Do Dancers Make Good Critics?
With support from the Chris De Marigny Dance Writer's Award, Dance Theatre Journal, the Bonnie Bird Choreography Fund (BBCF) and the Association of Dance of the African Diaspora (ADAD) orchestrated the two-day conference, "Writing on Performance" on March 31-April 1, 2007 held at London's historic Laban dance conservatory. Manned by editor Martin Hargreaves, director Margaret Morris and development manager, Funmi Adewole, Dance Theatre Journal, BBCF and ADAD encouraged "all those with an interest in writing for dance" to come along and discuss, listen and participate in panel discussions, performance talkbacks and the Laban experience in general. Over fifty dancers, dance professionals and dance critics attended. The trio of organizations took the reigns over the conference for good reasons: Dance Theatre Journal (which looks more like a literary magazine, its innards reflecting an intellectual thought about dance and dance writing that gives the journal a real sense of being less a dance magazine than a literary text) wanted to meet its readers and engage in a debate about dance criticism; Margaret Morris, the first editor of DTJ and the current Director of BBCF, who looked upon the conference as a necessary response to the needs of dancers and the written word, begged the question of how to best serve those needs; and ADAD wanted a platform from which to discuss the importance of cultural dance forms and their place in Britain's contemporary dance curriculum model. All expressed pretty heavy motives for the conference, and all voices were reflected over the two-day conference. Plus, you could take the discussions home with you in the form of back-ordered issues of DTJ for a mere three pounds each.
I somehow missed the Laban experience though I lived and studied for a year a mere two hours from London. The Palace had been recommended to me, but whenever anybody mentioned Laban to me, I (perhaps not wholly ignorantly) thought she was speaking of an institution dedicated to Laban Notation. Having entered this contemporary structure on the outskirts of Southeast London (you must travel beyond the Tube to the Docklands light rail to get there), I am convinced of its being a special place. The structure itself is magnificent. An unexpected, sophisticated grin on an otherwise mundane street, Laban transports you to a different world, inside and out. There seemed to be no other place to hold the "Writing on Performance" conference: Laban is a perfect amalgam of the intellectual and the physical. Its boldly colored walls speak loudly and proudly for themselves. Perhaps more so because they contain loads of relevant information- postcards, flyers, audition notices, schedules, upcoming events, company listings... So do dancers make good dance critics? This was my experience as a dancer wanting to learn more about dance criticism. You can decide for yourself.
Day 1: Saturday, March 31st
The conference opened by asking us all, What is the purpose of dance criticism? Information dissemination. Preservation of the art form. Ticket sales. This last reason stimulated a debate of the legitimacy of selling tickets as a purpose of writing about dance. Which in turn led to a discussion of what kinds of dance criticism there are, who writes and what language is used. Which itself led to an overall consensus of being unable to answer the first question when considering the second, third and fourth. You simply must consider the audience. Ironically, an idea contemporary dance itself does not always adhere to. Which led to the recognition of the primary objective of the conference itself--teasing out how performance engages with writing. Whew. Concrete ideas I gleaned from the heated discussion? 1. Don't fake it when writing about dance; if you don't get it, comment on something else. 2. Look for the intentions of the piece--did they hold up under the weight of the choreography? And 3. Tap dance in print. Keep a review short and succinct. I suppose that covers everything. To an extent.
Because we then broke off into groups to proceed to watch a dance video and collaboratively write a review. My group was great. Quite chatty. We weren't ready to stop the discussion when it was our turn to read our, uh, unwritten review. We watched a video of the French artist La Ribot Distinguida perform "Another Bloody Mary" in Le Centre Pompidou in Paris and instead of any actual writing taking place, we found ourselves in a discussion of, What is dance? Was a nude woman walking through a crowd in a musée de Paris, then spreading red props and her sprawling body in the center of said crowd of museum-goers, green shoes covering her feet, a hair piece covering her genitals--was that really dance? Well, if dance is movement through time and space...but she's not moving! But the camera is showing us where to look. But there's no music! There is the inner rhythm of her heartbeat. A biological meter? It was all very exciting. In the end our spokesperson had help from the rest of the group. (Note: the other three groups all had the Recorder read from their tightly written reviews.)
We certainly needed some lunch after that intellectual stimulation.
Part of speaking about dance is also watching it, and we saw the premiere of Adesola Akinleye's Climbing with Bare Feet - Truth & Transparency, a quartet inspired by Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. "The book tells the story of a young man who has his identity projected on him by those in power, he is unable to define himself until he finds himself in the darkness of a hole, where he begins to find his own form, his own light. Two dancers represent the man's mind in its fight for identity against projection. Both dancers and projected-light solicit space and shaped in their bid to claim the eye of the audience. Both on a journey to explore the meaning of 'Truth and Transparency.'" Quite fitting that blurb is, both in that the piece itself makes reference to a text and that the above text was written by the choreographer herself. I must be thinking like a dance critic as well, because as I saw it, there were four persons involved in the piece: the two young, strong men--one black, one white--and the two female projectionists, who were as integral as the dancers themselves to the overall effect of the piece. Slashed in two by a white screen, the stage itself engaged in the two men's struggle to become. They jumped, flipped, hurtled themselves in and out of the light, thus, in and out of being. Instead of the expected blackout at the finale, the lights came up, growing stronger as the men continued to dance, reaching actualization in themselves and completeness for the audience. A beginning with no real end. A constant bid for existence.
Though the panel discussion afterwards focused on the challenges to conventions within cross-cultural work (Akinleye used a barrage of African, contemporary, hip-hop and gymnastics movement vocabulary), I think the discussion earlier that day finally kicked in. I got a review out of the performance.
Day 2: Sunday, April 1st
Well, unfortunately, this particular weekend in England marked the "springing ahead" of clocks, and my boyfriend, a physicist who graciously accompanied me to London for the conference, changed his watch but not his phone. So my Sunday experience was rather abbreviated. Though I missed the first panel discussion, I inevitably received all the information I needed from a fellow conference-goer. Inevitably, I suppose because he was a member of the La Ribot panel discussion the day before. All I had to do was ask. This was a mild weekend and Laban has a nice garden--what we would call a lawn--bordering the main entrance, formed into large green steps. So you can plop yourself down in between panels and get to, well, more talking.
The second and final panel did a pretty good job of summing up the conference. We were able to hear four different choreographers of varying fields--from contemporary dance to Live Art (performance art)--speak about their processes. Process was everything to these choreographers, and for three out of the four, not surprisingly in light of the conference title, that involved some sort of writing. For one, it was cartoons; for another, desultory observations jotted down in a journal; and for yet another, it was an elaborate imaginary response from herself as an audience member to her own artwork. How important is it to any of you to recognize the influences in your work? Can process be performance? were questions burning in my brain. Very and yes. For a performance involving her students, one choreographer even added a sort of footnote to the end of her piece that gave credit for certain movements to the dancers who created them. Now that's my kind of writing.