(photo: Roy Tjin)
Alida Neslo (Paramaribo, 1954) prefers to call herself a ‘player’ rather than ‘actress’. She studied theatre and dance in Belgium and Senegal. She travelled the world as a player, working for radio and TV in Belgium and in the Netherlands. From 1993 onwards, she focused on searching for more intercultural forms of theatrical training courses for actors and dancers. In addition to her theatre work she worked at building the internal and external relationships between the Netherlands, Flanders and Suriname. In 2006, she returned to Suriname to share her knowledge with young people and she has been involved in the ArtRoPa project since 2007.
Even as a child, Alida Neslo loved dancing. She was lucky that her uncle was a choreographer. She had ballet lessons, but she was also introduced to Indian and Javanese dance. She had been inculcated from an early age with the idea that there was no uniquely classical dance style. In Paramaribo she grew up in legal circles. “My father was always going on about justice. Not thinking about himself so much — mainly about others. He believed that he should be able to work for anyone without being prejudiced, ‘Because I work for Suriname,’ he said.”
In 1973, Alida Neslo left for Antwerp to study. Most Surinamese students went to the Netherlands. Since she did not want to follow the herd, she decided to go to Belgium. She studied modern languages in Antwerp. After her first university exam, one of the professors said to her: “You don’t belong here — you should go to a theatre school.”
There were two theatre schools in Antwerp: the Conservatorium, which was based on the spoken word, and Studio Herman Teirlinck which was based on motion. “Their method was based on gut feeling: not too many analyses, more about improvised performances to see what you can express using only your body. Words only came after that.” She decided to go Teirlinck because she loved the idea of approaching theatre the way jazz is played. “There’s a theme and everyone has the opportunity and the freedom to go his own way.”
In 1959, Teirlinck wrote in his ‘Dramatisch peripatetikon’ (Dramatic peripatetic):
The artist who falls to pieces has forfeited himself. […] He was always watching out for other people’s opinions — curious, meek and fearful. All he could do was imitate. He’s one of a herd. The artist should be a resilient rallying point within society, a strange ruler who does not want to rule, someone as solid as a rock. How can he do anything else but cause disturbance? He is an obstacle.
(Translation: Andrew May)
At the age of twenty, Alida had to read Teirlinck’s book for an exam. “At the time, I didn’t understand a single word of it, but today it is my guide. I had to choose between being ‘cattle’ and being an ‘obstacle’. I took the second way. This attitude has become organic now. It has everything to do with my fundamental curiosity, like a child taking a toy apart, not because of any technical appetite, but to discover another layer every time. I like becoming, rather than being.”
After her studies, Alida Neslo travelled through Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. This had a considerable influence on her: “If you travel from one place to the next, you get emotionally confused. You start thinking about the concept of ‘home’. What does familiar mean, what does letting go and starting over again imply? You discover that you don’t have to throw everything away when you start all over again, but on the other hand, you mustn’t start out so full that there’s no room left for other things. The art education that I followed later fits in with this idea. I think it’s important that students keep changing their context. I like taking them outside their comfort zone — that has an enormous influence on their work and philosophy. They constantly have to create a new space and sometimes they do not even understand what that means. But as they do that, they discover that their intellectual space changes along with their working space.”
Alida Neslo has always made an effort to build bridges between young and old, rich and poor, high and low. What skills does a bridge builder need in Suriname? “What I’ve learned from my mistakes is that you mustn’t put forward your findings immediately. You have to look and listen first. The situation in a young country changes quickly, all the time. You mustn’t plan too far ahead or seek popularity. On top of that, in a small community it’s hard not to mix your private life with your professional field. You’ve got to be able to deal with people who didn’t have the same ‘advantaged’ background and who have other ideas than you about what is considered normal. Protocol often takes the place of content.”
If art education were to be implemented structurally at primary and secondary schools, her wish might come true. “Young people learn to be aware of what culture is and what the various disciplines are. And that art is a serious profession. Art education should be kaleidoscopic: it should include as many art histories and languages as possible. Today’s children have not only a national legacy, but also an international one. We should be paying attention to character development: concentration, training, in-depth studying, suffering and making sacrifices. Popularity is still the yardstick of talent in Suriname, too much so, but character should be much more important. There’s still no environment of criticism in Suriname either. That will only come later. When I read commentary now, almost everything is ‘good’. The intention is good, but it doesn’t help us to move forward.
Things that you could say in the Netherlands sound rude in Suriname, and indeed Dutch-speaking Belgium. We have to find a way of saying these things... We’ve a long way to go. You only have to be careful not to get too self-satisfied when things become generally accepted. You should keep on asking yourself questions. And if your environment is not critical, you should have the discipline yourself to be critical — to prevent yourself from becoming one of the ‘cattle’, as Teirlinck put it. What’s missing is the sense of wonder: looking at things to try and understand what they really are and have to say.”
A number of preconditions must be met if there is to be cultural development. “It’s very important for me not to beafraid of the unknown, and to consider space as something flexible. You shouldn’t say. ‘This is my territory and it will never change.’ Another condition is that you must learn to start with what you have and not with what you want. It’s a crucial element in developing countries.”
In 2008, Alida Neslo set up a social readjustment project called Beeldende Kunst en Theater (Visual Art and Theatre) with young offenders at the Santo Boma youth re-education centre. In 2009, that project resulted in an exhibition, a booklet, a music CD and a live presentation at the Thalia Theatre in Paramaribo. It is extraordinary that Alida Neslo managed to achieve this. “The boys I worked with at Boma were ashamed at first that they had to use upturned buckets as drums. They didn’t have any percussion instruments. It was a barren environment that had nothing. But there’s always something. You always have yourself. So start with yourself, where you are now, without shame, without thinking about comparisons. That will let you get somewhere. The lads eventually discovered that. And that’s why I’m so proud of them: they took the first step themselves towards something they initially didn’t believe in.”
Alida has no clear picture of the situation in Suriname in five years’ time. “We’ve only been independent for 34 years. So many areas aren’t yet stable enough to predict anything. One wrong person in a key position could ruin a lot in our small community. In the fields of culture and arts it is important to me that there are people who are willing to defend the creation of your own ideas, but without aggression. By defending, I mean fighting using your intellect and expertise. In Suriname we automatically think pluralistically: not from one culture, but from all the cultures. To me, the mix of eastern, western and southern components means that Suriname is more able than any other country in the Caribbean to act as a pilot, a breeding ground for what the world can finally become, ‘with nothing so old, that it cannot be reinvented’, as Derek Walcott so strikingly put it.”
Arnold Schalks, Amsterdam, 30 August 2009
(translated
from the Dutch by Mike & Clare Wilkinson/Ruud Faulhaber)