Operational Choreography. Dance and Logistical Capitalism (original) (raw)
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Arts, 2024
This article aims to take part in the ongoing discussion on the social and political potentialities as well as the conceptual premises of choreography and to contribute to the discussion about world relations in the choreographed movement. The much-used definition of Western choreography is “organized movement in space and time”. Although this definition always applies, it does not specify the world relations and worldmaking capacities of the choreographed movement. The main focus of this article is an ontological rethinking of the basic concepts of choreography: movement, space, time and organization, with the addition of kinaesthetic fields, kinaesthetic and spatial intelligence, virtual and actual realms, striated and smooth spaces (Deleuze and Guattari) and different conceptions of time. By analyzing these concepts, the aim is to provide a view of ontologically elementary units in choreography (such as a change in space, the difference over time and space, and passage to shared actuality), with a wider understanding of the inherent social relationality in choreographed movement. After discussing these topics, a few social choreography events and protests are described to represent different choreographic aims and organizational modes arising from each specific situation. The article concludes by proposing that choreography could be seen as organizing movement in space and time but also as a choreographic actualization of intensities in different discursive fields. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Choreography as an Aesthetics of Change
2008
This research delineates choreography as a new aesthetics, the one of change. Through the development a series of new choreographic methodologies manifested in eight choreographic works and appropriate theoretical contextualization, this research extends traditional definitions of choreography. The integration of ideas introduced by system theory and cybernetics, especially as developed by Gregory Bateson, has informed a number of paradigm shifts in the field of choreography, as proposed by this research. Choreography is presented as an emerging, autonomous aesthetics concerned with the workings and governance of patterns, dynamics and ecologies. The research indicates that if the world is perceived as a reality constructed of interactions, relationships, constellations and proportionalities, choreography can assume the creative practice of setting such relations, or set the conditions for such relations, to emerge. The thesis suggests that choreographic knowledge harvested from perceived patterns in nature forms the basis for wider acts of human creation and ordering, and examines the immanent and prevalent political dimension of the choreographic act by inquiring how order emerges on living systems. In light of the findings, this thesis finally re-negotiates the relationship between the fields of dance and choreography, offering a complimentary vision for dance as a 'figure of thought'.
Dance and Work: The Aesthetic and Political Potential of Dance
Emerging Bodies, 2011
The first film ever made captured the movements of the workers of the Lumière factory collectively surging through the factory gates upon leaving their workplace at the end of the day (1895). This same film also opened the performance 1 poor and one 0 by BADco. a Zagreb-based performance group 1. This mass exodus from the factory not only marks the beginning of cinematic history, but also the problematic relation between cinema and labor, which is also explored in Harun Farocki's documentary and text of the same title Arbeiter Verlassen die Fabrik (1995). In his commentary of the documentary, Farocki states that the primary aim of the movie was to represent motion, using the mass exodus of the workers. According to Farocki, there may also have been signposts helping the workers coordinate their movements when exiting the factory. Interestingly, this invisible movement takes place along specific lines, those marking the difference between labor and leisure time, between the industrial process and the factory, on the one hand, and the private lives of the workers, on the other. The movements of the workers, their simultaneously organized and spontaneous dispersal into different directions is choreographically organized as movement and filmically framed by the line separating the enclosed industrial space from private life, strictly rationalized procedures and so-called flexible leisure time. This is a line dividing dull work organization from leisure, when the workers can 1 BADco. is a collaborative performance collective based in Zagreb, Croatia (from 2000).
Practices of Relations in Task-Dance and the Event-Score: A critique of performance
Routledge , 2021
In this study, Josefine Wikström challenges a concept of performance that makes no difference between art and non-art and argues for a new concept. This book confronts and criticises the way in which the dominating concept of performance has been used in art theory and performance and dance studies. Through an analysis of 1960s performance practices, Wikström focuses specifically on task-dance and event-score practices and provides an examination of the key philosophical concepts that are inseparable from such a concept of art and are necessary for the reconstruction of a critical concept of performance, such as "practice", "experience", "object", "abstraction" and "structure". This book will be of great interest to scholars, students and practitioners across dance, performance art, aesthetics and art theory. Josefine Wikström is Associate Professor of Dance Theory at Stockholm University of the Arts.
Choreography as Form as Dance as AN Activity
2014
During the 1990s, perhaps as part of several strategies aimed at slowing down the boom of the 1980s, a discursivation of the body and its activity took place in the field of dance in analogy to speech acts. This analogy was much needed to help dance become more intellectual and self-reflexive, but it also made it difficult to think about bodies outside the cultural and ideological grids capturing them. Two further assumptions go hand in hand with this approach: first, that all bodily movements write from the perspective of those performing them; and second, that these movements be read from the perspective of those observing or even performing them. What can a body do? In short, the answer to this famous Spinozian question with regard to a body being understood in terms of language is that it can parody the grid, subvert the discourses, and write singularily. In the 1990s, therefore, the body often moved through already codified spaces of culture and ideology, but it rarely constru...
Acta Ethnographica Hungaricum, 2020
The final version of this paper has been officially included in the Volume 65 (2020): Issue 1 of the Journal “Acta Ethnographica Hungarica” (Jun 2020). https://doi.org/10.1556/022.2020.00012 Extract: In the framework of the cross-disciplinary project “Aesthetic machinations, symbolic machinations” (2016), Ecuadorian artists from different fields found a common space for creativity. The performances “Alina.06” and “La Señorita Wang soy yo” were the two resulting experiences that merged the work of dancers and musicians while allowing them to become more aware of the way in which they assume their own disciplines. This contrasting collaboration is significant in a country whose crossbred heritage constantly requires creators to find new ways to position themselves regarding their own art. The reason for this is a postcolonial discernment which always remains in the background, suggesting destabilization and a certain disobedience, not to foreign knowledge itself, but to practices and methods that are not put to the test in the space and material context of practitioners. It is in this sense, and not necessarily through a geopolitical lens, that suspicion arises in the eyes of Ernesto Ortíz (dancer, choreographer and director) against the given knowledge, as long as it remains disembodied. To parallelize with folk dance, wherein movement and its cultural context are interwoven, the author proposes a dialogue between his own ideas and those by Le Breton. The resulting conversation revolves around contemporary performing arts (dance, theatre and performance art) and the effort to emancipate themselves from ideological alignments, but more fundamentally, from the task of producing any explanation or clear fable for the audience. Hence, the spirit of contemporary praxis in art encourages subjectivity and, at the same time, offers ambiguous discourses to an also dissimilar and diverse audience, who end up with a certain possibility to come up with their own little version of the play as curators of their own experience.
The International Journal of Arts Theory and History, 2014
Theatre dance (notably ballet) can be seen as part of the domain of high culture and the social elite. However, through a historical postmodern analysis of one major company's role (the Firm) in Brisbane (Australia) between 1926 and 1960, it becomes evident that the Firm, when faced with the commercial reality of running a theatre business, blurred social classes when it came to the promotion of theatre dance. The first part of this paper will provide the theoretical background of historiography, cultural theory, and notions of class, as well as the popular high art debate. The research method adopted will then be outlined before discussing the results. Through this postmodern analysis of what occurred in Brisbane, a greater appreciation of the influential link between commerce and dance is established. In particular, it will be argued that this commercial impact (or influential link) related to the major influence of the Firm in running a production company and the blurring of classes involved. It was this commercial link that was critical in the shaping of ballet in Brisbane as it occurred at a time prior to any systematic government support.
How can a materialist approach contribute to the development of contemporary dance and cho-reography? That is the question that this article aims to investigate through the formulation of the current status of the ongoing artistic research project Movement Material. The project relates to topics within the philosophy of materialism, but focuses on practical artistic research. The article delineates the knowledge production that may emerge from the exploration of a materialist approach to dancing, understood as an attunement between sensory and cognitive capacities. These two capacities are understood as relational and transposed into the practice through two terms, dance and choreography. Sammanfattning Hur kan ett materialistiskt perspektiv bidra till utvecklingen av nutida dans och koreografi? Det är frågan som den här artikeln ställer genom att beskriva det pågående konstnärliga forskningspro-jektet Movement Material. Projektet förhåller sig till den materialistiska traditionen inom filosofi men har sitt fokus i det praktiska konstnärliga undersökandet. Artikeln skisserar den kunskapspro-duktion som kan komma ur det praktiska utforskandet av ett materialistiskt perspektiv på dans, som då förstås som en form av dialog mellan kroppens kognitiva och sinnliga förmågor. Dessa förmågor förstås som relationella i förhållande till varandra och översätts i det praktiska arbetet genom termerna dans och koreografi. To contextualize the research topic in focus, the article starts by describing related research along with some background information about how my previous PhD research (From Model to Module – a Move Towards Generative Choreography (Ölme, 2014)) in the subsequent years, led to the formulation of the research questions of the current