{"title":"The dancing body as a living archive","authors":"Christelle Becholey Besson, C. Vionnet","doi":"10.1386/chor_00058_3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00058_3","url":null,"abstract":"This autoethnographic video essay is based on The Shadow of Others, a performance presented in the seven-storey Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen (Scotland) in May 2017. Focusing on the phenomenology of the dancing body, the performance unfolded the complexity and richness of gestures. Departing from the assumption that a soloist moves with their shadows (gestures from previous dances), I argue for the plural shaping every singular gesture. Combining dance and anthropology, this video essay revisits the notions of archive, repertoire and anarchive, and proposes a reflection on the intermingling of time, gestures, memory, knowledge and history. Claiming that the (dancing) body is a living archive, I use the metaphor of shadow as a linkage between bodies and movements. Drawing on performance studies and contemporary philosophy, the work emphasizes the way artistic creation generates knowledge, asking the value of embodied practices.\u0000 Link to video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgCTOWmarko. The video essay is also available as an online resource for the digital edition of this article (Online Resource 1: ‘The body as a living archive’).","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45033417","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enacting peripeteia in Möbius Strip: Adapting Butoh principles in mixed-media performance","authors":"Eleni Kolliopoulou","doi":"10.1386/chor_00056_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00056_1","url":null,"abstract":"The article draws from the Japanese phenomenological approach (Kyoto School) concerning the embodied experience of time-space. The article aims at the distillation of Butoh principles and its creative adaptation in a mixed-media performance titled Möbius Strip. As a method of choreographic practice, the concept of qualia is the matrix of Butoh notation (Butoh-fu). The western term for qualia would be ‘image-worlds’, which is encountered in the choreographic practice of Trisha Brown, Steve Paxton and Michael Chekhov (). Butoh-fu is a chain of qualia (scores/atmospheres). Consisting of qualia that require full psychophysical engagement of the performer, Butoh-fu, one could dare to say, resonates with Haiku or Zen Koans (). Under this frame, the performance explores notions of temporality availing in the processual nature of qualia to address the issue of ‘politics of time in neo-liberal societies’ (). The performance borrows its title from the concept of a Möbius Strip by mathematicians A. F. Möbius and J. B. Listing; having only one side and remaining in one piece when split down the middle, characterized by alternative modalities of connectivity. Möbius Strip focuses on the effects of war upon ‘ordinary people’ who suddenly find themselves amidst a crisis that urges them to reconsider their principles and discover dormant values. This is a decisive turning point: a peripeteia. The performance is a bittersweet embodied poem that wishes to offer a crack of light amidst the deep darkness of the current warfare. This article documents part of the practice-based research that includes the creation process and theoretical framework of Möbius Strip. The performance seals the studio work, where Butoh training was deployed as a methodological tool to sensitize performers’ psychophysical compresence. Furthermore, while allowing themselves to be observed by the gaze of the audience, they eventually access shifting time perceptions through the performative experience.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42368850","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Human / nature: Interviews with Audrey Rachelle, Kelly Todd and Isabel Umali","authors":"Ilana Gilovich-Wave","doi":"10.1386/chor_00060_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00060_7","url":null,"abstract":"In this piece, I interview three dancers and choreographers – Audrey Rachelle, Kelly Todd and Isabel Umali – about their recent works on sustainability and climate change. All three dancers share a background in immersive theatre, having performed in Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More for many years. Their accounts illustrate a productive application of immersive theatre sensibilities and choreographic practices onto issues of sustainability and environmental justice. Rachelle, Todd and Umali’s pieces are borne out of a heedful relationship with their particular surroundings, as well as a thoughtful engagement with their audiences. This piece seeks to bring critical attention to new works while considering the productive intersection of immersive techniques and ecologically minded choreographic endeavours.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":"39 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135046362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Healing Series, Performance Space New York, New York, USA, October 2022–June 2023","authors":"Jody Oberfelder","doi":"10.1386/chor_00059_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00059_5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48344966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Choreographic Devices, Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), London, UK, 10–12 June 2022","authors":"Rachael Davies, J. Slater","doi":"10.1386/chor_00053_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00053_5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47695720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Making choreography, making community","authors":"Simon Ellis, Amaara Raheem","doi":"10.1386/chor_00047_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00047_2","url":null,"abstract":"Amaara and Simon are choreographers who co-edit Choreographic Practices (along with Dani Abulhawa and Lee Miller). In this editorial they peer into the relationship between making community and practices of choreography and how it might help us rethink the nature of authorship and authority. They talk about their best moves and also call on the work and practices of Sophie Strand, Miranda Tuffnell and D. H. Lawrence to propose that being an artist might be so much more than the first-person pronoun in ‘here’s something I made’.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42881769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Fading out the human presence: A conversation between Barbara Stimoli, Titta Raccagni and Simon Ellis","authors":"Simon Ellis","doi":"10.1386/chor_00052_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00052_7","url":null,"abstract":"This is a conversation between Italian artists Barbara Stimoli and Titta Raccagni with Choreographic Practices’ co-editor Simon Ellis. The discussion begins with how Barbara and Titta began working together, and then focuses on the development and various iterations of their work Pleasure Rocks.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42279143","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Remote proximity: Making immersive dance under COVID-19 lockdown","authors":"SanSan Kwan","doi":"10.1386/chor_00049_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00049_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article chronicles the various pivots one dance ensemble, Lenora Lee Dance, made in trying to bring our dance project to fruition under the COVID-19 pandemic and after both the murder of George Floyd and the spike in anti-Asian hate in the United States between 2020 and 2021. And the Community Will Rise was intended to be an immersive, site-specific dance set throughout the courtyards, hallways and apartment interiors of the Ping Yuen public housing complex in San Francisco’s Chinatown in autumn 2020. The piece aimed to explore the lives of the residents and the history of their struggle for affordable housing and tenants’ rights, amidst a contemporary background of rising housing insecurity among communities of colour in San Francisco. We were three rehearsals into the project when COVID-19 hit the Bay Area in March 2020. This article documents our attempts to adapt And the Community Will Rise from an immersive dance to an immersive screendance. I reflect upon the various options we moved through as the pandemic wore on, as well as the questions social distancing raised for us regarding the value of home, of sociality and also the value of remote dance performance. This article offers one case study, from an insider perspective, to understand wider artistic innovations this pandemic moment has initiated.\u0000 Together they board a boat that crosses the San Francisco Bay and pulls into Angel Island. They disembark and trek the mile to the Immigration Station. An immigration officer meets them and divides them into two groups. Names are called and individuals step forward, the rest are marched into the building in two streams. One stream goes to the women’s dormitory where earlier detainees are already settled; a man in a white medical coat enters and calls more names; these women are ushered to the medical examination room, the showers and the interrogation office. The new arrivees follow behind.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46521054","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"circling, tumbling, dancing around: Back pieces","authors":"Katrina Brown","doi":"10.1386/chor_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article consists of six text–image pieces that share practical research into modes of moving, perceiving and thinking through the back and extended notions of dorsality. Since 2019, through workshops, studio residencies, presentations and collaborative moving, conversational, drawing and writing practices, I have been developing physical exercises and choreographic devices for tuning into the back, bringing attention to and exploring the unseen surfaces and axial technologies of the back. These dorsal practices are evolving through movement and sensory research as well as opening a wider set of philosophical concepts and possibilities for orientating in and co-habiting a world amongst other bodies and things. The pieces combine short written texts, sidenotes and images. The texts have evolved from sensory observation in practical movement tasks and conversations, in the form of notes and recordings, often working in a dynamic process between embodied experience, memory and imagination. The footnotes are a playful device for allowing other peripheral ideas such as light, moth, vestibular labyrinth, tree, tracing paper, ghost, voice, front-crawling to enter and generate gaps for the reader in which to linger, skip, skim, imagine, (re)connect. The still images, diagrams and drawings are another way of taking note, testing, proposing, articulating and reading.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41922466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On the table: An open invitation","authors":"Caitlin Dear, Ebony Muller","doi":"10.1386/chor_00050_3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00050_3","url":null,"abstract":"In this text, we propose the table as a choreographic and discursive tool that enables fruitful, collective exploration of artistic material. Through poetics, essay and scores, we share our project On the Table (OTT) – a format for artistic exchange and collaboration. We, Caitlin and Ebony, co-developed the OTT format in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia), where it runs as a programme of regular sessions out of Dancehouse. Each is hosted by a different artist who puts something ‘on the table’ for everyone who attends to explore together. This can be any manner of provocation, meaning sessions take disparate forms, ranging from workshops and in-progress showings to open artistic explorations and collaborative research. Hosts come from various forms of dance, approaches to bodily practice and relationships to movement. We platform artists who work with dance in combination with other fields, which have included those working within martial arts, game design, science and therapy. People from these fields or with thematic interests in a session are encouraged to attend regardless of movement experience. Our practice enables everyone in the room to contribute towards and shape the session’s explorations. The aim is for an unconventional array of people to work synergistically, from their varied points of interest and differing levels of expertise. Although the format is applicable beyond a dance or choreographic context, it centres around collective, embodied encounters. In this text, we extend an open invitation to readers to borrow from our practice or initiate their own satellite OTT events.","PeriodicalId":40658,"journal":{"name":"Choreographic Practices","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44528237","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}