Performing Process

Description

Increasingly, choreographic process is examined, shared and discussed in a variety of academic, artistic and performative contexts. More than ever before, post-show discussions, artistic blogs, books, archives and seminars provide opportunities for choreographers to explain their particular methodologies. Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice provides a unique theoretical investigation of this current trend. The chapters in this collection examine the methods, politics and philosophy of sharing choreographic process, aiming to uncover theoretical repercussions of and the implications for forms of knowledge, the appreciation of dance, education and artistic practices.

Introduction - Hetty Blades and Emma Meehan

Part 1: Philosophy of Process

Chapter 1: Atomos EChOs and the Process-ing of Dances - Stephanie Jordan and Anna Pakes

Chapter 2: Choreographic Knowledge and Aesthetic Empiricism - Hetty Blades

Part 2: Methods and Formats

Chapter 3: Enhancing Choreographic Objects: Traces, Texts and Tales of a Journey through Dance - Sarah Whatley

Chapter 4: Research as Co-Habitation: Experimental Composition across Theory and Practice - Erin Brannigan, Matthew Day and Lizzie Thomson

Chapter 5: Process as Performance or Variations of Swinging - Annette Arlander

Chapter 6: Crystallisations, Constellations and Sharings: Exploring Somatic Process with Sandra Reeve - Emma Meehan

Part 3: Documentation, Dissemination and Scores

Chapter 7: Exploring Creative Thought in Choreography Together: Process Documentation with the Australian Dance Theatre - Scott deLahunta, Jordan Beth Vincent, Elizabeth Old, Garry Stewart, James Leach and Catherine J. Stevens

Chapter 8: Architectural and Choreographic Diagrams as Processual Modes of Sharing Creative Practices - Ariadne Mikou

Chapter 9: Dancing on the Page/Writing on the Stage: Sharing Dance (and) Theatre Process Documents - The Drawings of Jan Fabre - Edith Cassiers

Chapter 10: Animating the Archive: Voguing, Sampling and Queering Tatsumi Hijikata - Sara Jansen

Part 4: Politics and Labour

Chapter 11: The 'Visible Choreographer': Trust and Power, Reviewing Choreography as a Social Practice - Kathinka Walter-Høeg

Chapter 12: The Use of Uselessness - Claudia Kappenberg

Chapter 13: Resisting Explanation: The Politics of Audience Development and Possibilities of Form - Nicola Conibere

Contributors 

Index

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Éducation
• ART
• General
• Dance
• Education
• Performing arts
• Theory
• General officer

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 15 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783208968
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2018 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2018 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2018 Intellect Ltd.
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.
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Production manager: Jessica Lovett
Typesetting: Contentra Technologies
Print ISBN: 978-1-78320-895-1
ePDF ISBN: 978-1-78320-897-5
ePub ISBN: 978-1-78320-896-8
Printed and bound by Short Run Press, UK.
Cover image: Slow Races (Claudia Kappenberg 2014). Performers: Andrew Barker, Kate Brown, Andrew Downs, Andrew James, Katy Pendlebury, Andre Verissimo and Nic Sandiland. De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill: UK. Image credit: Emma Marshall.
This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Hetty Blades and Emma Meehan
Part 1: Philosophy of Process
Chapter 1: Atomos EChOs and the Process-ing of Dances
Stephanie Jordan and Anna Pakes
Chapter 2: Choreographic Knowledge and Aesthetic Empiricism
Hetty Blades
Part 2: Methods and Formats
Chapter 3: Enhancing Choreographic Objects: Traces, Texts and Tales of a Journey through Dance
Sarah Whatley
Chapter 4: Research as Co-Habitation: Experimental Composition across Theory and Practice
Erin Brannigan, Matthew Day and Lizzie Thomson
Chapter 5: Process as Performance or Variations of Swinging
Annette Arlander
Chapter 6: Crystallisations, Constellations and Sharings: Exploring Somatic Process with Sandra Reeve
Emma Meehan
Part 3: Documentation, Dissemination and Scores
Chapter 7: Exploring Creative Thought in Choreography Together: Process Documentation with the Australian Dance Theatre
Scott deLahunta, Jordan Beth Vincent, Elizabeth Old, Garry Stewart, James Leach and Catherine J. Stevens
Chapter 8: Architectural and Choreographic Diagrams as Processual Modes of Sharing Creative Practices
Ariadne Mikou
Chapter 9: Dancing on the Page/Writing on the Stage: Sharing Dance (and) Theatre Process Documents – The Drawings of Jan Fabre
Edith Cassiers
Chapter 10: Animating the Archive: Voguing, Sampling and Queering Tatsumi Hijikata
Sara Jansen
Part 4: Politics and Labour
Chapter 11: The ‘Visible Choreographer’: Trust and Power, Reviewing Choreography as a Social Practice
Kathinka Walter-Høeg
Chapter 12: The Use of Uselessness
Claudia Kappenberg
Chapter 13: Resisting Explanation: The Politics of Audience Development and Possibilities of Form
Nicola Conibere
Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
This book arose from a symposium called ‘Performing Process: Sharing Practice’ which took place at Coventry University in June 2014. Some of the chapters evolved from contributions on the day, whereas others were invited from scholars and practitioners working in the area. We would like to thank our co-convenor David Bennett and all of the presenters at that symposium for their role in shaping the theme of this book. We would also like to thank the American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR) for their financial contribution and Coventry University for hosting the event. In editing the book, we were supported by Jessica Lovett at Intellect who has been extremely helpful and encouraging throughout the process. We would also like to thank Scott deLahunta for his feedback and all of the authors for their insights, creativity and commitment to the publication.
Introduction
Performing Process: Sharing Dance and Choreographic Practice
Hetty Blades and Emma Meehan
Introduction

We live in a changing world of dance, and the level of discourse regarding dance and choreographic practices has been raised considerably compared to the mid or late twentieth century.
(Birringer 2013: 8)
As dance scholar Johannes Birringer points out, the articulation and examination of dance and choreographic practice currently plays a significant role in dance studies. In particular, as Birringer goes on to explain, since the mid to late twentieth century, dance studies has been established as an academic discipline within universities and ‘research into dance composition and documentation is also conducted by the practitioners themselves’ (2013: 8). A result of this shift is that processes of making are being increasingly examined, shared and discussed in a variety of artistic and performative contexts. More than ever before, post–show discussions, artistic blogs, books, archives, exhibitions, seminars and sharings provide opportunities for choreographers to explain their individual methodologies. The chapters in this collection examine the methods, formats, politics and philosophy of sharing choreographic process in recent years, aiming to investigate the theoretical repercussions and the implications on forms of knowledge, the appreciation of dance, political structures, education and artistic practices.
There are many possible reasons for the increased interest in process discourse: a product of dance’s relationship with the academy, an attempt to increase audiences in an austere climate, or a product of the ‘information age’ and the increasing access to digital technologies. What is clear is that the articulation of process is not exclusive to scholarly contexts; dance makers working across a range of cultural and stylistic disciplines are finding multiple methods to explain their process and share their ‘choreographic thinking’ (Forsythe 2009) and ‘choreographic thinking tools’ (deLahunta, Clarke and Barnard 2012). This vocalization of the artists’ process and intentions challenges post–structuralist and traditional aesthetically focussed ways of thinking about the role of the artist, revising empiricist ideas of ‘letting the work speak for itself’, foregrounding concepts of authorship and intentionality as well as interaction and exchange.
This book addresses performance as an ongoing process as much as a finished product, and how revealing the mechanics of this process has increasingly become part of the current dance and choreographic landscape. There are many cases where the process is foregrounded as part of a performance, drawing attention to the labour, thinking and actions that combine to generate the event. However, there is a possible distinction to be made between works in which the processes are the performance, and instances where practices themselves are shared, often in forms that do not neatly correlate to the terms ‘work’, ‘performance’ or ‘rehearsal’. Practice might not be conceived of by the artist as a process of working towards finishing a product, but rather an ongoing search for refinement, or operating in a state of exploration. Artists often invite others to watch their practice through ‘sharings’ and open studios. Such instances are not necessarily rehearsals or performances in the conventional sense, but instead invite others to attend to the exploratory, experimental aspects of dancing and dance making.
Furthermore, the sharing of practice is sometimes presented through text, image, participatory activity or talking. Sharing practice can be said to offer supporting information that could inform the appreciation and understanding of the work, as seen in pre–or post–show discussions, exhibitions, lectures or workshops. Artist–led publications are another important facet of this field, and many of these publications now include audio–visual technology to support the dissemination of process and practice, such as Material for the Spine (2008) by Steve Paxton, Improvisation Technologies (1999) by William Forsythe, Nick Haffner, Volker Kuchelmeister and Christian Ziegler, A Choreographer’s Score (2012) by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Bojana Cvejić and Capturing Intention by Emio Greco | PC. The potential of technology for sharing process is vast, demonstrated by websites such as Siobhan Davies RePlay and Motion Bank, as well as many other artist blogs and online mixed–media formats.
At the same time, the sharing of practice is not necessarily easy to distinguish from the performing of process. For example, when movement practitioners develop an ongoing practice that they share at various points, this might be on the one hand to clarify aspects of the practice, or it might be considered as a performance for audience enjoyment. In such cases, philosophical questions are posed about when an event might be considered a performance. Likewise, documentation and scores, which are also explored in this collection, sometimes are a means of encapsulating and sharing the practice of the artist, rather than documenting a particular ‘work’; however, these can also be integrated into a performance. The distinctions, therefore between practice, process, performing and sharing are fluid, contributing to the richness of the field for theoretical probing. The contributors to this collection explore how and why the processes and practices of choreography are increasingly being shared or performed, as well as the ontological and practical implications.
Histories and Themes of Performing Process: Inscriptions
Although we cannot cover all the ways in which process is performed and shared historically in this introduction, we will offer a glimpse of some of the forerunners that stimulate important questions for this book. The performance of process and sharing of practice has arguably been central to modern and contemporary dance practice. For example, the late 1950s and early 1960s saw a flurry of creative choreographic activity in the United States, stimulated by artists associated with Judson Dance Theatre in New York, such as Yvonne Rainer, Steve Paxton, Ruth Emerson and David Gordon. One of t