Dance as Art/Artifact
“The ontological lament aka the bummer of dance: dance disappears”
The art/artifact is often a tangible thing. There are lines to be drawn and debates to be had as to whether these “things” were intended to be art objects or cultural objects, or if they have changed in meaning (Vogel 1996; Svašek 2007). Regardless of the categorization given to the art/artifcat, art and anthropology does a great deal with objects. But that is not all that art and anthropology is concerned with studying. Dance, music, theater, and other performance art are important pieces of culture and thus, important elements of the art and anthropology realm. In the same way that scholars archive objects in research and museum exhibits to talk about a moment of history or an element of culture, performances art can also be archived for similar purposes. This paper focuses on the dual role of traces in contemporary dance: dance as an embodied archive for identity, culture, and society as well as the way that anthropologists and other dance scholars piece together elements of dances to archive and create tangible artifacts. Focusing on concepts that are rooted in art and anthropology, art history, dance scholarship more broadly, and dance anthropology. Specifically, I explore traces and body as archive, documentation of dance through docudance and ethnographic film, writing and research of dance, dance notation, social media’s role in archiving traces of dance.
Traces |
Anthropologically, this concept stems from E.B. Tylor’s idea of “cultural survivals (Napolitano 2014).” ‘Traces’ emphasize the knowledge that is held in the body and embodied practices—every day and ritualistic. “The trace is at once an analytical tool and an ethnographic site for inquiry” (Napolitano 2014, 47). This term is important to an anthropological approach in that it opens up knowledge exploration to things like ethnography rather than just a material culture approach. Sansi, with a foundation in Duschamp’s work, writes: “Art is to be found in the encounter rather than the object, which is more a trace than a work of art itself” (Sansi 2014, 25). In this way the elements left behind from a performance: notes, costumes, photographs, newspaper articles, become vital in understanding that moment or what that piece may represent or mean to culture. Traces of course can be material: footprints on a migratory trail, paint splatters from youths doing graffiti on trains, and so on. Traces are expanded to the embodied, making them less tangible.
The body is often seen by both anthropologists and performance artists to be a storehouse for cultural knowledge. According to Marcel Mauss, “each body technique has its own specific form, is handed down, is acquired, links conscious and unconscious and encodes bodily perceptions as social experience […] the body memory is itself a cultural form that is always historically specific” (Baxmann 2007, 209). For early anthropologists, elements of culture such as oral stories, rituals, and dances were considered to be the “gateway to society’s unconscious, organs, and hidden drivers” (Baxmann 2007, 211). Today, traces of culture and embodied knowledge that are still thought to be held in these elements of culture are also found in contemporary and postmodern dance and performance art. In the 1960s, the Judson Dance Theatre, as well as other post-modern dance groups, attempted to explore, understand, and discuss cultural movements, architecture, and more through their work. With this they had the goal to “shift (dance meanings) from the universal to the particular” (Burt 2006, 91). In this way, a dance can be an archive for a historical moment or cultural phenomenon. The next task then, is to archive this dance and the traces that reside within its movements.
Re-Enactment as Archive |
André Lepecki, in his work The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dancesdiscusses the various drivers behind one of the most commonly used archival methods within the dance community: re-enactments. There are three varying terms used by scholars to explain what influences these re-enactments: impulse to archive, drive to archive, and will to archive. Hal Foster argued that a choreographer had an impulse to archive, while dancer Jessica Santone critiqued this outlook instead calling it a “drive,” and stating that it was used to make the history of dance more complete (Lepecki 2010). Lepecki himself uses the term “will” and states that this “choreographic will” to stage re-enactments is not for a nostalgic reason, but an archival and documentary one. Within this view of re-enactments are even more ideas as to what the embodied experience is as documentation. Dancer Julie Tolentino called her body a “living archive” (Lepecki 2010, 32). Thus, her re-enactments, which take place in front of an audience, are not mere performances. Lepecki writes, “Tolentino's emphasis on the word and the concept of "archive" is of interest, for the question of archiving onto/into one's body brings us back to the problems surrounding the cenotaphic affect in Western dance” (Lepecki 2010, 34). The question becomes what is the role of a living body in documenting the work of bodies that can no longer create work or perform work?
Venessa Agnew calls this type of bodily archiving an “affective history,” referring to the idea that history is truly moving through both the dancer and the audience. Lepecki subscribes to the Foucauldian idea that an archive is not merely a thing, but also an event. An archive of dance can be the dancer, the dance, the statement, notation, writing, and so on. One of the most famous examples of re-enactment as archival work in dance was Richard Move’s Dragging Martha Back from the Dead. The work started in a nightclub in 1996 in NYC and resulted in Move re-staging Martha Graham’s seminal works. What started as personal interest and amusement turned into true archiving—when the Martha Graham company disallowed re-staging of her works for a period of four years. Thus, Move’s “underground” performances were the only Graham works being shown. During this time, previous Graham dancers took interest in Move and make suggestions to increase the authenticity of his re-enactments. In history’s strange way of working, Move performed in 2006 with the Martha Graham Company for the 80thanniversary and was commissioned by the company for a new work in 2007 (Lepecki 2010). This case study displays how the body can serve as an archive in its own right—and addresses some of the complexities in archiving dance through re-enactments. Finally, because of Move’s success new documentation of Graham’s works— videos, photos, newspaper articles, scholarly papers—have been produced, further adding to an archive of Graham’s work.
Similarly, in the early twenty first century, a movement to reconstruct, re-interpret, and cite Judson Dance Theatre pieces gained traction. This led a question about the knowledge that was held in those dances: would the “failures” of the post-modern 1960s be repeated in the new century, or could the knowledge of the avant gard held in these dances lead to something new? Thus, this movement in re-staging works became one of expanding the history rather than simply archiving it (Burt 2006). Reconstruction and reinterpretation are two of the techniques that are used by dancers and choreographers to preserve ephemeral dance work. Re-staging dances of famous choreographers requires approval from the original choreographer or their estate. Denver’s Cleo Parker Robinson currently re-staging many of the great Katherine Dunham’s pieces thanks to her personal relationship with the late Ms. Dunham (cleoparkerdance.org). Cleo Parker-Robinson’s example is the more formal archive and preservation route: legally through the trust or the company of the original artist. Re-staging dance works is just one method of preserving dance, there are also many archival techniques that have been utilized by ethnographers, scholars, and choreographers alike.
Archiving Dance |
Amelia Jones states that there is a “conundrum of how the live event or ephemeral art work—the act that can never be made the same way twice—gets written into history” (Jones 2012, 10). In this section I will go through the variety of ways that artists and researchers use film, writing, notation, and the use of social media to record and archive dance. Regarding film, there are three main ways that this medium is used: docudance, ethnographic film, and film recording for learning and remembering purposes.
Film for Documentation, Archiving, and Preserving Dance |
Docudance is a piece of art in and of itself. Docudance can go by many names, but the fact remains that it takes dance and creates a short film about the piece. It can manipulate time and space, can be site specific, may play with sound, and so forth. “Dance, as a mode of screen performance, tests the parameters of cinematic production, resulting in new types of filmic performance” (Brannigan 2011, 3). It is not a realistic documentation of the dance, but a further artistic expression of the dance work. It becomes its own type of artwork, though it also documents the work of a choreographer—possibly in a way that more accurately represents their imagination of what the dance couldto be. Two examples come to mind for expressing this role of docudance. First is the difference between the ability to make a docudance and staging a piece that would be suited for a docudance film: I performed in a piece in 2015 titled, First Stop: Fullerton by Dana Alsamsam.The piece began with the voice of the Chicago Transit Authority announcer saying, “Next stop Fullerton, doors open on the left at Fullerton.” Each dancer represented a different train rider. We were on a stage and used costume, sound, and chairs to elicit the vision of being on a train, but the choreographer dreamed of being able to film this dance on a train car/Fullerton Platform. A dream that was impossible for a college dance group to achieve. In contrast, Pina Bausch’s company created a film to celebrate her life titled, Pina (2011). In this film they did take one of her pieces and filmed it on a train car and platform. The film used cinematic manipulation to further the meaning of the original work which was performed, like our piece, on a stage. Another powerful example of docudance isQueens for the Day by Marie Nespolo, out of Switzerland. In her work she uses the site specific mountain and manipulates movement and sound using animals and wind. Pinaand Queens for the Dayare both strong examples of how a docudance film can use the power of cinema to further enhance the meaning and feeling of the choreography. Sometimes docudance films showcase the creative process with interviews and footage, other times they are simply the dance performance in some site-specific manner.
Ethnographic films on the other hand are an attempt at a realistic representation of dance. It may be manipulated in that it is shot in more than one take or has lighting edits, but its goal is to show what the dance is actually like in its context and setting. My documentary on Wonderbound Dance Company in Five Points is an example of this. I recorded their rehearsal and used interview footage. It was straightforward, no use of cinematic manipulation of the dance. The ethnographic film was answering a research question, just as a written ethnography would.
Finally, many dancers and choreographers and ethnographers record dances on film simply for themselves. The dancers and choreographers may use the recording to remember the dance and review it before the next rehearsal, or to recall the piece months or years down the road. Ethnographers may record a dance to analyze later as data. In a similar vein, choreographers often reply on documentation through film to replace complicated notation. Unlike docudance or ethnographic film, these recordings are purely for documentation and recall purposes. The films may be put into an archive in the same way as a dance notation, with similar copy write process. When in an “archive” or more likely a CV or portfolio, their use is primarily for future funding opportunities or recalling the work later on, but of course in the future it is possible they will be used for re-staging and re-enactments.
Writing and Research of Dance |
One of the biggest challenges for dancers, dance scholars, anthropologists, and art historians alike is how to write about dance. There have been attempts at formal archives and approaches as well as many variations and approaches to dance writing.
The most formal attempt was International Archive of Dance (AIDS), created by Rolf de Maré in Paris in 1931. This archive utilized photographs, costumes, pieces from sets, and writings on dance by dancers, ethnographers, and historians. The archive was housed in a facility that had a dance museum and library and hosted exhibitions of various dances around the globe (from ballet to dances of Japan, and so on), as well as hosting performances and lectures. The AIDS only lasted until 1936, with much of its collection now housed in Leizbig and on the online magazine from Germany, Tanzfonds. Nevertheless, it highlights the long standing tradition of dancers and scholars to come together and the struggle of maintain a dance history despite its ephemeral and embodied nature (Baxmann 2007). The Laban School of Dance in London hosts a huge dance archival library, unfortunately most of this is exclusively open to students.
Another common way to write about dance is through the history of the artist or a movement. Many books are written about particular dancers and choreographers, dance groups, or dance movements. These can be biographical or more of a wider history. They can also have scholarly questions that are being explored through the books. Often, photographs are used to bring the performances that are discussed to life. Within this format, the writing on the actual ephemeral moments are supplemented with historical and personal context. These books can be coffee table books or formal biographies. For example, I have a large coffee table book with many amazing photographs titled American Dance: The Complete Illustrated History a great book on the impact of a dance movement Judson Dance Theater: Performative Spaces, books about specific choreographers such as Graham and Cunningham, and specific regions such as Nordic Dance Spaces.
Overall, with dance writing the question becomes if the words are able to capture of ephemeral and embodied experience of rehearsing, performing, or viewing dance. The difficulty is not necessarily capturing the theme or the feeling of dance, but more so explaining the movement pallet to the reader in a non-dry manner. Some ethnographers have been very technical about writing the progression of movement; other dance writers tend to explain portions but not all of a dance. This is one of the reasons dance notation became a part of dance scholarship: to capture the movement in visuals rather than attempt to in words.
Dance Notation |
The purpose of dance notation is to preserve the dance for future generations and repertoire. There have been many variations of notation from folkloric journals with sketches of partner and social dances and their formations, to the most well-known notation method: Labanotation. Individual researchers and choreographers may develop their own methods for purpose of analyzing later on. In addition, some contemporary dance scholars/artists create new notation techniques that intended to be art pieces for gallery spaces.
Labanotation was developed by Rudolf Laban in 1928 (trinitylaban.ac.uk). The purpose was to documents every movement of the dancer in order to record the entire piece. While this notation method is highly informative there are two issues: it does not convey emotion (facials) and it can only be read by formally trained professionals from the Trinity Laban School in London. For example, if a ballet company wants to re-stage a Balanchine piece, they have to hire a very expensive Balanchine professional who trained in Laban to come and teach the piece. In addition, if a researcher was trying to create some sort of history of changes in ballet movement across time or border, the researcher would have to rely on a “translator” from the Laban school. Although it is an effective notation system, it is limiting for dancers and researchers alike.
Some artists develop their own notation techniques that serve both to record and teach a previous piece, and also serve as an art piece or artefact of the piece in its own right. For example, folklorists map out the movements of group or partner dances. One beautiful and contemporary example from my time in Iceland was German artists Lisa Homburger. The work was titled Systems of Movementand it was a long scroll of already staged dances and works of performance art. This piece not only captured dance in a notation system, but it also put this archive into an interactive gallery space—further opening the possibilities of how dance and its archives can be presented. One of the pieces on the scroll was Cafe Müllerby Pina Bausch. The audience walked right ways through the gallery space reading the scroll and were encouraged to follow the instructions as we went, re-creating the dance in this new context. This was a good example of a new approach to the classic dance documentation of notation, and of making that "trace" of the dance a performance and an art object for the gallery space as well. Homburger’s work opens up the bridging of the museum, contemporary dance, and notation/archive worlds. Visitors could also purchase the scroll so you could have these instructions and re-create these works whenever and wherever you like—further allowing the archive and trace of the dance to reach a wider audience. Below are two photographs of this scroll and notation system.
Figure 1: Lisa Homburger, Café Müller by Emily Creek
Figure 2: Lisa Homburger by Emily Creek
Social Media in Archiving Dance |
Today, new platforms allow artists to archive their work, researchers to archive or analyze work, and the general public to enjoy or learn about works. Popular culture and social media platforms allow dance to be archived in multi-media forms that include video, photo, text, and more. A few of the most productive platforms include Instagram, the New York Times, and personalwebsites/blogs. These platforms not only create archives of various documentations within dance, but they generally can reach a broader audience than a purely art-centric docudance film or notation system, an ethnographic film or article, or even a gallery space.
The platform of Instagram allows a sharing in two ways: image and video, each post can be supplemented with a contextual caption. In this screenshot of my research Instagram page, Figure 3, I display various attempts at recording dance while in the field this summer: I utilized videos, sketches, promotional photographs, traces from a performance, a photographs of a talk after a performance, documentation photographs of dance rehearsals, and notations. Having all of these various archival methods housed on one platform allows me to go back to analyze, and allows my followers to think about the work I was viewing in Iceland without having been there. I use the caption under each post as well to provide context or even brief interview quotes or thoughts about the particular dance moment I was documenting/archiving.
Figure 3: Emily Creek Instagram Feed
Instagram can be utilized in more ways than a researcher documenting dance visually and textually. Dancers and choreographers can use this platform to post 1-minute clips of their work and gain recognition. Not only can dancers gain recongintion through the platform, but their feed becomes a portfolio of short videos that can be linked to funding applications and to sites such as Vimeo where the longer versions of their works can be houses. Arguablly no one has used Instagram better than choreographer and dancer Emma Portner who began her career on instagram. She has choreographed for Justin Beiber and Bon Iver, and has upcoming works with large companies: Hubbard Street Dance, out of Chicago and the New York City Ballet. As an artist, Instagram is a free platform that can display dance and reach a huge audience. She is able to curate her own narrative as an artist, archive her work, and share it all at one time—creating a living history of sorts.
The New York Times (NYT weekly) dance section both on their website and their weekly dance post on Instagram are wonderful examples of documenting dance both in production and in process. The Instagram page posts a video or photographs of a rehearsal, a choreographer, or a production and provides a long narrative as well as a link to the longer article online. All posts are archived separately as well under the hashtag #SpeakinginDance. European magazines such as the before mentioned Leizbig and Tanzfonds, also allow for a combination of archiving, critiquing, scholarly thought in dance, and event/performance sharing. This type of journalistic documentation allows for a narrative about a dance company or piece to be written about and discussed. Furthermore, links to writing can be posted on company websites and paper copies housed in their files: creating tangible archives of the company or artist’s work over the years.
Conclusion |
It is of course difficult to archive a moving body. Dance itself as an artifact is not necessarily tangible. Yet for an anthropologist interested in contemporary dance, methods of archiving it are essential to be able to analyze dance pieces, which can be in and of themselves archives for cultural and societal knowledge. Furthermore, there are many methods and platforms available to both choreographers and researching for archiving this knowledge within dance so that the intangible can become tangible. These include the dancer themselves as an archive through re-enactments, and classic techniques of using films and photographs, writing, and notation systems. As an anthropologist, I find it important to engage with various techniques in archiving from re-enactments both live and written about, formal dance writing be it biographical or ethnographic, dance notation, and platforms of sharing dance work such as social media. Through an interaction with multiple archival and dissemination techniques, I think it is possibly to grasp someof this intangible knowledge and body memory for future generations to study (in a historical perspective, anthropological perspective, etc) and possibly re-enact. In particular, anthropologists engaging with dance should utilize writing, interviews, viewing, filming, and using social media in order to engage with this art form to its fullest cultural potential.
Works Cited |
Baxmann, Inge. 2007. “The Body as Archive: On the Difficult Relationship between Movement and History.” Knowledge in Motion: Perspectives of Artistic and Scientific Research in Dance, 207–2018.
Burt, Ramsay. 2006. Judson Dance Theater: Performative Traces. London; New York: Routledge.
Brannigan, Erin. 2011. Dancefilm Choreography and the Moving Image. New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cleo Parker Robinson Dance. 2018. https://cleoparkerdance.org/season/#
Fuhrer, Margaret. 2014. American Dance: The Complete Illustrated History. Minneapolis, MN: Voyageur Press.
Lepecki, André. 2010. “The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances.” The Dance Research Journal42 (2).
Napolitano, Valentina. 2014. “Anthropology and Traces.” SAGE Social Science Collections.
Rockwell, John. 2017. Radical Bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti, and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955-1972. Edited by Ninotchka Bennahum, Wendy Perron, Bruce Robertson, Simone Forti, and Morton Subotnick. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
Sansi-Roca, Roger. 2015. “Art as Anthropology.” In Art, Anthropology and the Gift. London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.
Svasek, Maruska. 2007. Anthropology, Art and Cultural Production. Anthropology, Culture, and Society. London ; Ann Arbor, Mich: Pluto Press.
Vedel, Karen, ed. 2014. Nordic Dance Spaces: Practicing and Imagining a Region. The Nordic Experience. Farnham, Surrey, England; Burlington, VT: Ashgate Pub. Company.
Vogel, Susan. 1989. Art, artifact: african art in anthropology collections. Edited by Arthur Coleman Danto, Jerry L. Thompson, and Center for African Art. 2. Ed. Munich: Prestel.
Dance Films referenced |
Alsamsam, Dana. 2014. First Stop: Fullerton. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEOelK5ZUpg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XU75k1P-sk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNuQVS7q7-A
Online Dance Archive Referenced |
https://tanzfonds.de/en/magazin/overview-dance-archives-around-the-world/
THANK YOU,
EM
