Hetty Blades

Affective Traces in Virtual Spaces: Annotation and emerging dance scores

This paper considers the role of annotation in three recently developed dance ‘scores’. Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced (Forsythe/OSU 2009), Using the Sky (Motion Bank/Hay 2013) and A Choreographers Score (De Keersmaeker and Cvejić 2012), each utilize annotation in various ways to analyse, re-present and reveal the shapes, relations and traces of movement. At times annotation provides a hidden methodological tool, helping researchers to systematize features of the works; in other cases it takes the form of written notes, digital inscriptions and spoken articulations. I consider how such methods relate to a codified notational system and draw on perspectives from philosophy (Apostolou-Hölscher 2014; Sabisch 2011) and human geography (McCormack 2013) to consider the aesthetics and ‘affect’ of annotation, highlighting its potential to offer innovative ways to observe, understand and experience dance.

Preservation and Paradox: Choreographic Authorship in the Digital Sphere

This chapter considers how the work of Merce Cunningham (1919–2009) and Pina Bausch (1940–2009) is being preserved and ‘protected’ through online mechanisms. Blades then goes on to talk about how preservation questions are being addressed by living artists, focusing on how Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s authorial positioning during the ‘referencing’ of her choreography by pop star Beyonce Knowles (2011) and the subsequent development of the online project Re:Rosas! The fABULEUS Rosas Remix Project (2013) demonstrates how the online circulation of dance poses important questions about what it might mean to preserve, author and own a work of dance art.

The Values of Leftovers in Dance Research

Cultural heritage content can be seen as a form of leftover and when reused can open up new creative possibilities and understandings of the value of culture. These leftovers can be remixed and revived, offering a form of renewal. In particular dance practices and scholarship have become more interested over the past decade in questions about what remains, what is lost, and what can be done with remains. This interest can be seen as an answering back to Schneiders (2011) proposition about the persistence and remnant of performance. Using Europeana Space (2014-2017) a major three-year EU-Funded project, concerned with the reuse of cultural heritage, we consider the leftovers of the project now that it has ended and how these remnants open up questions around memory, the body and archives.

Running, Resistance and Recollection: A conversation with ourselves through time

(to) constantly vent is a performance work by Katye Coe. A solo or group of runners travel in continuous loops, venting through events, exhibitions, meetings, and the surrounding spaces. The work was commissioned for What_Now (2013) in London and re-commissioned for the Dancer As Agent conference (2013) at DOCH in Stockholm where it was a constant or persistent intervention through a conference all about the agency of the dancer. This outing bought with it wider conversations and meetings that have changed its (and Coe’s) practice and thinking. Continuing its journey, the work was then enacted at Performing Process: Sharing Practice symposium (2014) at Coventry University, and was later re-situated in the Hayward Gallery (2014-15), where the work occurred for 12-weeks as part of Volumes Project in the exhibition, MIRRORCITY . Reflecting on the experience of venting in the Hayward Gallery, in this writing Coe and Hetty Blades, who also performed the work, recall their experiences, and respond to their questions about the practice through their fragmented memories and writing from others about running and memory.

Work(s) and (Non)production in Contemporary Movement Practices

This paper considers how the presentation of movement practices in performance contexts blurs the distinction between making and performance, raising questions about the nature of dance ‘works’. I examine the way that practice is foregrounded in the work of UK dance artists Katye Coe and Charlie Morrissey, and American choreographer Deborah Hay, troubling distinctions between the internal and external aspects of performance. In response to this, I examine the applicability of the work–concept (Goehr 1992), to current dance practices, suggesting that the concept is an open one and refers not solely to stable art objects, but also indicates open-ended entities, which are formed through a confluence of practice and performance.

Inscribing Work and Process: The Ontological Implications of Virtual Scoring Practices for Dance

In dance, unlike music and theatre, there is no universal mode of inscription. Although formal movement-notation systems such as Benesh and Labanotation are occasionally used to record movement, more often choreographers draw upon non-codified, idiosyncratic methods to document their work. Furthermore, the advent of video recording had a substantial impact on the documentation of dance, inspiring a wealth of literature concerning the philosophical and practical questions posed by the method.1 Despite their differences, documentation, through both notation systems and video recording, has tended to focus on movement-based performance outputs. This seems a logical response to dance’s ontological status; after all, it is through performance that we are able to see the work in physical form. Such is the significance of performances that Graham McFee (2011) and David Carr (1987) both claim that it is only through performance, as opposed to through recordings and scores, that we are able to access dance works. However, this chapter introduces an emerging form of dance scoring which is not focused on the documentation of specific movements or performances, but rather is concerned with disseminating choreographic process, and revealing features of the work not present in performance. I consider some of the philosophical repercussions of this method, asking how it impacts on the perception, identity and existence of dance works.