Dance War
Two titans, two teams, one battle…this is DANCE WAR!
The trailer to ABC’s new gladiator spectacular tells us that “talk is cheap.” So to settle their rivalry “Dancing with the Stars” judges Bruno Tonioli and Carrie Ann Inaba “put their money where there mouth is” and battle two armies of dancers against each other. The casualties of this conflict are not the titans but the unfortunate dancers America decides to vote off each week.
Dance makes for good wars and wars make for good entertainment. As vulgar as all this sounds it is important that we try to develop the thinking around this little cultural treasure. We love a good battle dance. Is it not the battle between the Montagues and Capulets that becomes the centerpiece of Romeo and Juliet. See Kristin’s video on battle training here. Indeed Dance of the Knights, Prokofiev’s score for the battle scene in Act I, Scene 2 of Romeo and Juliet, becomes the sonic theme for the whole ballet.
We have looked at the close relationship between the making a military body and making a dancer before. In our discussions of Foucault’s Discipline and Punish and Arbeau’s dance manual we have seen the science of choreography as a general problem to be employed for developing military maneuvers and dance maneuvers alike.
In politics, business and the culture at large war is arguably the eminent form or discourse. It makes sense then that contemporary dance should investigate this form a bit more deeply. Though the work is valuble I am not talking about making dances about conflict, such as David Dorfman’s Underground or William Forsythe’s Three Atmospheric Studies. Rather I am looking at dances that are themselves conflicts such as the battle format in breakdancing. If we were to look at professional wrestling as a performance practice it too would fall into this category.
Perhaps we should have performances in which two dance companies compete against each other and the audience, voting on their cell phones, determines which gets to keep the box office. I would definitely go see that show. It will be exciting to explore the dance war as a valuble performance outlet to be experimented with.
War and Money
War and money…it’s not the same old thing. They are hot contemporary topics that demand our attention. The economy is in recession and our military aggression on the world has no end in sight. War and money are entangled in an exquisitely complex embrace and it is within this romance that we move move move.
It makes us move.
This is why dance, it’s technologies and their study can help develop greater understanding of how war and money are choreographed. War is a dance machine based on debt. Money is a dance machine based on debt.
The machine moves because debt makes us move.
I will take the time to elaborate these points in my next couple posts. The dance is coming so stay tuned.
She’s a Dancing Machine
For the last meeting of my class last semester, 12-21-07, I had Julie Cruse of Ohio State’s EMMA Lab as a guest to share her research in developing Chorebot VICKI. VICKI stands for Virtual Improvisational Choreographer / Kinetic Instructor. She a virtual automaton who guides a dancer through a structured improvisation using randomly generated verbal cues. Upon initializing VICKI she describes her purpose.
She says:
Choreobot is designed to challenge a dancer’s movement skills, and asks the dancer to draw upon advanced improvisational interpretation. I am programmed to make dances using theme and variation as prescribed by my creator. I use textbook dance methods, but - I am unpredictable. The dancer will demonstrate as I begin my next new dance.
Read more of Julie’s description of the technology HERE at the project website.
Before the lecture demonstration Julie and I had to rebuild modules of the assembly so that we could get VICKI to talk off Intel-based Macs. Retooling software under time constraints can be terribly stressful but I am glad to report we patched things up in time for the class. Julie’s lecture/demonstration was wonderful. She took some time to explain her impetus for building the machine and gave the students a tour of VICKI’s inner workings. Next Julie fired up the choreobot and demonstrated how she danced under VICKI’s instruction. Next she invited the students to try. Watching the student’s improvisation was exciting.
The system forces the dancer to think on their toes and make quick decisions. With time I could see a dancer becoming expert at navigating in this environment. Julie has clearly taken the time to do this. For her it was the first time she was able to observe other people dancing inside her system. By the end of the class everyone was incredibly energized and immersed in conversation regarding future research using choreobot VICKI. Julie has left us with a copy of VICKI and has encouraged us to continue experimenting with and mutating the system.
Matt Gough has taken a good deal of time developing an analysis of this work. In particular Matt takes issue with the description of the work as an “artificial intelligence” simply seeing it as an automated version of Cunningham’s method of chance procedures. Julie has documented the critical discourse HERE.
I met Julie inside Sector 9 of the blogosphere. There she has made bold gestures regarding dance-technology as a field. Like Matt Gough, she has voiced discontent over the current state of dance-tech.
She writes:
When I hear dance and tech, I think - it better not be ANOTHER interactive audio/video environment. It better not be ANOTHER…
…dance contextualized by projected videos
…dancer controlled by robotics or sensors improvisation in real time that composes the score
…motion capture in real time translated to animated projections
…wearable technologies that do something with sound or video
…animated avatars in second life real time “telematic” improvising
I find such pugilistic remarks invigorating and am excited to see what trouble Julie stirs up in the future.
Transmission from Sector 9
I have been fairly quiet this semester on the winger, delving into deeper recesses of the blogosphere. Most of my writing has been on Dance Machines, the group blog for my class at Sarah Lawrence College, and in the bowels of the dancetech network. The dancetech network is similar to the inter-mission, they are both social networks run on the ning platform, and cast the ever enticing poly-panoptic gaze.
Its decription reads:
A dance and technology social network that aggregates and facilitates the flow of information and the distributed intelligence among movement, new media artists and theorists working in the confluence of embodied performance practices and new media.
It is interesting to compare the two. To view the intermission you have to be a member. You dont have to be a member view dancetech. The intermission has great graphic design. Conversations are friendly and straightforward. I especially like the fact that their is a member called theintermission whose interests include 1’s and 0’s and bodies in motion. This embodiment of many in one is Malkovichian and devilishly post-modern. It is a socialist gesture made through recursive induction.
The dancetech network is not such a friendly place. The site lacks the solid design of intermission/winger; the erratic changes in the layout make it feel more like battleground on some unstable landscape. Conversations range from metaphysical to ‘pataphysical. Forum conversations often run off topic and involve a significant amount of head-butting. The language can be cryptic, esoteric and vague.
And for all this I love it. Come over and have a look. The blog can be found here.
It is a great place to interact with people entangled in research involving technology and dance. It is where I met Julie Cruse of Ohio State’s Experimental Media and Movement Arts Lab. The work and interaction demands its own posting.
Gifts for Dancers…
As a holiday gift to all of you, (I apologize for it’s lateness)…
A sampling of Winger contributors gave our thoughts on what we (or other people involved in dance) might be excited about for the holidays.
We’ve suggested some things that are useful, inspiring, or just plain cool.
Popular among many contributors were spa treatments (and related goodies), magazine subscriptions, books, music, performance tickets, and the iPhone.
Enjoy!
Also,
LOLAstretch Gift Certificates, which enables the receiver to design their own leotard.
“Give the gift of creative control!”
Another thing I would recommend is season tickets to BAM. - CANDICE
“Look before you leap: an advice guide for choreographers” by Ann Whitley
The description on the back says:
“This is not a book about how to choreograph. It is a practical guide to the negotation, preparation, organization and continuing care of choreographic work. It is intended as a useful source of reference for choreographers, assistant choreographers, dance teachers, managers, administrators, amateurs, movements specialists, composers, designers, technicians and all those who collaborate with choreographers.”
Also,
There is an annual publication in South Africa called “Contacts” - this book contains all contact information for people working in the industry.
A grant to make a work … finding out that my funding applications were successful …. or even just finding a sponsor to support my work;
The completion of my MA thesis.
Spa Treatments for those sore bodies.
Alternative health remedies / tonics to keep us healthy during the intense seasons
Calender with beautiful pics
Funky bag to keep all the rehearsal stuff in
Beautiful journal - to write new ideas in
A subscription to a magazine is always a great gift idea that keeps on giving through-out the year. - MAIA
Also,
Touchstone by Laurie R. King
This book doesn’t come out till Boxing Day, so I guess it doesn’t technically qualify for holiday gift giving status (though I suppose you can always give New Year’s presents… why not?), but Laurie R. King is one of my favorite mystery writers. Her stories are always deliciously smart and satisfyingly precise.
Chocolate
One of those gifts that can very rarely go wrong (though my sister has a friend who likes neither chocolate nor peanut butter! Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups must be like a bad nightmare to him). My recent obsessions are Green and Black’s dark chocolate (really flavorful, but not too bitter) and Theo Chocolate’s “Bread and Chocolate” bar, which is dark chocolate pocked with the tiniest crumbs of salty baugette. This sounds like a really bizarre and unpleasant combination, but it’s addictive and delicious. Plus, the wrapper is a cheerful yellow and has adorable, cartoonish cats on it. - MEGAN
Also,
Tickets to The Nutcracker, Christmas Carol or Passion. - MIKI
Also,
I like all cotton sweats. hate cotton/poly blend. Yuck!
Something like these.
And of course the essential stocking stuffer, We B Girlz. - TONY
Also,
I’d love to be able to design my own ballet-wear somehow… but, like, with a few drags and a click.
…and a puppy. - EVAN
Also,
A subscription to Answers4dancers.com - good website that lists auditions.
And what tops my Xmas wish list this year:
*an iphone or blackberry so I can organize my rehearsal schedule and check emails between running from class to work to where ever! - TAYLOR
Also,
A membership to a museum.
An iTunes gift certificate to purchase some good warm-up music. - MATTHEW
Also,
Always useful - iTunes gift certificates and Starbucks gift cards. (There are four of these within a sic block radius of Lincoln Center).
And warm fuzzy things. - SLOAN
(From Ian, a dancer with Les Ballets Grandiva, who will be joining our family very soon…)
The top on my list are gift certificates for 90 minute massages at the Equinox Spa and 60 minute session gift cards for True Pilates and True Pilates East - anything that soothes aching 35 year old muscles!
Truth be told, I am also a sucker for anything from Hermes in the Hermes orange along with any little Louis Vuitton accessory like the I-Pod case. I guess that’s my two or four cents. - IAN
Space Ghost
November 9th, 2007 at Monkeytown
Two screenings: 7:30 and 10:00, $5
Reservations strongly suggested. Make a reservation at:
www.monkeytownhq.com
Welcome to the 4th-annual T-MINUS Film Festival: Bringing Time into Focus.
What slows down when everything speeds up? Why do things that move fast demonstrate a unique inner peace when viewed from a different speed? What are the defining patterns in the world of motion?
T-MINUS 2007 showcases a collection of imaginative and innovative work from filmmakers, scientists, photographers, dancers, printers, musicians, and passengers (as well as a few roosters) from around the globe - attempting to explore these questions through the creative medium of time.
This year’s festival presents 13 works encompassing a range of techniques and perspectives - from 16mm walks through NYC, to algorithm’s in dance. Through shifting sequences, interrupting motion, or shuffling timelines, each piece succeeds at illuminating the hidden corners of our world by bringing Time into Focus.
Including work by:
Charles Lim
Chris Jordan
Grant Wakefield
John Adderly
Luca Mugnaini
Luke Dubois
Nathaniel Stern
Peter Shapiro
Sameer Butt
Ting Hsing Want
Tony Schultz
Adam Kendall
Robert Dennis
pOpticons
Over the past few weeks of my Dance and Technology class at Sarah Lawrence College, the students and I have been programing, dissecting and repurposing surveillance systems to develop mediated performance outlets/environments. To aid and inform our strategies in this project we have been thinking and reading about panopticism.
What is panopticism anyway? wiki wiki
Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, a theoretical architecture imagined in the 1780’s, is illustrated above. The name literally means the “all-seeing place.” He describes it as a multi-purpose architecture whose design principles are applicable to constructing factory, school, prison, hospital or asylum. A multi-story ring of individual cells surround a central watchtower; every cell is visible from the watchtower while the watcher remains invisible.
The viewer can see everything while remaining invisible.
This panoptic prison named Presidio Modelo, built under the dictatorship of Gerardo Machado in Cuba, once held the one and only Fidel Castro. It is now a national monument.
Foucault uses the Panopticon to analyze the new ways in which power is exercised in the modern world and the role surveillance technologies play in creating a disciplined/docile body. He describes Bentham’s architecture as a kind of multi-staged performance space.
The unverifiable possibility that a subject is being observed at any time is the essential mechanism by which the machine operates. Visibility, as Meghan noted in class, makes one take responsibility for their own subjection.
He who is subjected to the field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play simultaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection. Discipline and Punish 202
What does this have to do with performance? Everything…
Foucault describes the stacks of cells; “They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”
In one way the panopticon is like a super-theater, a nesting of many stages.
However Foucault stresses that surveillance architectures are exactly the reverse of those of theater. He writes, “We are much less Greeks than we believe. We are neither in the amphitheatre, nor on the stage, but in the panoptic machine.” Survellence allows one to see many while theater and spectacle is based on many seeing one
Compare the structure of the Panopticon to that of the Globe Theater.
Different yet the same. Definitely involved in a complex tangle.
This assembly can be used as a dance technology. On April 28th and 29th 2007 Martha Williams directed and performed in a dance installation entitled Stacked, converting an out of business clothing store into a surveillance menagerie. Each dancer took residence in one of nine changing rooms which they themed and designed the interiors of. Camera feeds from each cell were composed and projected in the central room so that all of the dances could be seen at once.
Turning the panopticon back into a performance space constitutes a double reversal.
With this in mind, take another look at the dance-cube I prototyped last fall. In this staging the cameras are on the perimeter of the studio so that the gaze is directed from the outside in (as in theater) rather than from the inside out.
Though still, looking at this dance I am reminded of the cells of the panopticon.
“They are like so many small cages, so many small theaters, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.”
Could we characterize the structure of the internet as panoptic? Here is a great essay that explores that question.
This very space is haunted by panoptic geometries. Have a look at the contributor list in the sidebar, look at all those little faces, “perfectly individualized” subjects you can see all at once and may click on to reveal “so many small theaters.”
The design of social networking and internet dating sites, showing all your friends faces in an array, seduces us with a kind of panoptic fantasy, being able to see many at once. This is where things become slightly more complicated. Just like the panopticon embeds tiny theaters in an array, these social technologies embed so many small panopticons in a matrix of connectivity. Each cell is now its own theater and watchtower.
All these ideas should not creep us out. Rather, they should inform our thinking about performance and visibility and the way technology provides new venues for artistic expression. It is an open problem. In my estimation projects like Martha William’s Stacked, my dance-cube, or The(Inter)Mission are all part of a project to reverse-the-panopticon. While flirting with aspects of surveillance and making the subject hyper-visible, they enhance communication rather than simply separate us into little boxes.
So next time you feel like you are under surveillance consider it an opportunity to put on a show.
The Dance Masters
This fall I am back at Sarah Lawrence College teaching Dance and Technology. All of my students are smart, engaged and still unsure whether I am really crazy, or just pretending. We have set-up our own class blog where we discuss readings and communicate about building dance machines. The blog is appropriately located at http://dancemachines.blogspot.com. Come over for a visit. Other folks seem to be taking interest. Matt Gough wrote an incredibly encouraging post you can see here.
For readings we have started out with sections from Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish. Here is a part of that conversation.
Locating dance within Foucault’s framework of docility is both difficult and provocative. In attempting to pin dance to this trellis it becomes apparent that dance is slippery and cannot be easily categorized. It is clear however that discipline and dance are deeply entangled. Natasha spots this in the body of the soldier.
These men of the 17th-late 18th centuries were molded into figures with upright postures, programmed steps and structured attitudes; compare to ballet, especially, where all of these are instructed from an early age. Even the goals are similar - achieving honour and respect (of movement), grace, alertness, agility and strength. The quote on pg. 136: “A body that is docile that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved”, is applicable to any dance class or performance, even improvisational. We are constantly subjecting our bodies to our aspirations and limitations, using the body and our knowledge to further its abilities for the task at hand, transforming it (whether in attitude or structure) to execute movements and improving it for the short-term goals and the long-term benefits.
Foucault opens his section on docile bodies with a reading of Montgommery’s 1636 military manual La Milice francaise. It’s description of the dancerly pikeman, who ‘will have have to march in step in order to have as much grace and gravity as possible’ resonates with Thoinot Arbeau’s dance manual Orchesographie. Written less than 50 years earlier, it had illustrated the strong linkages between choreography in the court and on the battlefield.
Thinking that making a dancer is just another instance of creating a docile subject (be it a soldier, factory worker, school child, or mental patient) can be uncomfortable to say the least. Janet points out how subtle power mechanisms can operate to form the subject.
For example the idea of coercion - that the power structure is being so fully and well imposed because of the fact that it’s being slipped in the back door, so to speak. “Small acts of cunning endowed with a great power of diffusion, subtle arrangements, apparently innocent, but profoundly suspicious,” (p. 139). It’s not being beaten into people, it’s “proper” execution is being rewarded. It is being made convenient. I think that these ideas have a very great relationship to the more “open” versions of modern and contemporary dance technique. Even when we are not working from highly stylized and codified techniques, we are still being instructed by a teacher, being ordered into levels, being auditioned for placement and so on. Therefore if we are properly disciplined in WHATEVER is the “proper” kind of “technique” (even if that is merely a general body awareness?), we are being subject to a certain power structure based on WHO decided what is “proper”.
We are inside a discipline machine with all of the spatial and temporal markers Foucault describes. This class demonstrates that. A component of the dance {1,2}/3 or graduate study in the department of dance at Sarah Lawrence College. The class is physically located in a distinct place within a time table. The time and space within the class is also divided and in doing so controls the physical activities of the participant bodies. Some stand, some sit, some on the floor, some on chairs, some speak, some erase, some write and some read. We move inside the computer for a spell. Then there is time and space designated for dancing. Our bodies and activities are seem well placed within space, time and the structure of the academy.
But, Sarah Rosner pushes back with a contrarian maneuver.
I think the thing that hit me most about the idea of discipline via the control of movements is how much i DIDN’T feel like it applied to my experience of dance.
And Sarah Richison voices related discontent, but finds in it a contradiction.
say you revolt. are no longer docile. escape from prison. you find some way to do some other dance. so you move off and do your own thing and someone follows you. someone wants to do your dance. are you then the new discipline? yes. you have manipulated their body, right.
For those of you who were looking for straight answers I fear that we have none. Instead we are left with a set of contradictions and a general understanding that dance is slippery, at times obedient and located, at other times disobedient and dislocated. Here are one, two, three, four dances, two made inside the institution and two made outside. Dissect them with regards to this contradiction between dance’s discipline and disruption.
Lepecki to Orlin
Photo by Jean Pierre Maurin
One day not too long ago I decided to do a web search on Andre Lepecki. I had done this search many times before as I am researching the relevance of Lepecki’s proposals to South African contemporary dance. I am not quite sure what prompted me to do this search yet again. The click of the search button marks the beginning of a whole new journey … something I had longed for … to give voice to my opinions on dance performance. Specifically on South African dance performance as so little is written about it (both locally and internationally). The entry that would bring me into contact with The Winger was a link to a post by Tonya on her blog. She and Tony were discussing starting a reading group on Lepecki’s book Concept & Presence.
I was intrigued by this lovely lady … she is both intelligent & witty & writes fantastically about a whole range of dance. As many of you know by now Tonya put me in contact with Tony & the rest is history … my passionate interest in dance & Lepecki’s writing prompted Tony & Kristin to invite me to become a contributor.
I will be using these posts to tell you more about dance performance in South Africa. I have a keen interest in what is happening on the fringes – what Susan Broadhurst calls liminal spaces & according to Johannes Birringer, border performances. I belief it is within these borders – or gaps as I like to call it – that exciting and fresh ideas are being proposed by both established and up-and-coming choreographers.
These gaps are marked by a questioning of established dance/performance aesthetics which is an important and necessary aspect of breaking boundaries and rupturing the conventional to cultivate growth in choreographic innovation.
In South Africa, this lineage of questioning (characterized by performativity, presence and conceptual dance) can be traced to Robyn Orlin’s work. Today, Robyn lives and works in Europe. It is telling that one of Orlin’s latest works was a collaboration with Vera Mantero, whom Lepecki aligns with the characteristics of contemporary European choreography he highlights in Concept and Presence (2004) & Exhausting Dance (2006). South African dance researcher, Jill Waterman points out “challenging the notion of comfortable genres of dance and theatre categories is, on many occasions, the central thrust of Robyn Orlin’s performance pieces”.
http://www.robynorlin.com
The Paris Voice has this to say about her work:
“With enigmatic and provocative titles like daddy, I’ve seen this piece six times and I still don’t know why they’re hurting each other, South African choreographer Robyn Orlin has sparked more curiosity worldwide than anybody in the dance scene since Trisha Brown during the 1960s.”
Carol Pratl
At the moment she is working on a new work for South Africa’s annual Dance Umbrella in March next year. “I always go back to South Africa - because my dancers are there, and my family - for one project a year…”
I’m very excited about this new work and encourage you to go and see her work if you ever have the chance. Have a look at her great website to get an idea of her quirky humour and fantastic use of imagery.
Chapter 2: Ghost Story | Reading Group Post IV
The Reading Group at thewinger.comAndré Lepecki’s Exhausting DanceChapter 2: Masculinity, solipsism, choreography
Lepecki reads the work of 3 performers as a ghost story beneath the spectra of a 1589 dance manual Orchesographie in the second chapter of Exhausting Dance. The ghost of this ghost story is our solitary male dancer, in the empty dance studio, resonating with written language. This ghost haunts western choreography with a “solipsistic excess”. The relationship between this private dancing and the making of the “idiotic” modern subject (as from Greek idiotes: a private individual who declines public political engagement) is problematic for dance in the social and downright spooky.
Lepecki attempts to turn solipsism in on itself, framing its use in choreography as a generative metaphysical echo chamber. In his view it functions “to dismantle modernity’s subjectivization as a mode of the idiotic” and “intensify critically and physically the hegemonic conditions of subjectivization and to explode them.”
Rewind…What is solipsism?
Solipsism is the philosophical position that all things outside our own experience, including other minds, are unknowable and non-existent. It is the subjectivity of Descartes “I think therefore I am” taken to an extreme, “what I don’t think, is not.” It is a selfish and lonely philosophy.
Lonely ghost #1.
Thoinot Arbeau, dance master, Jesuit priest and mathematician. Author of 1589 dance manual Orchesographie. The engravings are really interesting. The proximity of military choreography to court dancing is evident in the manual (which reminds me of another conversation). The notation clearly derives from music scoring, consisting of notes on a scale over a beat time series.
The manual unfolds as a dialog between the Arbeau and the young lawyer Capriol. Capriol is in search of dance instruction so that he may integrate properly into society. The challenge of transferring dance knowledge through notation, so that the pupil could teach himself alone in the absence of the teacher, initiates the project of orchesography. Its development “as practice, as a technological binding of writing and dancing, as a pedagogical bond between men” allows “socialization with those who are not quite there…whenever a dance book is read in a secluded chamber.”
Obeying the commands of an absent dance master raises an apparition. I wonder if Kristin has ever seen Balanchine’s ghost. Scary.
Lepecki reads Bruce Nauman, Juan Dominguez, and Xavier Le Roy as lonely ghosts haunting and haunted by “solipsistic masculinity.” The chapter is interesting once you get your head around it a little and understand what it means to look at “Western choreography as an early modern subjectivity-machine” from a paranormal perspective.
I would love to see what conversation arises from these ideas and readings of these artists. Are these ideas useful to you? A dance blog seems like the sensible place to talk about language and the body as a technological interface. Do we believe that our technique shapes our subjectivity? Can/does dance suffer from solipsistic excess?
These ideas are useful for me to think about my own work. Most of the videos/dances I have made consist of solitary dancers recorded in empty studios. Much of my personal dance/technology practice takes place in the same space, the small studio.
I am there right now, writing and dancing, trying my hardest to not be an idiot.
