The blog will remain active until the close of the project on 1 September 2010. Click on the title of the post to read and leave comments.
In addition to the upcoming COVER#2 festival (22-27 March 2010 in Amsterdam) two other major European events this spring focus on artistic responses to the issue of dance reconstruction.
1)
From 2 through 13 February 2010, the Kaaitheater in Brussels organised Re:Move, exploring dance repertoire: “Dance is essentially a transient art form because it is hard to note down. In our Re:Move festival we are presenting performers who make transmitting or reconstructing dance the subject of their production. (…) In each case, the starting point is the here and now – the artist’s own methods – rather than performing an ‘historical’ reconstruction.” The festival included the Re:Move Colloquium on 12 February: “How can dance be reconstructed? Is it desirable? Can or should one update dance material or use it in a new context? These are some of the many questions asked at this colloquium.”
2)
At the 2nd Biennial Dance Instruction Workshop/Dance Plan Germany scheduled from 1 to 7 March 2010 at the Folkwang University Essen, students from all dance colleges in Germany will devote seven days to the subject of artistic reconstruction in dance. “Not long ago the history of modern, contemporary dance could only be found in books and dance archives. The great works disappeared in the mists of time as the main interest of artists lay in working in the here and now. However, choreographers are these days becoming more interested in the reconstruction and maintenance of choreographies in the repertoire of their own and other companies.”
In a different but related vein, the following project looks at the potential of developing software that can access “historic static sources and to translate their referentiality into visuality, thus revealing its motoric and kinetic aspects. The new computer application will aid research in reconstructing dance by creating animated movement sequences. It will allow to transfer movement content from a variety of sources into a visual, three-dimensional representation. The researcher will be given a great amount of flexibility, offering a wide range of possibilities and choices to connect visualized body postures to movement phrases.” The project Visualizing (the Derra de Moroda) Dance Archives started in October 2008 and is currently planned for a period of three years. It is conducted by the dance department of Salzburg University with technical support from the department for computer sciences. Head of the project is Prof. Dr. Claudia Jeschke. The software development is lead by Dr. Henner Drewes.
If you know of other related events and projects — we invite you to add them here in comments.
The third issue of the ARTI Journal RTRSRCH will be devoted to the topic of [NOTATION]. ARTI (Artistic Research, Theory and Innovation) is a research group at the Amsterdam School of the Arts actively engaged in practice-based research processes and chaired by Marijke Hoogenboom, professor of Art Practice & Development and Henk Borgdorff, professor of Art Theory & Research. The issue will feature several contributions from Inside Movement Knowledge as well as material from other ARTI group members. The full contents list will be posted here later. This post is to speculate on the title [NOTATION] which is in brackets on purpose to indicate a freedom from context. Most domains have some form of notation that is useful for recoverable gestures, recording for future transactions, problem-solving and communicative shared action. Notations have properties that afford this range of use-functions. But if notations are a type of information artefact, other artefacts have similar properties: models, documents, classification systems, indexes, diagrams and graphs. So, this issue of the ARTI journal is not singularly concerned with notation as it might be used in the context of, e.g. dance, music, mathematics, morse code or programming languages. [NOTATION] resists the idea that there needs to be a comprehensive ‘system’ for notation to function as such; notations may even support interoperabiliity between systems.
(Some inspiration for these ideas comes from the cognitive sciences and in particular the work of Thomas Green and Alan Blackwell on the cognitive dimensions of notation systems; but also from Nelson Goodman’s seminal Languages of Art).
The topic of reconstruction triggers many questions related to the key theme of IMK (the documentation, transmission and preservation of contemporary choreographic practice). One of our concerns is who is the ‘reconstruction’ for? Reconstruction is an opportunity to explore connections between art making, research and theoretical practices. Starting points may be shared (materials and methods, analytic or non-analytic perspectives, questions and conceptual frameworks, etc.), but how is eventual ‘output’ of any particular process valued by different communities of practice? (e.g. professional arts, higher education and cultural preservation)
It emerged from the ‘meeting on reconstruction’ organised on 31 October 2009 during Lab #3 that ‘reconstruction (or restaging, recreation, revival, etc.) might be best realised in the context of relations, emerging in the gap between ‘performances that remain and documents that disappear’ (Paul Clarke). Who documents for the purpose of reconstruction and how? Thinking about Marion Bastien’s proposal that she functions as a notator as a ‘filter’, trying to capture only the basic ‘parameters’ of a work. A question inspired by Marion’s presentation: What if education in one of the existing dance notation systems such as Laban included a broader training in documentation methodologies? Should the original maker be considered the primary source of information about the intention of a work or does intention manifest more ‘truthfully’ in the audience’s response to it? Or in the intentions of the individual who has undertaken the reconstruction process as Martin Nachbar suggested.
Documentation of Lab #3 will be available soon to include links to related reconstruction projects like COVER and the upcoming co-production of de Appel with STUK Kunstencentrum (Leuven) titled “The manifold (after) lives of performance” 13 Nov — 15 Nov 2009.
There are two fundamental questions for the IMK project: firstly, what forms of choreographic and dance knowledge are constituted through the development of these ‘case studies’, and secondly, how can these be exchanged and increase in value through circulation. These questions are related to the topics of choreographic resources and knowledge transfer and are shared by a number of high profile dance research projects mentioned elsewhere on the site, some of whom are represented by the International Associates Network, some involved in the Choreographic Objects workshops. We are curious to know what you think and what other projects there are concerned with similar issues (e.g. the e-dance project).
IMK is funded by the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science for research projects through its Foundation for Innovation Alliance. The Alliance funds new inter-institutional consortia focusing on improving the exchange of knowledge between non-for-profit institutes in the public sector, small and medium sized enterprises and the universities of applied sciences. One of the ‘meta’ goals of the IMK project, while not explicitly articulated in its ‘aims and objectives’ is to make a critical contribution to the development of ‘knowledge production’ discourses and policies from the unique perspectives of arts practice. We will be researching and developing this contribution over the next year and would be interested to know of other relevant projects in this area.
Click cover image to see table of contents. A PDF copy in two versions is available here: large [42 mb] and small [6.6 mb].
