Contemporary Choreography Research Articles

The Borders of Contemporary Israeli Dance: “Invisible Unless in Final Pain”

When Vertigo, an Israeli dance company, performed in collaboration with the English Ricochet dancers, there was one dance on the stage—one choreography—but the audience saw two different modes of movement. The English dancers were learned, elegant, arms and feet drawing long lines in space, the feet articulate. The Israelis danced with a powerful thrust, extremities loose, with total commitment and daring, their movements leaving in space traces of explosions too fast to recollect rather than spirals of continuity. How did this mode of movement develop? What is “Israeli” about Israeli dance?In this essay I offer a brief history of concert dance in Israel, then a largely descriptive account of choreographic and motional themes that distinguish contemporary Israeli dance. My descriptions of works by contemporary Israeli choreographers Jasmine Goder, Ronit Ziv, Anat Danielli, Shlomi Bitton, and Noa Dar are drawn mostly from observation of performances held during yearly Curtain Up festivals at the Suzanne Dellal Center for Dance and Theater in Tel Aviv. I also discuss works by Inbal Pinto, Rami Be'er, Nir Ben-Gal and Liât Dror, and finally, Ohad Naharin, artistic director and choreographer of the Batsheva Dance Company.

VOCABULARIES IN AFRICAN DANCES: FOCUS ON ANCESTRAL WORSHIP AND FERTILITY DANCES

The objective of this research is to compile and document the vocabularies used for communication in the dances indigenous to West Africa. This exercise seeks to provide an alternative to the Euro- American technique called `notation' for the creative benefit of contemporary Choreographers, who must keep expanding their body of vocabularies and who can only be relevant and effective by using the vocabularies that can easily be connected to and decoded by their immediate audience. This study is necessitated by our conviction that creativity and personal statements are central to the art of choreography. We insist that the contemporary West African choreographer must rise beyond a perpetual regurgitation of old dances by creating his own dances, which are relevant to his time and society. However, we equally insist that for reasons of relevance and effective communication, the paralinguistic properties of the old dances should be used as vocabulary. A vocabulary of dance systems, which produce new meanings, is only possible through an examination of the very basis for the production of dances already in existence. (Humanities Review: 2002 2(1): 30-45)

Matthew Bourne: Contemporary Choreographer of the Psyche

(2000). Matthew Bourne: Contemporary Choreographer of the Psyche. The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal: Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 73-79.

Skin, Body, and Presence in Contemporary European Choreography

Co-winner, 1998 TDR student essay contest. Today's European choreographyis a “reduction” of expansiveness, the spectacular, the unessential. Along withthis minimalism has come much nakedness onstage. This showing of the bodyreveals the power of the surface, the “skin of our time: open, marked, rented”.

Choreographing difference: the body and identity in contemporary dance

The choreographies of Bill T. Jones, Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, Zab Maboungou, David Dorfman, Marie Chouinard, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and others, have helped establish dance as a crucial discourse of the 90s. These dancers, Ann Cooper Albright argues, are asking the audience to see the body as a source of cultural identity a physical presence that moves with and through its gendered, racial, and social meanings. Through her articulate and nuanced analysis of contemporary choreography, Albright shows how the dancing body shifts conventions of representation and provides a critical example of the dialectical relationship between cultures and the bodies that inhabit them. As a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, Albright turns to the material experience of bodies, not just the body as a figure or metaphor, to understand how cultural representation becomes embedded in the body. In arguing for the intelligence of bodies, Choreographing Difference is itself a testimonial, giving voice to some important political, moral, and artistic questions of our time.

Writing Dancing in the Age of Postmodernism by Sally Banes. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, Wesleyan University Press, 1994. xvi + 412 pp., photographs, figures, notes, index. $19.95 paperbound.

Drawing of the postmodern perspective and concerns that informed her groundbreaking Terpsichore in Sneakers, Sally Banes s Writing Dancing documents the background and developments of avant-garde and popular dance, analyzing individual artists, performances, and entire dance movements. With a sure grasp of shifting cultural dynamics, Banes shows how postmodern dance is integrally connected to other oppositional, often marginalized strands of dance culture, and considers how certain kinds of dance move from the margins to the mainstream. Banes begins by considering the act of dance criticism itself, exploring its modes, methods, and underlying assumptions, and examining the work of other critics. She traces the development of contemporary dance from the early work of such influential figures as Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine to such contemporary choreographers as Molissa Fenley, Karole Armitage, and Michael Clark. She analyzes the contributions of the Judson Dance Theatre and the Workers Dance League, the emergence of Latin postmodern dance in New York, and the impact of black jazz in Russia. In addition, Banes explores such untraditional performance modes as breakdancing and the drunk dancing of Fred Astaire.

Dance and Gender: Formalism and Semiotics Reconsidered

The two starting points for our paper might hardly seem compatible, Ann Daly's analysis of the third Theme from Balanchine's The Four Temperaments (1946) in her article 'The Balanchine Woman', and the work of the choreographer Siobhan Davies.2 The latter is a leading British contemporary dance choreographer, one of the first generation of contemporary choreographers to emerge in Britain in the 1970s. But Daly's feminist analysis of The Four Temperaments, we found, suggested an interesting additional perspective for viewing Davies' work, and a consideration of that perspective reminded us of some fundamental issues inherent in reading art. Daly reads the third Theme of The Four Temperaments as an example of a man manipulating a powerless and vulnerable woman. It is a duet based on doublework, lifts and supports. Daly's view is that the goal of this joint venture is the display of the line of the woman's body, but that there are also violent, sadomasochistic undertones. The duet is an instance of ballet representing an ideology that denies women their own agency. Of course, it goes without saying that many other writers have seen very different things in this duet, and some have not seen any of what Daly saw. A few years ago, Jordan described Davies' duet form as

Repeatability, Reconstruction and Beyond

In 1988, Susanne Linke began her reconstruction of Dore Hoyer's Affectos Humanos (1962) by walking, clad only in black work clothes, to a costume rack placed on the stage.' Slowly and methodically, Linke donned Hoyer's costume for the first solo, Pride, in full view of the audience. At the outset, she established a distance between herself as reconstructor and the artist whose work was to be reconstructed. Indeed, each of the dance's three parts was punctuated by a similar meditative interval, in which Linke disrobed and recostumed herself. This reconstruction consciously avoided simulation of the original, as the reconstructor alternately embodied, stood apart from, and commented upon it. Such effects of distancing are rare in reconstructions of historical dance. But reciprocally, the idea of reconstructing the work of a predecessor has been rare, until recently, among contemporary choreographers.

Choreutic Concepts and Practice

Rudolf Laban's original choreutic1 concepts are too complex, in both his practice and his writings, to be usable for the analysis of contemporary choreography in the form in which he left them. The central hypothesis of this research is that a broadening, disintegration and reassembling of his material provides a rich resource. When seen in context with the spatial practice of other dance artists, teachers and theorists, it is possible to conceive of this resource as central to the study of choreography. To date two models of choreutic content exist. One is embedded

Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance

Drawing on the postmodern perspective and concerns that informed her groundbreaking Terpischore in Sneakers, Sally Bane s Writing Dancing documents the background and development of avant-garde and popular dance, analyzing individual artists, performances, and entire dance movements. With a sure grasp of shifting cultural dynamics, Banes shows how postmodern dance is integrally connected to other oppositional, often marginalized strands of dance culture, and considers how certain kinds of dance move from the margins to the mainstream. Banes begins by considering the act of dance criticism itself, exploring its modes, methods, and underlying assumptions and examining the work of other critics. She traces the development of contemporary dance from the early work of such influential figures as Merce Cunningham and George Balanchine to such contemporary choreographers as Molissa Fenley, Karole Armitage, and Michael Clark. She analyzes the contributions of the Judson Dance Theatre and the Workers Dance League, the emergence of Latin postmodern dance in New York, and the impact of black jazz in Russia. In addition, Banes explores such untraditional performance modes as breakdancing and the drunk dancing of Fred Astaire.