Afterword

The discussion that followed the original presentation of these papers at the 1989 conference speculated on the possibilities of radically reconstructing Tudor's work, somehow re-arranging the gender roles he assigns in order to comment on his covert construction of gender. Reactions varied: some conference participants asserted it was an interesting idea, but felt they wouldn't want to violate Tudor's intentions; others thought this was perfectly acceptable, that the definition of the work needed to be open-ended and include many possibilities. One audience member felt our panel might be considered an instance of the work, especially because Giffin and Maletic performed motifs from the dance. These diverse opinions reflect alternate understandings of what our panel accomplished. On the one hand, our search for constitutive properties is a way of documenting and preserving Dark Elegies. The search for constitutive properties details what has happened in various performances and the content of the score, and also tries to recapture Tudor's thinking. Through his analysis of the score, Giffin discusses Tudor's choreographic constructions and distinctive ways of using the body.