DR635 Dance

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DR635 Dance Discourse - Autumn Term 2007
Watching DanceBodies and Gazes
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Concatenation

• Last week, we looked at ways of linking physical
  action with other theatrical signs, and sign
  systems, as part of the mise-en-scène
  
• Today, lets explore further how the basic
  spatial and dynamic qualities of physical action
  are concatenated with other (spatial and dynamic)
  qualities

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The Concatenation of Physical Qualities

• There are four central aspects to look at
• coordinating principle (mode of presentation)
• relations
• genre and style
• structuring devices (? last week!)

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Genre and Style

• 1.) How does the dance relate to GENRE and
  STYLE?
  
• Genre Ballet, Modern Dance...
• Style LCDS-style, Cunningham, Graham....
• Is it done by the book traditional vs
  innovative?
  
• irony / subversion / deconstruction (as in
  Kyliáns Symphony in D)
  
• ....

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The Coordinating Principle

• 2.) Identify the dominant COORDINATING PRINCIPLE
  (or mode of presentation / mode of the
  dance)
  
• narrative
• thematic (concept)
• expressive
• atmospheric
• symbolic
• spectacular (aesthetic)
• self-reflexive
• visual
• formal (pure movement)
• ...

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Relations of Physical Qualities

• 3.) Identify significant RELATIONS of physical
  qualities within the dance
  
• main/minor/subsidiary relations
• accidental relations
• internal relations (between spatial and dynamic
  qualities, physical action)
  
• complex relations (between physical action and
  other sign systems, e.g. correspondence between
  physical action and music)

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Relations of Physical Qualities

• 4.) Evaluate the effect of the RELATIONS you
  have identified
  
• variation, correspondence, contrast, opposition
• group formations (synchronicity shared spatial
  and/or dynamic qualities)
  
• NB A group in this sense may not be immediately
  visible and needs not to be blocked as group in
  the stage space!

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Structuring Devices

• 5.) How are action qualities used as STRUCTURING
  DEVICES
  
• different (or same/recurring...) use across the
  episodes or scenes
  
• the distribution of physical action and qualities
  according to role, space, time, etc.

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Structuring Devices

• 6.) Investigate the effect of significant
  STRUCTURING DEVICES
  
• Do they create a linear / sequential / climactic
  structure?
  
• Do they give a certain rhythm to the profile
  (accent on a specific scene alteration of
  energetic and quiet scenes, etc.) ?
  
• Do they set (and how?) focus- / climax- / turning
  / transition points?

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Dont forget to look at whats not there!

• 7.) Identify significant ABSENCES of qualities
  (and elements/components...)!
  

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Analysing Dance Performance

• The ballet is the supreme theatrical form of
  poetry. The ballets function is symbolic, each
  step is a metaphor, a hieroglyph of a mysterious
  writing which one must be inspired to read. The
  illiterate ballerina can be the unconscious
  revealer of something which she symbolizes
  without understanding what it is. Only our poetic
  instinct can decipher her writing of the body.
  Her dance is a poem freed from all the apparatus
  of writing.
• Stephane Mallarmé, Ballets, 1886

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Analysing Dance Performance

• The task of the dance analyst is to find ways
  to reveal and understand the webs of meaning
  created through the dance event.
  
• Cynthia Nixon Bull, quoted in Thomas, 94

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Analysing Dance Performance

• Remember
• in your Performance Analysis, you will never be
  able to be complete
  
• it is therefore essential that you are selective
  and identify the most significant aspects of the
  performance
  
• you should carefully plot a strategy for
  presenting your performance analysis
  
• allow for detail and carefully (i.e.
  strategically) selected examples to illustrate
  your points

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Training your Skills

• Submit, for next weeks seminar, a performance
  analysis of approx. 1,500 words on one of todays
  video examples (Mats Ek or DV8)
  
• This will then be looked at and you receive some
  feedback from me as well as your peers.

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Also...

• The Modern Theatre-lecture on
• Dance/Theatre From Tanztheatre to Physical
  Theatre
  
• will take place in Week 7,
• FRIDAY 9th NOVEMBER, from 2 pm, at ELT2.
• You are invited to come along and refresh your
  knowledge from the first year!

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Bodies Gazes Dance Discourse

• Remember Susan Fosters essay from Week 1
• the perceived body
• the ideal body
• the demonstrative body
• ? fashioning an expressive self through the body

These categories are not only useful for talking
about dance training and dancing bodies, but also
about bodies in our society. The Body Project,
as H Thomas terms it, investigates how society
cultivates its ideal bodies, and regulates our
perceived bodies through its controlling
demonstrative bodies.
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Bodies Gazes Dance Discourse

• Get undressed but be slim, good-looking and
  tanned!
  
• Michel Foucault (1980 57)

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Bodies Gazes Spectatorship

• The focus on spectatorship indicated that the
  ways in which we look at dance are profoundly
  partial and social at the same time they are
  inscribed in and through a chain of signifying
  practices and cultural codes through which we
  make sense of the world, and through which our
  bodies, our subjectivities, are implicated
  (Thomas 1996, 83). As such, it offered a
  challenge to the abstract theories of beauty and
  perfection, which bracketed out the social and
  which had dominated the formalist tradition of
  dance aesthetics.
• Thomas, p. 162

Cinema (but also theatre) is defined by the
place of the look (Mulvey) / spectatorial
dynamics (Cooper Albright). There is the
potential to vary or expose this look
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Bodies Gazes Spectatorship

• Laura Mulvey (1975/1989) the male gaze
• an essay on spectatorship in FILM

• women are film are represented from the
  perspective of the male spectator
  
• Women become the OBJECTS OF MALE GAZE
• film duplicates the gender inequalities, but
  thereby creates pleasure

? to-be-looked-at-ness visual and erotic
impact of representation visual consumption
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Mats Ek

• b. 1945 Malmö (Sweden)
• Son of Birgit Cullberg
• did Theater Studies and only started dancing at
  27
  
• 1985-1993 Artistic Director of Cullberg Ballet
• Gisèlle (1982), Swan Lake (1987), Sleeping Beauty
  (1996)
  
• classical narrative ballets in radically new
  versions, but also shorter new works

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Lloyd Newson

• b. 1957 Australia
• 1970s classical training, dancer with New Zealand
  Ballet
  
• scholarship for London Contemporary Dance School
• Freelance dancer and choreographer for music
  videos
  
• 1986, co-founder of DV8 Physical Theatre