Beyond the Viscera (the emergence of "Subvisc")

[Sarah A.O. Rosner]

I'm working on a thesis dealing with new ways of viewing/presenting dance, and clarifying ways in which we (and other audience members) think about dance on a non-visceral (or maybe just over-visceral) level. This is just a short section, but i'd love any feedback you have on the definitions, uses, etc.

Thanks!

"Subtext as we know it in a literary sense is defined as:

“The implicit meaning or theme of a literary text”

with ‘implicit’ being defined as “contained in the nature of something though not readily apparent” and theme being defined as “a unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc., as in a work of art.” Subtext is why life is interesting. Subtext is the meat of everything that happens, no matter how visible it is, and subtext is what initially drew me in to a love of literature in high school. One of the beautiful things about literature, which I grew up with, fell in love with, and am now attempting to reinvent for dance, is that the reader can really dig into the hidden world of the piece to their heart’s content. Just as themes can underlie a line of text, meanings and subtleties likewise haunt the works of theatre, visual art, and dance. If we use the dance term ‘viscera’ to talk about the movement within a dance piece – specifically the body’s anatomical relation to itself, as well as its relation to space and time during the event of performance, then we can define what I’ve begun to call “subviscera” as

“The implicit meanings and themes inherent in the viscera of a dance performance.”

This subviscera, or “subvisc” for short, is inherent in every piece of postmodern dance, regardless of the choreographer’s intensions or desires, and can be subdivided into the two categories of Inherent Subvisc and Accumulated Subvisc. The Inherent subvisc can be divided into three sections that deal with the accumulation of meaning in the performance of the dance:
1. Meanings the choreographer brings to the viscera during its creation via his or her own understanding of its significance, history, and/or intension
2. Meanings the dancers bring to the viscera in performance, via the accumulation of both their own and the choreographer’s understanding of the intension, story line, or significance behind specific viscera.
3. Meanings that the audience brings to the viscera via their own perception and relation to the viscera during the event of performance
The Accumulated Subvisc can also be divided into three sections, and deals with the dance piece’s post-performance life:
1. The reactions and interpretations of the audience after the piece (which includes both the viscera and the subviscera, as well as set, music, costumes, etc.) is performed
2. The reactions and interpretations of persons deemed “critics” after the piece is performed
3. The accumulation of a judgment (or rather, a multiplicity of judgments) that gather around the piece via the reactions and interpretations of the audience and critics. "

[mpgough]

let me re-cap the main definitions:

- viscera: the moving (performing) body.
- subviscera: the implicit meanings and themes underlying the viscera.

the implication is that movement has implicit meaning. i assume you are taking a (neo-)structuralist stance and consider movement (viscera) to be metaphor. this ties in with: «a unifying or dominant idea, motif, etc. [...]»

the «inherent subviscera» seem overly dependent on accumulation of meaning(s) from different sources. your quote «contained in the nature of something [...]» suggests a structuralist perspective, as such there should be no need for an accumulation of meanings. in your own words: «meanings the [choreographer/dancer/audience] brings to the viscera [...]». if the meaning(s) are brought, they cannot be implicit.

the «accumulated subviscera» indicates an ongoing accumulation of meaning(s) beyond the performance itself. these meanings cannot be contained within the viscera as they are external and after the performance.

the terms «dance text» and «movement text» are more familiar to me than viscera. if i ignore the structuralist stance, «subviscera» could read as «dance/movement intertext». but, to take on the notion of intertextuality would mean re-thinking the inherent and accumulated categories. if we consider a dance work to be a (complex) object, the «inherent subviscera» could be «closed intertexts» and the «accumulated subviscera» could be «open intertexts».

although notions of intertextuality seem dominant in dance, there has been a growing trend towards neo-structuralism. the indicator of this being the previously mentioned «movement as metaphor» concept. it would be useful to see more of the text to see how/if you deal with intertextuality. i would also be interested to see how implicit meanings are written and read (using a specific example).

[Sarah A.O. Rosner]

Hi Tony and Matt,
thanks so much for the feedback - and sorry that it's taken me so long to respond.
I'm finding it harder and harder to clearly gather my thoughts as i get deeper and deeper into these questions, so i'll settle for responding murkily and hoping to make sense of it as i go. I'll address a few points of what each of you identified.

First, the idea of "subvisc". What i failed to make clear in the definiations that i origonally posted is what i see as the "second half" of what makes up subvisc - i go into detail later on in the paper. For me personally as a creator, movement always has some sort of "meaning" behind it. However, i do understand that many choreogrpahers make dances that are purely about the movement and, while i don't engage in that process, i respect and have at least some grasp of what that process entails. SO.
I would argue that subvisc - the meaning behind the movement - comes from two sources. The first, as evidenced by my first post, is specifc meaning that the choreogrpaher or dancers have in mind and body while creating the piece. Perhaps "implicit" was the wrong word compleatly. The other source (which i didn't identify) is the process. In this way, the idea of subvisc doen't nessicarily mandate that there be "meaning" attached to all movement, as much as identify the process of making a dance as a type of "meaning" that can be attacted to the final product.

So then, the idea of accumulated subvisc.
While i don't think there's a need for a viewer to have an awareness of this, as you point out matt, i think that in some cases it is impossible not to. For example, Yvonne Rainer's Trio A can't be fully understood (i would argue) unless you look at how may different times it was performed, by different people. All of these are factors that are not the dance itself (in that they are not the movement, nor the process of creating the movement) but are vital to a more holistic understanding of the piece as a whole. Why shy away from this? Isn't it important that dances imprint upon themselves the mark of the way they exist? For me it's an alternate way of viewing dance's historical footprint. It's not saying that "here's a dance, here's the performance, here's the history", it's giving the actual dance a much denser authority. It's saying that a specific audience feedback (or the cumulative effect of a thousand audience feedbacks, veiwed economically) is directly entwined with the piece itslef. It's allowing the audience and culture around us to imprint itself upon the actual piece of dance, and allowing the dance to incorperate that in its own evolution.
I'm not sure if this is clear yet - it probably isn't. I'll come back to this.

Tony, repies about what to call this "postmodern" thing later tonight.
Thanks again to both for the feedback.

[Sarah A.O. Rosner]

Okay, back again (i was blogging from work, and had to get back to being a costumed statue of liberty that waves a sign...) and sorry for the hasty posting.

I've been trying to think of ways to clarify how i feel about the previous point, and i think it will just be clearer to straight out describe what i'm making rather than talk about the theory. In my hypermedia, i'm attempting to give the process subvisc and the accumulated subvisc a level (maybe separate but equal) footing. So, rather than showing the DVD of the performance as one thing, the process as one thing (maybe a documentary or interview), and then "history" that it makes (in terms of the audience's reaction etc) as separate things, they will all be presented at the same time. If the DVD shows one particular movement, and the viewer clicks on that movement, they will be given the option to look at a multitude of things that are all contained in the piece. For example, a viewer might have the option of viewing rehearsal footage, interviews with the dancers, questions from the audience, a critic's review, and more.
Hope that helps to clarify, at least a little....

And last, i wanted to respond to the problem you articulated, Tony, about my use of the term "postmodern". Honestly, it was a last-minute decision that Rose Anne and I decided upon, and it probably will change, especially in light of your comments. While I am intrigued by your suggestion to avoid categorization, i do feel that it's important to this project to specify it's home in the dance world. While i'm convinced that this type of program could be extremly useful for choreographers like me, as well as my contemporaries at SLC, i don't think that it's for everyone. How to convey that then?

I used the term "postmodern" to generally apply to post-judson work, but the term "postmodern" certainly doesn't apply to much of the work that has happened from then through the present day. By saying that this work applies to "postmodern" dance, i think what i'm getting at is a heightened awareness of dance as dance. Awareness of and references toward modern dance as a performative conversation between viewer and dancer, and a certain hard-to-pin-down wariness and maybe even sarcasm. Maybe what i'm really trying to get at is a hyper awareness to process as opposed to product which i see as characteristic of my generation of choreographers. But then, that was Judson as well. I think part of what makes it so hard for us to give our generation of choreographer's work a title of some sort is that none of what we're doing is new when viewed in isolation from the other characteristics of our generation. These different styles, concerns, mediums, viewpoints are all consistently looping on different tracks and aligning in different ways, some too subtle to distinguish.

So what do we call ourselves?
Right now the term turn-of-the-century-process-centric seems more truthful than postmodern, but certainly not adoptable by the average person as a title they could use to identify and contextualize. Maybe one of our differences in terms of our searching for this term is that, on the seesaw of being perfectly concise or truthful and being sublimely marketable, i'm willing to lean a little towards the marketable side (although still seeking balance).

I need something to name myself as in your glossy brochures, Tony. What do you suggest?