Overview
Watching was developed for OpenSource{VideoDance} held at Findhorn, Scotland in November 2008. A PDF version of the performance-presentation is available here.
Summary
What lies outside of the frame?
In dance-on-screen writing and thinking there has been an invaluable emphasis on overcoming the problems of framing and screening movement. The language is strong: the “the rigid, rectangular window” (Nagrin, 1988 p.33), the “often-deadening space of the screen” (Rosenberg, 2006 p.13) – in which we witness the body’s “flattening” (Preston, 2006 p.79). The screen topples three dimensions into two. This flattening, powered by what Andre Lepecki calls the “reductive operation of the camera as perspectival machine” (2006 p.75), has occupied our thinking, acting as a reason to engage with screen dance, and a reason to avoid it.
At the heart of this language is an overwhelming concern for what the camera sees, and consequently, what is produced on screen. Douglas Rosenberg describes the phenomenon of camera-looking as an act that “implies a reverence for that which is framed and eschews all that is outside the frame” (Rosenberg, 2006 pp.14-15). However, to (over)emphasise what is within frame (or onscreen) is to run the risk of joining conventional cinema in presupposing the viewing experience. Our shared performance heritage – itself a critical aspect of screen-dance hybridity – necessitates an acknowledgement that screen dance content also lies beyond the frame.
In Watching I will explore those aspects of content in dance on screen that are typically (and easily) forgotten as being content. These are derived from a selection of Thomas McEvilley’s Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (McEvilley, 1991 p.70), and are: (i) content arising from context, (ii) content arising from the genre or medium of the artwork; and (iii) content added to the work over time.
The central component of Watching will be a curated, reversed revealing of the performative context(s) of the performance and video installation, Inert (Ellis, Corbet, Bott, Mitchell, & Lally, 2006). This account of Inert will initially involve presenting the two DVD-video dance-on-screen components of the project, and then, throughout the course of the presentation, slowly revealing an increasing amount of detail about how audiences experienced Inert at its premiere in Melbourne.
By using this device my goals are twofold: (i) to discuss a series of ideas on content beyond the camera frame in dance on screen; (ii) to present an alternate and curated rendering of Inert, and report on the “original” version of this practice-led research.
If the current focus in dance-on-screen research and thinking is to articulate the medium and form clearly and specifically, then in this essay/presentation I am interested in broadening and roughening the edges – in threading movement (or uncertainty) into our critical engagement with the form – and in questioning the in/stability of the screen dance viewing process.
References
Ellis, S., Corbet, D., Bott, S., Mitchell, S., & Lally, C. (Artist). (2006). Inert [Performance, dance and video installation]. Melbourne: Dancehouse. Lepecki, A. (2006). Exhausting Dance: Performance and the politics of movement. London: Routledge.
McEvilley, T. (1991). Art & Discontent: Theory at the Millennium. New York: McPherson & Company Publishers.
Nagrin, D. (1988). Nine points on making your own dance video. Dance Theatre Journal, 6(1).
Preston, H. (2006). Choreographing the frame: a critical investigation into how dance for the camera extends the conceptual and artistic boundaries of dance. Research in Dance Education, 7(1), 75-87.
Rosenberg, D. (2006). Proposing a Theory of Screendance. Paper presented at Screendance: The State of the Art, American Dance Festival. Duke University, Durham, NC. (pp.12-17).