shenanigans
more spurious claims about the ‘abandonment of choreography’ in dance and performance technology work. but this time from troika ranch.
in failing to define that they mean by not “making choreography in the traditional manner” they already loose a lot of credibility in my book. do they mean late 19th, early 20th, mid 20th or late 20th century choreographic methods? saying you are doing something new does not mean that you are.
A couple of days ago, we were recording (with the intention of looping) an improv with all of the dancers where they chose some movement to perform. Lucia chose to simply remove her t-shirt. I keyed into this, and asked the dancers to form a straight line in front of the camera, to remove their t-shirt and drop it to the floor.
We then took this video and made a very simple shifting loop — one of the loop forms where a loop of fixed length moves through the videotaped material, slowly revealing the entire movement […] it’s set into motion an investigation of very simple and pedestrian gestures as the source material for this piece.
how exactly is this not a classic example of late 20th C choreographic methods? improvisation -> structural process/ing -> set material. perhaps more significantly it is also indicative of mid 20th C composition, i.e. the accumulation (trisha brown is probably the best know exponent).
mark is describing a ‘progressive accumulation’ (or progressive iteration for the more technical minded). so instead of the accumulation’s ‘full loop’, it is the function (compositional device) that loops.
- accumulation: 1, 12, 123, 1234, 12345, 123456 … etc
- progressive iteration: 12345, 23456, 34567, 45678, 56789 … etc
in using a rolling reveal, rather than a linear reveal the viewer must recall the early loops from memory to conceive of the whole phrase. so the progressive iteration/accumulation is a divergent approach, but firmly grounded in postmodern dance practice (whatever way you frame postmodern dance).
although i don’t like the term ‘pedestrian gestures’ its also a classic mid 20th C compositional approach. but when people frame their work in a ‘pedestrian’ mode i get the feeling they don’t really understand the theoretical context.
mark has said he will post the video of the shifting loop sequence soon, so i may have called shenanigans early. but from his description i think not. and if its about ‘new to you’ rather than ‘new’, i would personally avoid making claims about abandoning choreography.
i’m wondering if iterative accumulation would be a better term than (marks) shifting loops.
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