Sweding A Dance

Okgo (and Rewind? And others?) persevers precense in marketing purposes, an idea by their producers. Gies is also “instructing” his dancers. Sweding a dance, performative choreographic acts discharged from a lasting originating grip Christopher Engdahl Nov 2009 This is a discussion about the insertion of performativity into choreographic authorship, following the latter’s recent destabilisation, in relation to various contemporary dance projects. These undertakings demonstrate ideological activities belonging to the post-‘68 era. The modernist outsider position of a subject that is a choreographer has in this latter period been replaced by a poststructuralist awareness of its impossibility of existing outside of ideological discourse. After, for instance, the failures of staging a revolution by the French student revolutionaries at the political events of 1968, where the students perceived themselves as “undesirable aliens, outsiders” (Burt in Lepecki, 2004: 38), there was a gained interest in what Michel Foucault claimed as subjects being “already insiders, and their bodies… totally impregnated by history” (2004: 38). Judith Butler, who have built upon the work of Foucault, has stated that any critical act is inevitably constituted and made possible by the discourse within which the agent exists; “identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results (Butler, 1999 [1990]: 33). Ones own position is included in the same power structure as that one seeks to criticize. Butler, with a strong will to contest what is considered as ‘real’, ‘true’ and ‘natural’ by transferring de Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty’s rejection of the body as a pre-existing essence outside culture and Derrida’s metaphysical critique into the realm of gender sexuality, argues for its site within the process of signification, contained by the process of reiteration and repetition: The body posited as prior to the sign, is always posited or signified as prior. This signification produces as an effect of its own procedure the very body that it nevertheless and simultaneously claims to discover as that which precedes its own action. If the body signified as prior to signification is an effect of signification, then the mimetic or representational status of language, which claims that signs follow bodies as their necessary mirrors, is not mimetic at all. On the contrary, it is productive, constitutive, one might even argue performative. (Butler,

1993: 30) She argues, when recognizing how the body is produced through obstinate procedures of cultural inscription, that each (unavoidable) reproduction (in her case of a stylized gender identity) is also a new act. The body is not only a site for inscription as argued by Foucault, but an implement of (re)writing, constantly in the act of doing. This process of signification lets the body perpetually and performatively exceed the language which inscribes it. When discussing the destabilization of authorship within the choreographic field one is led to encounter the work of Jérõme Bel. In his clever piece The last performance from 1998 he is concerned with the concepts of representation and subjectivity, occupied by tackling the centrality of presence attached to dance. In this piece, performed by four dancers, Bel exposes, turns and twists the elements of choreography addressing “the body as a site of a certain production related to originality [and] presence” (Spångberg, n.d.). At one point during the piece the dancers perform a dance originally choreographed and danced by Susanne Linke. Each of the dancers introduces him- or herself, by announcing through a microphone, as being Susanne Linke, then, one after the other, dances the phrase (and if one is not fully familiar with the tradition of dance one would suppose that the female dancer in the performance actually is Linke and not refer the name to an absent initiator of the phrase). By multiplying, varying and relocating the dance, where the latter is seemingly in close connection to a specific performer, Bel positions the phrase within an open ended succession of displacement which destabilizes this particular performer’s authenticity, leaving her in a position of haunting. The last performance suggests a moving away from a clogged, subordinate bond to a single, exclusive, transcendental choreographic original, and displayed a disruption of what Foucault called the “author function”1; [It] seems to have contributed towards releasing the performer from the normative meanings inherent in the expressive qualities of the movement performed, and allowed… a freedom from the disciplinary and controlling structures of repressive, representational regimes. (Burt, 2003: 39) With a semiotic, in particular Derridean, approach to choreography the condition of this rupturing of movement material is its perpetual iteration that is never exhausted in the present of its inscription; [a] written sign is proffered in the absence of the addressee… One might say that

at the moment when I write, the addressee may be absent from my field of present perception… My “written communication” must… be repeatable in the absolute absence of the addressee or of the empirically determinable set of addressees. (Derrida, 1971) In relation to Linke’s (original) authenticity, the movement phrase will break from its origin and will continue being produced even if “the author… no longer answers for what [s]he has written” (1971). The process of displacement of movement-phrases involves a constant decontextualization and re-contextualization; a written sign carries with it a force of breaking with its context, that is, the set of presences which organize the moment of its inscription. The force of breaking is not an accidental predicate, but the very structure of the written… This force of rupture is due to the spacing which constitutes the written sign: the spacing which separates it from other elements of the internal contextual chain (the always open possibility of its extraction and grafting). (Derrida, 1971) 1

Foucault argues that what constitutes an author is not produced in isolation but constantly in a discourse and that the author’s name “refers to the status of this discourse within a society and culture” (Bouchard, 1977: 123).

Then what happens when one recognizes that dance is what speaks through oneself rather than the opposite? What is the effect, in the context of choreographic production, of unleashing the control of its execution? What I argue in this essay, in line with Butler’s concerns, is that choreographic production is not something that is crafted by a pre-discursive subject, or a sovereign individual, but is an act incorporated in a constant denoting system of reiteration. In this context the capacity of acting involve repeating differently and with variety. Acknowledging the inevitable, evasive, melancholic reiteration at the centre of its own organization is to accept that constant re-using and re-framing of movement-material is part of its structure. But does The last performance not merely suggest and demonstrate this relationship and in fact preserve a somewhat naive connection to the original, working against its own critical potential? The dancers’ revealing of the dance’s relationship to its originator, Linke, strengthens the latter’s authenticity, and thus not simply fail to be loyal to an original as Burt argues, but rather the contrary;

It [The last performance] presents a difficulty in the sense that the work, on the one hand propose itself as, I believe, critical, but on the other… run the risk to actually counteract itself as a critical proposal and rather fulfill modernist, or even romantic notions of art… [It] can be interpreted as strongly idealistic, or even as a proposal of an authentic body… [and] actually consolidates an assumed authenticity of the body. (Spångberg, n.d.) Bel’s piece turns towards the origin and thus tries to avoid the (inevitable) play of difference. It risks suggesting a (authentic) body that is conceived as prior to the sign. In December 2006 Frédéric Gies created a solo called Dance (praticable). He wrote it down as a score and distributed it for free via his website. He encouraged people to compose their own adaptations of the solo, thus knocking his own authorship off balance creating a piece that only could be fully realized by a procedure of reiteration and circulation.

Figure 1 Frédéric Gies. Dance (praticable) (2006). http://www.praticable.info/dance-english.html In order for the interpreter to be given the capacity to act s/he constructs his or her own Dance (praticable) by reading the score and by exercising “body practice”:

The body practice becomes the main tool to generate dance and choreography. The deployment and the association of very contrasted movement qualities and body states, produced by inner changes of attention, establish the structure allowing the choreography to appear. (Gies, n.d.) Rather than generating choreography by applying a show-copy model within a representational framework Gies’ approach is based on embodiment. He strikes at the foundation of the structures of representation and states that “these styles appear not as reproduced forms, belonging to a choreographer, or to a choreographic current, but as possible body states”. Through this process he destabilizes the notions of authorship and style and the interpreters become the origin of their own styles. They become their own authors. Even though Gies challenges the notion of authorship within the choreographic field he, via his score, comfortably maintains his own presence in all the versions of Dance (praticable) to come. At the beginning of the 20th Century Antonin Artaud also reacted against the representational construction in the context of theatrical representation, but with the aim to criticize the continuing presence of the author and his text and obtain the full “experience [of] the unique moment of live performance” (Burt in Lepecki, 2004: 32). He acknowledged the limits of representation as he asked for a theatre that did without the enduring presence of the past; “the menace of repetition is nowhere else as organized as in the theatre. Nowhere else is one… so close to the primitive repetition which would have to be erased” (Derrida, 1978: 247). Artaud’s aim was to reach contact with a metaphysical reality, beyond the realm of representation. The intention with the argument of this essay is not to arrive at a position of an assumed outside, but merely to highlight the past’s (author’s) fruitless longing to persevere. The interpreters of Dance (praticable) continually and performatively exceed the material that formulates them, but the past that inscribes these interpretations insists on sticking around. All the different dancers use Gies’ single originating creation as their starting point and thus he stands as the co-author of each piece. In the midst of the staggering of the single author Gies speaks yet with an authorial voice and clings to the solidity of a few fractured branches of his own beloved presence. The Solo performance commissioning project was initiated in 1998 by Deborah Hay. It’s a project that is, at this moment of writing, still in production. It entails that she invites a number of dancers to work with her during eleven days in a residence setting. For the period of this residency Hay coaches the dancers in the performance of one of her

already produced solos, after which the dancers work autonomously for at least three months on their own adaptation before their first public presentation. She signs each adaptation as its choreographer and let the dancers stand as its interpreter. Via this initial process of coaching Hay transmits her material with the awareness of the inherent distance between her and the dancer. This distance can sometimes be overlooked in the choreographic process where the implement (the body) and the expression are one and the same, entailing that the ability to stand back from the creation of ones work is limited and where this constant merging often results in the notion of irreplaceable authenticity; Examining the more recent history of stage dance, it is significant to what amount choreographers, at least in the 20th century, stress the importance of how the process first operates in and is tries out on themselves. It is only later, after an initial contraction of deliverance, that the interpreter becomes involved, and a material is passed on a dancer. (Spångberg in Lehmen, n.d.) If a choreographer, in this case Hay, puts herself in the position of coaching or instructing she steps back from her accomplishment to reflect upon the work. She distances herself from her own creation and enables a critical stance; The choreographer standing away from his creation, externalizing his tools from his body in order not to stain himself or to become synonymous with them… (Spångberg in Lehmen, n.d.) For Hay it’s about guiding her dancers, a passing on of her concepts for the dancers to translate. It’s not simply about authoring a piece of choreography that the dancers breathe life into. With this project Hay takes a step away from an irreplaceable, unique authenticity in the process of choreographing. Ramsay Burt writes; If dancers are just seen as a medium for the choreographer’s intentions, their role is reduced to that of a transparent expression of values whose authenticity is garanteed by the authority and originality of the choreographer. (Burt, 2003: 41) Hay allows for the pleasure of the dancers to let their precursor speak, in order for them to articulate themselves. The dancers can contently

stand on her shoulders and from there take a firm leap towards what will come. But, this precursor who is Hay is not posited as yet another signifier but rather, as with the examples above, risks to propose an authentic body in the act of choreographic production. Her own body is not situated as “an effect of signification” but functions as purely causing effects. She will, counterproductively in relation to the critical challenge of the supposed sovereign individual who is the prediscursive choreographer, throughout the project be answering for her creation and continue to monitor the spread of her material.2 A similar, but yet different, approach to the procedure of choreography can be seen in the project 12 instructions in 2008 by Mårten Spångberg. He posted a series of instructions on You Tube for the project’s three dancers to use in order to form a presentation, a workshop, or a performance; Some of the instructions refer strongly to the body, other to speech, reflection, or the production of choreography. It’s a series of instructions that you naturally interpret as you desire. There are evidently no rights or wrongs, only the possibility of change in our view of what our practice can be. Order relates to license, like 007, he’s given license to kill. But how sad, that’s the only thing he has license to do. Instructions instead refer to permission. The following instructions are intended as a permission to act differently. Whatever comes out is always of importance as long as it expands the opportunities for you to act. (Spångberg, n.d.) Spångberg acts as a coach, setting the act of interpretation in motion while giving the dancers the possibility of expressing themselves through dance. The majority of 2

In 2010 a comparable work will be made by Siobhan Davies in London. It’s a choreography that will be layered through the voices of various artists and dancers before taken back and staged by her and her dancers. The production model entails that Davies will create a choreography with four dancers. It will be documented on video and given to a selected writer, musician, visual artist and/or other artists for them to respond to through their art form. This response will be given back to Davies and her dancers for them to use in order to produce a new choreography. This project entails an interesting proposal in terms of multi-authored processes of producing choreography and it will allow Davies to expand and develop her artistic voice through the effort of the participants of the project. The appealing aspect of this initiative is not the latter. It is how this process will bring about further unexpected potentiality.

the instructions entail a procedure of copying already existing choreographies by other dancers and choreographers. His instructions are intended for the project’s three dancers, but due to the former

being available on You Tube theoretically anyone could use these choreographic models for their own creative practice. As Spångberg says himself, his approach does not involve a notion of license but one of permission. When the produced material is performed and/or distributed it does not have to refer back to its initiator. He thus stands away from his creation and externalizes the dancers from his own body while simultaneously allowing the material to follow its own rupturing force as it breaks away from its context. Not only does he acknowledge the unavoidable, slippery reiteration at the centre of choreographic organization but also establishes a foundation from where the dancers unreservedly can act differently. Spångberg identifies within the context of the choreographic field what Judith Butler argues as the strength of postmodern, deconstructing critique; To deconstruct is not to negate or to dismiss, but to call into question and, perhaps most importantly, to open up a term, like the subject, to a reusage or redeployment that previously has not been authorized. (Benhabib, etc, 1995: 49) Spångberg makes possible new authorizations without claiming his own authenticity. He creates the platform for performative employment of quoted citations while rupturing the presence of an originating intention. When following this line of practice one is also led to encounter the project Inpex dance. This undertaking is a decentralized production of choreographic material based on reiteration, organized online, where no derivation is to be found. It’s a simple choreography that is replicated and where the person, place and time of its origin are not uncovered. On You Tube one can view over a hundred documented versions of the dance. Non of the videos are signed by an author and the dance is interpreted and performed by various people at numerous locations across the world.

Figure 2 Inpex Dance (n.d.). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tkt6xNAwTuo The dancers are integrated in the steady structure of recurrence with a dynamic capacity to act. Their choreographic production does away with a notion of solid entity turning towards a constructing that can’t be said to begin or end. My current project Swedance asks how creative choreographic reproduction without defined origin, as discussed above, can enhance and facilitate collective creation within the global dance community. The groundwork of the project is the establishment of a global social networking website to which dancers and choreographers are invited. On the website they are given instructions of a choreographic model called sweding, based on creative reproduction, to generate material. To swedance, or to swede a dance, means that the invited person views the other Swedances displayed on the website. S/he picks whatever movement material, ideas and concepts developed by the other people, and reuses them in order to generate his or her own solo Swedance. Then s/he documents the latter on video, posts it on You Tube, and links it to the website. In this context choreographic practice is not identified as brought forward by a pre-social, pre-discursive subject/choreographer, nor, as Butler writes, as an activity “understood as a set of practices derived from the alleged interests that belong to a set of ready-made subjects” (Butler in Terrell and Chamber, 2008: 169). The dancers operate within a constant repeating of norms and values where they are not their own starting point. They are agents who act “within the confines of already existing discourses” (Butler in Lepecki, 2004: 33). They are encouraged to work through, replay and reconstitute the positions that compose their practice, and doing it differently.

Figure 3 Swedance (n.d.). http://swedance.ning.com/ The goal of the project is not an outcome of a single owner of a choreographic piece called Swedance, but instead a platform for exchange between numerous variety of difference. The Swedance is composed by a stranger who is the creator, through unfamiliar and erratic signs, letting them on their part compose a creator who is the stranger. It is actively and willingly signed in its creator’s name because one can not not take ones own name. With this project one locates an endeavour to make impossible a solidification and consolidation of an assumed authenticity of the body, and where “[t]he pointing to a ground which never recovered becomes authority’s groundless ground” (Butler cited Harris, 1999: 68). The source of material does not derive from a single position of a control freak, but from various places, to be assembled at a singular location, to then break up and carry on into unforeseen potentialities.

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