Dance Scene Research Articles

A Study of Creative Application of the Dancer's Oral History : Making Diagrams Related to the Korean Dance Scene in the 20th Century

A Study of Creative Application of the Dancer's Oral History : Making Diagrams Related to the Korean Dance Scene in the 20th Century

The Material Base for Contemporary Dance : Market, Funding, and Employment

This study investigates the material base of contemporary dance such as market, funding, and employment in western countries including U.S., France, U.K., and Germany by critically reviewing related literature. Then I reflect on the dance scene in Korea. As contemporary dance is characterized as a subsidized market in all countries examined above, my investigation uses Hillman-Chartrand & McCaughey’s four models of governmental supporting the arts. I question how contemporary dance artists work and exist in the related industry and how their work practices inform their creative activities. By exploring these questions, I attempt to suggest a close relationship between the material base of present time and dance that is contemporaneous. Considering the powerful influence of postindustrial capitalism with global impact, contemporary dance world is expected to develop depending on what kinds of stance each artist and each country take in response to it.

EMBODIED SIGNS: READING GESTURE AND POSTURE IN CLASSIC MAYA DANCE

In this article, we couple Peircean semiotic theory with Laban movement analysis (LMA) to interpret scenes of Classic period Maya dance. We focus primarily on depictions found on polychrome ceramics that feature the dances of the Maize God and contrast them with those featuring thewahycreatures that inhabit the underworld. We interpret their inner emotional states based on their postural and gestural vocabularies using LMA, developed for that very purpose. The body can be considered a semiotic sign, and is therefore capable of simultaneously conveying iconic, symbolic, and indexical meanings. Maya dance has typically been interpreted at the iconic or symbolic levels, which reveal its mimetic or representational qualities. We explore the indexical qualities of the bodies of the dancers, and propose that shifting our attention to the indicative mode enables us to gain yet more insight into their embodied states.

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Gender and Dance in Modern Iran: Biopolitics on Stage

Japanese Ballet Dancers: Routes of Mobility and the Body

ABSTRACTSince the 1980s, Japanese dancers have won top prizes at some of the most demanding international dance competitions, and several have been promoted to the top ranks of major dance companies around the world. In this article, I explore the interplay between Japanese dancers and Western centers of dance, focusing on the paths and decisions dancers took as they went abroad to further their careers. As part of this movement, Japanese dancers are sometimes identified as such though their numbers have grown and they have become part of a globalized dance scene. At the same time, the paper explores the relationship between the development of a bodily habitus necessary to become a dancer and the artistry involved in communicating a message or emotion through the body. I argue that dancers understand their movement and growth as artists in relationship to their technique and artistry.

Raphaël Blanchier, Les danses mongoles en héritage : performance et transmission du bii biêlgee et de la danse mongole scénique en Mongolie contemporaine

Au croisement de l’anthropologie sociale et des arts du spectacle, cette thèse est consacrée à la transmission des danses mongoles en Mongolie contemporaine. En abordant l’étude de la performance dansée sous l’angle de la transmission, l’objectif principal de ce travail est de comprendre le rôle des danses dans l’engendrement d’un sentiment d’appartenance national. D’une part le bij bielgèè (bii biêlgee, biy biyelgee), danse des Oïrates (Oirat, Oirad ; Mongols de l’Ouest), inscrit au Patrimoine culturel immatériel de l’UNESCO, est intimement associé, par ses évocations mimées, au mode de vie pastoral nomade. D’autre part, la « danse mongole scénique », qui en constitue la version professionnelle, donne à ces représentations stéréotypées une légitimité nationale et internationale. Mon analyse des gestes dansés, des institutions, des pratiques de transmission et de performance montre que l’efficacité des danses mongoles repose moins sur les représentations qu’elles véhiculent que sur les conditions relationnelles qu’elles mettent en place. Les apprentissages que j’ai observés, et auxquels j’ai pu participer, visent moins la formation physique des danseurs que la légitimation graduelle de ceux qui font montre d’un talent remarquable à se produire en public. Capable, par son art de la performance, de susciter des modalités de participation spécifiques chez les spectateurs, le danseur apparaît alors comme un spécialiste quasi-rituel. Délégué du groupe dont il est l’émanation légitime, il déploie ainsi dans le même acte performatif la mise en danse de la culture mongole et la légitimation de celle-ci comme un des fondements de la « mongolité ».

‘Southern’ Northern Soul: Changing Senses of Direction, Place, Space, Identity and Time

‘Southern’ Northern Soul: Changing Senses of Direction, Place, Space, Identity and Time

The future of dance and/as work: performing precarity

This article explores how and to what extent precarity is intertwined with a contemporary dance artist’s labour, life and art in the neoliberal society. Throughout this investigation my arguments are supported by insights from an on-going qualitative study that uses in-depth interviews and observations of working processes within the Brussels contemporary dance scene, as well as performance analyses. My hypothesis is that the contemporary dance profession is precarious and this precarity is reflected in the work and lives of the artists, as well as in the aesthetics and subject matter of their artistic work. In a ‘performance of precarity’ artists perform their own working and living conditions as their way of broaching the urgent issue, demonstrating their survival skills and exploring several ways to ensure a more sustainable creative future in dance. This article discusses three such performances: Meyoucycle (2016) by Eleanor Bauer and Chris Peck, RECESS: Dance of Light (2016) by Michael Helland, and Only Mine Alone (2016) by Igor Koruga and Ana Dubljević. What these performances have in common is that they all address the consequences of the neoliberal work regime and explore what can be done to shape a more sustainable future in general, and for dance in particular.

Art in Science: The Artist and The Disease: The Exemplary Cases of Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Art in Science: The Artist and The Disease: The Exemplary Cases of Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec.

Tanztheater, Pina Bausch and the ongoing influence of her legacy

Pina Bausch and the Tanztheater Wuppertal have been fundamental in the international establishment of Tanztheater as a new and independent dance genre, and their impact is evident and vibrant in the current contemporary dance scene. To support this statement I will first unfold the history of modern dance in Germany, from Rudolf Laban and the German expressive dance movement of the 1920’s, to the creations of Kurt Jooss and finally the formation of Tanztheater Wuppertal in 1973. I will then study Bausch’s life and work, and reveal the essential and unique characteristics of her style, to ultimately prove the ongoing influence of her legacy, looking at one of the final pieces of the 2012-13 London based choreographic competition The Place Prize.

Archiving the contemporary art of dance in Serbia: Issues with institutionalization, or on betraying the ‘Independence’ of the local dance scene

Abstract After models that have been used so far on the local dance scene, there is a hybrid area of research that stood out in the vast field of research – the question of the institutional status/position of contemporary dance as an art practice, or in an even broader sense – a world of art, whose core value and political position in relation to the local scene was explicitly described as independent from institutions of art and culture. Our research into this issue was based mainly in interviewing eight independent choreographers who have worked with local institutions of dance and drama, primarily through artistic collaborations with directors of institutional drama theatres; we also gathered information in informal talks with other stakeholders in the performing arts. By juxtaposing a theoretical model of institutionalization of each art practice against a hybrid area of research such as this one, this text provides a very brief overview of all these issues as well as the discoveries and dilemmas that we came across during our research.

Literary dance: A personal reflection about two dancers in Zagreb in the eighties

Abstract A personal account of one segment of the Zagreb dance scene of the 1980s, on the example of a choreographic collaboration between Blaženka Kovač Carić and Snježana Abramović Milković, iconic dancers from the 1980s Zagreb dance scene, on the pieces Attic (1984) and Angel Hair (1986), produced by Zagreb Dance Company.

Archiving the contemporary art of dance in Serbia: Issues with institutionalization, or on betraying the ‘Independence’ of the local dance scene

Archiving the contemporary art of dance in Serbia: Issues with institutionalization, or on betraying the ‘Independence’ of the local dance scene

Searching for context – 1984

Abstract An overview of the pivotal personalities on the Zagreb dance scene as related to the programming of the first Dance Week Festival in 1984. These are the School of Rhythmics and Dance, Contemporary Dance Studio, Free Dance Chamber Company and Zagreb Dance Company. By making a note on the progress of these entities, aesthetic orientations and positions in the social environment and reviewing the performances, a dynamics of the scene of the period is delineated.

Neurocognitive aspects of body size estimation - A study of contemporary dancers

Dancers use multiple forms of body language when performing their functions in the contemporary dance scene. Some neurocognitive aspects are involved in dance, and we highlight the aspect of body image, in particular, the dimensional aspect of the body perception. The aim of this study is to analyze the perceptual aspect of body image (body size estimation) and its possible association with the motor aspect (dynamic balance) involved in the practice of dance, comparing contemporary dancers with physically active and inactive individuals. The sample consisted of 48 subjects divided into four groups: 1) Professional Group (PG); 2) Dance Student Group (SG); 3) Physically Active Group (AG); and 4) Physically Inactive Group (IG).Two tests were used: the Image Marking Procedure (body size estimation) and the Star Excursion Balance Test (dynamic balance). Was observed that dancing and exercising contribute to a proper body size estimation, but cannot be considered the only determining factor. Although dancers have higher ability in the motor test (dynamic balance), no direct relation to the perception of body size was observed, leading us to conclude it is a skill task/dependent acquired by repeating and training. In this study, we found a statistical significant association between educational level and body size estimation. The study opens new horizons in relation to the understanding of factors involved in the construction of the body size estimation.

Strategie metateatralne we współczesnym dramacie białoruskim

The article was aimed at analyzing the phenomenon metatheatricality in the modern Belarusian drama The sources of construction of meta theater date back to intermedia. Just as they are intended to diversify art the framework. therefore songs, dance, music inserts and conventional scenes play an important role in them. The second type, which originates from the prologue is the theme of the theater within the theater, often used for presenting artistic views of the author. Metadramaticality can hardly be considered only in terms of formal although undoubtedly changes the style of the dramatic text. It simultaneously implements aesthetic evaluation (accurate or caricatured, grotesque reflection of external reality or the reality of work of art and, which seems to be the most important), it becomes an expression of the philosophy and the world outlook of the author, an expression of the way they see and interpret the crucial relationship between the real world and the world presented.

Boundless Partnership: 19th‐Century Literature and Dance

AbstractDancing bodies and scenes of dance appear throughout the 19th‐century literature. Bringing the dance historical perspective to literary studies helps to situate texts within important social and cultural contexts and also raises questions about the presence of moving bodies within texts and how those bodies might have been deployed by the 19th‐century writers. Recently, scholars have attempted to bridge the gap between dancing bodies and textual bodies by bringing dance history and criticism into conversation with the article of the 19th‐century literary texts, creating the field of dance and literature studies. This field has rich potential for interdisciplinary studies and also much to offer both literary studies and dance history.

At work with Pina Pausch: An interview with Dominique Mercy

Abstract Dominique Mercy first met Pina Bausch in the United States at a summer academy organized by the choreographer Paul Sanasardo. Telling of his experience of the New York dance scene in the beginning of the 70s, and how he perceived it as differing from both living as well as dancing in Europe, he moves on to provide a detailed account of the development of Pina Bausch’s questioning method.

Core Elements in The Training of Upper Secondary School Dance Pupils in Norway

Abstract In Norway’s upper secondary schools, pupils can choose dance as their main subject of study in a programme designed to prepare them for higher education in general and, more specifically, higher education in dance. A committee selected by the Norwegian Directorate for Education and Training was appointed in autumn of 2015 and given a mandate to evaluate the structure of the programme and suggest changes that would increase its relevance. A reference group was selected to respond to the committee’s first draft in December 2015, before the draft was open to comments from the rest of the dance environment (spring 2016). The author took part in the reference group. In this process, several individuals representing the fields of education and professional dance argued that the traditional hegemony of the three scenic dance forms (classical ballet, jazz and contemporary dance) needs to be challenged as it no longer sufficiently prepares pupils for a career in dance. One could argue that new dance forms, personal expression, performative and collaborative skills are more in demand today. In her own teaching of contemporary dance in upper secondary school, the author has found it relevant to focus on what she sees as core elements in the training of today’s performers in addition to, and sometimes instead of, (traditional) technical exercises, especially early on in pupils’ dance education. She proposes that it would be beneficial to pupils to replace some of the technical training in the scenic dance forms with these core elements in a restructuring of the dance programmes in upper secondary education.

Re-enchanted with the Work

Re-enchanted with the Work