Archive for March, 2009
March 31, 2009 at 3:54 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
The UC Berkeley Graduate Program in Performance Studies is celebrating its 10th year this year! Along with my colleague Michelle I am organizing an anniversary symposium event that will take place on April 25th. Working on events like this remind me how important it is to work within an interdisciplinary community. I am learning so much from my peers who are focusing on slightly different strands of performance studies — everything from vocal affect to the performance of food. Check out our symposium blog for the exciting even schedule and more details!
March 15, 2009 at 2:59 pm · Filed under Events
I’ve been looking at William Kentridge’s work a lot lately and had the opportunity to see an exhibit of his work at SFMoma yesterday. I was blown away by how intricately he treads the line between over stimulation and a delicate and subtle emotionality. His multi-media oeuvre also tends to include a great deal of choreography. Although the exhibition blurb coined Kentridge as someone who looks at painting, drawing, film etc, they didn’t notice the implicit gesture toward choreography that accompanies his work. I found both historical reference and robotic work. This is aside from the plethora of projections that are necessary to convey Kentridge’s message about South African politics and more.
Hopefully more on this to come as I will see him speak this afternoon and tomorrow!
March 14, 2009 at 1:05 am · Filed under Thoughts
Tonight I’ll go to dinner with German dance dramaturg Anna Wagner. After her lecture last week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be a conceptual choreographer who works with a dramaturge. As someone who enjoys theorizing through her artistic work, I’m curious about my need for a dramaturge since I enjoy theoretical research myself, or if dramaturge would actually encourage me to indulge my love for theory even more. Trajal Harrel works with a dramaturge as he creates his incredibly specific and successfully stylized work. Both Trajal and Yvonne Hardt, choreographer who works with Wagner, enjoy theoretical research themselves and have mentioned how working with a dramaturge only helps them specify their ideas and choreographic arch. I experienced how frustrating it can be to choreograph a solo when you’re the only dancer. I wasn’t able to watch the piece from start to finish, so couldn’t adequately follow my spatial narrative. It seems to me that Yvonne uses her dramaturg as a tool especially when she’s dancing on stage. Perhaps having someone who I’m working with and who intimately knows both my theoretical and choreographic impulse would help to be my eyes as I work through my own movements myself. Or, perhaps this is not exactly what a dramaturge really is…
March 9, 2009 at 3:24 am · Filed under Events, Link
I just found the “dtwmain” posts on YouTube. Thank goodness for Dance Theater Workshop and their embrace of the Internet as a positive force in the contemporary dance community. Check out their amazing archive of performance and conversation…
…some of my personal favorites:
MAP ME by Charlotte Vanden Eynde & Kurt Vandendriessche at Dance Theater Workshop. Fall 2007.
Stephen Greco in conversation with Trajal Harrell prior to Quartet for the End of Time at Dance Theater Workshop. Fall 2008.
March 7, 2009 at 9:46 pm · Filed under Theory, Thoughts
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone on the phenomenology of dance as re-languaging. A liminality between the two faces of an object: presence/absence. I’m curious how this does or doesn’t relate to a relationship between the real, or more apropriately physical, and digitally virtual (as opposed to S-J’s physical virtual force).
March 5, 2009 at 9:52 am · Filed under Link
see my twitter on catologue raisonné….great resource!
March 5, 2009 at 6:10 am · Filed under Theory, Thoughts
I’ve been thinking a lot about how to articulate myself as a scholar who is practicing theory and whose theory will practice movement. Today I stumbled upon two thoughts:
First, I’ve realized that just as many conceptual artists practice their theory within their artworks, I will theorize my personal practice as a research method.
Second, I’ve been reading post-structuralism while considering the relationship between semiology and phenomenology. Today I realized that as someone who looks at dance practice from a personal and critical perspective, I would like to argue that theorizing dance requires a combination between post-structuralism/deconstruction and phenomenology. We need to consider an experience on its own in terms of the feelings, movements, and the existence of movement in relation to its surroundings. Since dance as performance also exists in a culturally specific environment it is in fact important to deconstruct the phenomenological perspective to adequately consider a constructed existence.
I’m realizing, though, that this may not make any sense at all. This can stand as the beginning of a thought…
March 4, 2009 at 6:49 pm · Filed under Thoughts, Uncategorized
I’m curious how posting all of my oh so precious ideas online for all to see is helpful and/or detrimental to my future projects. Am I creating something like Maruice Benayoun’s thedump? Do I want to do this with my ideas? Perhaps this space should only act as a déchargement rather than I place to work through potential material. Hmmm….
March 4, 2009 at 6:47 pm · Filed under Theory, Uncategorized
Technologically, when we digitally loop materials and we program loops into our network we complicate the possibility for what Gilles Deleuze calls the “following present,” or repetition, which is where he locates the virtual. In the case of Deleuze, the virtual characterizes a very physical presence, repetition. This virtual presence as a physical quality as opposed to digital reality is one that philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone uses to philosophize dance in her book, Phenomenology of Dance.
Lest we forget that although these considerations of the body and the real in media driven movement and looping are repetitions of well-articulated theories on the body and the real, our experiences of Deleuzian repetitions in everyday action are nonetheless confused and complicated with the introduction of “new” media and digital presence. For this reason I’m interested in how my research on digital environments are pre-established concepts in a new context. I will, therefore, ground much of my research in a historical situation of dance experience in relation to the body and the everyday with the hope of locating a new articulation of these terms; or perhaps new terms altogether.
There is space in dance scholarship to move through experiences in relation to digital limitation and/or distraction and phenomenological experience. The digital is no longer so “new” and technologies have forever mechanized movement practice. So, rather than forget previously articulated ideas, I hope to consider contemporary technologies and dance performance in relation to a historical theoretical perspective.
March 3, 2009 at 10:10 am · Filed under Events, Theory
Tomorrow night I will see Jerome Bel perform at YBCA.
I’ll be interested to see how his work functions within the context of the Yerba Buena San Francisco audience.
Tonight I attended a showing of The Show Must Go On and Veronique Doisneau. I must say that I was surprised by how much Bel draws from what I would consider a Western dance canon in terms of breaking the ballet industry. In The Show Must Go On Bel explores a kitschy regurgitation of popular culture and a reversal of the gaze. Although he works with similar concepts in Veronique Doisneau, the tone of the piece seems much different and more effective. In the discussion that I participated in at the showing this evening we explored how Veronique Doisneau employs a critique of the dance canon by allowing Veronique to retell the canon from a personal standpoint. She collapses an emotional, historical and critical while the choreography combines simplicity and virtuosity. The most telling aspect of the piece, for me, was the location: The Paris Opera House. How fitting that a commentary on the ballet industry take place in this opera house in particular. In this sense the piece became deeply site specific for me.
As Bel performs in San Francisco I’ll be curious to see how his work becomes site specific in terms of the context or lack thereof for his work.
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