[dance-tech] the present (criticism)
- From: "Birringer, Johannes" <johannes.birringer@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <dance-tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jan 2006 00:41:50 -0000
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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