a reading with tarot cards or palm readings or like reading tea leaves. All of those things. So that as a general sort of operation. 


PETER:

Yeah. 


Matthias Sperling:

And then also what I'm really interested in is working with momentum and perception at the same time. So we're taking a reading with momentum and perception engaged at the same time. Yeah, yeah. And, yeah. 


PETER:

And so if I understand, if I can already sort of try to surmise we're going to be with this rocking motion, I assume. and we are going to be taking a reading from it. So allowing it to occur and like you say, say in the text, the motion can enlarge and get small. I was wondering, is breathing already a sort of rocking motion? I was sort of as a way to try to understand how you're thinking it. Is it like small dances of Steve Paxton, where we're already in movement or are we generating the movement? I just out of curiosity. I like a practical question, maybe. 


Matthias Sperling:

Well. for me, I guess it has to do with the way that I think about momentum. And so for me, I'm thinking about my whole mass in relation to momentum. 


PETER:

Okay. 


Matthias Sperling:

And so there's a relationship to gravity in a way that I think breathing doesn't necessarily have. So it's, yeah. So generally with this material, I'm working with a little bit more expanded relationship to gravity and momentum. 


PETER:

Great, yeah. That's clear. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. And partly, I guess, what I'm interested in is. Wow, yeah, how to a lot of it for me, has to do with, um being able to draw on different ways of working that I've practiced throughout my history of dance. And so this thing about momentum and the more expanded range has partly to do with how to make links with more expanded ranges. At the same time as working with the yeah, the work that I'm very interested in in relation to perception. And when we mentioned Deborah Hay, I was kind of, you know, I was one really important influence for me. Yeah, and the score, yeah, this sort of the written score draws very heavily on sort of Deborah Hay's written scores as an example of what kind of form a written choreographic score can take. And also, I work with in this score, with a sort of a “what if” question that addresses the whole score? And I might mention that as well. because I think that's, yeah, important to know in relation to this as well. So the question is, “What if how all of my cells are doing knowing serves me well in the practice of no-how generation?” And no-how generation again is that N O how. And it could be, you know, “...no-how generation, whatever that might mean.” Yeah.. Yeah: what if how all of my cells are doing knowing serves me well in the practice of no-how generation? 


PETER:

Yes, so it's I see how it is really trying to be with the knowledge that you've accumulated in this vestule, body.. Yeah. And then. the Deborah Hay like score, the “what if” it is it is suggesting that it's there in the body and then for the no-how generation, just to sort of name that, because normally it's know K N OW, right? 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. 


PETER:

Which is a sense of like the already knowledgeable, or no, sorry, it would be the knowledge that's needed to do something, right? 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, so practical knowledge. 


PETER:

Exactly, exactly, right. Practical knowledge. So this is NO, how? Yeah. So we're sort of imagining it's unpractical. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, perhaps. Something other. Exactly. Something. Something that clearly sounds like it's somehow related to knowledge. Yeah. But somehow it's an other form of knowledge or knowledge otherwise. 


PETER:

Yes. Speculative, perhaps. Yeah. It's interesting because the reading is both factual and speculative as well, so. You have these fractures of knowledge. Great, I think there's for me that's feeling quite clear. Is there anything else you want to say? So we will go and do this backand-forthing, amongst all these ideas around no-how, is there anything else you'd like to. 


Matthias Sperling:

Maybe just that in the choreographic work, No-How Generator, myself and my collaborator, Katye Coe, who performed this work together. we do this practice wearing elf ears. 


PETER:

Wearing elf ears? 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, So you don't have to wear elf ears, while doing this, but it is. Yeah, it's very much part of this work. And that for me, yeah, I was enjoying listening to some of the other podcast episodes that you've done, and they were already in there, some references that I heard to Deborah Hay. I think through Cullberg Connections. 


PETER:

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. 


Matthias Sperling:

And talking about lightness. And so this is also something that I, yeah, really, find really important, and that I find Deborah Hay really helpful with, and I also love her sentence about this, which I heard her say some years ago: “I always retain the capacity to laugh at my own serious intentions, even while those intentions remain serious.” 

And so I find that really like a crucial part of practice. Not necessarily something that I always feel capable of, but I feel I always need to keep striving for.. And that it is very generative in itself. And of course, I say that with like, great seriousness. This is very typical of me that I'm like, very approaching with great seriousness, the reminder to try not to be so serious. But the elf ears are something that helps to do that. Yeah. Yeah.. 


PETER:

So if people do have elf ears, then they should do that. And it's sort of it jumps back to you mentioned the word conjuring. I imagine when one wears elf ears there is a sense of conjuring something other. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. 


PETER:

And we can mention we're in a space which has music playing somewhere else. There's a great drone sound, which you mentioned you might use as well while we practice, where we dance. So hopefully this isn't too irritating to listen to, maybe also adds to that magical aura.


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, I hope so. 


PETER:

Okay, then, we will pause and we'll come back in a bit. 



Pause



PETER:

Great. All right Okay, so we're back um I think we can just try to recall a little bit what happened. what we remember, what we experienced. We started with what you called a sort of light version of the back and forth, and you led us going to the floor and coming up and down. And then you spoke about it as being looser to the back and forth. And I was wondering if you could maybe describe or tell a little bit more about this tightening towards this back and forth. I think you mentioned it when we spoke before, but.. Yeah. If you can. I think it's an interesting. 


Matthias Sperling:

Well, I guess there are different things. There is a sort of, what is the particular um what are the particular parameters of a particular iteration of the practice and those parameters can be more defined or less defined and those might in different ways have different things that are good about them. Or in terms of what they might open up towards. And for the tightening of the practice, so to speak, so we eventually worked a little bit with some of this back-and-forthing practice, sort of closer to the form in which it begins in the score of the choreographic work No-How Generator. And that works with, I guess, a slower rate of change, so this constancy of this rhythmic rocking back and forth, but in terms of the way that the shape of the movement becomes articulated, that there's a kind of discipline about the accumulation of information gradually over time. And so partly, I think there's a kind of affordance in that from the perspective of experience, that it's what it opens up is the ability to stay with something. And but then on another level, from a more choreographic perspective, thinking about the audience, I am really interested in, I'm interested in the audience in a witness being able to become familiar with the practice that's happening through what they're seeing. And so, for instance, that they can become familiar with the idea that there's this rocking back and forth and that it appears that nothing is changing, but then something is changing a little bit. But then it seems that nothing is changing. But then something is changing. And that that might be that might be engaging. 


PETER:

Yeah. 


Matthias Sperling:

And also you can settle into this rhythm of witnessing the momentum, moving in this rhythmic way. And, yeah, sometimes audience members say that they, yeah, sort of on their way home are still sort of feeling this sort of kinesthetic response to that rhythm. Like you've sort of been by the sea, by the waves for a long time. 


PETER:

A sort of sea sickness. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, hopefully not the sea sickness, but yeah. But yeah. But so for me, it's important that there can be this ability for the performer to be experiencing this live and the audience to be experiencing this live, and for those experiences together to kind of meet in the zone of whatever the material is. And so that the material also allows the audience to be kind of on the journey with the material. Having a sense of to some extent some predictability of what it is and where it seems to be going right now. And then the possibility for it to become more unpredictable. But the sort of baseline of sharing some meeting zone feels important to me choreographically. 


PETER:

Yeah. Now it's fascinating that you bring in the sort of social contract that is sort of built or the choreographic contract that's built with the audience, because I was thinking about how the oscillations and you sort of mentioned this and maybe this is what you mean by layers. They they're not singular. There's often a sort of bom bom bo bum And it's was sort of very curious about you had an insistence on momentum, right? And I think this was a very interesting insistence because it it does it for me feels that actually perhaps that it's between that social contract, sort of producing of a contract of how am I recognizing the entirety of my center of gravity, maybe, or how is that felt and moved into the space? Because these oscillations, it could be quite micro and not communicative at all. Because sort of the momentum of walking or rocking forward and backwards, then sort of dissipating into the multiple frequencies in the body could then sort of distill into almost standing sort of feeling. That's the feeling I got. However, there was a sort of desire to be with the the center of gravity and it's. momentum. And maybe that relates a little bit to what you spoke of as the. Now I'm going to forget the term, but I want to say spotlight, but it wasn't spotlight. 


Matthias Sperling:

What lights up? 


PETER:

It's a fantastic phrase. Yeah, what lights up.. I guess sort of maybe also a a key into how I was also interpreting as well, like that imagination of the attention of perception being almost like a spotlight. But it How does that resonate with you, this sense of the. Yeah, the conceptualization of momentum, maybe within this, what we did now. 


Matthias Sperling:

Well, there's a lot, I'm curious to know a bit more about the connection you were just making between momentum and what lights up. So essentially, yeah, so I like to talk about momentum and perception. And so for me, what lights up is is a kind of operation of perception. A way of working with my perception in a way that I find helpful because it's a simplification. And so in effect, what lights up for me is a lot about allowing my attention to be with one or a few things at any given moment, as opposed to the sometimes overwhelming attempt to be with everything I am perceiving on every level at the same time, which I think is more my understanding of how a lot of how Deborah Hay has worked, that that she doesn't sort of narrow the field of perception but is working with everywhere that I am. And I guess sometimes I'm using what lights up as a kind of as a kind of way of slightly reducing the kind of cognitive load... within an experience of practice. If I'm trying to do things, for instance, on the level of momentum and the level of perception at the same time. 


PETER:

Okay. 


Matthias Sperling:

So I find it useful to simplify it on that level, because then I can sort of be actively engaging with both of those dimensions at the same time. There are several things about momentum. One of them is that I mentioned wanting to, before we began, I mentioned this desire that I have to try to bring with me all the things that I have learned or all the different kinds of ways in which I practiced over time in dance. And so for me, a big part of my early training was Limón (technique). And so this sort of focus on, in a way momentum, weight, gravity, and so that's something that's very kind of in me. And so I I'm looking for, I enjoy working with that, and I'm looking for that sort of way of opening towards that, along with other things I've learned later. And then another thing is the thing that I mentioned which you picked up on while we were moving, about, I guess what I might call getting moving what is fixed in my perception. And so for me, there's something how being in motion with my weight, with my whole mass, and this sort of rhythmic motion and this kind of a wave-like rocking, and we talked about this idea of this sort of like sloshing of water almost, and this sort of constancy of almost like this body of water. Sometimes for me, it feels like that has the potential to support the mobilization of my perception. And so that's kind of what I mean when I'm using the language, like, getting moving what is fixed. So there might be something in my experience of my whole environment of my whole perceptual reading, which I notice is kind of static, or constant or even like if I was sensing a kind of weather in the space around me, and this is sort of like heavy weather or, yeah, just something that is kind of stuck in place in my perception. And I like the idea that I guess I'm using this sometimes in my experience, that the momentum can be a kind of, can partly support this kind of unfixing, it's like unmooring of the things that are really kind of anchored, particularly when they feel in some way like they might be a limitation. Yeah. And so this kind of it's also a relationship for me to ideas about knowledge generation is this like making possible the becoming of something, making possible a shift in the kind of conditions of possibility. So something like, say even like the walls of the room. 


PETER:

Yeah. 


Matthias Sperling:

I might experience as very fixed and static. And when I start to get into a practice of working with my momentum and perception at the same time, that at least in my experience, I might just start to go somewhere imaginatively and experientially, where the room isn't so fixed anymore. And actually the world that I'm in sort of opens up in possibilities in some way. And my momentum is the actual, the actuality of my momentum and the rhythmic movement of my mass is part of what helps me together. 


PETER:

Yeah. Yeah. It's there's a lot to unpack. It's beautiful, and you articulate it so well. I had to think definitely by the end of the second sort of chapter. or the first chapter. Yeah, depends on how we divide it, but I'm thinking about the before we started the sort of tighter version of forward and backward, I really felt a sense of I got lost in the momentum. in a sort of beautiful way, I was I was able to allow exactly that “what lights up” to sort of drift and not be so demanding as exactly as you say, like, “everything, everywhere, all at once,” type Deborah Hay style of try to be with every sinew in the body simultaneously, right? And what I loved was, I think when you were speaking about, that which is fixed, I think you said something along the lines of, if that's even possible. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. 


PETER:

And I think that was what was very inviting was exactly this challenge, maybe, to the to the possibility of unfixing or moving or changing. And and exactly what I think I think you're pointing to something really fascinating with the experience that in momentum even in momentum, in change, can we unfix, what is fixity? When we are so, for want of a better word, fluid, like the bag of water, right? sort of oscillating inside of these conditions of perception and awareness and body and space and there's something very, yeah, beautiful there. And I love, it's beautiful that you do connect it to knowledge. I have to think of Epistemological anarchy (Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge), and this philosopher of science (Paul) Feyerabend,. I'll write it down, because I'm not pronouncing anything very well. And he does this very provocative move after (Karl) Popper, who is another philosopher of scientific method, and he makes this provocation, saying, the only way to do science is outside of the method. Sort of insisting that the change comes from a happenstance, comes from whatever you do within the method is only going to reproduce the same methods sort of thing. and I think in a way and I know you're working with neuroscientists, is that right? 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. 


PETER:

So I think it also produces a challenge to, I'm not agreeing or maybe making any connection with the scientific method, but to the sense of change in the brain, and I have to think of plasticity and how it seems to provide the model for structured structure-less-ness, you know, a sort of anarchy, an ability to be to change, but still remain structured in some way. At least this is my understanding of plasticity from what I've read of Catherine Malabou. This is a philosopher who looked at the concept of plasticity in. 


Matthias Sperling:

So it makes me want to talk about... plural epistemologies. 


PETER:

Oh, nice. 


Matthias Sperling:

And So I guess this is in relation to lots of different things for me. Let's say in relation to my work with collaboration, my work collaborating on research with neuroscientists. So if I were to say that there's a particular epistemology at work in their practice, I find it really important that the artistic research of my practice or other artists’ practices, can coexist with bringing different epistemologies that can be in contact with each other and that can so in the that's how I see from my perspective, one of the things that's most important to me about the Neurolive research project that I'm currently still involved with, a five year project that is in its 5th year now. So, yeah, they're around these like performances that we've made in the past few years, inviting different artists to create new works. The artistic research is happening and the scientific research is happening in these kind of interwoven ways. And so that for me is particularly important coming out of my PhD research, which was before this Neurolive project. And so yeah, these kind of ideas about plural epistemologies, and in relation to my own practice of dance, choreography and specifically something like back-and-forthing, I also see that, you know, through my understanding, the way that I understand embodiment I understand my body to contain plural ways of knowing. Plural epistemologies. And so I have these embodied capacities, some of which are more rational, some of and more sort of towards the rational, the language oriented, and then I also have embodied capacities of ways of knowing that are felt sense, that are intuitive, that are what I like to think of as more than rational. And these things are part of my being. And also, I mean, there can be one of the ways that they can be described is through, I guess, neuroscientific or cognitive scientific lenses, including the intuitive, including the less conscious or non-conscious, all those things can also be described through a scientific lens. And I'm quite excited by the ways in which they are being more and more described and integrated with each other. And so when I refer to cognitive science in my own interests, I'm often referring to those people in that field who are really tuning into those particular ways of knowing and the ways in which they are fundamental and necessary within human ways of knowing. And so people, like Guy Claxton is a British, I think he's described himself as a learning scientist. He studies learning and has a really strong focus on the body and movement and the relationship between body, movement, intuition, and how that relates to intelligence. And so all these kinds of perspectives I find, well, I find that they have a lot of kinship with the kind of experiences that I think I and lots of other people have in dance practices. 


PETER:

No, absolutely. I think it brings me back again to actually that, and it was really strong in the experience of the practice, the perception of the fixed or maybe I'm now mixing aspects of the practice, but how that what I perceive to be fixed in the room or within my body or within the patterning or my choice making or my association, and then how you invite both trying to make it loosen you spoke about, giving it a little bit more space, maybe that perhaps it could be not necessarily unfixed, but it would somehow. Yeah, somehow shift, maybe. But at the same time, this question also of, is it even possible? And exactly in relationship to this felt sense, I love that you because I love that you connected to the more the more than rational, because in the dancing, it is a very clear felt sense of now this is something I know, or this is something I don't know. This is a real felt understanding of that. The place I notice it the most is actually, I am now dancing, I'm not dancing. Actually, that felt sense between what I perceived to be fixed maybe as dance and not as dance, because, I mean, on an intellectual level, I can say anything can be danced, but for for me to feel it as dance, I need to relate to it in a different way. I need to start to Yeah, or I'm not sure, maybe what causes those shifts in consideration. But that fixity and definitely these elements of consciousness being aware of certain parts, of the the dance. or of what is fixed or not fixed, is really important, and it returns me again, and I think it's very notable that you're not.. You seem to have an interest with the performance, the presentation of dance. So there's also involved in this, and I brought up social contract, right, a making conscious of or sharing a consciousness of sharing a perception of something that seems to exist, that a felt sense or a rational understanding, a reading if it were, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's super beautiful. The the levels, this is what I think I'm trying to describe is that it goes from a very perceptive, very felt place, and it can be extrapolated right to the stage in a social political context. around knowledge production. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yes. Yeah. That's definitely how I see it. There was so much in what you just said. I just I. A couple of things that came up for me as you were just speaking, when you were talking about feeling what you're doing as dance. It made me think about, I think that for me,. I think for me, it has something to do with the more that I feel that all of my capacities are being engaged, the more I feel that I am doing what for me is dancing. And so, yeah, and that's a kind of an experiential thing. And I guess also I'm I'm associating that with the capacities that I have invested in developing, which are different kinds of capacities over different, you know, periods of my dancing life. And so I feel like I'm most fully dancing when I can be engaging as much as possible with all of those at the same time.. They're all there. Yes. Yes. And why not? 


PETER:

Yeah.. I didn't think it makes me aware of how. I mean, I feel it's very explicit in the at least what I experience now is that there are aspects of my perception of my capacities, that are or are not engaged, that sort of drift. I always remember hearing I feel terrible, I can't remember who said it, but it was some dance, choreographer. It said that “all dance involves space, time and movement.” And of course, I recognize the sentiment and I also recognized the validity that there is always space time and movement present, however, one's approach to the dancing will shift if you come from the perspective of or the perceiving that dance is now involving space, time and movement, or thinking through that I'm gonna play with rhythm or I'm gonna just have a jiggle around and not include those concepts. The concept produces a specific type of dance, a specific way and generalizing in that way and it just reminds me of the what we attend in our dancing. It also it becomes a part of it and the fact that you say the capacities being engaged, it really resonates with exactly how I feel dance, is that I have an attention to something which is really specific. And it is that kind of engagement. And if I may, it also feels like I am tapping into something divine or spiritual or of other worldly or and not necessarily having to name it as such a structure it as such, if that makes sense. 


Matthias Sperling:

Mm hmm. 


PETER:

Or magic, I think actually. The word magic is probably a lot better than those three. 


Matthias Sperling:

That's the language that I use. Yeah. Which I think, yeah, is magic in a very kind of expanded sense, of, I contrast it, yeah. I contrast it with science, but I also associate it with science. So magic and science at the same time, is a phrase for me that comes from Aby Warburg, who is an art historian. who died in 1929, who had some very interesting epistemological approaches. 


PETER:

Oh, cool. 


Matthias Sperling:

And it kind of special attention to movement as the lens through which to trace history. So the appearance or the reappearance re-occurrence of gestures over time was what he traced. Okay. And so movement had became very sort of central part of his way of reading time. And so he has a category called ‘Magic and Science’, which is one phrase, the two of those things held together, which I really love. And so I what I take from that in relation to the way that I like to think about choreography and about sort of a choreographic epistemology almost is this coexistence and complementarity between magical ways of knowing and scientific ways of knowing at the same time, which I think about the scientific ways of knowing as objective, ways of knowing. And I think about the magical ways of knowing as subjective ways of knowing. And when I think about my own body, I think about how I have both this objective ways of knowing and subjective ways of knowing, always happening in coexistence with each other, in collaboration with each other at the same time. 


PETER:

Yeah. It, I've been grappling a little bit with Cindy Millstein. a theorist, actually in anarchism. She expressed how one of the challenges with anarchism is the to hold both freedom from and freedom for simultaneously positive freedom and negative freedom. And it somehow resonates, right, that to be with the objective and the subjective simultaneously, it contradicts one another as a. It feels like they ask for each other to be excluded from one another, and yet at the same time, I think on a felt level, they have to be incorporated somehow. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That's a really big question. But, I guess the way that I like to think of it is perhaps that a sort of idea about separation between subjective ways of knowing and objective ways of knowing is at least on some important levels, a cultural thing. A cultural separation. 


PETER:

Yeah. 


Matthias Sperling:

And whereas in actuality, those ways of knowing are not necessarily in opposition with each other and actually that neither exists without the other. Yeah. I think it's. Yeah, I think yeah. I mean big question. 


PETER:

No, but it's exactly in at least for me, in the material, and I mean, I'm very speculative in my thinking. I mean, it's very clear this is from a PhD, it has a sort of a groundedness. There's a sense of. It's very Western to actually have this knowledge constructed in this way. Yeah, I would say. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, and so for me it relates to the sort of terms in which I've been thinking for a long time, particularly sort of earlier on before my PhD about mind and body relationship, or sort of the cultural effects of mind body dualism. Thinking about understanding non-dualism between mind and body, which I would, yeah, relate to these different ways of knowing. and looking at what that could mean in relationship to dance and choreographic practice. It's a lot of what I've been motivated by for a lot of years. 


PETER:

Yeah, And may I ask, as well, what the weather is, because it was also a reoccurring theme, and it feels very very full as a material. I'm just wondering if you could expand, maybe it doesn't relate so well to what we were just talking about. 


Matthias Sperling:

I think for me, when I use that term, like the weather, taking a reading of the weather, for me, that has to do with a felt sense reading of my environment and this sort of image of understanding my environment as one that's full of weather or weathers there's multiple weathers that can be changing, there could be different weathers in different areas. There is this kind of reading of different kinds of intensities? in the way that I have a felt sense of the environment that I'm in. And so it's trying to open up towards open up towards noticing and reading information, noticing percepts or intuitions or projections or imaginations that are about the whole environment that I'm taking a reading of. Yeah yep


PETER:

Yeah, it's really wonderful. And you also borrow from Deborah Hay, these concepts of cells because there is something very with the inclusion, the consideration of the weather, there is a potential for and I think you even said it at some point where thought could sort of be have a light. Yeah, sort of put on it. and butchering your words again. And but it sort of somehow begs the question of like, how much are we a collective and individual as well, and maybe as subjective objective. I don't know if that resonates at all. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah.. I mean.. I don't know. See, with these kinds of things, it's interesting that I often go to things that I've read, that are related to, neuroscience or also, maybe not just cognitive science, but also philosophy of cognitive science. And so there, when you're talking about sort of, are we individual, the sort of boundariedness of each of us, it makes me think about Andy Clark, a philosopher of cognitive science, who's very interesting. And so some of his past work has to do with, yeah, the sort of the way that our mind, our cognition doesn't stop at the edges of our skin, but that there are lots of ways in which our cognition extends into our environment and also in lots of ways, yeah, Guy Claxton really goes into this as well, about how our cognition is so relational as well. And how, yeah, just how interwoven we are and how not sort of boundaried we are. So I think there's something about this kind of some of this kind of neuroscience perspective that I just find really helpful because it's very.. There's something very clear about the propositions that are being made, and sometimes I also really love reading things that are not from within dance, or within, even from necessarily very concerned with art, art making, art history. But these sort of like other touching into something from another discipline, sometimes just helps me kind of shift my own thinking more. Yeah. 


PETER:

Yeah. I mean, it's really, it really echoes that sense when dancing, there is a collective quality to the experience, even within the ballet classes I've done, you're completely muted, I mean, because of the discipline in the room, there's no speaking or little speaking involved, and yet the communal quality of being in in conversation with these different bodies, be it in unison or be it. Yeah, not in unison. Yeah. And there's something magical about that as well, right? There's a. When we when it brushes up with these, maybe the narrative, the grand narrative, or the learned narrative of science, that we've sort of been taught, have to think of David Graeber (and David Wengrow) really framed it well for me in a book on Anthropology, “The dawn of everything,” I think it's called, and he speaks about how colloquially we have these grand narratives that we start as sort of small bands of communities and then the bigger, the band of people comes, the more control and structure that is needed to control the people, and yet the science actually gives a different story, and I'm thinking about how the what you're describing for the science, that you're reading and so on, is actually something of a bigger, more complex picture, a more magical picture than maybe what one would first, if I assume is the nature of personhood, of collectivity, of objectivity, subjectivity. 

Matthias Sperling:
I absolutely love that. That, you know, because of the way that I use the phrase "magic and science,” I love the way that you just, you know, framed science as, in some situations, the more magical influence. I love that. And sometimes that is true for me. And yeah, but of course, you were talking about you know in relation to David Graeber, these kind of like power dynamics. Yeah. And in a sense, if I can say it that way. And of course, you know, science has been, often is, a tool of that. And so I even though I'm interested in engaging with science, for me, it's important to also, yeah, keep approaching this idea of plural epistemologies as opposed to a kind of hegemony of knowledge that only science can own. And I feel like, for me, there's something very immediate about that subjective experiences of dancing are these very, very, these experiences that are full of knowing, full of the coming into being of knowing, and that they definitely stand in the same world as a system of knowledge like science. 


PETER:

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's beautiful. It's really beautiful. And I think I'm gonna wrap up a little bit. I feel so yeah, it's so it's so wonderful, actually, to be invited to be beside that tension between, yeah, all of those conflicting knowledges exactly the pluralistic nature, perhaps, of knowledge, maybe not conflicting per se, it makes it too somehow binary. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah, but they also sometimes are conflicting, we have to acknowledge that too. 


PETER:

But they're not all conflicting. I think that was why I wanted to not emphasize that it's all conflicting, but that it's plural, is a better description. And some are conflicting in some aren't and vice versa. But it's such a pleasure to be beside that, actually, and to invite that into the dancing. And actually, in a lot of ways, you still hold space for your history and background in dancing, coming from Limón and having those practices, sort of those histories and yet allowing them to come with you into this sort of research and speculative space. It's such a pleasure, yeah. Thank you so much. 



Matthias Sperling:

Well, a pleasure to pleasure to do and talk with you too. Thanks very much. 


PETER:

But if people are curious to get in touch with you or to know about anything that's up and coming, you've mentioned a little bit, the work that you'll be doing with Katye Coe. Yeah, in Stockholm. 


Matthias Sperling:

Yeah. So, yeah, so Katye and I will be coming to Stockholm with No-How Generator for some workshops at SKH and at Dansalliansen. , and then two performances at SKH presented by Fylkingen, and the performances are October 16th and 17th this year, 2025 and yeah, you can yeah, definitely I would love to hear from people if they would like to get in touch and I have a website with an email. I have various other ways to be in contact and then. 


PETER:

Yeah, you're very approachable. You're so grateful. And, I mean, and also your PhD work as well has its own website so people can even delve deeper into what we were doing today in so many, I imagine you have many different ways of approaching it and getting involved. 


Matthias Sperling:

That website is nohowgenerator.com NOHOW, nohowGenerator. Yeah. 


PETER:

I will link everything and I will also try to write down and catch all the references that came up and I will keep those in the description. But thank you so much. I am so grateful and I look forward to continuing to dance with your ideas and following you somehow. 


Matthias Sperling:

Thanks, Peter. 


PETER:

Thank you.