CCL4: Choreographic Thinking Input

(text by Scott deLahunta)

During nearly 40 years of making dances, Deborah Hay has developed a unique way of accessing the choreographic thinking of her performers. Her approach draws on a particular conception of the body (the cellular body) which challenges commonly held ideas about dance composition. In addition to her own choreographic work, Jeanine Durning has also worked as a performer with the choreographer Deborah Hay, and she participated in the Deborah Hay Motion Bank score project. The Deborah Hay project produced roughly 4 TB of data which will be available for the CCL. Jeanine will take part in the presentation at 1 pm on Day 1 (Thursday) to offer insights into Hay’s approach. Two parts of the score you might explore involving Jeanine are her own insights into how the ‘choreography of perception’ works, and when she interviews Amin Weber about his digital adaptation of No Time to Fly. Amin’s digital adaptation was one of the inspirations for the Choreographic Coding Labs.

Jon Kinzel (this link is to a review of recent work) is a choreographer and visual artist whose work has been presented in a variety of national and international venues since 1988. Here is a class description, and a short edited video interview regarding a recent piece. Jon works with both improvisational and set material. He is currently making a new work drawing on his own performance history titled Cowhand Con Man that will premiere in October. This piece is described as a work that “considers physical endurance and psychic restlessness as choreographic source material”. Jon recorded some movement material using the Magnet Optitrak motion capture system a few weeks ago and that data is available for the CCL participants to explore.

You can catch up with [Silas Riener](http://www.rashaunsilasdance.com/'s extensive biography and own creative work on his website, but it is interesting to note here that he was a member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from November 2007 until its closure at the end of 2011. Much of Cunningham’s choreographic approach as well as his interest in digital technology has been well documented over the last few decades. Silas is currently involved in the recreation of a work from the period when Cunningham was first developing his aleatoric methods. Silas is also currently working on a project with composer Jessie Stiles utlising the Kinect system. They just spent two weeks researching and rehearsing at the Studio for Creative Enquiry at Carnegie Mellon (the place directed by Golan Levin).

We recently met with Wally Cardona to discuss the possible use of Motion Bank systems to help document and publish the kind of choreographic thinking involved in the complex multi-year collaborative project Wally has been working on called The Set Up. The Set Up is described as a “series of 8 dances by Wally Cardona & Jennifer Lacey and 8 international masters of existent dance forms”. As part of his research for the work Wally travels to meet these masters at home to study these forms for several weeks. This interesting project probes, amongst other things, what it means to be a dance expert, the aquisition of skills and techniques in dance and meaning making in movement. We have proposed to Wally that we set up a station at the CCL where we can continue our conversation about his documentation project as a way of opening up access to the extensive dance knowledge he brings to his project.

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