SYMPOSIUM
RE: SEARCH
DANCE DRAMATURGY
SYMPOSIUM AS A CONVERSATION
PROGRAM AS AN INVITATION
PUBLICATION AS A PLACE
On the 3rd December 2016 the Symposium on dance dramaturgy took place, with the aim of articulating a multiple vision by observing dramaturgy as a articolare una visione molteplice e osservando la drammaturgia come un ambito in espansione per nuove strategie e sfide all’interno dell’ecosistema delle performing arts in costante ridefinizione.
In the changing political and economic landscape of the performing arts in which the artistic practices, the functions and the working conditions have been redefined, dramaturgy is regarded as an expanding field of knowledge and a terrain for challenges.
Dance dramaturgy develops from different perspectives, scientific and artistic areas, as well as institutional contexts, as a critical discourse on practices, intertwining text and context. If minor dramaturgy can be considered as the common ground where the creative process, the materials and the structure of the artwork can take place, and major dramaturgy as the relationship of the artwork with its wider social and economic context, reflections on the interdependency between these scales can be raised. This allows us to question both the development of artistic practices in a certain environment as well as the wider framework of cultural policy. How do these different scales interact between each other, in terms of artistic tendencies and institutional contexts?
The symposium is an occasion to articulate urgencies on the role of dramaturg and of the dramaturgical function within the current performing arts and contemporary dance field by encountering different approaches proposed by dramaturgs, researchers and practitioners.
PROGRAM
10.00 Welcome
10.15 Welcome by Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo, Anghiari Dance Hub, Ricerca X
Introduction of the framework by Ricerca X
10.30 Macro Zone 1 – Dance dramaturgy: features and perspectives
10.40 Alessandro Pontremoli “Dance dramaturgy: a preliminary approach”
11.20 Q&A, respondent Francesca Cinalli
11.40 Pause
11.50 Bart Van Den Eynde “A rehearsal space for the director”
12.30 Q&A, respondent Teresa Noronha Feio
13.00 – 14.30 Lunch break
14.30 Stefano Tomassini “Whistle the space/ the dance outoftext”
15.10 Q&A, respondent Cinzia Sità / Elena Pisu
15.30 Guy Cools “Dance dramaturgy as a creative and somatic practice”
16.10 Q&A, respondent Ambra Pittoni
16.30 Pause
16.40 Macro Zone 2 – Dramaturgy: applications and beyond
Introduction by Carlotta Scioldo “Towards a cultural policy: between major and minor drammaturgy”
16.50 Carlo Salone “The role of space between practices of knowledge and knowledge inpractices: some suggestions from the performing arts”
17.10 Q&A, respondent Erika Di Crescenzo
17.30 Carlo Salone in discussion with Guy Cools, Bart Van Den Eynde, Alessandro Pontremoli, Stefano Tomassini
21.00 Performance evening Anticorpi eXplo – young authorial dance
“I am shape, in a shape, doing a Shape” Barbara Berti
V I B – vibration in body” Orlando Izzo
SYMPOSIUM RE: SEARCH_DANCE DRAMATURGY
curated by Anghiari Dance Hub, Workspace Ricerca X
with the support of Fondazione Piemonte dal Vivo
and the collaboration of Hangar Piemonte and Mosaico Danza
media partner Krapp’s Last Post
*event organised by Workspace Ricerca X within the project Choreographic residencies Lavanderia a Vapore 3.0/ Piemonte dal Vivo
The publication of the symposium is available HERE
ABSTRACT & BIO CONTRIBUTORS
Alessandro Pontremoli – Dance dramaturgy: a preliminary approach
The talk outlines the fundamentals of dance dramaturgy (from an historical and theoretical point of view) by referring to the traditions of some professional figures (such as dramaturge and the external supervisor) and offers a reflection on their roles in the Italian contexts in recent years.
Alessandro Pontremoli is Professor of theater and dance studies at D.A.M.S. at the University of Turin. Since 2004 he is Scientific Director of the Master in Social and Community Theater at the University of Turin. Since 2010 he is member of the Dance Commission at the Ministry of Culture.
Among his publications: La danza. Storia, teoria, estetica nel Novecento, RomaBari, Laterza, 2002; Danza e Rinascimento, Macerara, Ephemeria, 2011 (Premio Pirandello 2015); Elementi di teatro educativo, sociale e di comunità, Torino, UTET, 2015.
Bart Van den Eynde – A rehearsal space for the director
“Dramaturgy is a flexible process. It doesn’t have a formula, it shouldn’t have prescribed roles.” says Meg Stuart in a text on dramaturgy. From the same text I also stole the title of this lecture, which is a description of hers of the meeting between choreographer / director and dramaturg.
Starting from my personal experiences as a theatre and dance dramaturg, I will use the term “situatedness” as a starting point to develop some thoughts on dramaturgy and the position of the dramaturg.
Bart Van den Eynde is a freelance dramaturge for dance and theatre productions. He has worked with directors (Ivo van Hove, Guy Cassiers, FC Bergman, et al.), choreographers (Meg Stuart, Arco Renz, Lisbeth Gruwez, et al.) and playwrights (Simon Stephens, Peter Verhelst, Judith Herzberg, et al.). From 2009 to 2012 he was the artistic & pedagogic director of Advanced Performance and Scenography Studies (a.pass), a postgraduate research program on performance and scenography in Brussels (BE). Since 2015 he is the program director of the new master theatre at the theatre academy in Maastricht (NL).
He has obtained a degree as social mediator (KULeuven & KHLeuven, BE) in 2015 and he is in the midst of a Master in Psychology (VUBrussels, BE).
Stefano Tomassini – «Devora libellum» (Apc 10,9): dramaturgy and dance outoftext
My understanding of dance dramaturgy has often been related to the idea of intensification and alliance within the relationship with the choreographer proposed by Liesbeth Wildschut. However, after the studies on the logic of the articular body by Guillemette Bolens (student of Alan Berthoz), the idea of considering movement as something related to an unusual motile and sensorial ability, in opposition to the normative logic of the body considered as shell (the bodymind), brought me to reconsider the extra textual, that is the relationship between body languages, texts and the unpredictability of the extra textual. It’s a matter of marking the limit of the textual: the text is devoured, just as with the injunction of the angel in the Apocalypse.
My case study concerns the Otolithes project by Swiss choreographer Lorena Dozio. The work takes inspiration from the language of birds and from whistling techniques practiced in different parts of the world. The choreography is not just an act of writing anymore, but an environment, a climate, an atmosphere. What is added here to the textuality is the extratextual [horstexte], its limit: it’s the second nature of the whistling, the possibility for the extratextual to split the air creating a space that can only be moved by a body.
Because it is the density of the air that reveals the concreteness with which all the parts of the body will search solidarity in the movement.
Stefano Tomassini is researcher at IUAV of Venice, teaches at USI of Lugano and is consultant for the dance programme at LuganoInScena, LAC. He has been a FulbrightSchuman Research Scholar, ScholarinResidence at the archive of Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival (2010) and Associate Research Scholar at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University. From 2013 to 2016 he collaborated to the dance programming at the Venice Biennale.
Guy Cools – Dance Dramaturgy as a creative and somatic practice
Placing my own practice as a dance dramaturg in the still young history of dance dramaturgy, I will address the notion of ‘open dramaturgy’ as original defined by Marianne Van Kerkhoven; how the dramaturg as witness oscillates as an ‘outside body’ between proximity and distance but always has to remain invisible; and how dramaturgy always is a ‘dialogical practice’.
Guy Cools is a dance dramaturg. Recent positions include Associate Professor at the research institute Arts in Society in Tilburg, and Guest Professor at Ghent University. He has worked as a dance critic and curator and as a production dramaturg, with amongst others Koen Augustijnen (BE), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (BE), Danièle Desnoyers (CA), Lia Haraki (CY), Akram Khan (UK), Arno Schuitemaker (NL), and Stephanie Thiersch (DE). His most recent publications include The Ethics of Art: ecological turns in the performing arts (coedited with Pascal Gielen) (2014): Inbetween Dance Cultures: on the migratory artistic identity of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and Akram Khan (2015) and Imaginative Bodies: Dialogues in Performance Practices (2016). Cools lives in Vienna.
Carlo Salone – The role of space between practices of knowledge and knowledgeinpractices: some suggestions from the performing arts
Starting from a nonspecialist look at performing arts, my reflections focus on the edge between the traditional ways of knowing, based on the idea of accumulation of knowhow as an asset, and the collective construction of a knowledge which is situated within the practices. In these two distinct conditions of knowledge production which are at the opposite extremes of a continuum, we can observe the interplay between different spatialities which involve the body, emotions and rationalities of the players inhabiting the space and transforming it into place. This contribution will try to interact with the other interventions in a dialogic way.
Carlo Salone is Professor of territorial development at the University of Turin, at the University ParisEst Créteil and at the University Lyon 2Lumière. He is also director of the international Master Program ITCILO “World Heritage and Cultural Project for Development” at the Turin School of Development.
He publishes regularly in international reviews on the subjects of: european territorial policies, regional development and recently on the role of culture and art in urban regeneration and place making processes.
