<x-flowed iso-8859-1>Hello all: I am happy to let you know that The Cultural Choreographers
Corporation Chile is representing a Web Site for Chilean Choreographers
work at the Monaco Danses Forum Congress.
Responsable Vicky Larrain Choreographer
http://expage.com/page/danzachile
At 12:46 p.m. 22-11-00 +0000, you wrote:
>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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