Artistic Strategies in Contemporary Dance

The seminar Artistic Strategies in Contemporary Dance - The Dancer as an Artist presented four new lectures by people who are all in their different way involved in the field of contemporary dance: Ramsay Burt from England, a professor of dance history, cultural sociologist Rudi Laermans from Belgium, Norwegian dancer Loan Ha and Slovenian philosopher and dramaturge Bojana Kunst. After the lectures, a panel discussion was arranged. The seminar was moderated by Josefine Wikström.

The field of contemporary dance maps out and tests performative concepts and dramaturgy. There is a great range of practices and methods. Many choreographers personally have a background as dancers, and they often work both roles. Many contemporary dancers of today choose to choreograph performances of their own, a tendency we see at work in Norway as well as abroad. In their artistic methods, many choreographers include processes through which the dancers directly contribute to the choreographies and the performance material. They provide the dancers with what may be described as an artistic license - an opportunity to help shape the performance. In other projects, however, the dancer works within the choreographer’s materials and concept.

Only rarely is light shed on the dancer. And if the emphasis is on the dancer, the body is often what is discussed. In Routledge’s Dance Studies Reader from 1998, Alexandra Carter writes in the introduction to Performing Dance, a chapter discussing the role of the dancer: "Whereas in other parts of this Reader the challenge was to find representative work from the wide section available, for this Part, the difficulty was in finding writing by dancers at all, especially on their experience of performance".

Still, as a rule, choreographers are who usually comment on the performative aspects of contemporary dance. Few dancers write. Few dancers are interviewed about their art. Few dancers are included in discussion panels. And many dancers resist putting into words – through writing about or verbally expressing - their artistic strategies and methods. The same goes for their opinions and perspectives on contemporary dance. The experiences and perspectives of dancers have been largely ignored within discourse on and discussions within contemporary dance.

How does the dancer see himself in relation to being an artist? Anthoni Dominguez writes, in
ballet tanz’ TEAM year book 2008, titled DANCE IN ART: "The use of the body as living raw material during a performance enables the artist to reduce the distance between himself and his artwork. Even before any activity takes place, the body manifests itself in both material and a temporal dimension by its simple presence. "

In the same publication choreographer Ben J. Riepe states: "I appreciate dance (...) but only as a working method, as a tool, as something with which to create an artwork".

Ramsay Burt´s lecture is titled Contemporary Dance and the Politics of Historical Consciousness. A number of European dance artists in the past fifteen have cited past dance works either through reconstructions, re-stagings and re-enactments, or through making new works that explicitly respond to works from the past. Given that history and memory are important to the construction of identities, reconstructions are an important means of understanding the relationship between past and present.

An articulation of historical consciousness can be used to assert the right to define one's own chosen history rather than accept an official canon. Some European dance artists have articulated concerns about the way a globalised market for contemporary dance that has developed since the 1970s influences and determines the kinds of works that are taken up and shown at key dance festivals and performance venues. One aspect of the workings of this market is a flattening of history.

This paper argues that radical experimental work which articulates historical consciousness, challenges its beholders to pay attention in a focused, intense, active, engaged way that is very different from the diffuse inattention that is all that is required when beholding the same old tired choreographic devices within blandly uniform dance works. Through a discussion of a few recent examples, this paper will argue that the development of a historical consciousness among experimental dance artists can be seen as an act of resistance to the anaesthetising effects of the globalised dance market.

Rudi Laermans' lecture is titled Creating Together: Artistic Collaborations in Contemporary Dance. Based on extensive depth interviews with dancers from the Brussels dance community, the lecture identifies some of the principal motivations behind and stakes involved in collaborative practices in contemporary dance - such as unrecognized co-authorship, the production of a social and artistic 'common', and the dynamics of trust between a choreographer and the dancers during a rehearsal process.

Bojana Kunst's lecture Dancing Labour connects the question about the strategies of the dancers to the ways in which dancers work today and how their work has changed with the expanded notion of choreography, research and new discursive contexts. She relates this to political issues like postfordism, the continual nomadism of dancers and the multiplicity of time. What has changed in the work of the dancer today, with new ways of production, and how does this influence the body?

Loan Ha's lecture is titled Tracing My Questions: About Becoming a Dancer. She reflects on becoming a dancer and how the questions she has asked herself has continued to inspire, affect, and change her work. In 2005, while still a student at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels, she interviewed teachers, dancers and choreographers in her educational environment about what it meant to them to be a practitioner.

On the contributors:

Ramsay Burt is a professor of dance history at De Montfort University in Leicester, U.K. He has experience from art studies at Leeds University. While he taught history of art he began writing dance criticism for The Yorkshire Post and for several dance magazines. In 1999 he was a visiting professor in performance studies at New York University, and in 2002 he became founding editor, with professor Susan Foster, of the journal Discourses in Dance. His first book The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality (Routledge, 1995), has become an important reference work. In 2007 he published Judson Dance Theater: Performative Traces, and in 1998 Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, 'Race' and Nation in Early Modern Dance. With Valerie Bringinshaw he has written Writing Dancing Together (2009). Ramsay Burt's work is connected to understanding dance through social, historical and political contexts.

Rudi Laermans is a senior professor in sociological theory at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium and a permanent guest teacher in the theoretical program at P.A.R.T.S. He has published extensively on dance policy, general trends within contemporary dance and the work of particular choreographers such as Anne Theresa De Keersmaeker, Vincent Dunoyer, Jan Fabre, deepblue and Meg Stuart. He has recently directed research projects on globalisation, modes of believing within Western Islam, cultural heritage, the cultural omnivore and alternative pop music. He has published widely on social systems theory, French post-structuralism and cultural theory. His book on contemporary dance titled Moving Together was published in 2011. Several of his texts can be found at http://www.sarma.be.

Bojana Kunst is a philosopher, dramaturge and performance theoretician. She works as a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg (Performance Studies) and teaches at the Slovenian University of Primorska. She also works as a dramaturge and artistic collaborator. She is a member of board of editors in the journals Maska, Amfiteater, and Performance Research. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and publications and she has taught and lectured extensively in Europe. She has published three books, including The Impossible Body (Ljubljana, 1999) and Dangerous Connections: Body, Philosophy and Relation to the Artificial (Ljubljana, 2004).

Loan Ha has studied at the contemporary dance school Skolen for Samtidsdans in Oslo (2000-2002) and at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels (2002-2006). In addition to working on her own and other co-choreographer’s projects, she danced in several repertoire pieces by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker while at P.A.R.T.S, and she toured with productions by William Forsythe (Die Befragung des Robert Scott) and Trisha Brown (Set and Reset and Lateral Pass - Reworked) . Since the summer of 2006 Loan Ha has worked as a freelance dancer for productions including the Norwegian multimedia performance Terje, which was staged in Yokohama, Japan and The Kansas City Shuffle for Canadian Sandy Williams, performed in Ghent, Leuven and Brussels, Belgium. Since 2006, she has worked with impure company/Hooman Sharifi. She is also involved in projects with Kristina Gjems and Human Works (Anne-Linn Akselsen and Adrian Minkowicz).

Josefine Wikström is an independent curator and writer. She has an MA in philosophy from Middlesex University in London, has studied dance at London Contemporary Dance School, literature at Stockholm University and journalism at the journalist academy Poppius in Stockholm. She has written for various dance and arts magazines such as Merge, Nummer.se and Rodeo. In 2008 she was a guest editor for the art journal Paletten with choreographer Malin Elgán, on the subjects of dance, performance and choreography. Wikström is a member of the performing arts collective Inpex, through which she has worked on projects such as The Swedish Dance History and Hula-Hula To Tensta Konsthall. She has collaborated with artists and choreographer, including Malin Elgán, with whom she created a choreographic score for the exhibition Undersöka form at the Swedish Nationalmuseum (2008). She also worked with International Festival in the project The Theatre in Graz and the London/Frankfurt-based art project XYM. With freelance curator Sarah Kim she manages the recently initiated curator collective Username.

Source: BIT Teatergarasjen, Oktoberdans 2010. 02.11.2010: http://www.bit-teatergarasjen.no/article/364