Anya Royce
Anya Peterson Royce, Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology, Indiana University.
That the Pilobolus Dance Theatre has created a kind of dance not seen before is clear to everyone—audiences and critics alike. That it has done so based on an unusual creative philosophy is less well-known but even more important for understanding the company’s place in the world of American contemporary dance. Its philosophy is based on two principles: that choreography be created through a collaborative creative process with improvisation at its core; that technique and its mastery is not a prerequisite for dancing or creating dances. That philosophy and its embodiment in the working of the company has maintained its vitality over four decades of performance, across some significant changes in the company structure, and through major cultural shifts. We have much to learn about creativity, collaboration, and what Max Weber called routinized charisma in both theatrical and traditional performance settings from an examination of the self-reinvention of the Pilobolus Dance Theatre.
Living out a philosophy of collaboration, inherently democratic, imposes constraints and poses challenges for a genre that has not always embraced a communally democratic point of view. This is truer of consciously theatrical forms, performed for an audience, than of dance embedded in a cultural context with deep roots and a history of persistence. If we look for similarities between the Pilobolus experience and traditional performance, one fundamental one would be that the dancer-creators in both traditions are part of a communal life that extends beyond their dance involvement.
The social context of the 1960’s was certainly influential to the emergence of a company espousing this philosophy. It was a time when social institutions and values were being challenged and when the community was held up as the source of a more democratic and “natural” way of living. Pilobolus embodied this in its insistence on the ability and right of everyone to create, and on the value of collaboratively created art. Through this research, we can document the ways in which Pilobolus has been able to instill this philosophy in generations of dancers, giving enough structure to an inherently fluid and democratic process to allow it to sustain itself, creating endlessly inventive work. Understanding their process allows us to make comparisons with other instances of collaboration, innovation, and creativity, both in theatre settings and in the rituals of traditional societies.
The company is approaching its fortieth year, an extraordinary accomplishment for any dance company. The challenges are many--staying solvent, maintaining a repertory that pleases an audience, educating audiences through works that are different from what they think is Pilobolean, attracting generations of dancers who are willing to be part of this strange familial enterprise. How they have responded to the challenges tells us much about the tenacity of their philosophy and the intelligence of their strategies.
Through the words of directors, dancers, audiences, and critics, through performances seen both live and in film, through watching rehearsals and classes, through seeing the creative process at work in shaping new dances, I hope to propose characteristics of the collaborative model of creativity and begin to compare that model with creativity in traditional societies. Finally, I will suggest the conditions under which collaboration flourishes and those in which the sustaining structure is too fragile or too rigid.
In the film sessions, I will show examples from the repertory that illustrate important points.
Helena Wulff
MEMORIES IN MOTION:
PLACE AND TRAVEL OF IRISH DANCE
Helena Wulff
Department of Social Anthropology
Stockholm University
This paper explores how Ireland is produced as a place through the mobility of different, but interconnected dance forms, such as Riverdance (the Irish commercial dance show), competitive Irish dancing, and dance theatre. Dance in itself is a case in point, but also the way dance travels around Ireland, North and South, as well as globally. In a wider perspective, mobility clearly produced new connections and meanings of place, indeed new power structures. This has been happening for a long time with Irish dance through emigration, yet foreign touring and travel to championships are now expanding practices. This mobility is in large part constituted by representations and constructions of Irishness in and around the different dance forms, even though Irish national identity is both cherished and contested, diverse and distinct, and all this is expressed in Irish dance often through the memory of the past. Irishness is what competitive Irish dancing is all about, although increasingly in a cosmopolitan context. Irish topics can be the story of entire dance theatre pieces, or just a reference in passing. Some Irish topics such as Irish mythology and political circumstances appear in all dance forms. The history which is still haunting Irish people, is for example expressed through stories about the Great Famine and emigration waves. On the whole, Irish dance stories often deal with memories of displacement, longing and resistance.
Pallabi Chakravorty
Remix: The Culture and Aesthetics of the New Dance of India
-Pallabi Chakravorty-
Last year’s multiple-Oscar winner “Slumdog Millionaire” is an example of the global reach of the aesthetics of Indian cinema and the compelling vitality of Indian music and dance in a fairytale/mythic narrative. But for Indians, this is not new. Dance and music (it is difficult to separate the two in India) have always been central to Indian lives, myths, and popular culture. Whether it is the gyrating figure of a Bollywood “item girl”, the ecstatic body of a Sufi saint, the cosmopolitan aura of an avant garde performer, or the precise aesthetics of a classical dancer, Indian dance exists in myriad performance and social settings and is an enduring activity. Classical Indian dance has also been an important element of nationalism and national identity formation. The ways in which the meaning and significance of Indian dances have shifted in changing political, economic, and cultural conditions is fascinating. My book (“Bells of Change”), based on ethnographic and historical research, traced the arc of two centuries of Kathak, a classical Indian dance of North and East India. This work used theories and methods from anthropology, ethnomusicology, and performance, media, and gender studies to map the journey of Kathak from courtesans and courts to the global stage—from colonial “nautch”, through classical Kathak under nationalism and post-colonialism, into “innovation” and “new directions” during early globalization. This paper will use this work as a jumping off point to analyze the hybrids that are the emerging dances of India. Let me explain:
Indian dance is now deeply engaged in a mushrooming visual culture driven by new media and new consumers created by fundamental changes in the nation’s economic and cultural spheres. Classical, folk, and popular film dance genres are coalescing into postmodern hybrid formations. A new aesthetics of “remix” (which cross-cuts classical and folk, Bollywood dance, and other hybrid forms that exist in-between) is replacing the traditional codes and experiences of Indian dance (associated with “bhava” and “rasa”, or emotion and taste). I will focus on the recent production of Indian dance—especially in the “remix” genre—to analyze the aesthetic, embodied, and perceptual changes that are significantly altering our understanding of dance and visual culture. Overall, I will use dance as a lens to explore the interaction between the actors and forces of cultural change driven by television, film, fashion, and consumer culture. This research will build on foundational scholarship by Paul Stoller (1997), Thomas Csordas (1994), Kalpana Ram (2008), Purnima Mankekar (2004), and Sally Ness (1992), who have all made thoughtful and critical contributions to our understanding of contemporary dance and visual culture. My questions will converge on three themes:
- Enculturation and dance in a digital age. How are pedagogical shifts (new methods of training) impacting the experiences of the body (shaped previously through a traditional apprenticeship system)? What are the influences of media and films on the traditional/classical aesthetics of Indian dances? What is retained and what has fundamentally changed?
- Hybrid modernity through choreography. How are the new notions of global spectatorship constructed for the remixed dances that are on television reality shows and Bollywood films? How are they related to the idea of a “choreographer” inhabiting the global stage of dance consumers? What are the politics of “remix” and what kind of power relations are being reproduced and subverted through this new dance culture?
- Embodiment and Perceptions How does the dancing body adapt in mediatized and digitized performance spaces? What kind of selfhood emerges from such experiences of dancing? What are the new identities of femininity and masculinity? How does participation in the dance experience (both as spectator and performer) shape the contemporary Indian subject?
Kinga Gajda
The anthropologist of dance, Roderyk Lange, defines a dance as the kind of „human speaking in nonverbal mood with the help of movement with the creative aspect”. The most important part of the definition is the drawing the attention to the element of significant movement. Using the daily movement into unusual situation is the distinctive element of dance, according to Lange. The significant movement should carry a lot of meanings and fulfill different functions: recreation, cultural activity accompanying all important human activity as religion, entertainment and art. The dance is linked not only with the magic, “satisfaction of biologic human needs”, the way of communicating legends, myths and stories, but also, with being designed for individual experiences, self-expression. The dance is the way of building the individual identity and the possibility of searching community relationship. So the dance is the prescription for harder and harder possibilities of self-define into contemporary world.
The aim of my paper is to point at performative role of dancing into the process of self-define, description of individual identity. The dancer is the person who exhibit the self in order to be an medium into audience process of self-defining. In the field of research there are the examples from Polish and foreign dancing scene, among other: Bill T. Jones, Amareya Theatre, Polski Teatr Tańca and Ultima Vez, Pina Bausch. Respecting the time of represnting the paper I decided to focus only into the polish examples what could be more interesting looking at the international character of conference. I would like to talk over the subject of cultural-individual way of interpretation of human/individual identity. I am interested in the process of communicating the identity through the body and significant movement.
Roman Arndt
For decades there have been signals that the profession of the “dancer” is bound to be changing. On the one hand there are more and more “dancer- choreographers”- i.e. dancers that are working creatively themselves in the fields of solo- dance or choreography. On the other hand, a dancer in a company is today no longer only the vicarious agent of the choreographer, but a creative partner. The dancer is expected to bring in own material: material from life- his or her own life and the surrounding life. Questions and points of view that follow from this approach are getting more and more important.
The aim of teaching therefore has to be the fostering of different abilities such as the ability of reflecting the own dancing, the ability to contextualize and dealing with critique. This also includes the training of perception and a critical analysis with questions of art and society in general.
As preparation fort he final written B.A. or Diploma- Thesis, the students are encouraged to develop and explore their own questions. When the dancers practice theoretical reflexive argumentations in writing and in verbal discussions, this helps them to achieve a better understanding of their art which will then also lead to better results in the practice.
In the German- speaking area, the institutional and academic connection of dance and science is relatively new.
In Europe, “dance studies” is a field whose specific motoric and referential knowledge had for a long time been situated away from the necessary scientificality and that did not have academical status.
Dance generated a heterogeneous, nomadic type of knowledge that had been adapted and archived via different media (body, writing, image/picture). Only very recently, this nomadic type of knowledge that had been given shelter by other disciplines (literature, theatre studies, music) has begun to form up an own science.
The project “Virtual Archives” is meant to be a preparatory course which is grounded on the idea and longtime teaching experience of Claudia Jeschke, Professor of Dance Studies at Salzburg University. In the sense of praxis- oriented Dance Science, the approach combines scientific historiography with questions of education and performative practice.
Five courses from the work of Claudia Jeschke have been developed as an E-Learning-cours (in German and English) for students in Bachelor programs (in Dance) at academies and schools. The virtual format makes it possible that the schools cooperate with Salzburg and have the modules of the e-learning course quickly and very flexibly adapted according to the specific needs of the students.
The communication between dance and new media helps to come to a better understanding of dance theory and practice and complies with a process- oriented understanding of the generation and transmission of dance- scientific knowledge.
E-leaning fosters the critical analysis and reflection of the art, of theoretical assumptions, significant theorists or critics, of styles and techniques, of important pieces, great personalities, historical caesuras, climaxes and fractions.
The use of terms and categories from theory and history of dance as well as the perception of movement are trained (lexis of dance).
The aim of the project “Virtual archives” is to not only communicate the idea of archives to the students, but to get them to work actively with selected documents. By this they are bound to learn that archives may be models for a useful handling of dance history and teaching of dance at a university in general.
Katja Schneider
Contemporary Dance today is an art form often characterized by intermediality. This means more than the succession and addition of different media. Here, beyond the plurimediality that is constitutive of the performing arts, the interaction of the media and their transformations come into focus. An important medium hereby is language: since the 1960s and 1970s, more and more dance works have been created that use spoken elements. Looking at the recent production Homo ludens by dancer-choreographer Richard Siegal, the transformations of the codes of movement will be examined in the light of this new contextuality. Furthermore, effects of the overlapping of these medial formattings will be described.
Thomas DeFrantz
What does dance do? Where does its theory intersect with possibilities for presence in the world? How do popular aesthetics circulate in dance, and how do these circulations press on global understandings of dance theory and aesthetics? This talk will explore interstices of theory and practice that might enliven dance towards a fuller articulation that could encompass the terms of social circulations. Case studies drawn from African American contexts of performance will offer examples of aesthetics in wide, global circulation that continue to influence how dance emerges.
Chrissie Harrington
The intention of this essay is to explore how, through participation in scholarly investigations, students become instrumental in driving curriculum developments and recognise, increasingly, their skills and attributes as creative and empowered individuals. The discussion makes specific reference to the pedagogical and disciplinary investigations that have been developed and refined through a four-year case study, ‘Architecting the Body through Live Performance and Digital Media’ (Harrington, 2004) initiated through a PALATINE Development Award and explored further through a National Teaching Fellowship Funded Activity. Central to this research are the students who play a key role in the development and refinement of a model that highlights the inter-dependence of pedagogical and disciplinary practices. Outcomes reveal how students make new and innovative work, contribute to curriculum design and construction, and become confident and competent - able to recognise their achievements and apply them beyond the university context.
The research was undertaken through qualitative methods including observations, documentations, evaluations, disseminations and commentaries on the part of the author, students and third party participants. This paper includes the context, content and analysis of the case study but excludes information on the teaching and learning model per se, and the evidence of research processes and outcomes. Equally the paper does not explore in detail the inter-sections between the disciplines of dance, architecture, film and cultural theory, as they emerged through the research processes and outcomes. It is suggested, however, that the investigation undertaken identified a scholarly practice that could be applicable for development across Higher Education delivery, especially within the arts disciplines that interface with performance.
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