The OPEN ACCESS publication channel Dance Articulated engages research that offers momentum to future dialogues and community building within dance. The journal aims to increase the publication opportunities for researchers in the fields of dance, dance education, and choreography, stimulating the sharing of such research and contributing to new networks and new readers of research in dance, dance education, and choreography. Dance Articulated mainly publishes peer-reviewed research articles, but also editorials, selected reviews, and other not peer-reviewed articles. The editorial board wishes to: deliver contemporary and cutting-edge research on a broad range of topics related to dance, dance education, and choreography through Special Issues on urgent research themes, suggested by the editorial board or guest editors. strengthen the possibilities for research publications within a broad field related to dance, dance education, and choreography internationally. stimulate to increased visibility of research on a broad field of dance, dance education and choreography contribute to new networks of writers and readers on a broad field of dance, dance education and choreography
The how of political acting: Infrastructural improv through social choreography – Local case studies in Helsinki
This article explores how choreographed movement, through its collective orientation, builds political agency. How might shared gestures reform the public space and lay ground for new social structures to grow, structures that are restorative and reparative against the extraction that is commanding the way of life? This how is addressed by looking at the social choreographies common moves in 2023 and Make Arts Policy! in 2014, both realised in the sociocultural environment of Helsinki, Finland. These social choreographies engage in facilitating an active presence that emerges in shared movement. The article explores the political aspect of choreography as a rehearsal ground for new types of social structures and relations to emerge. This aestheticopolitical possibility is considered through the notions of common and affective infrastructures, namely through Lauren Berlant’s theorising. The case studies together with the theoretical perspectives offer a lens to look at the local gestures that have in their own ways ruptured the status quo, even momentarily. The ripples of these instances resonate and keep their movement alive. Altering and claiming the public space in unexpected ways enable new types of social structures to emerge. This article discusses the notions of agency and social change: movement and speculation, as well as the senses and emotions that tie into the aesthetic experience that emerges in social choreography.
Copyright (c) 2025 Kaisa Lassinaro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Embodied knowledge and dancers’ dance-making: Solo dance improvisation and phenomenological perspectives
This paper illuminates the existing lack of knowledge concerning how dancers work in creative processes in contemporary dance. The material was produced from a period of sharing and elaborating upon dance improvisation practices. Two improvisers used solo improvisation, one performing and one watching, and invited another researcher in when analysing the material. They identified the theme dialoguing with your material and two situations called returning home and the eye moment. Through conceptualising the not-yet conscious, the lived expressive body, the attentiveness and bodily intentionality, the material illuminates the practice as something that dancers could gain new perspectives on. Analysis reveals the knowledge dancers embody as both vague and clear, as well as expressed in the dance improvisations’ mutual sharing between the watching of the watcher and the dancing of the dancer. Bodily, social, and inter-affective relationships play out, and the dancer’s knowledge is visible in dwelling and expressiveness as a source for exploration of the dancer’s subjectivity, voices, and tradition. Phenomenological literature supports how language plays a part in dancers’ dance-making. This article exemplifies how creating material from improvisations contributes significantly because it is felt, known, bodily available, and should be pursued, not dismissed. Dance improvisation regarding dance-making needs to be further investigated, discovered, and articulated.
Copyright (c) 2025 Hilde Rustad, Gunn Engelsrud https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Dance for people with Parkinson's disease brings happiness, well-being, and enhanced mobility
This project has its starting point in a dance class with 14 people with Parkinson’s Disease who participated in Dance for Parkinson’s Disease® (Dance for PD). PD is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder associated with symptoms such as tremors, freezing, slowness of motion, and non-motor symptoms such as fatigue, sleep disturbances, and neuropsychiatric disorders. The purpose of this study was to explore the dancers’ experiences of participating in Dance for PD. The study was designed with a qualitative structure (framework). Data collection included diary entries after every dance session and, finally, two focus group interviews. All data were analyzed with thematic analysis. Three themes from all the data emerged: Maintaining everyday life, Working with health conditions, and Transformation to a happier life. The findings suggest that Dance for PD can be a complement to treatment. Attending the dance classes was an important activity in the lives of the participants. The participants in Dance for PD experienced improved physical mobility and well-being, and through the dance they gained an increased confidence in their own abilities and dared to challenge other aspects of everyday life. The dance teacher’s pedagogy with varying music and movements adapted to the participants became important for the actual experience of the dance. The dance promoted social interactions, and the participants experienced togetherness. In the study, Community of Practice (CoP) serves as a lens for discussing the findings.
Copyright (c) 2025 Elenita Forsberg, Kristina Ziegert, Lars Kristén https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Editorial. The hard, but rewarding, work of collaborating across sectors - dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations
This special issue is motivated by a firm belief that cross-sectoral educational collaborations are needed and have value. In response to the recognised gap in research addressing the possibilities and challenges inherent in cross-sectoral educational collaborations, we initiated this special issue. We invited research contributions focusing on dance within cross-sectoral educational collaborations, encompassing schools, teacher education institutions, and other formal or informal educational institutions as the contextual backdrop. As we initiated the special issue, we pondered around a myriad of questions: how do teachers, teacher educators, and/or teacher candidates organise, develop, implement, and carry out collaborations with external choreographers, professional dancers, and/or dance teachers? How do collaborative planning, pre-workshops among participants, or other preparatory actions before the actual school, teacher education, or other educational institution practice support transformational mutuality? How and why do obstacles, friction, and tension arise, and how are they solved in dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations? Furthermore, how might dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations critically challenge stereotypical views on knowledge or uneven power distribution among participants in different positions in cross-sectoral collaborations? How do collaborations with other arts fields influence, support, or complicate dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations? Additionally, we contemplated the integration of dance and technology in cross-sectoral educational collaborations and how these two domains can complement each other. The eight peer-reviewed articles included in the special issue touch on and contribute knowledge in response to these, and more, questions. We warmly invite readers to actively immerse themselves in these articles, as each presents a unique viewpoint and profound insights into the complex landscape of dance in cross-sectoral educational collaborations. In doing so, we hope to ignite a passion for this important topic, inspiring transformative and collaborative approaches to dance education.
"Det er jo dans, det her også ...? " – Styrking av dans i kroppsøvingslærerutdanningen i tverrfaglige og tverrsektorielle profesjonsfelleskap
Denne artikkelen undersøker kroppsøvingslærerstudenters arbeid med skapende dans ved hjelp av interaksjonsanalyse. Formålet er å øke kunnskapen om hvordan studentene benytter ulike semiotiske ressurser for å formidle betydning gjennom dans som uttrykksform. Studien inngår i et større tverrfaglig og tverrsektorielt samarbeidsprosjekt mellom faglærere ved en lærerutdanning i Sørøst-Norge og dansepedagoger ved Senter for dansepraksis (SANS), som tar sikte på å forbedre utdanningen av kroppsøvingslærere. Studentene fikk opplæring i skapende dans gjennom et sanselig didaktisk design som involverte bruk av digital teknologi (iPad), for å uttrykke et narrativ gjennom egne multimodale dansetekster. Ved å analysere videodokumentasjon av to økter der studentene skapte dans til den multimodale danseteksten, viser vi hvordan studentene utforsket og utnyttet ulike semiotiske ressurser for å formidle betydning gjennom en uttrykksform som de hadde begrenset kjennskap til, nemlig dansen.
tverrfaglig og tverrsektorielt samarbeid om dans
An artful encounter with dance – empowering future teachers in cross-sectoral collaborations with the Cultural Schoolbag as an example
This article explores how teacher candidates articulate their experiences of a cross-sectoral collaboration with dance students in creating an artful encounter for pupils in primary schools in Norway. Through an arts-based inquiry, using clay as material of expression, groups of teacher candidates were filmed while creating a sculpture representing their processes. The creation process and sculpture were in turn analysed, revealing that the teacher candidates considered themselves to be scaffolding the artful encounter with the children in school, providing them with greater confidence as key personas in these artful encounters, and a better understanding of the creation of art. The analysis regarding the dramaturgy of the collaboration revealed that the teacher candidates experienced being co-creators in the project when they could focus primarily on unfolding the educational potential of the artful encounters.
Troubling dance education from a Nordic policy perspective: A field with an interdisciplinary and cross-sectoral potential
This article seeks to create an overview of existing structures for dance education in the public educational systems and of cross-sectoral collaborations in the Nordic countries Denmark, Norway and Finland. A case study methodology of the field of dance education of each of the countries is used for an analysis that seeks to better understand the different kinds of structures we find in these countries. We trace ways of organising, dividing, and defining the field based on different types of documents such as policy documents, white papers, webpages, reports, research articles, and curricula. The analyses of case descriptions result in insights into which opportunities or lack of opportunities structures give for children and young people’s long-term engagement with dance as an arts educational practice, how well the systems for educating teachers seem to support dance in education, and, looking to dance education in New Zealand, there is a discussion about what might be ways forward to strengthen the field in the Nordic countries.
Better together: toward a joint pedagogy in folk dance and music
The pedagogy and practices of folk music and folk dance are firmly separate in Finland. Furthermore, the expertise in these fields focuses heavily on folk music and dance as performing arts rather than communal activities. The situation has led to the differentiation and fragmentation of professional and amateur activities. To address this gap in knowledge and practice, the KanTaMus project intends to present a pedagogical model for a joint participatory folk dance and music pedagogy devised through practice-based development work. This article explains the basic premises of the model under development. We first discuss the legacy issues crucial in Finnish folk dance and music and its pedagogy. Secondly, we outline the values, pedagogical principles, and prior development work we see as fundamental to our work. Martin Seligman's PERMA theory serves as an overall canvas for our development work. The basic elements of the theory, i.e., positive emotions, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment, work as a basis for our model, which emphasises embodied presence, inclusion, and interaction as crucial features of a shared learning situation in dance and music. Finally, we present the pairing process as a specific example of the application of the model. The article and the KanTaMus project have been supported by the European Social Fund.
Arts, crafts, and dance - developing aesthetic learning processes in arts and crafts through a general teacher education and higher dance education collaboration
The context for this research is a collaboration that took place in 2021 between the general teacher education study program in arts and crafts at the NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University College of Dance Art in Oslo, Norway. The higher dance education institution visited the general teacher education institution with the workshop KROM, an anagram for body and spaces in Norwegian. KROM was developed at Rom for dans (Dancespaces) and is a well-established workshop project that has been touring schools in Norway widely. The KROM workshop visiting the teacher education institution became an educational design research project guided by the question: How can a workshop collaboration with the topic “body and spaces” carried out by an educational design team from a primary and secondary teacher education institution and a higher dance education institution produce insights about aesthetic learning processes in arts and crafts? An educational design team consisting of six members from the two involved institutions designed, carried out, and researched the project. Central insights offered as an outcome of the collaboration are as follows: the quality of the collaboration in the design-team itself is of crucial importance; active connections to the traditions and pedagogies of the hosting subject, in this case arts and crafts, need to be made by the hosting teacher educators in order to support the teacher candidates’ learning; and, dance engages specifically the elements of body, space, embodied collaboration, and play in arts and crafts aesthetic learning processes.
Dance-Musicking: Non-prescriptive dance, music, and dance-music engagement in cross-sectoral collaborative teaching and learning
This article explores dance-musicking as a non-prescriptive process of interdependent engagement with dance and music in their teaching and learning contexts. The author asks how this engagement challenges and disrupts uneven institutional hierarchies, and how it cultivates a more holistic understanding of, and access to the knowledge embedded in the dancing and dance-musicking processes. The discussion is informed by the author's dance, music, and dance-music practice oscillating between formal and non-formal settings, and continuous research on the same in East Africa. It is premised on a critical observation that within the twentieth century, dance and music knowledge has continued to grow more into an institutionalized form than it has into a communal one. The article pivots the dance-musicking process as a cross-sectoral collaborative engagement for teaching and learning dance, music, and dance-music discussed on both micro and macro levels of artistic (co)existence. As such, it highlights core elements of 'communitarian' teaching and learning approaches, which have not favourably evolved alongside formal education. This situation is attributed to a lack in cross-sectoral complementarity between the formal and non-formal dance, and music knowledge bases —complementarity that works well in transforming higher education institutions into intellectual resources that positively influence, and that are influenced by their communities.
formal and non-formal teaching and learning contexts
formal and non-formal educational contexts
“communitarian” teaching and learning approaches
“It ended up being a bit too advanced”- discourses on dance collaborations in a Swedish holistic educational landscape
It is well-known that art and cross-sectoral collaborations are needed and have value in the educational sector. The aim of this article is to describe and problematise beliefs, norms, and experiences that are articulated in descriptions of collaboration surrounding dance teaching in educational contexts in Sweden. This article rests on social constructionist perspectives and is informed by discourse analysis to problematise the experiences of collaboration regarding dance education. The empirical material consists of focus group interviews with dance teachers, pre-school teachers, and school-age educare center teachers. Analysis is focused on the discourses that occur in the empirical material, where different educators describe their experiences of collaborations. Three discourses emerge in the result: first, dance as an eraser; second, the dance teacher as inspirer and physically competent; and finally, ‘Jack in the box’—dance as collaboration? The conclusion drawn from the results is that cooperation is common, but collaborations are not. If one intends to develop shared values, alignment, and equal power relations, collaboration is required. The importance of combining dance competence with pedagogical competence adapted to the specific educational setting is essential.
The potential of multiprofessional collaboration in integrating dance in early additional language education in primary school
This article explores how a multiprofessional team collaborates in integrating dance in early language education. It is based on the team members’ experiences and reflections as they combined dance with the teaching of Swedish as an additional language in grade 1 in a Finnish primary school. The project was framed by the notion of embodied learning understood as the holistic engagement of learners within their socio-material surroundings. Following socio-material approaches to education, the study examines the team of a dance teacher, a researcher, and the school’s class teachers as an assemblage and multiprofessional collaboration as events that cross subject boundaries. The data assemblage encompasses audio-recorded, embodied, and material documentation of weekly meetings, in which the team co-designed the activities. The analysis maps the collaborative process of integrating language and dance through the post-qualitative approach of embodied writing. It highlights the designed practices, the challenges and the possibilities of the collaboration, and the conditions for successful collaboration. Co-designing dance and language integrated pedagogy occurred in events of disciplinary crossings and in entanglement with the process of becoming an assembled team. These insights illuminate multiprofessional collaboration as an entry point to embodied and cross-disciplinary pedagogies in early language education in primary school.
Re-imagining ‘how’ community dance affects the health and wellbeing of older adults
We are currently experiencing unprecedented population aging worldwide, with people over 65 projected to outnumber youth for the first time in human history. As such, the need to support this demographic’s health and wellbeing has never been more acute. There is a growing recognition that engagement with dance and arts provides numerous benefits for the health of older people, with existing research existing primarily within a biomedical model of efficacy. Driven by the primary research question “how does dance affect the health and wellbeing of older adults”, we reflect on the potential insights gained by returning to the root of research aims and methodologies. Sitting in conversation with dance and health scholarship and leaning into critical gerontology debate, this article broadens discourse to consider not only how evidence is articulated, but as importantly, how it is being asked. Through a series of exploratory “how” questions that critically engage with literature from practitioner, participant, and sector perspectives, we consider elucidating the origins of research enquiry as fundamental to broadening and deepening our understandings of the benefits of community dance for the health and wellbeing of older adults.
Structured water dance intervention for adults with profound intellectual and multiple disability: Development and description of the method
People with profound intellectual and multiple disability (PIMD) have a combination of severe intellectual disability and extensive physical impairment, which limits their access to health-promoting enjoyable activities, such as dance. For people with PIMD to participate in dance, there is a need for adjustments and support. Thus, to bring dance and music into their everyday life, the Structured Water Dance Intervention (SWAN) was developed in Sweden. This paper aims to describe the development and methodology of SWAN. SWAN was developed from a holistic view on human existence adhering to a bio-psycho-social perspective. Hence, the key components of SWAN are experience of dance and music, adapted movements, stimulation of the senses, and interaction. In SWAN, the person with PIMD participates in the program in a warm water pool under the guidance of two instructors and in close collaboration with a support person who acts as a dance partner. We conclude that SWAN provides a meaningful activity with the potential to increase wellbeing for individuals with PIMD.
Profound intellectual and multiple disability (PIMD)
Dance – a way towards health and wellbeing
Stemming from one creative experience that emerged in London during the lockdown period of early 2020, called the “Emergency Festival”, this article is a result of observations based on practice, centred around the festival that a group of multicultural, interdisciplinary movement-based researchers and dancers created, curated, and participated in. It explores the possibility of making a radical alterity out of a hitherto previously established ideas of territory, time, and community, using performative writing as practice-based analysis scheme. Employing the concept of “communitas” by Victor Turner (1969) to approach the phenomenon of dance through distance, the article examines the importance of the emergence of collaboration as a way forward, epistemologically looking at dance as a method of creating and sustaining communities that are longing for a sense of home in times of change. The writing is divided into three parts, focussing on the aspects of space, time, and community, all the while embedded in the nature of movement and its effect on the practitioners, and onlookers, concluding with contemplation on the place of dance in varied mediums and the way forward to study it in a period of global disruption.
The Coronavirus (Covid-19) continues to reshape many lives socially, politically, and economically. Choreographic practice, performance, and those involved in dance are also affected in different ways. This article investigates the research question: How might the event of Covid-19 prompt the transformation of freelance dancers’ identities? Through a qualitative narrative inquiry, three freelance contemporary dancers from Aotearoa/New Zealand were interviewed. From a thematic analysis of the data, the theme of alienation and adaptability were drawn out. This research reveals that the event of Covid-19 has caused freelance dancers to question their identity and precarity within their communities and shifted their position to advance a sense of security. The stories shared by the dancers revealed that industry practices and conditions for freelance contemporary dancers in Aotearoa/New Zealand need redevelopment for greater sustainability, relevance and inclusion, which could pave the way for industry changes to occur post-covid-19.
This text historicizes the concept of street dance (dança de rua) by showing distances and approaches in relation to hip hop. For this purpose, the analysis starts from the cultural history of street dance in the city of Uberlândia, Minas Gerais (Brazil), to understand the complex relationships that gave meaning and form to the practice of street dance between the 1980s and 1990s. In a first step, I investigate the various perspectives that permeate the bond between the popular dance and dance festivals, well as between the city neighbourhoods and dance clubs. In a second step, the analysis shifts to the cultural performance that allowed street dancers to migrate to the so-called hip hop dance. Analysing street dance and hip hop considering their ruptures and continuities, the text intends to contribute to studies dedicated to the presence of dance in the construction of urban identities.
As a contribution to the critical and creative discussion regarding definitions and examples of how dance practices are being reimagined in the age of distance, this article focuses on possibilities and challenges with organizing virtual contemporary dance workshops for older adults. The aim of this article is to explore intra-actions within entanglements including older adult amateur dancers, a choreographer, homes, dance studios, the software zoom, devices, music, and dance during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Situations seen as webs of relations including the mentioned actors were created. To be able to describe how the constantly performed intra-active networks of dancers and other material actors were constituted, actor-network theory was applied. The results show specific trajectories that exemplifies intra-actions with the participants. The older adults became dancers that make meaning in their lives, even if the virtual trajectories possible to follow to some extent, are limited by the pandemic cursed distance
Dancing someone else's movements through someone else’s body
In this article, we will describe the uneven conditions in which dance practices are being extracted and circulated by looking at how online gaming platforms have digitised and commodified human movement. The study of these controversial cases contextualised within the legal aspects of dance copyright are the basis to offer speculative courses for both dance practitioners. The first section explores the issues of digitisation and ownership of bodily movement within virtual spaces by looking at notions of disembodiment and dance as a commodifiable object. The second section illustrates the complexities of copyrighting choreography through a critique on how intellectual property regimes disregard collective and social practices. Finally, we will present alternatives for dance practitioners going forward by looking at how to protect dance as a digital object; the current initiatives to engage dancers with technological affordances; and the decentralising potential of blockchain networks to build new collaborative landscapes for the circulation of creativity.
Editorial: An urgency to (re)imagine dance in the age of distance
This special issue has been motivated by the transformation the world has experienced in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Major upheavals and change have occurred in light of this pandemic and there is now a forced reconsideration demanded of what dance is and how dance practitioners, educators, and researchers might continue their work in sustainable, relevant and accessible ways. With such change comes the possibility for dance to be transformed, reconsidered, and reimagined in ways that have implications for meanings, enaction, contexts, communities, practice, education, policy, and application.
Livets dans og danserens liv - en drøfting av forståelser av dansealder
Artikkelen undersøker alder og dans, det å bli eldre som utøvende dansekunstner, danseres pensjonsalder og årsaker til at mange dansere slutter som dansere i relativt ung alder. Den australske forskeren Elisabeth Schwaiger hevder i boka Aging, gender, embodiment and dance; finding a balance (2012) at det eksisterer en konservativ taus forståelse av at dansere forventes å slutte som sceniske utøvere før de fyller 40 år. Hensikten med artikkelen er å sette søkelys på profesjonell danseralder, og på en forståelse av danseralder, som på den ene siden synes som om den er tatt for gitt, og på den andre siden virker utdatert. Gjennom en hermeneutisk-fenomen ologisk tilnærming benytter forfatteren seg av skriftlige og muntlige kilder i form av publisert forskning, rapporter, avisartikler og uformelle samtaler knyttet til temaet samt egen levd erfaring som forsknings-materiale. Erfaringer fra Norge og Japan fokuseres. Kunnskaps bidraget med artik-kelen er blant annet en artikulasjon av at hvordan den profesjonelle danserens alder forstås i Norge, og flere vestlige land, skiller seg ut og er ganske annerledes enn alminnelig forståelse av alder og generell pensjonsalder i samfunnet for øvrig. Artik-kelen løfter også fram danseralder forståelse som kulturrelatert, og at danser alder forstås annerledes i Norge og vestlige land, enn i Japan.
Editorial for the special issue Choreography Now
Lynda Gaudreau’s current artistic research on asynchrony emerged from her choreographic practice. Asynchrony is the modification or disturbance of perception caused by a slight change in space and/or time within a work, and which, like a pebble, slips inside a machinery. This tiny friction between space and time heightens the audience’s attention. During her doctoral research (2018), she elaborated her conception of asynchrony through specific parameters, such as the hole/ gap, short circuit and fake space. These were organized into three dynamic axes: desynchronization, destruction, and editing. Her project eventually took the form of twenty-five fictional letters to various individuals - artists, thinkers and characters. They include letters to Pier Paolo Pasolini, Cedric Price, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and a Sainte. The letter to Ludwig Wittgenstein is one of the unpublished letters of this project. Begun during the live screening of the American presidential election in 2016, the letter integrates various recollections and texts about space, movement and time. It carries the reader into a choreographic and asynchronic experience, from one place to another, and into different times (live stream, recorded…). The letter to Ludwig Wittgenstein is a reflective enquiry into the relation between space and language, and the mobile nature of both.
Towards astroembodied choreostructions: Deviating from choreographing to choreoreading
In this article, I introduce the notion of choreostruction, which has emerged during my doctoral research project Choreography as Reading Practice in the Performing Arts Research Centre at the University of the Arts, Helsinki (2013–2019). The term stems from studying the French philosopher Jean Luc Nancy’s notion struction, which he examines in depth in dialogue with the French astrophysicist and philosopher Aurélien Barrau in the book What’s these Worlds Coming to? (2015). In the book, the concept of struction is introduced as one of the concepts that could help us understand how “ we are not living in one world but worlds” , and how we “ no longer create, but appropriate and montage” (quotes from the book cover). I approach the notion and its operative potential by exposing one experimental choreographic work that I am still processing and in which the operative move in my choreographic practice from composition to attention is one important shift that connects my practice to the notion of struction. The term choreostruction is an attempt to materialize the dialogue between my artistic practice and my understanding of Nancy’s notion of struction. Other influencing references of this process come from the writings of philosophers Thomas Nail and Jaana Parviainen and artworks from the history of site-specific art.
This article discusses a practical exploration of the ability of a textile to meet with and affect bodies. It builds on the inherent ability of textiles, particularly in the form of a garment, to evoke movements and emotions. This paper suggests a shift in focus of the design of bodily materiality, towards an expression emerging from interactions connecting materiality and performativity. The findings are the result of 2.5 years of exploration, during which four performances, ten workshops, and four exhibitions were performed. The entwined parameters of expressing and informing are applied as a material choreographic thinking, which in this case results in a material choreography of openness, where expressing and informing are essential as entwined design parameters in the design of body-material interactions. The material choreography is developed as a method for addressing somatic experience, with improvements in terms of wellbeing and presence as aesthetic goals, focusing on reducing movements and emotions relating to stress for people suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome.
Holding the space: Choreography, architecture and urban heritage
This article responds to the interdisciplinary developments that choreography has undergone in the twenty-first century, in terms of a focus on relationships between dance, architecture, site and cultural heritage. It makes a claim for how choreography within the city manifests itself in the form of a public bodily act, as artistic boundary-crosser and socio-political agent. We explore this through the lens of a central case study: artist Anton Mirto’s Scaffolding (2019), a workshop-performance event for seven dancers sited within The Chapel of Many, an architectural installation by architect Sebastian Hicks and set inside the ruins of Coventry Cathedral (UK) as part of the Coventry Welcomes Festival’s Refugee Week. Grounded in an exploration of dance and architecture in terms of spatiotemporal relations following Rachel Sara’s (2015) framework of a transontology of architecture and dance and Rachel Hann’s (2019) concept of fast architecture, we argue for how the choreographic process of making Scaffolding speaks back to both the architectural space and the urban heritage site in which it is located and addresses a certain experience of temporality, history and memory. In turn, the potential political agency of such a performed conversation between architecture and choreography in the twenty-first century city is revealed.
Between and within choreographies: An early choreographic object by William Forsythe
In 1990, William Forsythe created The Books of Groningen – Book N(7), an installation commissioned by the Dutch city of Groningen and architect Daniel Libeskind. This early choreographic object is composed of a water canal, a series of willow trees pulled by wires in order to grow in arched shape and a bush hedge. At a time of marked interest in expanded choreography as it develops in conjunction with choreography’s links to visual art, as well as in choreographic history, this article considers Book N(7) in relation with diverse historical conceptions of choreography – as dance-making, as an organisation of moving bodies, as notation and pre/scription. This analysis shows that the installation negates certain aspects of choreographic history while exemplifying and perpetuating others, therefore situating itself between different historical construals of choreography. At the same time, it points to the ways in which Book N(7) defies the possibility both of complete ruptures and of smooth continuities with the choreographic past, engaging in a negotiation which reworks this past in the present. Framing this analysis of The Books of Groningen – Book N(7) by references to certain of Forsythe’s ulterior works, this article presents the installation as a part of the artist’s longlasting, shifting engagements with the notion and history of choreography.
Dance curation as choreographic practice
Dance curators (or programmers, as they are often called) have a significant impact on the dance field through their selection processes: elevating certain works, practices, and artists, while effectively excluding others. Through this, they have a considerable hand in shaping what kinds of dance pieces a local audience has access to, effectively writing dance history over time. But their working processes remain poorly understood, and there have been limited attempts to theorize their practice. This article begins with an exploration of the etymology of the term curator and the historical emergence of the curator in both the fine arts and dance. It then goes on to examine the role of the curator as mediator in two common models for dance presentation (the festival and the theater season) and explores two alternative curatorial models (the focus program at Brussels venue Beursschouwburg and the uncurated model of Amsterdam festival Come Together). Finally, it explores the practice of dance curation as a form of choreography itself. It concludes that contextualizing dance curation as a form of choreography could be an effective starting point for theorizing the practice, hopefully paving the way for further study.
Med embodied pedagogy og småbarnspedagogikk på paletten – å se nyanser av rødgul farge i to (u)like fag- og forskningsfelt
Fag- og forskningslitteratur fra/om småbarnspedagogens kroppsligrelasjonelle praksis synes å ha mye til felles med fag- og forskningsfeltet embodied pedagogy. Undersøkelsen denne artikkelen baserer seg på viser likevel at de to forskningsområdene småbarnspedagogikk og embodied pedagogy har liten kjennskap til hverandre. Hensikten med artikkelen er å undersøke hva som kan males frem når disse to feltene møtes, innsirklet i et kroppslig møtepunkt. Artikkelen er en litteraturgjennomgang basert i Alfonso Montouris (2005) forståelse av litteraturstudier som kreative undersøkelser. Forfatteren skaper en fargeblandingsanalysemetode der litteraturgjennomgangen ses som to farger som blandes sammen. Fargeblandingsanalysen visualiseres i en modell formet som en palett der utpenslede begreper fra småbarnspedagogikk (rød) og embodied pedagogy (gul) sammenfiltres til et mulighetsrom (oransje) av nærliggende og mulighetsgivende faglitteratur og forskning. Mulighetsrommet som males frem gir pedagogkroppen og småbarnaspedagogens kroppslige profesjonskunnskap rom og redskaper til å vokse og utvikle seg. Artikkelen er en teoretisk delstudie i et større forskningsprosjekt som i sin helhet er plassert innenfor metodologien artsbased research. http://dx.doi.org/10.18862/ps.2019.503.2