Dance, Process, Artistic Research. Contemporary Dance in the Political, Economic and Social Context of “Former East” of Europe (original) (raw)
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EUropean Dance: The Emergence and Transformation of a Contemporary Dance Art World (1989 - 2013)
2016
The dissertation is an empirical investigation of the development of a contemporary dance art world as a distinct field of cultural production at a transnational level. I argue that this art world came to being organized around the recasting of dance as a field of knowledge production. I contend that the aesthetic transformations within the artistic realm became successful due to the confluence of wider political and organizational factors. The transnational networking movement that began in the independent performing arts field in the late 1970s and 1980s were given an additional boost by the “cultural turn” of the European integration process since the end of the Cold War. I analyze the impact of EU programs on dance networks for the dissemination of the aesthetics and production models of dance throughout Europe. In other words, I investigate the process through which contemporary dance made in Europe became European contemporary dance.
This thesis investigates the lives, movements and performances of dancers in a Romanian urban folk ensemble from an anthropological perspective. Drawing on an extended period of fieldwork in the Romanian city of Timisoara, it gives an inside view of participation in organised cultural performances involving a local way of moving, in an area with an on-going interest in local and regional identity. It proposes that twentyfirst century regional identities in southeastern Europe and beyond, can be manifested through participation in performances of local dance, music and song and by doing so, it reveals that the experiences of dancers has the potential to uncover deeper understandings of contemporary socio-political changes. This micro-study of collective behaviour, dance knowledge acquisition and performance training of ensemble dancers in Timisoara enhances the understanding of the culture of dance and dancers within similar ensembles and dance groups in other locations. Through an investigation of the micro aspects of dancers’ lives, both on stage in the front region, and off stage in the back region, it explores connections between local dance performances, their participants, and locality and the city. It draws on multi-layer concepts of local belonging that interact with notions of continuity and visibility, local cultural norms, and performance aesthetics. This thesis follows the dancers through their ensemble lives, starting from their apprenticeship when they learn local dance moves and acquire a sense of belonging to the ensemble. It examines the role of the key choreographers as pseudo-parents within their ensemble family and the authorities that provide time-depth and stability through the maintenance of local cultural norms within ensemble life and in performance aesthetics. It examines the dancers’ involvement in local event organisation during the performance process, and concludes that the continuity of local dance, music and song is dependent on its local and translocal visibility. Mellish, Elizabeth Sara (2013). Dancing through the city and beyond : Lives, movements and performances in a Romanian urban folk ensemble. Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University College London (UCL) School of Slavonic and East European Studies.
Notes on Politicality of Contemporary Dance
Dance, Politics & Co-Immunity, Stefan Hölscher & Gerald Siegmund (eds.), Zürich: diaphanes, 2013
The links between politics and dance appears as one of the hot topics in the performing arts today. Before I try to answer that theme, I will think this very phenomenon, introducing some epistemic and social frameworks within which we speak and can speak about politics when speak about contemporary performance and art in general. Then I will continue with the characteristic modalities of politicality that I register on the actual international dance scene. At the very beginning I want to emphasize that my focus here won't be a particular politics of contemporary dance, but the politicality as the aspect of an artwork or art practice that addresses the ways it acts and intervenes in public sphere, in regard to discussions and conflicts around: the subjects and objects that perform in it; the arrangement of positions and powers among them; the "distribution of the sensible"; and the ideological discourses that shape a common symbolic and sensorial order of society, which affects its material structure and partitions. Therefore, I aim here neither to advocate political art, nor to divide dance performances to socio-politically engaged and l'art-pour-l'art-istic ones. Instead, I would stress an urge to reflect a broad and complex raster of politicality as an aspect that characterizes each and every performance-be it political or apolitical, resistant or complicit, transformative or servile-as a social event that is practiced in public.
Not quite Eastern – not right Western dance (On contemporary dance in Serbia)
European Dance Since 1989: Communitas and the Other, Joanna Szymajda (ed.), Routledge, 2014
This analysis of contemporary dance in Serbia is also an attempt to raise the question: Who has the right to contemporaneity? Namely, as contemporary dance is a new phenomenon in Serbia, there are two harsh theses that I would put forward as starting points. First, as there is no local contemporary dance history, there is no need to follow the diachronic traces of the present scene; and, second, what is currently considered as contemporary dance in Serbia is contemporary Western dance. Yet, that scene seems to be not-quite-Western though it is not-right-Eastern either. Presenting it in its full complexity may help us not only to understand that particular art scene better, but also to recognize how wider streams of power, money, and administrative regulation define contemporary art in today’s global world.
Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe : Myth, Ritual, Post-1989, Audiovisual Ethnographies, Fifth Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe 2016 South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, 2016
Twenty five years since the changes in regimes in southeastern Europe, local dance is still thriving and has even taken on a new vibrancy both within this area and among southeast European economic migrants. This paper evaluates these trends by focussing on two examples, recreational dance groups for adults in Romania, and Bulgarian dance clubs in the UK. After a brief historical overview highlighting the changes during the last twenty-five years, the author sets out the current situation in both instances. This is followed by a brief summary of the similarities and differences between two ethnographic case studies drawing from the authors’ participatory fieldwork. The final section raises questions regarding triggers for the increased enthusiasm for participation in Romanian or Bulgarian dancing both ‘at home’ and when living abroad and the contribution of this to social, cultural and economic values of associated industries. Mellish, Liz (2016). “The south east Europeans are (still) dancing: recent dance trends in Romania and among south east Europeans in London.” Liz Mellish, Ivanka Vlaeva, Lozanka Peycheva, Nick Green, Ventsislav Dimov (editors), Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe : Myth, Ritual, Post-1989, Audiovisual Ethnographies, Fifth Symposium of the ICTM Study Group on Music and Dance in Southeastern Europe 2016 South-West University “Neofit Rilski”:189–195. Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria: University Publishing House “Neofit Rilski”. ISBN 978-954-00-0123-4
Politics of knowledge: East - West relations in the anthropology of dance
In our presentation we examine the intellectual and political conditions giving rise to different methodological and theoretical approaches to the anthropological study of dance. We focus on the explicit links between epistemological stance and geographical location, first highlighted by Royce (1977), and later developed by Giurchescu & Torp (1991), and Kaeppler (1991). All contrasted the European folkloristic and American ethnological traditions, and characterized the former as largely concerned with form, and the latter with context. We argue that the politicization of knowledge production during the Cold War period (1963-73) exacerbated this geo-intellectual divide, but paradoxically an intellectual shift, spurred on by linguistics and structuralism, occurred on both sides of the Iron Curtain. With the rapprochement made possible by this intellectual common ground and by the contact maintained by of a handful of intrepid scholars, the anthropology of dance was consolidated as a legitimate academic field with international visibility.
Folk dance production at the stage in Croatia has never been considered as a revival. At this point this discussion should not be a part of this panel but as the participants are always invoking past dancing through the paradigm of showing old, domestic and local tradition, discussion fits into proposed cross- cultural comparison. The concept of revival got some other connotations in our social and political context after the last war 1991/92. From time when it started in 1920s and 1930s public practice of folk music and dance was a part of political program of the Croatian Peasant Party. Political ("national") orientation focused on local, regional, and ethnic/national identity in dance was always important especially when social and ideological circumstances changed. Following these changes up until today the author analyses and puts together emic and etic dimensions and views of participants in processes and interpret them from the other proposed discourses – "recr...