Skip to content
1981
  1. Home
  2. A-Z Publications
  3. Choreographic Practices
  4. Previous Issues
  5. Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Choreographic Practices - Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Volume 14, Issue 1

Volume 14, Issue 1, 2023

Language: English
  • Editorial

      • Editorial

        https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00054_2

        This editorial is written by Lee Miller, one of ’ editors (along with Dani Abulhawa, Amaara Raheem and Simon Ellis). Here, Lee discusses the idea of uncertainty and its potential as a tool for resistance. Reflecting on the submissions in this issue, Lee considers how uncertainty might be used within choreographic practices as a way to rethink what we believe to be true, or certain, about ourselves, bodies in movement and the world more broadly.

  • Articles

      • Listening to choreography

        https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00055_1

        This article argues that Michal Grover-Friedlander’s choreography (2021) relates to the domains of dance and of music – unheard and heard – in a new way, expanding current typologies of dance and music. It maintains that music-less choreography can nevertheless be perceived as generating music. , the article claims, portrays a relationship of dance not directly to music but rather to listening to music; the choreography solicits listening, inviting the audience to perform the act of listening to movement. is contextualized by providing a brief overview of the relationship between music and dance. Two examples are considered in some detail. Both explore the relationship between dance and unheard music: Xavier Le Roy’s choreography (2005) and Mark Appelbaum’s musical composition (1995).

    • Enacting in : Adapting Butoh principles in mixed-media performance

      https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00056_1

      The article draws from the Japanese phenomenological approach (Kyoto School) concerning the embodied experience of . The article aims at the distillation of Butoh principles and its creative adaptation in a mixed-media performance titled . As a method of choreographic practice, the concept of is the matrix of Butoh notation (Butoh-fu). The western term for would be ‘image-worlds’, which is encountered in the choreographic practice of Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton and Michael Chekhov (Barbe 2011). Butoh-fu is a chain of (scores/atmospheres). Consisting of that require full psychophysical engagement of the performer, Butoh-fu, one could dare to say, resonates with Haiku or Zen Koans (Mikami 2016). Under this frame, the performance explores notions of temporality availing in the processual nature of to address the issue of ‘politics of time in neo-liberal societies’ (Han 2017). The performance borrows its title from the concept of a Möbius Strip by mathematicians A. F. Möbius and J. B. Listing; having only one side and remaining in one piece when split down the middle, characterized by alternative modalities of connectivity. focuses on the effects of war upon ‘ordinary people’ who suddenly find themselves amidst a crisis that urges them to reconsider their principles and discover dormant values. This is a decisive turning point: a . The performance is a bittersweet embodied poem that wishes to offer a crack of light amidst the deep darkness of the current warfare. This article documents part of the practice-based research that includes the creation process and theoretical framework of . The performance seals the studio work, where Butoh training was deployed as a methodological tool to sensitize performers’ psychophysical compresence. Furthermore, while allowing themselves to be observed by the gaze of the audience, they eventually access shifting time perceptions through the performative experience.

    • Human / nature: Interviews with Audrey Rachelle, Kelly Todd and Isabel Umali

      https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00060_7

      In this piece, I interview three dancers and choreographers – Audrey Rachelle, Kelly Todd and Isabel Umali – about their recent works on sustainability and climate change. All three dancers share a background in immersive theatre, having performed in Punchdrunk’s for many years. Their accounts illustrate a productive application of immersive theatre sensibilities and choreographic practices onto issues of sustainability and environmental justice. Rachelle, Todd and Umali’s pieces are borne out of a heedful relationship with their particular surroundings, as well as a thoughtful engagement with their audiences. This piece seeks to bring critical attention to new works while considering the productive intersection of immersive techniques and ecologically minded choreographic endeavours.

  • Video Essay

      • The dancing body as a living archive

        https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00058_3

        This autoethnographic video essay is based on , a performance presented in the seven-storey Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen (Scotland) in May 2017. Focusing on the phenomenology of the dancing body, the performance unfolded the complexity and richness of gestures. Departing from the assumption that a soloist moves with their shadows (gestures from previous dances), I argue for the plural shaping every singular gesture. Combining dance and anthropology, this video essay revisits the notions of and , and proposes a reflection on the intermingling of time, gestures, memory, knowledge and history. Claiming that the (dancing) body is a living archive, I use the metaphor of shadow as a linkage between bodies and movements. Drawing on performance studies and contemporary philosophy, the work emphasizes the way artistic creation generates knowledge, asking the value of embodied practices.

        Link to video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgCTOWmarko. The video essay is also available as an online resource for the digital edition of this article (Online Resource 1: ‘The body as a living archive’).

Volumes & issues

Most Cited Most Cited RSS feed

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error