Comment

Comment by Jeannette Ginslov on June 23, 2008 at 5:41am

Thank you Alva and Marlon
This video is indeed inspiring and made me think of my ravings a few months back about the "post-choreographic". I too have been grappling with the "stuff" that needs to be negotiated by dance, audience and creator. It is not solely the lines, structure or narrative that engages the audience but what rises as a kind of, dare I say it, "vapour", around the performance that interests me.

And you Alva, have just confirmed what I needed to hear. Embodied phenomenology! Great. An understanding of what is transforming in you and around you and the dance and environment, for all three participants.

As you know, the dancer is always aware of mind and perceptual flow, seeing in real-time but also seeing shifts in perceptual flow and shifts in
perspective, as if there is a constant dialogue within the performer between the different 'performative selves' - one is aware of the structure and responds accordingly, one is aware of the shifts and slight differences that occur at each performance, so cause and effect vary slightly at each
performance, one is aware of mistakes and therefore new ideas and
possibilities, one that is aware of audience and the desire to evoke an
empathetic response in them; making them as kinetically or emotionally engaged and in an excited/aware state, one that is always judging the performance as a whole within a cultural context aware of place in time and history, with one that is the personal and the other political. And of course the locus of the Body. All three are interlinked.

But above all my search is for the enactment of experience, the fleshing out of experience that should be negotiated by the audience who have come to "see" the show, in order to engage with a re-distribution or re-negotiation of experience according to the artist presenting.

There is in fact a co-authorship between audience, performer and choreographer (who might also be the perfomers). All three are in this "dance of landscape" together, re-negotiating an understanding of what they are dealing with, within that hour or so of performance.

best wishes

jeannette