“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.
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).
(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
Choreographer: Jérôme Bel Production: The show must go on (2001) Photo: Laurent Philippe
I propose livening up this Reading Group through conversation – where we all participate in defining this field. I would like to start this conversation by inviting all of you (whether you’ve read Lepecki’s Exhausting Dance or not) to share your viewpoint on this critique of representation/virtuosity through stillness and reduction…
When Jérôme Bel had one of his performers ask this question – “To be … or not to be” – in The Last Performance (1998), he set up a critique of representation. Re-Read this famous Shakespearean quote from Hamlet as:
To represent … or not to represent … that is the question in contemporary dance.
Jérôme Bel critiques representation through stillness … or reduction … as Lepecki points out in Concept and Presence (A chapter in Carter’s book Rethinking Dance History, 2004):
“The contemporary European dance scene can be qualified by one term: ‘reduction’ – of expansiveness, of the spectacular, of the unessential…”
Pirko Husemann points out “on the level of dance an evident fading-away of dance itself prevails. Contemporary European dance becomes less and less danced in the usual sense. Admittedly, this tendency within dance history is no singular occurrence – here mentioned would be only the minimalism of American 1960s postmodern dance.”
This critique of representation is certainly not new. The lineage of this rejection of virtuosity and representation includes amongst others:
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”.
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.
I recently had the pleasure of meeting up with Acty Tang, recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Choreography (South Africa) to talk about his new work, Chaste. Emotions surrounding this work are running high as performers are dealing with highly relevant and personal issues of love and the repressed unconscious. This Butoh-inspired physical theatre work is an iconoclastic interpretation of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé. Acty believes this work is about the awakening of desire that has the potential to conquer the repression of law, patriarchy and religion. Performed by Acty himself, a dancer Sifiso Majola, an actress Heike Gehring and two singers this work is bound to provoke stereotypical renditions of what constitutes dance. The politics of dance has been inherent to Acty’s work since he presented his first butoh-inspired dance work at the Dance Umdudo in 1999. Last year Apology for a Stranger questioned why dancers make work and what audiences desire to see. In this work he apologized for his inability to dance and asked “What is there left to make work about, except the act of making work?”
In terms of content, Acty keeps going back to the theme of love. Thematically it involves politics because he looks at the homoerotic on stage in a country where it is still not acceptable at a very basic level. For him, love and desire are very closely related. In AmaQueerKwere (2005) he explored desire across time and space through Sontag’s notion of the erotic, approaching meaning through the sensual. And in Beloved (2004), even though the title refers to love there is no exact love object in the work. Some of his other works include And the Empty Space of His Shadow (1999), Ndilinde - Wait for me (2004), Apology for a Stranger (2006) and The Silent Wail of Melisande (2006). Thematically, it is about the
politics of LOVE. Acty sees love and justice as very much linked: he believes there will be healing and community love but born through huge amounts of trauma, struggle and injustice.
The Silent Wail of Melisande - Studio Shot
Photo by Chipo Laba
At a very basic level Butoh takes the body out of the social realm (which is filled with trauma and resistance) into the extraordinary and spiritual realm. The white painted body classically used in Butoh also relates to South African Xhosa initiation rituals, where black Xhosa boys paint themselves white and live in the bush to exit as young men. This happy
coincidence is very similar to the original context in that it refers to a making other and a link to the spiritual. It also speaks to a local audience who might not be aware of butoh and immediately transports the work to a spiritual realm.
Our apologies for dragging our heels a bit on introducing this lovely lady (her profile page has been lurking on the right side of the winger for some time), but computer and internet troubles in her native South Africa and busyness here at the winger caused some snags that have now been worked out.
Ms. Maia Jordaan’s profile reads like a list of individuals you would need to put together an entire production - except she can do everything herself… “director/choreographer, producer, performer, set/costume designer, stage manager, company manager, marketing manager, teacher and researcher…” Quite an impressive list of talents! She is studying at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa, where she’s working towards a practice-based Masters in Contemporary Performance.
Maia is currently working on her thesis dissertation in which she “explores Lepecki’s proposals on the characteristics of contemporary dance/performance to three South African works: Robin Orlin’s daddy, i’ve seen this piece six times before and i still don’t know why they’re hurting each other (2000), and The First Physical Theatre Company’s 16 Kinds of Emptiness (2006).
This is part of what Tony Schultz thought would make her both a fantastic contributor to The Winger as well as a great addition to the Reading Group, in which Tony and Maia will be discussing and dissecting Andre Lepecki’s Exhausting Dance. Check out the Reading Group page to get a copy of the book, see what they have written and discussed so far, and throw in your own thoughts!
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