Choreographies

Jacky Lansley

Description

Choreographer Jacky Lansley has been practicing and performing for more than four decades. In Choreographies, she offers unique insight into the processes behind independent choreography and paints a vivid portrait of a rigorous practice that combines dance, performance art, visuals and a close attention to space and site.



Choreographies is both autobiography and archive – documenting production through rehearsal and performance photographs, illustrations, scores, process notes, reviews, audience feedback and interviews with both dancers and choreographers. Covering the author’s practice from 1975 to 2017, the book delves into an important period of change in contemporary British dance – exploring British New Dance, postmodern dance and experimental dance outside of a canonical US context. A critically engaged reflection that focuses on artistic process over finished product, Choreographies is a much-needed resource in the fields of dance and choreographic art making.

Chapter 1: Minimal Dance

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 2: Dance Object

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 3: Out of Thin Air

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 4: Holding Space

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 5: View from the Shore

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 6: Standing Stones

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 7: Researching Guests

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 8: Guest Suites

Jacky Lansley

 

Chapter 9: Other Voices

Jacky Lansley

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Contemporary dance
• Choreography
• Performance art
• General officer
• Dance
• Art
• General
• Drama
• Performance

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783207671
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 25 Mo

Extrait

Lansley Tracing the Materials of an Ephemeral Art Form
Tracing the Materials
of an Ephemeral
Art Form
Choreographer Jacky Lansley has been practising and performing for more than four
decades. In Choreographies, she offers unique insight into the processes behind independent
choreography and paints a vivid portrait of a rigorous practice that combines dance,
performance art, visuals and a close attention to space and site.
Choreographies is both autobiography and archive — documenting production through
rehearsal and performance photographs, illustrations, scores, process notes, reviews,
audience feedback and interviews with both dancers and choreographers. Covering the
author’s practice from 1975 to 2017, the book delves into an important period of change in
dance as an art form – exploring British New Dance, postmodern dance, and experimental
dance outside of a canonical US context. A critically engaged reflection that focuses on artistic
process over finished product, Choreographies is a much-needed resource in the fields of dance
and choreographic art making.
"Lansley has written about her trajectory as an independent artist over four decades and at last there
is some much needed information provided by someone who has been immersed in experimental
dance within the UK. Since the early 1970s, when she was a founder of the seminal X6 Dance Space,
Lansley has maintained a unique thread of activity rising from that period and continuing for the next
generations of artists to relate to. I think of her as someone who has been involved in the questions that
have helped to shape dance practice in Britain. Politically and artistically her research and performance
have understood the strengths and responsibilities of dance as an art form."
Siobhan Davies CBE, choreographer and founder of Siobhan Davies Dance
"Jacky Lansley’s significant insights into the working processes of choreographic practices and
collaboration are an invaluable contribution to dance, drawing on her rich experience over four decades
of working with cross art form strategies as a choreographer and writer."
Christy Adair, Professor Emerita, York St John University
"Drawing upon decades of experience and enquiry, Jacky Lansley shares her expanded sense of
choreography — or rather, choreographies — as spaces that hold the traces of many areas: other art
forms, histories both personal and political, training, processes of research and creation. Lansley has
written Choreographies as a kind of "open book" — open to other fields, to varying voices, open to reading."
Sanjoy Roy, dance writer (The Guardian)
ISBN 978-1-78320-766-4
00
9 781783 207664
intellect | www.intellectbooks.comChoreographies
Ch0_FMi-x.indd 1 4/7/17 8:32 AMCh0_FMi-x.indd 2 4/7/17 8:32 AMChoreographies
Tracing the Materials of an
Ephemeral Art Form
Jacky Lansley
intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA
Ch0_FMi-x.indd 3 4/7/17 8:32 AMFirst published in the UK in 2017 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2017 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2017 Jacky Lansley
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Emily Dann
Collage created from photography by Hugo Glendinning
Central performer Tania Tempest-Hay, researching Holding Space by Jacky Lansley
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production editors: Jelena Stanovnik and Matt Greenfeld
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-766-4
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-767-1
ePUB ISBN: 978-1-78320-768-8
Printed and bound by Gomer, UK
Ch0_FMi-x.indd 4 4/7/17 8:32 AMI dedicate this book to all the performers who have made my work possible
Ch0_FMi-x.indd 5 4/7/17 8:32 AMCh0_FMi-x.indd 6 4/7/17 8:32 AMContents
Acknowledgements ix
Inward1
Chapter 1: Minimal Dance5
Chapter 2: Dance Object 33
Chapter 3: Out of Thin Air… 47
Chapter 4: Holding Space 71
Chapter 5: View from the Shore 81
Chapter 6: Standing Stones 93
Chapter 7: Researching Guests 103
Chapter 8: Guest Suites 117
Chapter 9: Other Voices 133
Onward 151
Works and Photography Credits 159
Bibliography 169
Index173
Ch0_FMi-x.indd 7 4/7/17 8:32 AMCh0_FMi-x.indd 8 4/7/17 8:32 AMAcknowledgements
I would like to thank the following individuals and organisations for their help and support with
various aspects of writing and assembling this book: frstly the following for their generous time
discussing the material, reading drafts, doing interviews, sourcing archival text and images, writing
endorsements and contributing to an ongoing artistic dialogue: Fergus Early, Sally Potter, Diana Davies,
Miranda Tufnell, Matthew Hawkins, Tony Tatcher, Rosemary Lee, Professor Ramsay Burt, Rose
English, Lily Susan Todd, Anne Bean, Siobhan Davies, Professor Christy Adair, Sanjoy Roy, Martha
Oakes, Lynn MacRitchie, Sylvia Hallett, Jonathan Eato, Vincent Ebrahim, Esther Huss, Ursula Early
and Tim Taylor; then all those who belong to the community that is the Dance Research Studio, which
has provided an invaluable context for much of the work in this book. I would particularly like to thank
Yoko Nishimura for her support as archivist and with all IT matters throughout the whole process;
also Hugo Glendinning for his beautiful photography of certain works. During the writing of this book,
the choreographer Rosemary Butcher sadly died. I will always be grateful for her kind support and
the inspirational legacy of her choreography. Finally I would like to thank Jelena Stanovnik, Matt
Greenfeld and all at Intellect whose thoroughness and understanding have helped to make the process
of publishing this book a creative and positive experience.
Ch0_FMi-x.indd 9 4/7/17 8:32 AMCh0_FMi-x.indd 10 4/7/17 8:32 AMInward
INWARD
Ch0_01-4.indd 1 4/7/17 4:11 PMChoreographies
Choreography is the art form which most profoundly links the mind and the body – yet very few people
understand what it is. Even those of us who practise choreography difer widely on what we consider
the art form to be. In this book I refect on a selection of my own choreographic works made over forty
years and the changing cultural and social forces that have infuenced me over the same decades. My
aim is to help demystify some of the processes that can be part of choreography, by tracing the actual
materials and strategies that my collaborators and I use. Te works and projects I have chosen span the
period 1972–2017 and include discussion of the seminal collaborations and organisations that have
inspired and supported me over the years. As part of this excavation, I have had many interesting
conversations with other choreographers and performers whom I have quoted extensively; several
interviews with artists are also included. Tis sense of conversation has become part of the book’s style
and has allowed me to expand on my work as a voice amongst many.
Trough refective writing, archival notes, scores, descriptive accounts, reviews, interviews and
images, I have tried to reveal some of the cross art form strategies and infuences within my own
practice and to acknowledge the importance of this broader landscape. For me this revealing is complex,
as it is concerned with ‘hidden’ elements which as an artist one would not ordinarily expose. For all
artists there are undoubtedly periods in a creative process when an idea needs to be private in order to
grow, when we don’t want feedback, advice or opinion. Tis may seem inward-looking, but nevertheless
it does seem to be part of making art and I hope my accounts of choreographic work and the contexts
from which it emerged, will make a useful contribution to the understanding of practices and choices
that support and become choreography.
For a long time I have found it useful to use the word ‘author’ when describing my role as a
choreographer. By association it gives the role dignity and a connection to the idea of language creation
rather than working with a received or traditional technical vocabulary. Te idea that choreographers
can explore and develop their own vocabularies has been established for several decades; it is a journey
that has tracked modernism and postmodernism and has enabled choreographers to draw from their
own experience, as a modern painter, writer or sculptor would do. My model of the choreographer as an
author, however, runs contrary to some pervasive theoretical perspectives which argue against the
1author’s voice and insist on shifting meaning away from experience and the subjective ‘I’. Counter
arguments that question the certainty of this postmodern attack on subjectivity have come through
many channels, including feminism, with its rallying cry the personal is political, and other communities
who seek to voice their diferent oppressions. I hope that my own work as a writer and choreographer
shows that I understand that all language is cultural, collective and borrowed; that, indeed, I have learnt
2from and explored postmodern systems that deconstruct traditional narratives throughout my practice.
I do believe, however, that the more innovative and experimental sectors of dance need the authorial
voices of practitioners to refect a layered and mature culture that is not always and only ‘emerging’.
3I am now part of a third generation of New Dance practitioners and it is interesting to recognise
the enduring processes in my own eclectic works. Te critic Jenny Gilbert once wrote of my work as a
4‘collage of glancing fragments […] that add up to more than their sum,’ which I think accurately
refects the mix of infuences in my hybrid work. I make no claim to having any ans