ITF 2nd Theatre Seminar: The Performance Space - Jayachandran Palazhy

Duration: 00:45:58; Aspect Ratio: 1.778:1; Hue: 41.515; Saturation: 0.073; Lightness: 0.155; Volume: 0.286; Cuts per Minute: 2.393; Words per Minute: 123.956

The 2nd national seminar held by the India Theatre Forum intended to address the overall theme of "Spaces of Theatre, Spaces for Theatre" in a wider and holistic manner. It was held between 14 to 18 March 2012 in Ninasam, an extremely special theatre space in Heggodu village of Karnataka which has served as a community centre for over 50 years. The seminar intended to cover a gamut of related topics ranging from the relationship of performing "bodies" to space, to the actual physical spaces of performance, to the politics of the spaces in society , to the new virtual spaces opening up and to the future of Spaces. In other words, the seminar built on the understanding that the act of theatre is always more than simply an act of theatre. To think of theatre and its processes is, ipso facto, to think of its temporal and spatial specificities. However, the main approach of the seminar was not to develop an academic theory of the spaces of/for theatre but to sketch the contours of a "spaciology" of theatre as perceived by its practitioners.

Jayachandran Palazhy speaks of various spaces in which performance can be situated, moving away from the sense of physical space to find the spaces of the ritual, the traditional and the folk. He also tries to suggest how space can be mediated in dance performance, using the example of Attakkalari's work and ends with a dream of creative rehearsal spaces.

Transcribed by Vaishali Janarthanan.

Abhilash Pillai: I am Abhilash from Delhi, basically a theatre worker and at the same time I'm a faculty member from National School of Drama and what I do is, the first time, I'll just raise certain questions which, usually, I confront with my students and then I'll introduce all the three speakers and after that they can get on with their own sessions.
Ninasam, Heggodu, Karnataka

It is perhaps somewhat surprising to find that scholars, critics, practitioners and theatre goers do not have a precise and widely shared vocabulary to enable them to make/ meet and to participate in the multiple dimensions of the way space functions in performance. It has (remained) confined to the domain of pedagogy. By contrast, the concepts such as characterisations for the actor have been well-theorised in all its complex and problematic error. For example, acting methods like the Stanislavskian have created a method of reading into acting and also writing a specific vocabulary. Yet that actor occupies the space and even looking at that actor, even a bare body on stage, requires a wide emotion of understanding space.

Now usually these are the questions confronted by me before the production is mounted or rather, I should say, these are the questions raised by students in the theatre class and till today I don't have a precise and widely shared vocabulary to answer these questions. How do we select a space for a text or how do we mount a text in different given spaces? For example, proscenium theatre to proscenium theatre, it's like - if I talk in the context of Delhi, it’s the same play, the same group, the same company performs in Kamani which is a proscenium theatre; at the same time, performs in Sriram Centre, it's different and how does the whole performance tweak around and how it fits into Sriram or into the Kamani, even though they are both proscenium spaces.

Similarly it applies to the other works also like theatre in the round or even in the sandwich kind of stage and everything. The next question - how much are we concerned about selection of rehearsal space for a text or are we always given a kind of a rehearsal space? Does backstage discipline have anything to do with the backstage space? Backstage space is also one of those very important spaces; how do we get used to the backstage space of every given theatre architecture or theatre space and mostly, because most of the times the theatre architecture which we have in this country, we live with it and there is hardly any space around the wings or...even in Kerala there are theatres where right on the roof we have fans so we can't think about lights on stage.

How do we compromise with different kinds of lanterns and equipment in the theatre? How do we take decisions on the levels of sound in different theatres? How do we take the decision of the angle and scale of the installations? And in a way what is the kind of spectator-actor relationship in every space? How can we define it? If theatre is also about experience, then why is human body so important in a performance space? These are the questions which...there are many more questions that can come up that we can later slowly go to, now I'll just go through introducing all the three speakers here.

Jayachandran Palazhy. Sri Jayachandran Palazhy is the founder and artistic director of Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts driven by Attakkalari's underlying philosophy that is - Traditional physical wisdom, innovation and technology. Jayachandran is deeply committed to extending the reach of contemporary movement arts. A gifted and innovative choreographer, Jayachandran's collaboration with international artists and some works involved interactive arts and technologies which have resulted in some very exciting multimedia dance productions of new-age genre. Jayachandran has taken research on subjects such as teaching methodology in performing arts of Kerala and as a part of a collaborative project at Arizona State University, he worked on the role of interactive technology in telematics and performance. At Attakkalari, Jayachandran has directed an exhaustive research and documentation project "Nagarika" on the movement principles of Indian physical traditions. This seminal research series is the first of its kind and such initiative in India in the field of traditional performing arts - this is historically important.

Now let me come to Zuleikha Chowdhury. Zuleikha Chowdhury is a theatre director and lighting designer. Her work is an investigation of the nature of performance. It explores and develops a series of questions to do with interpretation of narrative structure, how it reaches a construction and experience, what is the relationship of the text and performer, what is the dynamics between performer and space, how narratives are created and understood and finally what is the role of the spectator in the performative experience. Her practice has developed over the past years into working with light structures, installations as explorations of space. She is interested in the nature of experience; her installations engage with the question of how we experience and how the experience of experiencing can be created and communicated. Her installations are as much about external landscapes as they are about internal geographies. They are as much about real spaces as they are about imagined and unreal ones.

Now let me also introduce Mr. Atul Kumar. Atul has worked in India and abroad as an actor with different directors, organisations and theatre forms. He has also directed various theatre performances in different languages. In 1993, he formed his own ensemble, The Company Theatre, that not only performed extensively but also conducted acting workshops, organised seminars and conferences, explore alternative theatre spaces, engage youth in theatre and finally established an international residency for theatre research and performance in the countryside of Maharashtra. Today, Atul's paper will mostly be in tabular form in which he will simply list out all the major things that work and do not work in performance spaces for them that is based on last 25 years of performing all over Indian cities and abroad. His presentation will be in Question and Answer session which are always more informative and interactive.

Now I would like to invite Jayachandran. He will be basically be...uh... Jayachandran will talk on how he conceives space, both artistic and conceptual, in his work. He will also talk on physical infrastructure for training and performance. Please...

Jay: Thank you Abhilash. Just want to say a big thank you for...uh... how happy I am to be here again you know at Ninasam; it's a special place for me. In this little sharing of my thoughts, I would like to say first - the idea of space is not necessarily for me an empirical space, an experienced space in that sense but much more in my perception and in the larger sense of experience. In physics, for example, space-time is always mentioned as a boundless four dimensional continuum and which is probably very close to what dance and choreography is but in dance of course there are other dimensions...temporality, and music and also energy...transmission.

Immanuel Kant also has said about - "Neither space nor time can empirically be perceived, they are elements of the systematic framework that humans use to structure all experiences". So I'll just speak out a few such points and then come to my presentation. Constitution of spaces in our experience and performance is but varied. Sensing and perceiving a space can be visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory - smell-related, dynamic - energy related, empirical, virtual, conceptual, imaginary etc. So this multidimensionality offers us possibilities of intersections, overlaps, juxtapositions, materialisation, disappearance, evolution, dissolving and mutation.

And these things are as a continuum and as an evolving form, an evolving idea of space is very important for dance and choreography. Relatively fixed or static notion of transient and fluid or appearing and disappearing, these larger notions of space...So I call this little thought as 'performance as suspended spaces', they are not necessarily concretised for a long period of time like a generic tool?

Inheritance, interaction and imagination. One of the key things about understanding space is the context and in performance it is also about learning and the performance and the intentions are quite often varied, you know each of the movements has an intention, each of the phrases have an intention. So it can be... performance can be ritual, social, folk, martial, classical, on and off stages, site-specific, promenade , virtual, you name it. There are different ways - there are now personalised performances as well. And in the ritual and folk idiom are largely absorbed by being in the context; so the space you are perceiving is much more in a sensorial manner and ground, had it ground into yourself, you know. Some examples, like Yakshagana.

Training. Construction of a body self indicates...agency and power. This aspect is important. You know when you train, there is no fixed notion of a body; a body is imagined or a movement is imagined or a kind of line is imagined. Then by constant and rigorous practice you try to achieve or try to indicate or suggest that space. This is a very specific kind of a program because there is no role involved, because it's not a visible form, it is in the realm of imagination. Every training has got this idea of image and images...collection of images as a continuum is the key. Say for example, if you know your arm is going like this and there are these real contours of the body. What it will connect...the spine, breath and your focus, it can reach forth by...just by a simple motion of how these different molecules of the body are connected to the space around us. So this space need not be empirical, that we can visualise, but also can be much more profound in a imagination.

In neuroscience for example, it is now very much talked about - the notion of empathy; (in) choreography and dance...this notion is very important, how you sense a movement, you know when the other person, the other performer is doing a movement and there are equivalent transformation in the brain for the audience and if the audience is somewhat introduced or somewhat have a training, then it is even further heightened. And this idea of experiencing the movement is not necessarily just a conceptual thing but much more a sensorial thing.

In Kalari for example, Kalaripayattu - martial art, the space is conceived as a microcosm, you know, where time in terms of 12 months, they call it Rashi are placed in different corners of the Kalari and also the space in terms of the direction, in terms of the energy of the deities and the past gurus are also placed in this space. Then in this microcosm, you place another microcosm which is the practioner's body so he also visualises space as...like a temple in the kind of costume, kind of idea and there your idea is to again reach out to the larger universe and universal energy. So each of the movements is embedded and invested in this idea of space which slowly the teacher moulds the students into achieving.

So the body concept primarily, you know the movement began from the spine and the idea of nervous, the Nadivyuha, the neurological system through which the motion...the message of the movement passes through the body, the energy passes through the body and it's conceived as a circularity and sometimes as a spiral. So this notion of movement originating from the spine and returning to the spine is very important. For example, if you do a movement in Kalari it goes from the spine and then comes back again or if you go some movement here, it always does this circularity. Even a leg swing like that you know, not like a ballet swing but a swing going out, out of gravity but you are relating to the gravity from the spine...

And this idea of circularity as a continuum is very important in the Indian notion of body, in the Indian notion of space. In Kutiyattam, for example, sometimes lamp is represented as a another character and the space is very much imagined and constructed through the focus, I'll come to that later.

Now weapons are also conceived as an extension of the body, so from every movement in dance and in contemporary dance sometimes we were told, for example, in Graham technique, you are told that the arm movement is just an extension of the back...of your back. So same in Kalari, it is much more profound. The weapons are...you know you don't do this kind of thing (demonstrates) but you take it from the back and strike. So the whole body is involved. It is more of a performative kind of a martial art, I would say.

Architecture of Kalari.
So the architecture of Kalari, here, for example, is the flight of steps going down the floor to the floor and this pit is constructed specifically like this to control the temperature but also contain the energy and it gives a kind of a universe for the performer to inhabit. And these are the different deities and Gurutaras (?) and things like that. I move to the next one. In Kalari there are different styles and this is what Abhilash was mentioning about the interactive video DVD produced about Kalari and the various movement languages that evolve in this Kalari according to the community, according to the guru, according to the region -it's very interesting.

In classical forms like ballet, Bharatnatyam or Kathakali, the training is a bit more impositional...you have a predetermined form and the effort of the student or teacher is to attain that perfect form, almost distant. But in contemporary dance because it is it's not a form, it's rather an approach to create a new world. So this idea of perfect form is not there, instead the idea is to create the facilities in the body, the tools and devices in the body in order to create whatever movement you perceive or you imagine.

Now it is also important to understand the idea of a body inhabiting spaces beyond the contours of the body, so that's what I'm saying, a performance is of course a make-believe world and here, the dancer - what he does is actually by connecting different parts of the body you can do it in different ways. For example, in this movement and this, if I connect the two I get one movement; if I do this and go to the leg, you get another kind of movement; if I do this, I can get another... you know each of these things are…what it does is actually giving you a trajectory, giving you multiple spaces, not one singular idea of space because space is constantly unravelling in front of you and there are strategies of how you can project these spaces into different places. Now you can connect two dancers in terms of how temporarily and spatially they are connected and in terms of energy; they don't need to be next to each other.

So your reading of space in terms of its juxtaposition, in terms of its contrast, in terms of its proximity and distance, you read the experience of the space as completely different and as a choreographer or dancer, we are always dealing with this idea as to how to suggest spaces. So I would say body as a resonator...Grotowski very famously said about his training method...you know how to use the body as a resonator and I think in dance it goes a little bit further than that. It goes a little bit more beyond the body and how to animate the space around us as well.

Costume and make-up also create spaces and in different cultures, different ways of I mean in Yakshagana or Kathakali or Kabuki, you know you can really think about how the costume is framed, how the performance is actually enhanced or defined by the costume. Some images of how the costume actually (enhances performance) in different contexts.

Now, as you know ,some of our forms like Bharatanatyam for example were born in temple or were very closely associated with temples, Kutiyattam also. So the architecture of the temple and the kind of iconography also plays a role in terms of creating that space in the performance. Bharatanatyam (picture shown). Now in Kathakali, the facial masks, the facial paint and the way the eyes are used in a very intricate manner creates emotions, sensations and sensuality, creating the space for the performance. Some images of Kathakali...

And the eye practices and each muscle of the face are also used to very, very great extents and it is conceived - this colour scheme is conceived for the oil lamp, this flickering oil lamp - it really comes alive. But I think now if you look at Kathakali performance what happens is quite often there is a halogen light in the front completely flattening that image; it's almost like a fly on a piece of paper. Kabuki for example, again has costumes making a deep impact in terms of how it is framed. In Noh theatre, the stage area and the pathway to it...it creates a spatial orientation of an immense importance because you know the movements are so slow and so small and when a slightly, relatively larger movement happens it almost gives the audience a kind of a shock. Some images from the Noh.

Now Indian streets, like for example images of streets of Mumbai, it gives another idea of space - completely fluid, and we experience this and if we know that space you know we are not actually getting sustenance from our day-to-day life experiences. In contemporary dance we have a technique which was developed by Steve Paxton but is now practiced the world over, called contact improvisation. This is a very democratic way of creating images and movements where each of the partners or any of the partners could initiate a movement and the other person has to be extremely sensitive to be able to follow and it results in lifts and different kind of things. And I think our streets are a contact improvisation by automobiles.

It's amazing - how much they can go around. Now if you look at technology in performance you know,, arguably, some of the first technology was when we lit a lamp and then there are gradations of it as our ability to bring in new kinds of technology on stage (increased).
This is from one of my earlier works called "Transavatar" - kind of dealing with the idea of multiple identities and metamorphosis and how I was using technology in performance. Here, I looked at body as an architecture and how this could result in terms of stage decor and mostly digital (installations). So we had a gauze in front of it so that the performer…there were things that were projected onto him so you get a kind of three-dimensionality in which the actors or the dancers are doing their live action. So we worked with proportion and also reprocess that image, you know how these ideas of one person transforming into multiple or multiple forming into one.

Here for example, all the performers were morphed into one - to give this idea in the performance. Now storyboarding and graphic representation to organise, thought and structure is one way of microarticulation? I was telling, I was just remembering what Romi was saying about collaboration and what is interesting in terms of collaboration is actually - it is creative and positive, it forces you to leave your usual habits and think afresh...push you to another kind of domain. This Purushartha, this I actually directed and choreographed. Actually (Mitsuaki) Matsumoto was my collaborator.

I'm glad that we chose that image. This is for example how we prepare the stage. So we have to get this precise proportion of the stage and then we put the LED lights on the side and the three Japanese collaborators were actively performing on the same side of the stage, completely triggering and reprocessing the images. Different stages have a different position. The calibration of that space in terms of digital space is also crucial because we have a camera on top and camera in front and that coordination has to be worked out precisely for the inner activity to work.

Some images from the rehearsal.
One of the things we have tried is to alter the perception of space and time, you know, a kind of bringing the memories of what just happened before or particles of it. You don't necessarily intellectually understand at that moment but in a subliminal perceptual way you understand there is something happening. You just have seen this because the timeline is not the real time of the empirical world so in that timeline we can...you have the power to alter the kind of time you need for your memory. These are some images from that.

It's of course, very interactive...it... because it is constantly changing, it allows you to have that kind of malleable kind of space - constantly evolving. Sometimes they/ we on this side of the projector screen, you know that image comes firmly when you are still and the moment you are moving, it kind of dissolves and goes away. Subsequently I did a production called Chronotopia. It is the starting point was the concept of tinai in the Tamil poetics where landscape reflects the internal feelings or emotions of the characters. So instead of the landscape, the tinai, we decided to use some interactive scenography, but this scenography in Tamil poetics is of course the landscape, the larger landscape of forest, desert or fertile land or sea shore or whatever, but here we create a similar thing but only through recycling the dancers and their movement, so that you create a universe which is only...or the logic of that performance resides within that performance, not an external one but you are calling upon other suggestions, other suggested spaces from outside for the benefit of the audience's imagination.

And I would say this is kind of...the way we did it was that there were three layers of stage area, there is a gauze, there is...in front of the gauze performance, there is behind the gauze there is a light installation so in between those there is a performance space and behind the light installation there is also a performance space and it was going in circles. In Indian traditional performances there is something called Parikramanam or in a way we go one round like this; you are in a new scene, so change of space happens like that. Digitally, this is what we tried; the images were constantly going in a kind of circle.

This is a much earlier production, a solo work I did called Scanned V with a German digital artist. Here on the top image you can see a canopy and sometimes the canopy comes down and there are works with shadows. You know in earlier times of image making there was some time needed for compression and decompression, so if you used a program called Max MSB and if you are trying to trigger music and the image through that, there can be a delay. So we used this delay to create a kind of divide between me dancing and the projected image of it and it is quite interesting... two sides of it and they have a delay.

And I have tried to use the same thing in a telematic performance when we did the research in Arizona State University. There also, compression and decompression - in order to be able to go through the internet that offers you the possibility. It can be handicapped but if you look at it in a positive way, it can also be a possibility. Here we had the notion of disembodied presence, that also plays a role. And finally all the images are mixed on the computer alone and the performer gets his stage. So the telematic and virtual performance events, internet, mobile phone, other platforms to enable interactivity and mediation and prosthetics, augmentation... these things are also some of the ways to possibly explore performance.

Another one is site-specific performance. You know I remember somewhere __ (?) said that you know the kind of deadly theatre, you know when you have to perform the same thing over and over again and there is some kind of deadliness set in. So site-specific performance, because of its very nature, it is changing its coordinates each time, the space in which you are performing changes. That kind of potpourri gives the freshness at least for the performers and Ganesh Chaturthi in Mumbai is a fantastic site-specific performance and you know you can see the kind of images and how high the participation is. In India there are so many of these folk, ritual performances which are fantastic examples of this site-specific, promenade performance.

Now this is a kind of installation performance you could say, like the Varuna Yagna. Ritual performance is not for the audience; it's between you and the god and it is that same in Theyyam for example. Now, in carnivals, you know, very eclectic, sometimes irrelevant, sometimes very exuberant kind of performances and really celebrating the notion of body so I'll just show you some examples of it. Now in political theatre and in India too, these are images from Tahrir square for example, it's a kind of a political choreography of a different nature you know and I think these choreographies are very important, how we perceive these events actually.

And you know writing on the body as another kind of performance. Now we did a performance few years ago in London, in the Trafalgar Square at London commissioned by the Trafalgar Square Festival. The idea was to transpose images of Bangalore into London. So this image for example was created by...from people, you know if you come to Bangalore...I'm sure in other cities of India too, in the paths you see the most amazing kind of exercises; very odd sometimes and I'm very fascinated about that and I have created some movements for that. And Bangalore also has these bikers, they are both men and women, so we were in Trafalgar Square and we were riding Royal Enfield bikes as part of the performance.

Now this is in 1997, commissioned by the Southbank Centre in London, this is on the rooftop of Queen Elizabeth Hall?. Here we had a challenge, because we were working with a very multicultural cast - some Indian martial artists, some street performers, some cinematic dancers, contemporary dancers from Europe, drama from the Sanskrit theatre Kutiyattam and contemporary composers. So it was quite problematic, endless discussions and you know translations so it was a very, very interesting learning curve for me. It was dealing with...at that time quite a lot of productions came about men and their lives.

This image again is from another site specific performance called "For Pina". This was created for Goethe institute and this was to pay homage for Pina Bausch, this is on the rooftop of the Goethe institute in Delhi and in the garden. We also performed this at Spaces, that is Sadanand's space, actually it is brilliant there and then we went out to a seven city tour. In ___ (?) and in the Qutub Shahi in Hyderabad. In Qutub Shahi what was interesting was the buildings were far away and the audieces went crazy. They didn't necessarily distinguish between what is performance and what is in between. So they would ask the dancers - where is the next one? They interrupted the performance and then ask them. But it was in a very positive space and quite an interesting thing for me to find out.

This is from Attakalari India Biennial opening at the National Gallery of Modern Art. We tried to do the idea of tradition in the contemporary. This Nagarika series is an attempt to access traditions...from physical traditions as well as performance traditions, the knowledge of principles of movement and concepts of body embedded in those kind of forms. I was very interested; in the last Biennial we had a seminar in which I was introduced to this Carnal Art by the French artist Orlan and I was really intrigued to first explore that and in India for example there is again...this is a part of our performance tradition, and on one of my journeys to Thailand I saw a similar image where a gun is pierced here and somebody holding it like this. So it's a Carnal tradition there.

Now this is our latest production where I strip down all the ideas of technology and looking at, because the title is Mei Dhwani or Echoes of the body, where just the body and its manifestations were explored. I must say interior and exterior landscape and mapping the residues of experience and memories in the body of contemporary events? And also one of the concepts was encounters of the male and female energy and the ideas of five elements, all alluding to the notion of this concept of space in the vastu.

Now I will briefly touch upon this space, this physical space we need in order to create something like that. Our motto at Attakkalari is traditional physical wisdom, innovation and technology. And these are the different departments that are working - repertory, biennial festival, diploma in movement arts and new stage technologies division, and research division and an outreach division. And when we got the space, it was a kind of dilapidated garage with so many little, little rooms, completely run down and I consulted some architects and they all suggested several steps and things like that and I realised I am not getting anywhere with the architecture?

I knew and I thought what we need is a style that is versatile, really neutral kind of space in order to be able to create. It is interesting because if you look at the spaces in ____(?), in Yamaguchi for example there is a media arts centre, or in New York...the idea of theatre has changed. It is no more necessarily a black-box, but it is much more in terms of its versatility where through various connections you know this projection, light, sound or any other things are all interwoven and this is important for us, for our architects and performers also to think about, to create spaces.

So here, it is an old building so there is a mezzanine from where we started to function as an office and in the beginning we had three little cupboards so we did a performance, the first performance there, making use of the cupboard. This was in 2002 or something like that and one of our training programmes, our first repertory batch and now the studio has changed. We now have three studios and this is a diploma studio in another building because we don't have a campus; it's another rented space from where we function. In fact the lack of space for an organisation, for an art form which is so much involved with space is a kind of a strange situation and that's where we are.

This is from one of our outreach works, making dance available to the larger community and the research and documentation I already told you about. All Attakkalari productions have an R&D component and research in the physical traditions and performance is an important part of our activity. Now TransMedia technologies is one division we set up because we were so frustrated each time when we reached the theatre and were not able to perform, not able to realise what we wanted to because the theatre space was not lending itself to it. So we started to create a division like that and some of the services they do is now not only servicing our production but also increasingly lending services to so many theatre and dance organisations in Bangalore. And repertory works are now performed all India and internationally.

Now this is a building recently constructed in London called Laban Centre. This building won that year's architectural award in the UK and it's interesting how inside and outside coming to the building and each of the studios are very interestingly constructed, even the library. You know there is never any crowding and it all flows into one another. Few samples of performance venues, I'll just quickly go through them. This is for example for those who have not been to Bangalore - Chowdaih Hall, you know there is no cafeteria, there is no kind of place for people to hang around and you come and watch performances and increasingly our performance spaces are like marriage halls and we have a deep problem there, how to make that space alive. Ravindra Kalakshetra, which is a government supported... it's very beautifully located; one could do wonders with the space because they have an amphitheatre, ample car parking and it has gone through some refurbishment recently but I think there can be so many things done to this place to make it a kind of a world-class space there.

This is a smaller space next to Ravindra Kalakshetra, ADA Rangamandira, very small but lot of performances happen there as well. This is a privately owned college, Christ College in Banaglore and there you know they have a different idea of space, it's more like for conferences or lecture halls. Alliance Francaise has got in a very small space but it's kind of versatile but not enough ceiling height so lighting will be very difficult but it allows some kind of versatility. Now few ideas for an Attakalari building if we were ever to get a small piece of land and we've thought about creating a small space with...from very basic industrial things we can find but we still haven't got a space, we are just still desperately looking. So just some images for you to have a look. Some ideas, not exactly the buildings but some ideas in terms of how the buildings could be, some perceptions. Thank you very much.
(Applause)

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