text: journeys to no specific place

William Forsythe mentions references of journeys to the South Pole as being inspiration for his projects. Specifically One Flat Thing, or also known to the philistine as the riot in the cafeteria (source: Forsyther Interview, side remark about a critic), was influence by books Forsythe was reading at the time about expeditions to the South Pole: "I may be Some Time" by Francis Spufford and "South" by Ernest Shackleton.
(interview source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=xqlq3q5RMrc )

Journeys like the south pole expeditions have no specific point of arrival, except for perhaps an actual point determined by a compass, the location of stars or some other mapping. But as much as the location goes there in no arrival at any concrete place. Nothing of any substance will have looked any different in a 100, 200, 300 mile radius. Snow and absence of sound and significant points of reference will be all encompassing. This scene reminds me of the sheets of paper that Merce Cunningham would use to find minor imperfections in to mark these to begin his journey to choreograph the next dance performance. Chance marks that could have been in this or that place on the paper becoming the source for movement. The south pole is not quite a chance point but the geology around it is going to be filled with chance marks that each could just as well be the point of destination.
There really is no discernible difference in arriving 10 miles or the left or right of the point specified. Eventually the achievement was not reaching the point but the challenge of endurance, or the inspiration however mad to persevere to find that point of nothing and load it with significance of everything. 

text: brain scramble

With One Synchronous Object by William Forsythe, a collaborative project with Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and Ohio State University, strives to make more concrete the impermanence of dance, and to explain how dancing works. “Dance is not materialized in a way that affords a reading, a sustained reading like you have in the sciences and visual arts. The sciences have their documents and the arts have their objects…. we don’t have anything that people could read and examine at their leisure… there is no way people could study what we do. And there is no way to publish ideas…” With Digital new media “can now publish the dance and the idea at the same time” where previously  it wasn’t possible to reflect on the dance as the dance would already be gone. (quotes: Forsythe, ‘Interview with W.Forsythe @ Hellerau, Dresden, Germany http://www.dance-tech.net/video/interview-with-william)  

====================

"that Forsythe's interest in Libeskind is not his 'deconstruction' but his operations on drawing, and that the consequences for ballet are not so much to valorise moments of disappearing but to make ballet's highly evolved sense of counterpoint central"

USE THIS QUOTE to support my approach of focusing on drawing and dance. And I think it is surprising that just the other day I held in my hands my copy of a Libeskind book full of drawings that made me think surely this would, could, somehow connect to Forsythe and his choreography! 

text: Frames of Reference

I was just watching the video interview of William Forsythe (bottom) and in it he speaks about 'Three Atmospheric Studies', a project he directed in 2006/2007. The performance is about war, and from here I elaborate freely: it is about listening, speaking, hearing and not hearing. Forsythe speaks about Frames of Reference and how there are distinctly different frames of reference embedded in this piece. When they finally realize the source of their miscommunication and their positions it culminates with "trauma".
'Three Atmospheric Studies' might be a heavy place to work from but I am just delighted to find myself confirmed when I think of Forsythe as a political choreographer, even so until I realized that 'Three Atmospheric Studies' existed I just had a feeling rather than any factual understanding.
It is important to me that the artists I am interested in also have a political dimension. It is a ground criteria for even a valid human being to be honest. We have never lived in a time where we could really afford to be so disinterested in the source of our security and wellbeing and comparative luxury that we should not be in some way interested in the political. It surely helps to know the dominating political system's operating structures, the names and their positions, frankly I'm over that. That is not too much more than meaningless figureheads easily interchangeable and frequently swapped shortly after election time. What is unchanging is another structure or web that links each individual to decision making. And personal choices make political choices. Without going too much further with this stream of thoughts our political power begins with the weekly grocery shop, the surplus possessions acquisition, the latest gadget fetish and other signifiers of our perceived outer and purchasable status.

Where was I..? Frames of reference. Indeed.



originally published here: http://www.dance-tech.net/video/interview-with-william on April 8th 2009

text: from tracing image to tracing movement

For all of history humans have been trying to make sense of the world by understanding its inherent form and the medium of dance is no exception. While it was once speculated that a quinxus (a sort of an x shape), followed by a globus and any number of vital shapes; as well as plants (considering Goethe’s fixation with an Urplant being at the heart of all nature’s manifestations) choreographers since the inception of the term choreography have been devising ways to understand, choreograph and notate movement. Which is dance by means of an array of mostly linear projections in the 3 dimensional space occupied by the body. Seriously this endeavour began in the 1920’s with Rudolf Laban being one of the first and all time main proponents. Recording 3 dimensional movement for much of the history of movement notation endeavours was not a possibility so the theory developed traced with pen and paper,

Since it’s beginning photography has been a tool in capturing and mapping the course of body movement. Its first name ‘sciography’ meaning writing with shadows, so evocatively and much less statically describes the process. In contrast Forsythe’s project[1] Synchronous Object (2011), no matter how joyfully colourful, just like Merce Cunningham’s forerunning projects: Biped, Hand Drawn Spaces, Loops, Ghostcatching, has the appearance of traces of shadows of past movement. This isn’t intended, but it gives these projects an air of inherent melancholy, perhaps nostalgia. The notalgia part being incredibly at odds with the medium they are created in. Digital age and nostalgia seems anachronous but when a moment is traced, recorded, canned; and when it was a human moment that becomes transcribed into a digital one some trace of the original remains. This feels melancholic, possibly nostalgic.

---

[1] ‘The web project Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced by William Forsythe is coproduced by The Forsythe Company with the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design and The Department of Dance at The Ohio State University’ http://www.wexarts.org/ex/forsythe/

dj.

1.

anachronous - chronologically misplaced; "English public schools are anachronistic" anachronic, anachronistic asynchronous - not synchronous; not occurring or existing at the same time or having the same period or phase

--
note to self: insert cyanotype and anthropometries by Ives Klein

text: mind-jumble-alert- for personal use

Dissertation, William Forsythe, movement alphabet, deconstructing classical ballet, Cunningham, postmodernism, dance, trace, counterpoint.
Lineage of movement alphabet, lineage of breaking the boundaries of choreography, counterpoint, interrelationships, collaboration, exchange, Gesamtkunstwerk. drawing and the body, drawing with the body in space, drawing and movement, movement as drawing, counterpoint a tool for creating complex resonant art work,......

text: new working title

Working title: 

Understanding lineage and interconnectedness between times and genres. Focusing on the development of shared ideas and collaboration of artists working with drawing, dance and counterpoint. (Justifying my attachment to the past and hoping to clarify elements of my love for choreography.)

text: notes from 'Abwesenheit' a book in german about choreography and performance

reference book: Abwesenheit, eine performative Ästhetik des Tanzes; William Forsythe, Jerome Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Meg Stuart. (written by Gerald Siegmund, 2006, publisher: Transcript)

The bodies of dancers are exhibited by Jerome Bel and Xavier le Roy; deforming them, reducing each movement to it's function.

The movements of William Forsythe and Meg Stuart are no longer beautiful in a classical sense. Forsythe became increasingly radical since the 1990's, confusing the audience. p.09

Q: what does it mean to dance on stage in front of the audience and to watch dance from the auditorium? [Dance and cultural themes that make apparent the engagement / argument between radical contemporary dance & the Christian body image] p.09

Abwesenheit: empty space, use of the body, separation of hearing and seeing, where in each case one parameter is made absent. The stage scene receives significant gaps / absences spurring the self imagination of the audience. P.10

With the term ‘absence’ it’s counterpart: presence is evoked. Can not been seen separate from each other.

“The engagement with ‘absence’ also: to open a space in Art, in which the subject is no longer reflected, doesn’t encounter itself as self but as other” p.11

(Lacan theory of split subject of the unconscious)?

“The dancing body appears thus as desiring body, that is simultaneously in relation with: The symbolic, the imaginary & the real” p.11

beware I'm starting typing now.. Let's see if some shape will appear.. Right now it feels like I might as well try to make confetti into origami.. Hurrah, good luck to me!

text: Roberta Carreri interview; and thoughts of my own.

..what interests me is particularly as she speaks about the intimacy of Odin Theatre and how
the limited audience of 60 allows for an immersive, intimate experience where the audience
becomes part of the performance in a way that within a large audience wouldn't be possible.
This is also what I was interested in with my photographic work Chorus, I used large scale
to try and create a world that the viewer could become a part of.

The other interest I have initially in Roverta Carreri is the passion and warmth that infuses
her words. It is this kind of warmth and passion that attracted me to become an Artist. I
realize that it is of another time, the current art scene doesn't seem to allow for poetry. I
understand that I got caught up in a revival of narrative art that took place in the 1980's
and carried over to my early beginnings. But with the advent of technology developing
another art was called for and I didn't quite fit in. I  cling to the romanticism of the 90's, in
my heart I am analogue not digital.

This conflict could work for me in this dissertation however. The striking difference to my
initial interest in dance and drawing and today is this: the digital revolution took place.
Everything I learnt and essays I wrote at university; essays rooted in the Art of Rauschenberg, Surrealism and Fluxus; everything now appears of another time altogether, is it devoid of
value because of this? Of course it depends on my aims. But can that old information, the
arts now in history and ready for the museum, can I still learn from it and take that what I
find with me into the present and possibly future?

I am hoping that William Forsythe will be one of my linking agents. But even this is going
to be problematic, he alone might not be enough. Although what I do appreciate about
William Forsythe is that while the movements of his dancers are so informed by geometry,
his choreographies are narrative, employ narrative elements. This is of huge help to me as I
search to formulate a new practice that is allowed to remain narrative while developing more
in a formal sense.