Preserving Dance Across Time and Space

Lynn Brooks, Joellen Meglin, Lynn Matluck Brooks, Joellen A. Meglin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134906451
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

Dance is the art least susceptible to preservation since its embodied, kinaesthetic nature has proven difficult to capture in notation and even in still or moving images. However, frameworks have been established and guidance made available for keeping dances, performances, and choreographers' legacies alive so that the dancers of today and tomorrow can experience and learn from the dances and dancers of the past.

In this volume, a range of voices address the issue of dance preservation through memory, artistic choice, interpretation, imagery and notation, as well as looking at relevant archives, legal structures, documentation and artefacts. The intertwining of dance preservation and creativity is a core theme discussed throughout this text, pointing to the essential continuity of dance history and dance innovation. The demands of preservation stretch across time, geographies, institutions and interpersonal connections, and this book focuses on the fascinating web that supports the fragile yet urgent effort to sustain our dancing heritage.

The articles in this book were originally published in the journal Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts.

INTRODUCTION

LYNN MATLUCK BROOKS and JOELLEN A. MEGLIN

Dance flickers “at the vanishing point”: the movement is performed and viewed, but cannot be fixed in time or memory. Rather, “a moment later, who could be sure” what it was—that it was?¹ Dancers know this, many finding ephemerality part of the thrill of the art, and writers—like Marcia Siegel, quoted above—faced with an assignment to discuss a dance work they have just seen immediately feel this truth. You cannot hold on to dance. Or can you? What constitutes the stuff of dance history? Can we legitimately talk about dance existing in time? Dance’s relationship to place is also fragile. What William Hardy McNeil has described as “the indefinitely expansible basis for social cohesion among any and every group that keeps together in time”—this “muscular bonding”²—is connected inextricably to the ground and community from which this dancing sprang. What happens when a community migrates from that ground?

These questions shape the essays in this volume, resulting from a call for papers by the editors of Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts on the theme “Preserving Dance as a Living Legacy.” In formulating this call we asked, Can we hold on to our dancing past? What value might dance have in spite of, or even because of, this very fragility? How are preservation and recreation to be achieved? Dancer and critic Fernau Hall noted the “poverty” of access to ballet’s traditions when compared with the antiquity of available precedents in the fields of painting, literature, and music.³ Commenting on the irretrievable loss of so many ballets old and—in his time—new, Hall bemoaned “losses caused by imperfect transmission (or complete failure of transmission).” These losses so impede the forward momentum of the art that, periodically, it must “be re-created almost from scratch.”⁴ Ballet, of course, is not the only dance art so troubled, according to a recent publication of the Dance Heritage Coalition (DHC): “From toe to toe, from hand to hand, from eye to eye, dance, more than any other of the performing arts, has been transmitted through time by human chains of dancers, choreographers, and others involved in its creation and performance.” However, the fragility of that chain makes it imperative that we, according to DHC, “take advantage of new awareness, new technology, and new resources to lessen our dependence on the human chain of memory.”⁵

It became evident that the questions and topics articulated in this Dance Chroncle call for papers were concerns shared by many in the dance world. So rich were the responses to this theme that we published two issues on the subject: volume 34, number 1, was titled, like the call for papers, “Preserving Dance as a Living Legacy,” while volume 34, number 3, focused on “Preserving Dance in Diaspora.” In these issues, we presented a range of voices discussing concerns that cross time and geographies. Preservation, as discussed in these articles, involves memory as well as artistic choice, interpretation, cultural continuity and flexibility, and the realities of dealing with institutions, individuals, communities, documentation, and artifacts. It is a challenging endeavor—rich with possibilities for generating new knowledge and even new art from the perspectives of both embodied memory and intellectual history.

In 2006, for example, Canadian dancers participated in an important gathering, “Endangered Dance: A National Dance Heritage Forum,” held in Toronto, Canada, and spurred by the Danny Grossman Dance Company as it faced the retirement of its artistic director. This forum articulated goals for protecting, preserving, and sustaining Canadian dance and dance history. In “Choreographers’ Archives: Three Case Studies in Legacy Preservation,” Cheryl LaFrance explores how the objectives emerging from that forum have shaped the work of choreographers Karen Kaeja, Allen Kaeja, Rachel Browne, and Stephanie Ballard. Moving from the dancers’ views to a different perspective, LaFrance also explores ways that Canadian archives, such as Dance Collection Danse, have responded to the needs of dance preservation and she offers views from archivists on strategies for artistic documentation and legacy maintenance.

Another Canadian artist, Peggy Baker, established a highly personal plan for preserving her dance legacy. In “The Choreographer’s Trust: Negotiating Authority in Peggy Baker’s Archival Project,” Allana C. Lindgren and Amy Bowring investigate the give and take that Baker embedded in her preservation plan, which allows for artistic interpretation of her documented works and yet retains control of what is preserved and how it is presented to the public. Baker resists authoritative readings of her works, seeing the dances as opportunities for interpretive choice as artists of different backgrounds perform them. Yet the materials of the six selected dances—the steps, patterns, and musical choices—remain Baker’s, supported by considerable textual documentation for each work selected for preservation. This plan results in “a paradox … as the traditionally privileged position ascribed to choreographers in relation to their work is both restricted and reinforced by Baker’s efforts to archive her solos,” these six being the only works she chose for her preservation project. Baker, like the artists discussed in LaFrance’s article, was caught between the ongoing artistic urge for creating anew and the desire to preserve works already presented and she, along with her Canadian dance colleagues, faced the limitations of time and funding that forced choices about which works would be documented and the format for that preservation.

The trust has been a legacy-preserving choice for other artists as well. In fact, Francis Yeoh advocates the choreographic trust as the ideal legal construct for safeguarding, sustaining, and controlling a choreographer’s work beyond his or her lifetime. In “The Choreographic Trust: Preserving Dance Legacies,” Yeoh takes a close look at successes and failures in preservation of the oeuvres of George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Jerome Robbins, Merce Cunningham, and Martha Graham. Citing legal precedents and rulings as well as concerns and practical outcomes of these artists’ plans (or lack thereof) regarding their own legacies, Yeoh makes a persuasive argument for the value of the trust, in its varied manifestations, as an instrument for artistic preservation. The responsibilities, rights, and privileges of the artist and legatees receive careful attention in Yeoh’s concerns for appropriately constructed and sustainable trusts.

An institution that has played a central role in the preservation of dance of all types—theatrical, social, folk, and more—by means of the written word, material traces, oral histories, and film recording is discussed in “A Bold Step Forward: Genevieve Oswald and the Dance Collection of The New York Public Library” by Lynn Matluck Brooks. More precisely, the experiences and memories of that collection’s primary founder and long-time sustaining curator, Genevieve Oswald, form the backbone of this article—part history, part memoire. How this collection has interfaced with and influenced dance trends, research technologies, choreographers and performers, and dance preservation is revealed in Oswald’s wideranging comments on her work and on the field it helped to nurture.

Dance in academe, which depends on institutions like the New York Public Library’s Dance Collection, plays an important role in preservation of the art’s history. Trinity Laban is one such academic center that values not only new dance, but dances of history. In “Gained in Translation: Recreation as Creative Practice,” Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Lesley-Anne Sayers consider recreation—with the emphasis on creative process—to fill the lacunae in information when no detailed transcriptions of movement or camera-recorded moving images of the original work exist. But their argument has implications even for reconstruction as traditionally understood, as they explore what lies beneath the “surface forms” of a work—what processes and intents created it and what meanings it has accrued within larger political, economic, sociocultural, and intellectual contexts, not to mention the specific circumstances of its production. Preston-Dunlop’s recreation of Rudolf Laban’s Die Grünen Clowns (Green Clowns, 1928) and Sayers’s recreation of Georgi Yakoulov’s Constructivist set design for Sergei Prokofiev’s Le Pas d’Acier (1927) present new knowledge that could only be revealed through embodiment: the psychic-physical-spiritual connections made when a dancer inhabits a complete world, rich with visual-aural-kinetic intersections and replete with historical meanings. Notable about Preston-Dunlop and Sayers’ approach is its focus on the learning community involved in the project, comprised of students and faculty-artists, arts and humanities scholars, and the general public; digital access compounds the interdisciplinary, interactive knowledge that can be generated by such projects.

Mark Franko’s “The Dancing Gaze across Cultures: Kazuo Ohno’s Admiring La Argentina” plumbs some of the paradox between the two components of the title of the initial call for papers: “preserving dance” and “dance as a living legacy.” Is there something in the very concept of preservation that suggests freezing of a dance creation as it existed at a particular point in time? When a work “lives” (is recreated) or a choreographic artist is revisited, is it not always through the eyes and embodiment of the new artist(s), hence summoning memory and phenomenological experience, both individual and cultural? Franko’s study of Kazuo Ohno’s famous evocation of La Argentina (Antonio Mercé) explores the meanings that proliferate, recursively, iteratively, when one artist “admires” the work of another. In considering an extreme case—one artist remembering another across time warps, gender gaps, generational differences, geographic divides, and even cultures—Franko’s philosophical–psychoanalytic perspective reminds us that the “gaze” is integral to the process. There must be somebody who “remembers.” In alighting on excorporation—empathetic transcendence of self—as the psychoanalytic process underlying Ohno’s tribute or memorial, the author’s argument resonates with others in this anthology that investigate meaning in works of memory.

It is not only the individual artist who springs across divides in time and space, with the fluid medium of dance serving as their bridge; global migration or diaspora has also shaped dance practice and preservation. As populations move from their homelands to different cultural settings, they must find new understandings as well as methods of preservation and reconstruction for their traditional dances. As a Greek-Australian (now living in the United States), Patricia Riak has pursued “nostalgic ethnography” to uncover family heritage in the island of Rhodes, where her grandfather was a prize-winning sousta dancer. Because her focus is on the period between the two world wars, she interviews Greek citizens from her grandfather’s generation, constructing her text from their memories, which results in a rich and warmly human description of the wedding ritual in which the sousta was embedded. She uncovers the dance’s integral part in courtship and marriage, expressing central cultural values of honor and grace, legitimizing gender relations, and revitalizing a Greek village community.

Another inter-war migration affecting Greek populations was forced on the Pontians, who came to Greece from Anatolia, Turkey, as part of a massive population exchange mandated by the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923. Focusing on the celebrations of Panayía Soumelá, a summer feast honoring the Madonna, Magda Zografou and Stavroula Pipyrou explore the preservation not only of movement but also of cultural identity in this community’s maintenance of the dance traditions connected with this holiday. These traditions mark the community of Pontians as distinct and individuated from surrounding Greek populations, even as they borrow from, allude to, and integrate with contemporary Greek society. Key to this investigation are the concepts of “major” and “minor” differences—the theoretical framework for this research—which facilitate or hinder a population’s distinctness as well as tolerance of difference.

Some artists are concerned with sustaining the nature of a community’s expression in movement, what Ruth Eshel calls the “DNA” of a people’s dance language. In her article, “A Creative Process in Ethiopian-Israeli Dance: Eskesta Dance Theater and Beta Dance Troupe,” Eshel explains the particular circumstances leading to the immigration of a large population of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the challenges faced by this group to both sustain its traditions and to integrate into contemporary Western society, and her own role in nurturing a choreographic version of this delicate balancing act. What kinds of works can best represent these dancers, the roles they play in the creative process, and Eshel’s drive as both an artist and a teacher to explore and sustain essential elements of this community’s movement language? Investigating these questions yields insights relevant to other immigrant populations struggling with their own cultural sustainability. The relationship of “folk” to “theater” dance and the unique history of dance in Israel are factors in the development, presentation, and reception of this work.

Today’s artists are aware of dance’s slipperiness: “Everything that we do as dancers, as choreographers, is created and destroyed in the same moment,” according to Crystal Pite, a Canadian choreographer who worked closely with William Forsythe at Ballett Frankfurt. As she watched older colleagues and teachers retire from the stage, she discovered, “I had nothing to hang onto, other than memories.”⁶ This led Pite to ask, in her work Lost Action, some of the very questions that have shaped this anthology: “What happens to a dance when it’s over? Does it vanish, never to exist again? What if, like a painting, a dance could live on forever?” She concludes, “Dance is really a present-moment experience. It is always disappearing unless you are doing it. I think this could be what gives it its power, but it’s also quite tragic.”⁷

With the attention to preserving and recreating dance across time and space articulated by the artists and authors included in this volume, we grapple with this very loss—its implications and even its potential for dance’s renewal.

Notes

1  Marcia Siegel, At the Vanishing Point: A Dance Critic Looks at Dance (New York: Saturday Review Press, 1972), 1.

2  William Hardy McNeil, Keeping Together in Time: Dance and Drill in Human History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), 2.

3  Fernau Hall, “Dance Notation and Choreology,” in What Is Dance?, ed. Roger Copeland and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 390.

4  Ibid., 392.

5  Dance Heritage Coalition, “Beyond Memory: Preserving the Documents of our Dance Heritage” (http://www.danceheritage.org/preservation/beyond.html#intro, accessed December 17, 2010).

6  Crystal Pite, quoted by Robert Johnson in “ ‘Dark Matters’ Review: A Look at the Ephemeral Nature of Dance,” Star-Ledger, Oct. 15, 2010 (http://www.nj.com/entertainment/arts/index.ssf/2010/10/dark_matters_review_a_look_at.html, accessed July 24, 2012).

7  Pite, quoted by Sara Bauknecht in “Kidd Pivot Explores Ephemeral Nature of Dance in ‘Action,’” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 16, 2012 (http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/theater-dance/kidd-pivot-explores-ephemeral-nature-of-dance-in-action-360014/, accessed July 24, 2012).

CHOREOGRAPHERS’ ARCHIVES: THREE CASE STUDIES IN LEGACY PRESERVATION

CHERYL LAFRANCE

Case studies of current practice in dance archives, preservation, and legacy-building among established Canadian choreographers are instructive for the field. The personalities, circumstances, and creative drive of each of these choreographers influence choices in maintenance of records for their own legacies. Viewpoints from archivists and the head of a national dance collection further illuminate this investigation.

What choices and concerns do established contemporary-dance choreographers face as they attempt to maintain a legacy of their historic records and past dance creations while they are still actively creating and presenting new choreography? Three case studies of choreographers who are wrestling with the everyday realities of simultaneously preserving the past, creating in the present, and planning for the future reveal some opportunities and limitations that other choreographers may wish to consider. Circumstances and preferences of the choreographers affect their choices of what to keep, where to deposit it, and how to ensure that it is passed on for use in the future. Each case demonstrates that a choreographer’s legacy is both a historical record that resides in archived form ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• Part I: Choreography, the Archives, and Sustaining a Legacy
• Part II: Preservation and Creation
• Part III: Preservation in Diaspora
• Index