Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement

214 Pages·2015·3.27 MB·English

by  Pil Hansen

Dance Dramaturgy
New World Choreographies
Series Editors: Rachel Fensham and Peter M. Boenisch
Editorial Assistant: Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
Editorial Advisory Board: Ric Allsop, Falmouth University, UK; Susan Leigh
Foster, UCLA, USA; Lena Hammergren, University of Stockholm, Sweden;
Gabriele Klein, University of Hamburg, Germany; Andre Lepecki, NYU, USA;
Avanthi Meduri, Roehampton University, UK
New World Choreographies presents advanced yet accessible studies of a rich
field of new choreographic work which is embedded in the global, transna-
tional, and intermedial context. It introduces artists, companies, and scholars
who contribute to the conceptual and technological rethinking of what
constitutes movement, blurring old boundaries between dance, theatre, and
performance.
The series considers new aesthetics and new contexts of production and pres-
entation, and discusses the multi-sensory, collaborative, and transformative
potential of these new world choreographies.
Gretchen Schiller & Sarah Rubidge (e ditors)
CHOREOGRAPHIC DWELLINGS
Prarthana Purkayastha
INDIAN MODERN DANCE, FEMINISM AND TRANSNATIONALISM
Royona Mitra
AKRAM KHAN AND NEW INTERCULTURALISM
Forthcoming titles include:
Cristina Rosa
BRAZILIAN BODIES AND THEIR CHOREOGRAPHIES OF IDENTIFICATION
New World Choreographies
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–35986–5 (hardback)
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing
order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address
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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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Dance Dramaturgy
Modes of Agency, Awareness and
Engagement
Edited by
Pil Hansen
and
Darcey Callison
Introduction, selection, and editorial matter © Pil Hansen and
Darcey Callison 2015
Individual chapters © Contributors 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
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save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
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permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
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Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-55797-4 ISBN 978-1-137-37322-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137373229
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Series Editors’ Preface ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
Notes on Contributors xiv
1 Introduction 1
P il Hansen
Part I Agency
2 Propensity: Pragmatics and Functions of Dramaturgy in
Contemporary Dance 31
Bojana Bauer
3 Errancy as Work: Seven Strewn Notes for Dance
Dramaturgyy 51
A ndré Lepecki
4 Thinking No-One’s Thought 67
M aaike Bleeker
Part II Awareness
5 Distributed Dramaturgies: Navigating with Boundary
Objects 87
F reya Vass-Rhee
6 Improvisation Practices and Dramaturgical
Consciousness: A Workshop 106
Vida L. Midgelow
7 The Dramaturgy of Performance Generating Systems 124
P il Hansen
v
vi Contents
Part III Engagement
8 Field Notes: In the Studio with Ralph Lemon and
Donald Byrd 145
Katherine Profeta and Thomas F. DeFrantz
9 Dance Dramaturgy as a Process of Learning: koosil-ja’s
mech[a]OUTPUTT 163
Nanako Nakajima with performing koosil-ja
10 Dance Presenting and Dramaturgyy 180
B onnie Brooks
Index 195
List of Illustrations
Front Cover: (f-b) Mairéad Filgate, Katie Ewald, and
Marie Claire Forté.
Public Recordings’ dancers futuring in Relay. Enwave
Theatre, Toronto, Canada, 2010 (photo by Ömer Yükseker)
5.1 William Forsythe and Freya Vass-Rhee in rehearsal for
Selon with Amancio Gonzalez, Festspielhaus Hellerau,
Germany, 2013 (photo by www.mentzos.com) 95
5.2 Piecemaker interface detail and Forsythe’s comments
from rehearsals for Theatrical Arsenal 2, 2009 (photo
by Freya Vass-Rhee) 98
7.1 Public Recordings’ dancers futuring in Relay, Enwave
Theatre, Toronto, Canada, 2010 (photo by Ömer
Yükseker) 129
7.2 Public recordings’ dancers futuring in Relay, Enwave
Theatre, Toronto, Canada, 2010 (photo by Ömer
Yükseker) 130
7.3 Ame Henderson and James Long futuring memory in
an A cts of Memoryyexperiment, The Theatre Centre,
Toronto, Canada, 2011 (photo by Pil Hansen) 134
8.1 Discussing the undiscussable: resonances of race in
ballet, Thomas F. DeFrantz in The Sleeping Beauty
Notebook, choreography by Donald Byrd, New York,
2005 (photo by Chris Bennion) 154
8.2 After 100 years of sleep, The Sleeping Beauty Notebook,
choreography by Donald Byrd, New York, 2005
(photo by Chris Bennion) 156
8.3 Djédjé Gervais, David Thomson, and Gesel Mason in
Come Home Charley Patton, 2004 (photo by Dan Merlo) 159
8.4 K atherine Profeta and Ralph Lemon in rehearsal, 2014
(photo provided by Maggie Allesee, National Center
for Choreography) 161
vii
viii List of Illustrations
9.1 Nanako starts to recite her texts, while koosil-ja
starts walking silently on the stage (photo provided
by koosil-ja) 163
9.2 As both sequences of the Noh performance are
synchronised and as her previous performance is
projected on the screen, koosil-ja walks from the
bridge to the main stage area, singing, “I have come to
Dojoji. I have come to Dojoji … I hurried, so I have come.
I will go to pray to the bell” (photo provided by koosil-ja) 1 67
9.3 Following the Noh performer and her own previous
performance on the screen, koosil-ja continues
dancing Ranbyoshi steps on stage; this image shows
Ranbyoshi, which is the climax of the Dojoji, but the
quietest and most repetitive part (photo provided by
koosil-ja) 170
9.4 When Nanako finishes reciting her texts, koosil-ja
switches her movement from R anbyoshi to K yu-no-mai
by dancing around the stage very quickly to the
beat of the drum until she reaches the end of the
first half of mech[a]OUTPUT. At this point she jumps
into the bell hanging from the ceiling. Then, there is
silence. Nanako begins reciting her texts again (photo
provided by koosil-ja) 175
10.1 Merce Cunningham Dance Company Legacy Tour:
Family Dance Day on the Ida Crown Plaza, Israel
Museum, Jerusalem, Israel, 2011; Sculpture: Anish
Kapoor, Turning the World Upside Down (photo by
Bonnie Brooks) 181
10.2 Merce Cunningham Dance Company Legacy Tour:
events in galleries, tech crew, musicians, and dancers
in rehearsal, Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel, 2011
(photo by Anna Finke) 183
10.3 Merce Cunningham Dance Company Legacy Tour:
panel discussion at the Merce Campus, housed at
Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, (l-r) Bonnie
Brooks, Andrea Weber, Trevor Carlson, Robert
Swinston, Daniel Madoff; Under the Mountain
Festival, Jerusalem Season of Culture, Jerusalem,
Israel, 2011 (photo by Oscar Abosh) 191
Series Editors’ Preface
Choreography in the global context of the 21st century involves
performance practices that are often fluid, mediated, interdiscipli-
nary, collaborative, and interactive. Choreographic projects and
choreographic thinking circulate rapidly within the transnational
flows of contemporary performance, prompting new aesthetics and
stretching the disciplinary boundaries of established dance studies.
Crossing the borders of arts disciplines, histories, and cultures, these
new world choreographies utilise dance techniques and methods
to new critical ends in the body’s interaction with the senses, the
adoption of technology, the response to history and present-day
conditions of political and social transformation, and in its consti-
tution of spectator communities.
As a result, well-rehearsed approaches to understanding chore-
ography through dance lineages and canonical structures, or as the
product of individual artists, give way to new modes of production and
representation, leading to an ever extending notion of what consti-
tutes dance in performance. Choreographic practice and research on
choreography draw on new methods of improvisation, (auto-)biog-
raphy, collective creation and immersion in ways that challenge estab-
lished (Western) notions of subjectivity, of the artist as creator, or that
unsettle the ‘objective distance’ between the critic and the work. The
post-national, inter-medial, and interdisciplinary contexts of digital
and social media, festival circuits, rapidly changing political econo-
mies, and global world politics call for further critical attention.
With an openness to these new worlds, in which dance so adeptly
manoeuvres, this book series aims to provide critical and histori-
cised perspectives on the artists, concepts, and cultures shaping this
creative field of new world choreographies. The series will provide a
platform for fresh ways to understand and reflect upon what chore-
ography means to its various audiences, and to the wider field of
international dance and performance studies. Additionally, it will
provide a forum for new scholars to expand upon their ideas and
to map out new knowledge paradigms that introduce this diverse
ix