Site Dance

In this article I explore the potential of site-based dance and performance to influence and inform subjective, cartographic processes of connecting and situating oneself in urban locations. 'Vernacular mapping' is explored as a process by which subjective urban experiences, trajectories and associations are mapped by individuals and retained and developed as cartographic tools through which we navigate and negotiate lived environments. The concept stems from critical geography and non-representational theory and proposes a progressive, contemporary approach in which individual routes, trajectories and vectors of mobility challenge the 'representational certitude of cartography'. From this perspective I consider how encounters with site-based dance and performance might inform vernacular mapping processes and impact subjective-site relations.

How does the moving, dancing body engage with the materials, textures, atmospheres, and affects of the sites through which we move and in which we live, work and play? How might embodied movement practice explore some of these relations and bring us closer to the complexities of sites and lived environments?
This book brings together perspectives from site dance, phenomenology, and new materialism to explore and develop how ‘site-based body practice’ can be employed to explore synergies between material bodies and material sites. Employing practice-as-research strategies, scores, tasks and exercises the book presents a number of suggestions for engaging with sites through the moving body and offers critical reflection on the potential enmeshments and entanglements that emerge as a result. The theoretical discussions and practical explorations presented will appeal to researchers, movement practitioners, artists, academics and individuals interested in exploring their lived environments through the moving body and the entangled human-nonhuman relations that emerge as a result

This chapter reflects on the outcomes of two phenomenological movement workshops that I devised for the Spacing Dance: Dancing Spaces conference in Odense, Denmark in 2011 and Radical Space at the University of East London in October 2013. It questions what the practice might reveal regarding human processes of experiencing and engaging with space and place.

Crosswalk is a site-responsive performance conducted in the middle of a pedestrian crossing in the inner streets of Melbourne and exposed in the homonymous video attached to this article. The performance – an experiment with the duet dance form of Argentine tango – emerged out of a practice-based process of inquiry. My failed attempt to find my tango in the city while finding my place in the city through the tango becomes a drive to explore the nexus between learning and the experience of publicness and defuse the rationalist reliance on the isolated cognitive individual as the key pedagogical agent and target. I argue that, in Crosswalk tango worked (or could have worked) as a reverse public pedagogy through somatic connection not only between dance partners but also with the broader environment. Becoming vulnerable to the otherness of the outside world is one way of promoting diversity and fostering plurality.

This article examines the impact of site dance in urban landscapes on discourses that address large-scale geo- and socio-political issues. The article specifically explores how a certain site-adaptive project, Rooms (2015–16), works to further public discourse around such issues through the careful honing of methodological process. To realize the aims of advancing political discourse, the article argues that site dance methodologies must work to: empower participants through constructive mechanisms/processes; foster inclusion of diverse publics in both creation and presentation stages of a work; and locate such projects in accessible public civic spaces historically associated with assembly. By endeavouring to methodologically craft site dance practice for spaces that are intended for public assembly and discourse, we may realize the goal of creating a diverse, empowered and engaged public that will address the critical systemic concerns of our time, including neoliberalism, globalization and climate change.

This paper explores the influence and application of Perec's work within site-specific dance practice. It considers how Perec's methods and prose might encourage creative dance approaches to engaging with and reflecting on subjective encounters with space and place. It

In this article, I investigate the historical precedents of site-adaptive dance. After walking through the mobility discourse as applied to site-specific art by such scholars as Miwon Kwon, Fiona Wilkie and Victoria Hunter, I examine the mobile site works of North American choreographers Ann Carlson, PearsonWidrig DanceTheater, Eiko & Koma, and Stephan Koplowitz as exemplary of early attempts to take site dance on tour. Finally, I argue for the value of employing the lens of adaptation to analyze such works, both for the field of site performance and for the larger cross-disciplinary dialogues that could be activated.

This book also features the work of new, up and coming phenomenologists such as Christine Bellerose, author of Chapter 9, “Being Ma: Moonlight Peeping through the Doorway”. Her nonlinear approach to describing ma, a spiritual Japanese concept of undifferentiated ancestral time and space, a phenomenon that lives within “the interval between purpose and possibilities” (Bellerose, 2018, p. 169), was weaved together in a manner that combined historic text with present day contexts and existential phenomenological literature. The most salient moment in her chapter was her description of performing a piece she named, “Healing my Mother”. When she performed it on an icy landscape, she described her experience of sensing the “embodied affects of freedom and tension in a buoyant ma emanating from [the] environment”, a place where she “entered in a conversation with the ice…the interval between the landscape and me” (Bellerose, 175, p. 175). Her body both melted the ice while at the same time was cooled by it. And in describing this experience, the reader orients to both the chilling and warming nature of relational human existence. She concludes her chapter by affirming her belief that “ma expands understandings of the dance itself [in that she becomes] more than a moving body; [she is] part of all that moves and exists” (Bellerose, 2018, p. 179). (Book Review by Rebecca Lloyd, U of Ottawa, 2020)

This article examines the impact of site dance in urban landscapes on discourses that address large-scale geo- and socio-political issues. The article specifically explores how a certain site-adaptive project, Rooms (2015–16), works to further public discourse around such issues through the careful honing of methodological process. To realize the aims of advancing political discourse, the article argues that site dance methodologies must work to: empower participants through constructive mechanisms/processes; foster inclusion of diverse publics in both creation and presentation stages of a work; and locate such projects in accessible public civic spaces historically associated with assembly. By endeavouring to methodologically craft site dance practice for spaces that are intended for public assembly and discourse, we may realize the goal of creating a diverse, empowered and engaged public that will address the critical systemic concerns of our time, including neoliberalism, globalization and climate change.

In this article I explore the potential of site-based dance and performance to influence and inform subjective, cartographic processes of connecting and situating oneself in urban locations. ‘Vernacular Mapping’ is explored as a process by which subjective urban experiences, trajectories and associations are mapped by individuals and retained and developed as cartographic tools through which we navigate and negotiate lived environments. The concept stems from critical geography and non-representational theory and proposes a progressive, contemporary approach in which individual routes, trajectories and vectors of mobility challenge the ‘representational certitude of cartography’ (Gerlach 2013:1). From this perspective I consider how encounters with site-based dance and performance might inform vernacular mapping processes and impact subjective-site relations.

The 2010s have seen the emergence of the choreographic in major galleries and museums. Choreographers such as William Forsythe, Siobhan Davies and Xavier Le Roy are expanding their practices into installation art, while artists such as Tino Sehgal, Alexandra Pirici and Anne Imhof are working with choreographic concepts and strategies. The current choreographic turn raises new issues regarding the relationships between the performative, the choreographic and the visual in gallery settings, which have been studied by scholars such as André Lepecki (2017 and 2012), Susan Leigh Foster (2010) and Claire Bishop (2017). However, the relevance, influence and methodological impact of the choreographic within the artist’s studio have not been addressed: what this turn implies for artistic production before the encounter with the viewer remains unclear. This context has led to my research question: how might artists integrate choreographic approaches in their processes of making to explore performativity within a site? This research focuses mainly on studio practice, and is less concerned with the experience of the audience.

To address this question, I examined the choreographic through a practice-based research approach informed by my artistic practice. Utilising distinct mediums such as video, performance and installation in different forms and contexts, I produced five site-responsive artworks combining installation with choreographic approaches. I investigated how the choreographic influences, contributes to and manifests in the making process, and conceptualised its role in shaping new ways of thinking about making. This study contributes new knowledge to the field by arguing that the integration of the choreographic with installation practices fosters a conception of the site as performative. Furthermore, I developed a tool for transforming a site into a performative site – the choreovisual model (CM), which is comprised of three spheres of action: tracing, mapping and situating. In my proposed method, a listening outlook underpins the three action spheres; the rehearsal process emphasises the relevance of the site as a situational context for drawing with movement; and an iterative approach involving working with both live and digital movement is central. The model offers artists working in installation, sculpture, dance and performance a process which emphasises the potential and the challenges of producing artistic work that approaches site performatively.

As an in-depth study of the emerging relationships between installation art and choreography, this research examines, clarifies and highlights how an expanded choreographic practice may take place in installation art. In doing so, the study also addresses the need for a suitable terminology to identify, discuss and specify the current choreographic turn. I propose the new term choreovisual practice to refer to visual artistic projects which consider the body, the site and movement at the core of the work, developed through processes of making which are directly informed by choreographic approaches. The research contributes to current debates on installation art and choreography as expanded fields of practice, widens the understanding of evolving contemporary artistic trends, and repositions the current perception of the relationships between the visual, the choreographic and the site.

Using insights gleaned from previous publications (Kloetzel 2009, 2016),  this chapter offers a reading of site-specific dance practice in North America as one with activist potential. The chapter argues that specific tactics pursued by site dance practitioners after the 1970s have continued the revolutionary ambitions evident in the Judson Dance Theater era. Adding Canadian choreographers, along with the voices from 'Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces', to round out the North American context, the chapter pinpoints how certain tactics within the site dance genre – recontextualization, perceptual disruption, subversion of place-based cultural norms, and democratization of practice – have advanced clear civic aims and political objectives over the past fifty years.