Moving Sites

Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance

Victoria Hunter, Victoria Hunter

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317532491
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Sous-sujet: Arte performativa

Moving Sites explores site-specific dance practice through a combination of analytical essays and practitioner accounts of their working processes. In offering this joint effort of theory and practice, it aims to provide dance academics, students and practitioners with a series of discussions that shed light both on approaches to making this type of dance practice, and evaluating and reflecting on it.

The edited volume combines critical thinking from a range of perspectives including commentary and observation from the fields of dance studies, human geography and spatial theory in order to present interdisciplinary discourse and a range of critical and practice-led lenses through which this type of work can be considered and explored. In so doing, this book addresses the following questions:

· How do choreographers make site-specific dance performance?

· What occurs when a moving body engages with site, place and environment?

· How might we interpret, analyse and evaluate this type of dance practice through a range of theoretical lenses?

· How can this type of practice inform wider discussions of embodiment, site, space, place and environment?

This innovative and exciting book seeks to move beyond description and discussion of site-specific dance as a spectacle or novelty and considers site-dance as a valid and vital form of contemporary dance practice that explores, reflects, disrupts, contests and develops understandings and practices of inhabiting and engaging with a range of sites and environments.

Dr Victoria Hunter is Senior Lecturer in Dance at the University of Chichester.

Part I Approaching the site

Experiencing space and place

This section introduces the reader to a number of philosophical ideas and practical approaches to negotiating interactions with space and place. It combines theoretically driven essays with practitioner accounts of working practices that employ spatial and phenomenological theory and experiential methods to approaching site, engaging with space and place and making site-specific dance performance. This section is, essentially about beginnings, encounters and exploratory methods and, through the contributors’ approaches it addresses questions such as: where to begin, what to respond to and how to react to spatial information and place-based experience.

The section begins with my own essay that presents a model for experiencing site and a framework for considering how site-based experiences and both formal and informal site responses might inform the making of a performance work. Following this, Fiona Wilkie’s chapter presents interview material from two contemporary site-based artists in which they discuss their individual approaches to developing site performance. In this chapter dance artist Carolyn Deby and performance maker Stephen Hodge reflect on contemporary developments in site-based practice and consider how evolved considerations of site, mobility, environment and ecology have informed the development of their work. In the third chapter, architectural academic Rachel Sara explores relationships between the built environment and the moving body in which she presents an account of her movement–architecture workshop practice that aims to explore synergies between moving bodies and designed spaces. Through a discussion of atmosphere and the affective qualities of spaces presented in Chapter 4, human geographer Derek McCormack invites us to consider the often, ineffable qualities of spatial interactions and presents an engaging theoretical discussion that explores ideas of non-representational theory in relation to corporeal and sensory space–time encounters. The section concludes with the re-presentation of my essay Embodying the Site in which many of the theoretical ideas explored in the preceding chapters are exemplified through the account of the Beneath (2004) creative process. This chapter presents an account of my working processes when creating a site-specific dance work in a basement location. Informed by theoretical ideas posited by the human geographer Doreen Massey, the chapter outlines a number of working methods and reflects on the implications of the work in terms of what this type of practice might reveal regarding understandings and experiences of space and place.

1 Experiencing space

The implications for site-specific dance performance

DOI: 10.4324/9781315724959-3

This chapter considers how site elements might influence and affect creative dance practitioners.¹ It explores relationships between the spatial and experiential components of site and the choreographer and considers how these relationships might inform the creative process leading to performance.

Drawing upon the work of architectural and philosophical theorists concerned with the experiencing of space, including Henri Lefebvre (1974, 1991), Bryan Lawson (2001), Yi-Fu Tuan (1974, 1977) and Gaston Bachelard (1964), initial questions of how we experience, perceive, and interact with space are explored. These theories of space and spatial interaction are placed alongside those drawn from choreographic and performance theory offered by Valerie Briginshaw (2001) and Valerie Preston-Dunlop (1998) in an attempt to begin to draw parallels between the philosophical and practical areas of dance and space theory. Concepts of social and personal space, ways of constructing, experiencing, perceiving, and reading them and the implications for site-specific dance performance are considered here. The chapter focuses on architectural and constructed spaces and does not concern itself with landscaped or geographical environments. Though the existence of dance specific spatial components (Hunter 2007) implicit in choreographic creation is acknowledged, they are not scrutinised in depth here.

The chapter concludes with the presentation of a ‘model of influence’ as an illustration of how the various approaches upon the creative and interpretive process can be of influence.

Perceiving, constructing and experiencing space

The process of perceiving space can be defined as a form of absorbing and ordering information gained while experiencing and interacting with space. Perception can be seen as a process of ‘making sense’ of this information, a process that is particular to each individual. Further definitions are provided by Bryan Lawson (2001) and Christian Norberg-Schulz (1963),

Our immediate awareness of the phenomenal world is given through perception.

(Norberg-Schulz 1963: 27)

Perception is an active process through which we make sense of the world around us. To do this of course we rely upon sensation but we normally integrate the experience of all our senses without conscious analysis.

(Lawson 2001: 85)

These definitions imply that perception is distinct from analysis and is an active process, occurring subconsciously, almost instantaneously. The act of perception is a personal one, subject to many variables; space and spaces therefore can be experienced and perceived in many different ways by many individuals. Towns, cities and buildings, however, are constructed spaces, ‘concrete’ in dimensions and form, so how can such ‘closed’ structures produce a variety of responses and interpretations?

Lefebvre (1991) and Lawson (2001) suggest that environments and spaces are ‘constructed’ in a variety of ways. Lefebvre considers concepts of ‘socially’ and ‘personally’ constructed space, as ‘real’ or ‘mental’ space. Linked to this is the practice of architecture itself. While many architects are assigned or assign themselves to a particular architectural ‘school’ or movement, few provide a concise, generic definition of the term ‘architecture’. For the purposes of this discussion therefore, an appropriate definition of architecture is provided by the dance scholar and architectural user and ‘consumer’ Valerie Briginshaw: ‘spaces that are structured actually or conceptually according to ideas associated with building design’ (2001: 183).

On first inspection, this definition appears straightforward enough. On closer inspection, however, it begins to raise questions regarding authorship and construction. Buildings do not simply appear; they are subject to complex processes of planning, designing and re-designing, eventually culminating in construction and realisation. Likewise, towns and cities evolve according to a number of factors including history, economic growth, social migration, and national and international policy. Buildings, towns and cities largely speaking are subject to rules and regulations regarding planning. They are constructed environments and, as such, dictate and influence how we experience and ultimately interpret them.

An examination of the use of scale in construction can serve to illustrate this point. Bryan Lawson (2001: 29) observes: ‘Scale is one of the most important elements in the social language of space.’ He then cites the example of the city of Prague dominated by the grand Hradčany castle built at the top of a hill overlooking the city. He describes how housing built at the foot of the hill is small and increases in size and stature towards the top of the hill nearest the castle, reflecting the social hierarchy in existence at the time of construction (Lawson 2001: 50–1). This use of scale indicating wealth and status is still prevalent in Western society today. Large houses are deemed ‘grand’ and ‘imposing’ deferring social and economic status upon the occupants. Similarly, the size and scale of many civic buildings reflects the importance of the activities taking place within. Notions of power and control can also be associated with large civic and corporate buildings. Briginshaw (2001: 30) observes: ‘As a social construct space is not transparent and innocent, it is imbued with power of different kinds.’

Briginshaw’s observation highlights how particular elements of location, scale, construction, and design can be interpreted and imbued with meaning according to the dominant ideology of a particular society. Historically, in the UK for example, we associated the term ‘inner city’ with notions of poverty and deprivation, while ‘the countryside’ carried with it images of peace and tranquillity.² Social construction of space can be seen therefore to develop through associations and connotations assigned to particular environments and spaces. Through common usage these associations become part of the common psyche. Thus cities, spaces, and environments are ‘constructed’ on a number of levels including physical and social ones as influenced by ideology.

Such social and ideological factors can influence the way in which we interact with and experience spaces. However, the physical construction and design of spaces and buildings directly dictate the manner in which we physically engage with space. Road systems and one-way traffic management schemes dictate how we enter cities and towns. Entrances and corridors determine how we navigate our journey through buildings. Lawson describes architectural and urban spaces as:

‘Containers to accommodate, separate, structure and organize, facilitate, heighten, and even celebrate human spatial behaviour’

(2001: 4)

Here, Lawson is referring to a degree of architectural ‘control’ examined later. Constructed environments inevitably provide us with a wealth of formal and informal spatial information. While we may not consciously be aware of their impact upon our perception of space, Lawson explains how our brains prioritise these elements over others when later attempting to recreate a space in our ‘mind’s eye’. Lawson (2001: 62–8) identifies these elements as:

Verticality

Symmetry

Colour

Number (of windows, columns, doors, etc.)

Meaning (i.e. ‘labels’ church, gallery, etc.)

Context (our context when entering a space)

The first four elements listed here refer to an interaction with the more formal and structural elements with space, leading perhaps to an aesthetic response. The remaining two elements, meaning and context, both relate to the social and personal construction of space and require further examination.

The dominant ideology of any given society attaches labels of meaning to particular buildings and environments. These meanings are often constructed externally via architectural design and internally through conventions of use. This type of functional inside/outside interface is also facilitated via the internal design of the building serving to orchestrate and engineer the individual’s interaction with the space and ultimately the institution it houses or represents. Lawson provides a pertinent illustration of this process when describing the conventions surrounding the construction of and interaction with church buildings:

The Christian church not only organizes space for ritual, but also uniquely locates each of the roles in the special society of worship. The chair, the congregation, and the clergy each have their own place, and a Christian visiting a strange church will have little difficulty in knowing where to go and how to behave.

(Lawson 2001: 26)

Lawson implies that the ‘meaning’ of the space refers not only to its external façade, but also indicates the building’s function and the social norms employed when interacting with the space. These meanings and social norms attached to certain buildings can be culturally determined and are often identifiable only to those familiar with the conventions of usage. For example, an individual well versed in the conventions and social norms of a church building may be unfamiliar with the conventions employed within other places of worship. The individual’s subjectivity and the context in which they experience a particular building or site may also impact upon their experience and perception of the space.

Personal, social, time-based, environmental, cultural, geographical, and political contexts can influence and impact upon our experience of place, to quote the Dutch architect Aldo Van Eyck: ‘Whatever space and time mean, place and occasion mean more. For space in the image of man is place, and time in the image of man is occasion’ (Van Eyck in Lawson 2001: 23).

Again, using the example of a church space, we can see how our experience and interaction with the space can be radically altered according to the context of the occasion occurring within the space. Weddings, funerals and christenings all elicit differing responses to and prescribe differing interactions with the space, while the internal and external architectural make up remains essentially the same.

Choreographers engaging in the creation of site-specific work need therefore to experientially research the site on a number of occasions and from a range of social, cultural and contextual perspectives prior to embarking upon the creative process (see Hunter 2007).

While ‘external’ factors focus the experience of space, therefore, ‘internal’ elements add contextual meaning. Erving Goffman (1969) highlights how the ‘performance of self’ affects the way in which we interact with any given space and Gaston Bachelard (1964) emphasises the psychological associations we make with spaces, suggesting that attics, for example, relate to the ‘super ego’ (p. 19) while basements connect to ‘the dark id’ (p. 19); the home remains a haven, an ‘ideal’ space. Lefebvre, however, urges that both external and internal spatial factors operate upon our experience and perception of space: ‘In actuality each of these two kinds of space involves, underpins and presupposes the other’ (Lefebvre 1991: 14).

Thus both external and internal ‘contexts’ influence and inform our experiencing of space inferring a two-way interaction between individual/space and space/indiv...