<x-charset iso-8859-1>Hi!
Apologies for the break in communication - illness prevented me from
getting to my University email. Blah blah.
Anyway, thanks again for the responses re DogmaDance.
I thought I'd write to let you know that we had our launch on the night of
one of the dreadful storms in England, and it was reasonably well attended
considering. It generated some good feedback.
An introductory website can be found at www.dogma-dance.org
[takes you to a host site: Left Luggage] There's not much there at the
moment, admittedly, as we are still debating our rules.
Another aspect to it, and slightly unconnected with our dogma, is our aim
to launch an on-line video-dance database and resource facility to act as a
central focus for video-dance makers to be accessed by makers, students,
promoters, etc. Does anyone know of a similar initiative?
After attending a couple of recent dance-film/video events, the issues as
raised by Johannes are still very much foremost in my mind - as they were
when we sat down to think through this a couple of months ago.
Did I say that dance was being pushed out of criteria? If I did I think I
meant funding/commissioning criteria as evidenced by many of the films I
see being made.
Of course the question: "But Is It Dance?" gets asked time and time again -
without any dangerously restrictive definitions of 'dance' we are going to
constantly ask this. The lazy criticism and myopic question: "But is it
Art?" is now virtually redundant (in the day of anything can be art in the
right context), but has it perhaps meant that art (I'm thinking the visual
arts, where this question seems most easily and frequently raised) has
suffered as a result? Sod intention. Stuff meaning. Bollocks to
communication. A black square is as much art as is a cave daub; a child's
hand print is as artistic as an 18th Century portrait. What can we do to
stop the rot? Is dance film suffering because of a too liberal attitude to
what constitutes dance art? To me it's dance if I want it to be, but to you
or someone else they might not see it; they're opinion may be changed, or
coloured. Good or bad?
JB wrote and asked:
>These programs confirm my suspicion (and I'm quite happy with the
>suspicion) that "dance" is reconfigured through video, digital media,
>animation, motion capture, the web, and that this is to be expected, and
>I myself am not keen on making/presuming to make restrictions on what
>artists are creating and what they consider dance and new choreography
>to be. (My understanding of movement is widening all the time, and I am
>very interested in image movement and in new conecptions of dancing
>images and dancing bodies, ghosts of mocapped dancers, design of
>movement, dance design, animation, new sites for dance/environments for
>dance, new dance with media, new conceptions of movement architecture,
>parallel processing and parallel bodies).
>
>Aren't you?
Of course I am. And I agree that dance has moved into new areas of form. I
myself work with live and virtual/video bodies. The different ways in which
dance can be produced amaze me. Is it a question of: I know dance when I
see it? Sometimes yes. Sometimes I need to have it justified. I want to
restrict and I don't don't want to restrict. It's all about challenging
[pre/mis]conceptions.
At a recent event at Chisenhale a video piece called 'Man Ray and Friend'
(maker's name I can't recall) was shown as an example of a dance film. It
was of 2 dogs being manipulated to move their heads by watching an
off-screen tennis ball on a bit of string. Is that dance?
I contend not. But who am I to say?
When I put forward the DogmaDance manifesto idea at the end of the
Chisenhale evening it was met with a very mixed set of responses, generally
favourable I feel. But one person asked if it was necessary to have a
manifesto and set of rules. Well why not.
If we want to have a separate 'genre' called 'dance film' (whatever), we
need to have an idea as to what that consists of. Take German Expressionist
film. One of the most influential film movements that was never really a
movement, and if we accept Barry Salt, then we can say that only 6 films
ever made were even truly German Expressionist [my film history is rusty
but I think that's about right].
I'm not suggesting a radical set of defining characteristics to separate
the chaff from the dance films. Or am I? I dunno.
I've seen 'Dust' for example, and while I think it a great film and Mim is
a talented and articulate artist, the 'dance' was hard to spot - wouldn't
you agree? That doesn't make it any less of a short film.
Why do we want 'dance film' to be separate from 'short film'? Well, for a
start I don't think we do. But not every [short] film is a dance film,
surely. That would make any definition of dance and dance film totally
pointless.
Rabbit rabbit.
Sorry for the rambling. Hope it keeps the balls rolling.
Thank you
Deveril xxx
At 00:55 30/10/00 +0000, Johannes Birringer wrote:
>dear Deveril:
>
>thanks for your response concerning "Dogma Dance". I will be interested
>in keeping in touch with your project/site.
>
>You argued that dance is being pushed out of criteria..... But which
>criteria? Funding? or categories of festivals, screenings? or dancing
>with bodies-criteria?
>Whose criteria?
>
>you wrote
>
>>> Obviously this raises
>questions about what dance is, and issues along those lines, and this is
>something that we have been trying to re-configure (I won't say
>re-define).
>It seemed to us that many dance films were being made that to us weren't
>dance films at all - despite our having the widest, most diverse complex
>idea of what dance is. It's a can of worms - we know - but we want to
>side-step certain given notions and organisations and bring the body
>back
>into dance films.>>
>
>
>mmmmh. this is a cumbersome subject. And I think we talked about it here
>on the list last year ("But Is It Dance"?).
>
>I recently introduced (before screening) a bunch of new videodanse works
>at a Wexner Center screening of a program that came to us from New York
>(Lincoln Center, Dance on Camera Festival/Dance Film Association). Not
>all them were excellent, but some of them were very very interesting
>(e.g. "DUST" by A. Atanasio/with Miriam King - it's now running
>successfully at festivals in Europe), and also inspiring.
>
>Another example: Isaac Julien's new video installation (three-screen
>projection), "The Long Road to Mazatl·n," currently on view in the
>Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Probably not a "dance video," in a
>dogmatic sense, but we are not talking about dogma here but about an
>astonishing film narrative with dancerly cinematography, dancerly
>gestures, sensual and poetic movement-images (swimming body under
>water), the Texas landscape, and actual dancing by the men,
>the"cowboys," on the road.
>
>Or the Japanese multimedia group OM2's performance "Convulsions of Mr
>K," directed by Shigeo Makabe and just premiered at the MCA Theatre in
>Chicago ---it includes, besides the stage dance/choreography, numerous
>digital video projections on the surrounding screens and the seven
>monitors onstage that, for example, display a moving text or text
>fragments and text animations and dancing fonts which, for me, clearly
>have a choreographic form and feel to them, especially in relation to
>the actors and their paranoid roles onstage -- in fact they have a
>precise dancerly/gestural form and gestalt, and when I write my review
>of the concert, I will elaborate on that.
>
>
>Johannes Birringer
>AlienNation Co.
>http://www.aliennationcompany.com
>http://dance.ohio-state.edu/files/Dance_and_Technology/environ.html
>
>(PS). If you are interested, Dance Magazine (online) published an
>image/story on our recent Environment III ("In'ter"). Go to
>
>http://www.dancemagazine.com/sterns/bodytech_frame.html
>
>(and check for the writings on "body and technology")
>***************************************************************************
*******
>
>
************************
Deveril
Dance Dept.
University of Surrey
Guildford
GU2 5XH
Home Tel.:01483 232646
"In the meantime, I must uphold my
ideals, for perhaps the time will come
when I shall be able to carry them out."
Anne Frank, July 15th 1944
************************
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