Democracy's Body, Neoliberalism's Body: The Ambivalent Search for Egalitarianism Within the Contemporary Post/Modern Dance Tradition

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (01) ◽  
pp. 47-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jose L. Reynoso
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Collaborative Practices ◽  
Cultural Forms ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Capital Ownership

This article analyzes ways in which dance as labor and artist as a specific subjectivity relate to the material conditions of their production within contexts shaped by neoliberal notions of freedom, ideologies of liberal democracy, and the logic of global capitalism. The discussion focuses on contemporary dance practices that embody some of these values by striving to be more egalitarian, thus giving performers more agency in how they participate in creative processes that lead to a collectively created performance work. This analysis emphasizes the tension between these collaborative practices and modes of producing and distributing financial and symbolic, as well as cultural forms of capital in ways that resist and/or reproduce exploitative aspects of capitalism. Examining some works by Yvonne Rainer, Xavier Le Roy, and Tino Sehgal enables the theorization of the entrepreneurial artistic archive as well as practices of crediting creative labor in relation to notions of capital, ownership, collaboration, and consequently who dance-art makers and performers become as politically progressive artists.

scholarly journals Re-Constructing the Choreographic Studio of João Fiadeiro Through Animated Infographic Films

1969 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan Jürgens
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Interesting Point ◽  
Creative Processes ◽  
Artistic Process ◽  
Conceptual Structures ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Interdisciplinary Arts

The starting point for this article is an artist-led practice developed by choreographer João Fiadeiro during the past two decades, which has been designated as "Composition in Real Time" (CTR). The interesting point about this methodology is that it has been applied in performance composition and in arts education by its author himself; but also in such diverse fields as anthropology, sociology, neurosciences, and economy by scientists and academics in collaboration with Fiadeiro. The authors of this article have conducted a long-lasting case study on the artistic process of Fiadeiro in the framework of an ERC-funded interdisciplinary arts and cognition project. We present our resulting novel approach to researching contemporary dance work through the creation and production of animated infographic films. Along with leading PaR theorists we argue that the utilization of adequate artistic techniques and methods in academic research can successfully reveal how unique creative ideas and conceptual structures come into being in the creative processes of today's contemporary artists. The article discusses specific excerpts of the provided animated infographic films to show how we digitally re-constructed Fiadeiro’s conceptual and imaginative universe, and how our findings can address both an academic and interested lay audience. SOLOS study: I am sitting in a different room you are in now from BlackBox Art&Cognition on Vimeo. SOLOS study: I was here from BlackBox Art&Cognition on Vimeo. Graphic models developed by João Fiadeiro from BlackBox Art&Cognition on Vimeo.

Dupuy, Françoise née Michaud (1925--) and Dupuy, Dominique (1930--)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanja Andus L’Hotellier
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Training ◽  
Publishing House ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Training Institution ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Teacher Training Institution ◽  
Dance Companies ◽  
Study Center

Françoise and Dominique Dupuy are French dancers, teachers, choreographers, and writers who met in Paris in 1946 and were married in 1951. Along with Jacqueline Robinson, Karin Waehner, and Jerome Andrews, they are key figures in the development of modern dance in France. In 1955 they founded Les Ballets Modernes de Paris (BMP), one of France’s first modern dance companies and initiated a collaboration of more than six decades as members of Jean Weidt’s company, Ballets des Arts. Prolific writers as well as choreographers, in 1969 they founded Rencontres Internationales de Danse Contemporaine (International Encounters of Contemporary Dance, RIDC), a pioneering teacher training institution, and in 1996 Le Mas de la Danse (Provençal House of Dance), a research and study center for contemporary dance as well as a publishing house. Une Danse à l’œuvre, a co-authored collection of essays on their dance practice, was published in 2001. They continue to explore the themes of heritage, memory, and the aging dancer.

Dudley, Jane (1912–2001)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria Phillips Geduld
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Professional Training ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The United States ◽  
London School ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Dance Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Works

Jane Dudley, a key figure in the radical dance movement of the 1930s, was a choreographer who developed her own distinctive voice within the modern dance idiom and an educator who trained numerous dancers both in the United States and in England. An early member of the New Dance Group (NDG), she oversaw the creation of group works such as Strike (1934), while choreographing solos such as Time is Money (1934), in which she used the modern dance idiom to embody a worker’s oppression on the assembly line. A striking performer, Dudley joined the Martha Graham Company in the mid-1930s. At the same time, she continued to develop her own repertoire, in part through the Dudley–Maslow–Bales Trio, whose founders—Sophie Maslow, William Bales, and herself—remained committed to the social ideals of the 1930s long after they had abandoned the making of overtly political works. Dudley’s loyalty to NDG extended over several decades during which it became a major New York training venue, offering inexpensive classes and professional training to promising students, including many African Americans. From 1970 to 2000, Dudley directed the London School of Contemporary Dance, transforming it into one of Europe’s leading modern dance institutions.

Hoyer, Dore (1911–1967)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl Eric Toepfer
Keyword(s):  
Weimar Republic ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Nazi Regime ◽  
Dance Culture ◽  
Modern Dancers

Dore Hoyer was perhaps the most innovative figure in German modern dance in the years between 1935 and 1965. This was a period in which political and historical circumstances in Germany severely marginalized the powerful and turbulent dance culture of the Weimar Republic and compelled modern dancers to work within a highly fragmented artistic environment in isolation from each other. Although Hoyer constantly sought opportunities to develop ensemble dance pieces, her artistic significance rests on her work as a solo dancer. She embodied the extraordinary capacity of an isolated soloist and modern dancer to transform oppressive constraints on dance and on bodily expressivity into intensely emotional, existential, and political experiences. Because of her, it is possible to see that the astonishingly imaginative Weimar dance culture did not come to an end with the advent of the Nazi regime in 1933, nor did the movement remain stagnant within a discouraging artistic atmosphere. Partly for this reason, later German dancers, including Susanne Linke and Arila Siegert, have recreated her solos as integral works in the contemporary dance repertoire.

(Re)Playing Shakespeare through modern dance: Youri Vámos’s Romeo and Juliet

2020 ◽  
Vol 102 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-68
Author(s):  
Mattia Mantellato
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Romeo And Juliet ◽  
Classical Technique

This article discusses Youri Vámos’s 1997 modern-dance adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. It examines the shift from Renaissance Verona to the 20th century; his choreographic architecture within physical and spatial ‘partitions’; and his contemporary-dance vocabulary, which fuses classical technique with modern gestures and movements. The lovers are interpreted by the youngest, least experienced dancers in the ensemble, while the dramatisation shifts between irony and tragedy, following a succession of intersemiotic translations of the text and stylistic reworkings. The article concludes with a study of the lovers’ pas de deux, comparing their first encounter and the ballet’s tragic conclusion.

Dreaming the Fourth Hill

2016 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-18
Author(s):  
Daystar/Rosalie Jones
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
Contemporary Dance

Dancer. Teacher. Choreographer. Writer. Passionate Amateur Mime and Mask-Maker. Wannabe Puppeteer. Founder, Director of Daystar: Contemporary Dance-Drama of Indian America. Acknowledged ‘pioneer’ of native modern dance USA. My father's insight: One day you will realize that you were blessed to be a descendant of the original peoples of this land.

Martha Graham's House of the Pelvic Truth: The Figuration of Sexual Identities and Female Empowerment

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrietta Bannerman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
Female Students ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Martha Graham ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Dance Training ◽  
To Come ◽  
The 1960S

Martha Graham writes in her autobiography Blood Memory that she was bewildered, or, as she puts it “bemused,” when she heard how dancers referred to her school as “the house of the pelvic truth” (Graham 1991, 211). We might perhaps agree with Graham that this is not the best description for a highly respected center of modern dance training; neither does it match Graham's image as an awe-inspiring and exacting teacher, nor does it suit the seriousness with which her tough technique is regarded. But the house of the pelvic truth does chime with stories about Graham's often frank method of addressing her students. She is reputed to have told one young woman not to come back to the studio until she had found herself a man. At other times she would tell her female students, “you are simply not moving your vagina” (211). Add to this other stories about the men in the company suffering from “vagina envy” (211), and it can be readily understood that the goings-on in the Graham studio gave rise to its nickname, “house of the pelvic truth.”In British dance circles of the 1960s, it was not rumors of the erotic that attracted most of us to Graham's work or persuaded us to travel to New York in search of the Graham technique. There was little in the way of contemporary dance training in Britain at this time, and we had been mesmerized by the beautiful and rather chaste film A Dancer's World (1957), in which Graham pronounces: a dancer is not a phenomenon … not a phenomenal creature.… I think he is a divine normal. He does what the human body is capable of doing. Now this takes time…it takes about ten years of study. This does not mean he won't be dancing before that time, but it does take the pressure of time, so that the house of the body can hold its divine tenant, the spirit. (1962, 24)

scholarly journals Post-Salvagism: Choreography and Its Discontents in the Occupied Palestinian Territories

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Palestinian Territories

While researching dance within the Occupied Palestinian Territories, comments made by the choreographers of local performance troupes resonated in my mind because they exemplify how foreign hegemony controls notions of modernity. The first was a lament: “But can't they understand that this is our contemporary dance?” It followed the rejection of the group's application to a European contemporary dance festival, on the basis that their dance production was not contemporary enough and that it would be better suited to a folkloric festival. For those engaged in creative innovation in dance, this rebuke can feel like being sent to a home for the elderly: packed off to a place where everybody dances in circles, reminiscing about the glorious golden past of their own particular civilization. The second comment cropped up in numerous conversations with local dance practitioners and audiences: “I don't like the modern dance.” This comment was generally directed at any foreign or local dance production that did not fit within nostalgically imagined impressions of dance in times gone by.

scholarly journals The Crisis in the Rise of Representative Liberal Democracy to Populist Authoritarianism with Post-Truth Politics

2021 ◽  
Vol 72 ◽  
pp. 210-235
Author(s):  
Nihal UMAR ◽  
Gencay SAYLAN
Keyword(s):  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
World Order ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Methodology ◽  
Northern Cyprus ◽  
Global World ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

In this century, representative liberal democracy is universally considered as the most perfect political regime. However, it is emphasized that the same political regime is exposed to a major crisis for the last 10-20 years as well as looking for ways out. Pursuant to many political scientists, the representative liberal democracy has the authoritarianism tendency that is defined as populism, and they relate it post-truth politics. It is also underlined that due to the politics with such negative elements, democracy contains paradox in terms of practice and discourse. Political regimes become functional within a certain social structure and it is obvious that democracy as a type of political system becomes functional within global world order, namely capitalism. In the research, political methodology, which studies the quantitative and qualitative methods, has been. This study aims to clarify how global capitalism throws representative liberal democracy into major functionality crisis, and the political and administrative rise of populist authoritarianism through post-trust. The sample of the study consists of academics working as lecturers in universities in Northern Cyprus. The results show that, there is a difference between demographic charecteristics of the participants responses to representative liberal democracy, know about populist authoritarianism and post truth politics. There is also a relationship between the political scientists’ authoritarianism tendency and authoritaritarianism defined as populism, as well as between liberal democracy role over the major crisis and role of global capitalism throws representative liberal democracy into major functionality crisis.

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