"T h e e x p a n d e d f i e l d o f c h o r e o g r a p h y "

Liz Waterhouse March 2, 2017

Choreographic Laboratory - Kaserne Basel 

 

Proposal:

Lately, many people around me are saying the phrase "choreography as an expanded practice" -- using the word expanded like it is self-evident what they mean. What do we mean when we use the word choreography? What critique is meant, if we say that choreography is expanding? And in what ways are we...or aren`t we... expanding the field of choreography here in Switzerland? In this session together, mixing lecture and discussion, we will discuss these and other issues. As an introduction, I will trace this business of "expansion"  from the essay by Rosalind Kruass, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" (1979), through Mårten Spångberg, to the retrospective and conference by Xavier Le Roy in Barcelona in 2012. We will also look specifically at the Choreographic Laboratory--asking ourselves how what has come up in the workshops, might help us to articulate what choreography is doing, right now.

 

Texts Referenced:

Rosalind Krauss, "Sculpture in the Expanded Field" (1979) - link - SLIDE

William Forsythe, "Choreographic Objects" (2008) - link, also available in german

Cvejic, B., & Le Roy, X. (2014). To End with Judgement by Way of Clarification. Danse: An Anthology, edited by Noémie Solomon, 145-57.

 

Links:

Dancer`s Knowledge - What else is it good for? Workshop 2016

"Dive into expanding theater and dance and interdisciplinary dialogue" - MA program in Utrecht

"the expansion of body knowledge" - MA program in Choreography in Berlin

"The students deal with an advanced understanding of Theater that goes beyond the borders of any particular discipline." - Expanded Theater HKB Bern

The Expanded Field of Choreography - Conference 2012

Documentation of Retrospective of Xavier Le Roy in Barcelona - 2012 

Documentation of Retrospective of Xavier Le Roy at MOMA - 2015 

Jerome Bel - "Pichet Kluchun and myself 3"  - page from Bel`s website

Jerome Bel - "Veronique Doisneau 3" 

Boris Charmatz - "Manger" 

Forsythe - Choreographic Objects - video

Garden State -Documentation

Charlotte Spencer Projects - Choreographic journeying

Stoerung

Motion Bank

CCL Choreographic Coding Labs

The Art of a Culture of Hope

The Bureau for the Future of Choreography

 

Discussion Exerpts (noted by Liz):

Discussion Prompts 

For me, what is important/interesting about choreography is… 

 

-potency/potentiality - once you strike potentiality, it has a different dimension

-the possibility to discover the potency in someone, as performer

-how you can touch the audience, emotionally

-recognising that there are many ways of touching the audience

-to design or create an experience for the audience

-going out and learning something 

-immediacy or liveness of the shared moment in time

-fictions

-empower - to work with breaking authority

-to get grounded and reconnect to the body

-the human quality of a piece that touches people in any country or context

-investing in the whole process, even the details that do not take place on stage, and resisting 

mechanisms within that

-rearranging what you are interested in

-for me what is important is production, and the distinction between arts and entertainment

-the arts are an opportunity to problematise entertainment, important is the responsibility towards

showing the audience how media can be manipulated