[dance-tech] the present (criticism)

hello all:

A good week for dance, one should think, looking at the many reviews that came 
out this week (New York Times -- "All the News that's Fit to Print"). so we can 
take a deep breath.

congratulations to Troika Ranch for their New York and US premiere of "16 
(R)evolutions", the work they showed in England last fall and at the Digital 
Cultures Lab-Festival.


I'm reminded, though, of a small discussion we had last spring on the list,  
when the NY Times first made a big splash preview of  Trisha Brown's new 
collaborative piece (created at ASU), "How Long Does the Subject Linger on the 
Edge of the Volume", pointing out how expensive and very complicated the 
real-time motion-capture-derived graphic animations were and how fascinating 
this "new technology" was (when it fact it was not so very new and had been 
explored by numerous other artists and choreographers with significantly more 
modest budgets at their hands), only to proceed then, after the premiere, to 
fail the work for not coming together [a notion of course that one would have 
to explore more carefully..]. I quote from John Rockwell's critique (14 april 
2005)

>>
The newsiest of the recent works was the New York premiere of "How Long Does 
the Subject Linger on the Edge of the Volume" (2005), which combines six 
dancers, four wearing sensors, with a computer program triggered by the sensors 
that projects patterns on a front scrim and modifies Curtis Bahn's understated 
score. The patterns were attractive - white and red lines, shapes and washes, 
occasionally alluding to the human figure _ - but to this taste, there was no 
real fusion of the visual and the choreographic.>>>


This week, the critical appraisals included Rockwell's very curious, almost 
absurdist  "The Enigmas, the Oddities: What to Make of Dance From Japan "... 
which is too odd itself to quote from (perhaps one can mention that apparently 
for Rockwell the more "scary," "anguished", "eerie" and "disturbing" a dance 
strikes him, the more "Japanese" it looks to him). 

Another review of Emio Greco/PC, titled "Landscape of Light and Shadow, Nimbly 
Crossed"  proceeds to praise the choroegraphy but dismisses their programme 
notes and the choreographer's "European intellectual"  or  "philosophical 
explications" as so much metaphysical nonsense.   

Critic Jennifer Dunning reviews Ibrahim Quraishi (Pakistan) and his piece "5 
Streams" , saying it sounds "terrific on paper," but does not come together and 
remains nearly unintelligible. 

Rockwell's review of Troika Ranch praises the "technology" and "brilliant 
visuals,"  but complains that it is not coming together, implying that he 
didn't like the concept or choreography which he suggests is "superimposed" on 
the "visuals", which of course is somewhat absurd since the visual images are 
interactively generated by the dancers.  I don't bring this up because Mark 
Coniglio and Dawn Stoppiello are long-time members of our community and this 
list, I am curious as to what one is to make of such dance writing, when 
concepts, choroegraphy, performance and media get separated, or when Rockwell 
writes about "technology" as if it was an artform ("Troika apparently don't 
have faith that their technology will provide enough variety or meaning to 
sustain interest over an hour.").... 

I think this whole question of  how computer-augmented interactive dance or 
multimedia performance works are received, what "comes together", or is 
perceived as apart or not integrated or perceived as not-integrated and 
not-interdependent, concerns most of us who work with live performers, digital 
media, interactive interfaces and 3D or 2D image-projections and sound. It is a 
fundamental issue, and obviously needs addressing. It needs to be addressed in 
our methods of composition (and to pick up from last week's discussion on 
pedagogy), and in the training, and our collaborative workshops on (what shall 
we call it) digital choreography?   As we have not defined digital choreography 
yet (nor is it institutionalized, which might be a good thing), and of course 
we will have different understandings of what digital dance is,...... the 
question of the reception will also linger for a while, one assumes. 

Johannes Birringer
Houston, TX 




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