Choreographic Practices - Volume 8, Issue 1, 2017

This article outlines a collaborative enquiry between a dancer and a poet. It considers some past and present collaborations between poets and dancers before framing the authors’ interest in the traditions of North American postmodern dance and European Physical Theatre. Utilizing Daniel Stern’s theory of vitality dynamics and his interest in interdisciplinary artistic collaboration, the authors consider some key aspects of their creative work in the light of these ideas, focusing in particular on the usefulness of the concept of syntax for reflecting on the interrelation between language and movement.

When words and dance are made inextricable in performance, potential exists for disciplinary conventions to be cracked ajar, creating space for minor forms of practice that defy conventional expectations. In such circumstances, the relationship between bodies of language and bodies of motion is intensified and made visible. This article discusses the interplay of words and dance in the choreography Radio Strainer by Longley (2013), and through Simone Forti’s practice of Logomotion. The studio practices of Forti and the Radio Strainer rehearsals are discussed in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of a minor literature, Andrew Pickering’s discussion of the mangle of practice and Sally Gardner’s work on translation and mistranslation.

This article introduces and analyses two approaches to experiencing and interpreting confluences of the spoken word and movement when training or performing solo movement improvisation. The first is Metronome – a training strategy invented by two of my earliest improvisation teachers, Peter Trotman and Andrew Morrish – in which there is a deliberate coming together of speaking and moving. The second is Melodic Lines – a training or loose performance score that I have developed – in which spoken language emerges from sensation. Sondra Fraleigh’s comments on the ‘fragmented “umms” and “ahhhs”, pauses and detours’ that she notes in everyday speech open a useful perspective on the way in which Metronome encourages uninhibited production of words in synchronicity with movement. A consideration of dance ethnographer Deidre Sklar’s views on linguistic meaning – articulated in terms of the ‘somatic reverberations’ of words and her proposition that it is possible to ‘bid words to participate in the somatic schema they represent’ – frames my consideration of Melodic Lines as a strategy in which words are experienced as embodied knowledge. These approaches are further contextualized within the related improvisatory discourses of Keith Johnstone, Ruth Zaporah, Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay.

This text is a simultaneous reflection on and re-entry into a research enquiry that revolves around the intersection of linguistic and kinaesthetic knowledges in a dance practice. It takes a somewhat autobiographical approach, partly to render the convoluted research process more transparent, and partly because the performative act of writing the unfolding of the process forms a key aspect of the text’s proposal concerning the iterative cycle of practice-based research. Following, reflecting on, and continuing the development of I Object Score – a score based around wordplay – this text employs processes of play and riffing as a means of embodying words both in dancing and writing. Delving into these processes across the different spacetimes of the studio, notebook, laptop, and moving-thinking-speaking-writing body, this text draws out the implications of understanding language as embodied and body as enlanguaged that emerged as being at the heart of the enquiry.

This article examines some of the intricate relationships between the spoken word and the body in the multiple semiotic systems of self-reflexive postmodern dance by example of Portuguese choreographer João Fiadeiro. Two case studies are presented with reference to Fiadeiro’s ‘Composition in Real Time’ (CTR) method, which discuss his choreographic practice in the context of recent theories in contemporary choreography, dance dramaturgy and embodied cognition. In the first section of this paper I scrutinize three solo stage works by Fiadeiro to examine in what ways language in its multiple intermedial forms (live and mediated spoken word, processed audio signal, printed written word, projected written text, hand-written visual forms, and so forth) impacts on the conception of the body, the temporality of dance performance, and consequently the dramaturgical structure in Fiadeiro’s choreography. The second section of this article examines the creative process of Fiadeiro’s recent production for a group of five dancers, What to Do with What Remains (2015), and how the spoken word is employed to report onstage in real time about the experience of performing at the limit of physical exhaustion. Subsequently, I discuss the five dimensions of improvisational awareness in the work from a dramaturgical perspective, and relate my findings to recent research in the field of dance cognition.

This article proposes an understanding of Charlotte Spencer’s Walking Stories (2013) as ‘moving poetry’. It navigates through possible perspectives on the ‘poetic’ to discuss how recorded text and movement interact in this audio-walk for open spaces. In doing so, it moves from Genette’s structuralist analysis of poetry to Kristeva’s notion of the heterogeneity of poetic language to highlight how poetic texts unsettle signifying processes. While recognizing the value of the metaphors that can be constructed through literary approaches, the article proceeds by arguing that a focus on the ontological dimension of poetry can lead to a notion of the ‘poetic’ that engages with the transformative possibilities of choreographic practices in which movement and words intersect. Tracing a line between Gadamer’s and Rancière’s discussions of poiesis as speculative and productive activity, it articulates a reading of Walking Stories as an event that produces as well as being produced. Specifically, the article suggests that, through its use of recorded sound and text, Spencer’s work engages with strategies through which time and space are ‘made’, advocating a rethinking of how subjectivity and community may be configured.

Artefacts is a multi-voiced collection of paraphernalia, documentation and reflection relating to a week-long event (July 2015) that revolved around the work of dancers and poets Julyen Hamilton (Spain) and Billie Hanne (Belgium). Hosted by Chisenhale Dance Space, London, and curated by dance-artist Antonio de la Fe and artist/scholar Robert Vesty, the Space and Words for Dancers event consisted of a six-day workshop for 25 dancers led by Hamilton and Hanne that focused on the use of space and words in performance; two solo performances by Hamilton (Play) and Hanne (Deep Brown Sea); an Evening Talk event with Hamilton and Hanne talking in-depth about their work and the making of poetry and dance; as well as an open-to-the-public Discussion Day that used Open Space Technology (OST) as an organizing tool to discuss the question ‘What skills are required of the dancer and poet to produce poetry and dance in performance?’. Artefacts is a collaboration with graphic designer Tomas Di Giovanni and includes Billie’s Outline, a rationale for bringing words and dance together in the workshop, written by Hanne; poetry by Hamilton and Hanne composed especially for this Words and Dance issue of Choreographic Practices; programme notes from Play and Deep Brown Sea; a reflective piece by Antonio de la Fe on the nature of work for the dance artist as performer entitled That You Took the Workshop Doesn’t Mean You Have Done the Work; a photo-essay by resident photographer Maria Andrews; extracts from the transcript of Evening Talk collated around the headings On Poetry and Dance, On Space, On Making Pieces, On Repeating Pieces and On How it Works; and finally, a nod to the discussion day. Overall, the aim of Artefacts is to pull together some coordinates of the different and multifarious strands of activity that went into and came out of the Space and Words for Dancers work-week, which inspired this special Words and Dance edition of Choreographic Practices, but to do so in a way that might begin to perform and applaud the aesthetic quality of the work with space and words.