1/7/2024 0 Comments Doubletake dance studioCase studies of work by UK and EU-based artists Avatâra Ayuso, Roberto Olivan, and Máté Mészáros & Nóra Horváth are examined in relation to historical influences, devising processes and directorial choices taken in an intensive rehearsal period with third year Bachelors of Dance Studies students at the University of Malta’s School of Performing Arts for an international tour in Malta and the UK. This is not to say an account of a dance is impossible, but to suggest there are conditional features that need taking account of, and to question the artistic validity of ossified reproduction.Īsking ‘where are we now?’ this paper charts the choreographic process of four contemporary dance artists creating new work in relation to the theme of 21st Century identities. Dances, it seems, simply wear out unless they are subject to regular revision and a definitive version cannot be said to exist. Evidence for this can be found not only in the experience of dancers, but in the actions of choreographers dealing with their own works, even when they are considered classics. For dancers and choreographers there is a more subtle process of evolution that occurs with the regular performance of a dance: the dance changes itself to suit its purposes, and this often renders the meaningfulness of documentation an academic (or more lately legal) exercise. This paper posits this working process as played out in performance as well as the confines of rehearsal, and gives as a practical example the performance of a work by the same dancers across a thirty-year timeframe, presented alongside the original video material. Notwithstanding the problematics of this assumption about the archival form of such material, that the tokens of the types that Wollheim (1968) posits as necessary are simply too flexible to be captured as definitive, this in itself presents a creative opportunity. Focused far more on outputs than production, they decontextualize dance by ignoring its context: the working process. Dance academics and organizations like ballet companies and the trusts that claim to protect and preserve the heritage of specific choreographers protect this idea. This is that dances can be fixed, like a text, script, painting or even a musical score. The documentation of dance regularly asserts a false concept.
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