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- Volume 38, Issue 215, 2023
Maska - Volume 38, Issue 215-216, 2023
Volume 38, Issue 215-216, 2023
- Editorial
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Editorial
Authors: Jasmina Založnik and Pia BrezavščekThe impetus for the theme of this issue is the fact that interest in somatic practices has visibly expanded in Slovenian contemporary art in the last decades. These are holistic approaches to movement that explore movement from the perspective of how it can be understood and felt from within and not how it is performed and seen, which tends to open completely different insights into the connection between mind and body. At the turn of the last century, somatic practices, by offering insights into anatomy and raising awareness of human movement processes, began to make a significant impact on the field of dance education and art in the West. Somatic practices are traditionally found in many non-Western cultures and practised by many indigenous peoples, where they are the cornerstone of non-dualistic spiritual systems. Contemporary somatic practices develop less invasive physical approaches to prevent injury, are useful in post-injury rehabilitation and help to change entrenched harmful movement patterns, while opening possibilities for building holistic dance approaches.
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- Articles
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A Small Dictionary of Somatic Practices
Selected most widespread forms of somatic practices referred to by the authors of the articles in this issue are described.
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The Alternative in Somatic within the South Korean Context
By Jae Lee KimThe article discusses how the phenomenon of somatics in South Korea produces practices, knowledge, and criticism within the institutional and cultural context. Over the past decade, somatic methodologies have been applied in the fields of the contemporary dance scene, with choreographers using somatics for developing dance techniques, and as a tool for choreography. However, there is no precise Korean translation for the term ‘somatics’. As a result, various dance forms that incorporate principles and concepts from Western countries, such as Body-Mind Centering® and Feldenkrais, as well as holistic styles of movement, are often loosely referred to as ‘somatics’. On the other hand, interest in somatics is influenced by the trend of new materialism, which approaches movement and subjectivity in a more microscopic way through the conceptual infusion of materiality/immateriality. Rather than just adopting global trends in dance methodologies and seeking formal alternatives, this discussion aims to explore the phenomenon of somatics within South Korea’s dance institutions and cultural context, as well as its potential in choreography.
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Les liaisons dangereuses- Dangerous Relations between Dance Practice and Choreographic Work
More LessDragana Alfirević is questioning the tensions between dance practice and choreography, by presenting three projects from her own dance history: Obed by Tehvan Ratsanik and Torvald Silver, Physical Manifestations by Snježana Premuš and Inside the Outside by Deborah Hay. She presents the somatic aspect of each process and her questions revolve around openness and learning. She believes it is useful that we create new choreographic tools which would be in tune with practice and not superior to it.
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- Review
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On Dragon Hunt and Mutual Transformability after Samuel R. Delany
More LessTaking Samuel Delany’s SciFi novel Stars In My Pocket Like Grains of Sand as a point of departure, in a joint effort with other artists we’ve labored a work which is at once a dance, fantasy, and a queer road film. Its protagonists, animated by the weirdening landscape of the Dalmatian Hinterland and enraptured by the sound of the conch shell, partake in the melding tradition of Dragon Hunting. An exploration in somatics, media translation, mimicry, and the sensuous, Dragon Hunt is a result of mutual transformability exercised between fellow artist friends and different machine learning algorithms.
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- Articles
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From Tigers and Chameleons: A Dialogue Text about Somatic Practices within Dance with Ellen Söderhult and Thiago Granato
Authors: Ellen Söderhult and Thiago GranatoThe introduction of somatic practices to the contemporary dance field and education serves as a starting point for this dialogue around how dance can be practiced, taught as well as created. In this textual conversation, Ellen Söderhult and Thiago Granato dive into the topic of possible somatic approaches within dance, and unfold it in different directions. Through shared and individual experiences, they bring up future expectations, present questions and past experiences through reflections, references, speculations, metaphors and provocations.
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SomaHut: ‘Somatic Hut. A Space: Real and Imaginary, Concrete and Abstract, where People Gather and Meet’.
More LessSomaHut is a platform launched in 2020 under the aegis of Multimedia Hut – an art organization from Zagreb, as a response to the needs articulated at the initial meeting of the “Somatic Network,” organized within the festival Improspekcije 2017.I The initiative aims to create a structure of networking of various groups, projects, associations and individuals, connected through an interest in the moving/living body in relation to different branches and fields of human activity, and through the need to affirm a somatic approach in the context of arts, education and care.
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Somatic Practice and Dance Improvisation in Non-Traditional Contexts: Ethics, Responsibility, Hospitality
More LessThis article reflects upon an experience of facilitating somatic movement and dance improvisation in a university as a non-traditional context for these practices. This was part of a short post-doctoral research project held in 2021-22 called Moving the modes of encounter: Embodying (in) equalities in the university responding to the theme of equity, diversity and inclusion. It explores the ethics of encounters between the researcher and the institution; the researcher and the participants; and between the participants themselves. It argues for the affordances of somatic practices on developing foundations of trust, and the limits posed by institutional constraints on duration and timing with the aim to inform future attempts of doing somatics in non-traditional contexts.
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Simple Principles – Complex Structures
More LessIn 2012, I began to intensively research perception and physicality in the hyper-productive world of today, including the related questions of perceiving one’s own body, the body of the other, and the relationship towards the environment. Applying somatic dance systems, I focused on studying socio-choreographic situations, observing body writing and perception images, doing reflections with various (target) audiences and experts, and generating specific scores and presentation formats.
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Captivating. And a Captor.
More LessThis text is a reflection of participant Radharani Pernarčič to the workshop led by Snježana Premuš and Zrinka Simčič Mihanović that took place between 7th and 8th of June 2023 at the Old Power Station in Ljubljana.
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Choreographic Historicizing of Contemporary Dance and its Predicaments
By Rok VevarIn his article, Rok Vevar takes a closer look at some recent events that communicate the history of dance expressionism and modernism in Slovenia. In doing so, he critically interrogates both the memoiristic and self-documentary, i.e. private, nature of the historicization of expressive dance, as well as the loose referentiality of choreographic production.
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- Review
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In Orbit
By Samo OleamiThe author interprets Danijela Zajcs performance Gravitacija perspektive (Gravity of Perspecitve), the second part of trilogy in progress, which methodologically combines and builds on the procedures of the artists previous works - sound, climbing and movement on suspended ropes, and elements of contemporary dance. As the writer points out, this is a notable crossing of genres; the work moves from contemporary circus to dance theatre in the context of the artist›s oeuvre.
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- Article
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Girls, Fight!
By Zala DobvšekThe author writes about the performance series Spolna vzgoja II (Sexual education II) by Tjaša Črnigoj, more precisely about the fifth performance Borba (Fight) and the theatre performance Punce (Girls) and thinks about the bonds that tie the past, the present and the future on the field of the struggle for women’s reproductive rights and their sexual lives.
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