The relay does not follow a predetermined pathway. It moves between theory and practice , without privileging either term. The relay is not a structural concept . It is, rather, a form of movement, a manner of thought which enters into and engages a dynamic terrain. The figure of the relay shakes up the notion of theory and practice, opening up both terms to a sense of the encounter. Deleuze and Foucault speak of theory âs encounter with practice, and conversely, of the impact of practice upon theory. In so doing, they do not position theory above its encounter with practice. Theory belongs to practiceâit is itself a form of practice. In short, the relay unsettles the distinction between theory and practice , opening up both terms to a more dynamic and fluid conception of thought.
The notion of a relay draws attention to the formation of lateral relations, felt between theory and practice, and made possible through their serial encounter with one another. These encounters enable theory and practice to move on, to develop, acquire, and accumulate insight. The encounter also underlies the thinking embodied in this collection, which itself arises from a series of encounters staged across multiple locations, cultures, and kinaesthetic contexts. This book is the work of the Choreography and Corporeality working group, which forms part of the International Federation of Theatre Research, an organisation which holds annual conferences around the world. Over the years, the group has met in a great variety of locations, inviting and enjoying participation from many corners of the globe. The mobility of these annual meetings made us think about the uneven nature of these locations and the ways in which this might impact upon the possibility of dance and, by implication, upon our own concerns and problematics. This sense of unevenness also highlighted the difference in our relationships to one another, making evident our distinct means and mobility to gather in these sites. That sense of difference was augmented by the generosity of local choreographers and artists, who shared their work and opened up for us a more nuanced understanding of the ground upon which we were standing, sitting, talking, and dancing. These meetings further helped us to imagine our differences of approach and concerns in dance and with dancing bodies. They also helped us think more broadly about how a relay of ideologies binds up and disperses ways to theorise choreography and corporeality. These experiences have evolved into the diversity of ideas contained herein. While they are collected under the proper names of their authors, and arise from the joint history of the group, they express and traverse a series of differences which cannot be situated within a single, overarching conceptual structure. Such is the nature of the relay : it runs in different directions, marking its own territories of thought, generating history out of its successive encounters.
The relay sets theory in motion. Theory avails itself of concepts along the way, concepts which are themselves marked through a series of unfolding events and interactions. The concept is thus indebted to practice. Hierarchical conceptions of theory and practice are only able to conceive of practice in terms of illustration, exemplification, and instantiation. They confine practice to a supporting role. The notion of the relay activates practice , so that it can advance theory . This is why the relay does not signal a retreat into localism. The relay calls for a re-evaluation of the singular case, which may well find itself linked to a theoretical articulation, not as instantiation, but as a provocateur of its future theoretical self. Theory for its part takes up specificity, moving practice into a theoretical, conceptual register. The unfolding reciprocity of theory and practice is evident within the work of this volume. While its authors make use of their specific origins and local practices, these are thought through in a theoretical register. Their articulation of situation, itself a manner of practice , is not a mode of illustration, rather the means whereby theory is generated. The conceptual elaboration of these situations is an extension of thought into theoretical terrain.
If theory functions on a conceptual level, there is a sense here of difference within the concept . Philosophyâs habit is to assume the stability and identity of concepts, while acknowledging difference only at the level of instantiation. But if we take the notion of mobility seriously, and take on board the idea of a relay between theory and practice , then we might consider the concept itself as less stable and more mobile. If we donât know what a body can do, we might likewise say that we donât know what a concept can do. Thus, the invitation of this collection is to experience the different ways in which concepts are mobilised and put to work, amidst very different concerns, embodied histories, and motivations. Its suggestion is that theory is itself marked, subject to material and corporeal forces, and is itself open to the different milieus that give voice to theory.
To that end, we begin with a part entitled Rethinking Choreography, which consists of four chapters that ostensibly address the same concept , yet propose a variety of linkages and practices as the means whereby theory might be put into practice . The first chapter, by Philipa Rothfield, poses the field of choreography as open to change from within. Rothfield examines the notion of creativity embedded in the idea of innovation through introducing the figure of subtraction. Initially posed by Gilles Deleuze , subtraction offers a way of looking at the production of the new in the field of art. Subtraction suggests that artistic creation must at some level involve an element of destruction. If the history of art is settled into its current state, then something must occur to open it to change. Subtraction targets that which maintains stasis, whether social and political constraint, kinaesthetic convention or cultural assumption. Its aim is to destabilise the forces of convention, as a means to foster the emergence of new possibilities. Deleuzeâs initial formulation was oriented towards the theatre, in particular the work of Carmelo Bene, who mounted classical works by taking away some central element. Deleuze focused on the social and political forces that maintain equilibrium. Shifting the conceptual ground of subtraction towards the field of dance raises specific questions around stabilisation within dance: asking what forces stabilise the dance work or indeed the practice of dance, and how might these become destabilised? Rothfield discusses Australian choreographers Natalie Cursio and Russell Dumas in order to investigate whether their work can be seen in terms of subtraction.
Muto Daisuke poses a different conceptual qualification, through linking the notion of meshwork with that of choreography. Where Rothfieldâs analysis speaks to the question of innovation within choreography, Mutoâs chapter is directed towards the figure of the choreographer as author. Drawing on the work of Susan Foster, Muto develops a genealogy of choreographic authorship that discerns its origins in the inception of choreography as a form of writing. Although the function of the choreographer has gone through a number of transformations, most notably, through the figure of postmodern dance, Muto argues that the authorial agency of the choreographer persists and founders upon the question of (multicultural) otherness. Through taking up the work of French choreographer JĂȘrome Bel, Muto evaluates the ethical and political implications of single-node authorship which, he claims, fall short of their purported ethics and politics of inclusivity. Enter Tim Ingoldâs concept of meshwork. Muto turns to a series of Japanese dance events as a means to explore the ways in which choreography could be seen in terms of meshwork. His examples activate the possibility of such a theoretical elaboration through offering a very different sense of choreographyâs work, one which runs in numerous directions. Ingoldâs term for this is meshwork. For Muto, the idea of choreography as meshwork avoids the pitfalls and limitations of authorship, including the structure of the author-subject (choreographer) presumed to know. Meshwork not only opens out a multiform process of choreographic elaboration, it allows for learning on the part of all participants, including the choreographer. In their distinct ways, Rothfield and Muto displace the creativity of the choreographer, Rothfield by looking at artistic creation through the lens of subtraction, Muto through opening up artistic agency to a distributed domain of relationality.
âFunmi Adewole and Nigel Stewartâs chapters demonstrate how the same location can generate very different kinds of relay , in part because of the way they construct and represent their situation, but also because their situation provokes a very different elaboration. âFunmi Adewoleâs context is the critical appreciation of black dance in the UK. Her aim is to evaluate the way in which a British choreographer working with a Caribbean heritage can be understood according to hegemonic notions of black dance in the UK. Adewoleâs chapter shows how practice can collide with (âthe wallâ of) theory , thereby provoking new movements on the part of thought. It documents current thinking about hybrid, diasporic, black dance, showing how it cannot appreciate the singular breadth of Beverly Gleanâs choreographic oeuvre. Such limited thinking has a history, and Adewole traces its origins and development. She offers this critical history as a means to explain why Gleanâs hybrid combination of UK based contemporary dance training, Caribbean dance culture, and Reggae music culture cannot be grasped within the current terms of understanding that rigidly separate traditional from contemporary dance. If Gleanâs work exceeds a âcoherentâ representation of tradition, then Adewole questions the basis of such disciplinary coherence. Adewole thus does two things with the concept of choreography. Firstly, she shows how its historical deployment functioned as a means of aesthetic devaluation. By doing so, she secondly opens up the concept to acknowledge the artistic value of Gleanâs work.
Nigel Stewart begins with a different theoretical formulation in relation to choreographic practice , by bringing dance into contact with philosophy, ultimately claiming that dance can offer new philosophical insights. Stewart argues that choreography is able to be viewed as a mode of philosophy, that dance is itself able to function in philosophical terms. He begins this argument with Jacques Derridaâs characterisation of the western, philosophical tradition. According to Derrida, light functions as the central metaphor of knowledge within western philosophy. The notion of light construes knowledge as a form of seeing, rendering epistemology a question of vision. Stewart develops a term, dance photology, to explore the sense in which dance can generate its own understanding of light and therefore knowledge. According to Stewart, distinct notions of vision have historically found expression within philosophy and art. Totalising forms of vision can, for example, be discerned within colonial landscape painting and naturalist theatre. These represent a certain way of thinking light, in transcendental, panoramic terms. Stewart takes us through a number of choreographic works in relation to these questions of light, vision and, by implication, knowledge. His discussion ultimately centres upon Russell Maliphantâs Afterlight which, Stewart argues, provokes a shift in how we might conceive of light in relation to knowledge. Stewartâs dance photology refuses a totalising vision of Afterlight, preferring instead a range of partial insights. In so doing, the work opens itself up to a series of perspectival understandings and eroticised experiences. For Stewart, Afterlight thereby offers a fickering photology, which exceeds and perhaps evades the epistemologistâs grasp, so as to offer a new range of experiential and philosophical insights.
The mobility of the relay encourages us to consider how its action shifts possibilities for dance according to context. âDanceâ cannot be a singular or unified concept across geographies, even as the relay spreads its contents. The contents of dance are altered by their translocation, across time and social circumstance. In this part, Circuits and Circulation, four essays explore how circuits of communication open and close variously, depending upon who watches and what they know.
Commodification changes the nature of exchange, introducing concerns of marketplace capitalism into the very fabric of performance. As bodies, cultures, and kinaesthetic heritages shift location, contingency produces errant bedfellows. Commodification seems to be contingent upon the trends of the moment, and whether those trends take into account varied valuations of dance practices through time. Janet OâShea and Franz Anton Cramer consider the ways that national projects create unexpected terms for choreographic expression. For OâShea, the very concept of the âdance festivalâ warrants scrutiny as a formation. Her exploration of two festivals, both born in Great Britain, demonstrate how festivals act and react to their own emergence. The Festival of India, created as a national project in the 1980s, sought to relay aspects of an expansive âIndian cultureâ to foreign audiences. Around the same time, the Dance Umbrella festival emerged out of the British new dance movement, as a scrappy showcase of independent artistry. These two events could hardly be more different from each other in their ambitions, national profiles, and presentation of dance artistry. OâSheaâs depiction of their changes over time confirms the ways in which festivals assert a relationship of dance to diplomacy, even as they create crucial possibilities for counter-events that can challenge an aesthetic status quo and advocate for social change outside of the festival stage.
Franz Anton Cramer wonders at the impossibility of an outside to the power-ridden capitalist relay of inter-cultural exchange in contemporary dance forms ported to foreign locations. With arch clarity, he explores the uses of African dance as a ânatural resourceâ for contemporary European choreographers in light of cultural capitalisms that accelerate aesthetic turnover. Looking at the work of twenty-first-century collaborators, Gintersdorfer and Klassen, Cramer articulates the âenlightened criticalityâ of performances that expose the paradoxical presumptions of speaking about, or for, âAfricaâ in contemporary European dance theatre. Achille Mbembeâs crucial concept of the postcolony allows Cramer to discuss the paradoxical creation of contemporary performance that references an unanticipated new reality, both discursive and factual, where âAfricaâ might be performed.
Circuits of relay produce miscommunications and heighten differences in approach to corporeal exercise, even among seemingly stable cultural practices. Dance researcher How Ngean Lim probes the function of rhythm in contemporary Southeast Asian dance through the fact of his association with Amrita performing arts group in Cambodia, and world-famous Thai choreographer, Pichet Klunchun. In working through Deleuze âs concept of subtraction, Lim identifies a continuous process of âbecoming-minorityâ that circumscribes repetitions of traditional dance rhythms. Lim demonstrates that the shifting affiliations of rhythm in traditional cultural forms can indeed become emblematic of explorations in contemporary choreographic form; the relay can produce dissonance among closely connected creative theories and practices.
The movement of practice across continents can create a different type of kinaesthetic dissonance, as choreographies âfeel differentâ in different venues and in relation to different practitioners. Susanne Ravn dances the tango in Buenos Aires and observes professional dance-sport practitioners of tango in Odense; the two locations produce surprisingly similar approaches to understanding how some of its theoretical possibilities operate. Ravn explores how participatory âsense-makingâ is mobilised to realise an extended bodyâone that encompasses the partner as an integrated portion of the dance-making process of corporeal gesture. Across broad geographic distance, tango arrives with distinct articulation but complementary assumptions of a phenomenological attachment to the partner as endemic to the form.
The notion of the encounter offers a certain conceptual thickness to the idea of writing about dance. It fleshes out that which is implicit and makes possible dance scholarship. The encounter is a corporeal event, one that occurs between bodies. Writing about dance ensues from the encounter, whether on stage, in the studio or between audience and performer. Baruch Spinoza was particularly interested in the outcome of such encounters, basing his ethics upon their effect, conceived in terms of affect. 1 While affect theory has become prominent within the humanities, the role and nature of affect within the field of dance is open to new conceptualisations. The chapters in this part titled Affectivities engage with questions of affect through the body, within and between bodies, in performance and between the work and its audience.
According to Elizabeth Dempster, affects have a life of their own. This is a legacy of human culture which has come to identify and privilege certain affects over others. Affects, for Dempster, are unruly. They threaten the boundaries of subjectivity because they are not under our control. Dempsterâs chapter focuses on the affect of shame in relation to dance, both on the part of the performer and the audience. Although shame is uncomfortable, Dempster refuses to construct shame in merely negative terms. She works the idea of shame into a positive sense of transformative possibility, firstly by contestin...