Choreographic Practices - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2014

Existing qualitative approaches within the field of music perception and embodied music cognition provide scientific models for the evaluation of physical gestures and their expressive impact in performance. This article examines the ways in which qualitative research methodologies and outcomes may be used as stimuli for new choreographic research, drawing upon the original performance ‘Woman=Music=Desire’. Beginning with an illustrated account of expressive features of piano performance by music researchers such as François Delalande and Mark Thompson, recent departures in choreographic and related artistic practice that indicate a growing interest in the expressive function of musical corporeity are discussed. Through exploring such work, the intersubjective and kinesthetic relationship occurring between musician and spectator is explored via an examination of gestural empathy. Thus, through re-appropriating instrumental gestures within practice-led research that interrogates the close relationship between corporeity and expressivity, the musician’s body emerges as a dancing body with the creative potential for a new and exciting departure in choreographic practice. A trailer to the performance ‘Woman=Music=Desire’ may be found at http://www.imogene-newland.co.uk/perf_women_md.php.

This photo essay documents the research and production of the performance Zebra, while avoiding a strict replication of the performance. This photo collection is an independent artwork, reflecting on the potential for image-based work to simultaneously represent encounters in performance and artistic research. The essay operates in the choreographic style of the performance, suggesting a connection between visual patterns and the selection of a lineage of events. The repetition, replication, and representation of a sunset is key, as it uses the photographic medium to connect the fleeting aspect of the performance with the occurrence of a sunset. The Zebra’s appearance is mediated through digital technology, a metaphor for choreographic camouflage.

This article develops a notion of time-specificity of performance. It begins by taking a temporal approach to performance through the philosophy of Henri Bergson. It looks at three artists/collectives: Tehching Hsieh; Every House Has a Door and Janez Janša, Janez Janša and Janez Janša. Their practices play with notions of the present, past and future, and by doing so set new terms for a temporal aesthetics of experience. Time-specificity opens up reconsiderations of pivotal notions within performance such as repetition, documentation and freedom.

During the discussion on Dance and Politics at Southbank Center, London, in November 2010, Xavier Le Roy suggested that ‘We should look at him as we would look at the lion in the zoo, only of course the lion would not talk to us’. Later that evening he presented his work Low Pieces (2009–2011). Drawing on the particularity of Le Roy’s choreographic suggestion and on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben and Paolo Virno, this article attempts an analysis of the dramaturgical structure of Low Pieces in order to discuss connections drawn between the movement of the human animal and the way in which it uses language, between this movement and that of other animals and living organizations, but most importantly, between the human movement of the linguistic animal and current understandings of the relationship between dance and politics.

The performance of stillness is a potent tool of contemporary activism, utilized in the Chipko movement against forest privatization in Uttarakhand, India, protests against the Keystone XL Pipeline in North America, and Pick Up America’s litter clean-up across the United States. These activists choreograph stillness to interrupt the ontological flow of modernity – and concurrently the material flow of capital and resources – in order to intervene in the unsustainable components of the neo-liberal capitalist system. This investigation highlights the body as central to interrupting regimes of capital and subjectivity through non-violent means – in this case, through what the author calls still-activism.

This article discusses the approach that Yvonne Rainer has taken to conserving her Trio A, a work made originally in 1966 and which has been performed many times since, including now by custodians or ‘transmitters’ of the dance. The discussion is contextualized within the broader frame of the question of whether and how the legacy of modern and postmodern dance might be maintained for the benefit of future dancers and their capacity to develop contemporary dance art – particularly at a time when a generation of seminal artists who also voice their desire regarding these matters is passing away. I use the question ‘What is a transmitter?’ and an alternative notion of ‘translator’, drawing on philosopher Paul Ricoeur, to highlight the complex role of dancer-performers, not only in the creation and performance of work(s) but also in maintaining a repertoire.

In October 2012, German dancer and philosopher Aurelia Baumgartner presented her 90-minute production Tanzende Pferde: Spiegelungen im Raum/Dancing Horses: Reflections in Space. Set in an arena, with a raised stage and a projection screen in the background, it provided a performed anthology of the relationship between human and horse. In the article, Meyer-Dinkgräfe discusses the production based on viewing a 40-minute DVD edited by Baumgartner from footage from two cameras recorded during the two 90-minute performances. The author’s testimony is complemented by Baumgartner’s comments and the context of critical literature exploring the relation of performance and animals that has emerged over the past fifteen to twenty years.