80 research outputs found
Unexamined assumptions: A Conversation between Arabella Stanger and Simon Ellis
No full textA Conversation between Arabella Stanger and Simon Ellis regarding student screendance projects at Roehampton University
The Choreography of Space::Towards a Socio-Aesthetics of Dance
No full textWith its emphasis on the socially constructed and mobile nature of 'space', Henri Lefebvre's theory of spatial production presents rich possibilities for a sociocultural analysis of choreography. In this article Arabella Stanger uses an examination of so
The choreography of space: towards a socio-aesthetics of dance
No full textWith its emphasis on the socially constructed and mobile nature of ‘space’, Henri Lefebvre's theory of spatial production presents rich possibilities for a sociocultural analysis of choreography. In this article Arabella Stanger uses an examination of social space and spatial aesthetics as a basis upon which to develop a socio-aesthetics of dance – an approach in which the societal contexts and the aesthetic forms of choreography are understood to be fundamentally interrelated. Borrowing from Lefebvre's The Production of Space (1974) and Maria Shevtsova's sociology of the theatre and performance, Stanger establishes the theoretical parameters and methodological steps of such an approach, and locates a short illustrative example in the socio-spatial formations of Aurora's Act III variation from Marius Petipa's The Sleeping Beauty (1890). Ultimately extending a bridge between formalist and contextualist strands of dance studies, the article argues for the use of a particular concept of space in understanding choreographic practice as social practice. Arabella Stanger is Lecturer in Dance at the University of Roehampton. Having trained in classical ballet, she completed her MA and PhD studies at Goldsmiths, University of London, and has published on the work of Merce Cunningham, Michael Clark, and William Forsythe
Heterotopia as Choreography: Foucault's sailing vessel
No full textIn thinking through Michel Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, with a particular focus on the sailing vessel as the heterotopic space par excellence, this article develops an idea of ‘the choreographic’ in order to illuminate the spacetime dialectics which mobilize certain strands of utopian thought. The choreographic is defined incipiently as a place in process and theorized as the making of a situation in which space and time negate one another. The article presents a three-part inquiry through which this idea of the choreographic is used to assess propositions about utopia come-to-earth. The first part of the discussion excavates the choreographic properties of David Harvey’s model for utopian thought and practice (2000). The second part extends that excavation to questions about the spatiotemporal nature of Foucault’s sailing vessel (1986). Finally, the discussion of spacetime oscillation at sea is used to evaluate the utopian character of a lived example: the Middle Passage slave ship. Here the materialist underpinnings of Harvey’s argument are used to extend Foucault’s ideas to (or locate them in) the context of a ship that carries utopia and dystopia entwined. Ultimately, a dialectics of negation is found to be innate in choreography and is uncovered in the concept of utopia itself
Striking a balance::The Apolline and Dionysiac in contemporary classical choreography
No full textNo description supplie
In Defense of Dalida.:Nostalgia, Dancing and Vulgarity in French Disco
No full textThis chapter focuses on the gay icon Dalida (1933–1987) and provides the first study in Anglophone scholarship of French disco music. By situating Dalida’s disco at the crossroads of competing discourses, at a time when the camp tradition of le music-hall was reviled as vulgar by chanson critics and hailed as radical anti-Establishment by gay admirers, it debates the extent to which Dalida’s performance could be construed as “queer.” On the one hand, Dalida performed a very family-friendly style of disco that tamely alluded to romance and was heavily broadcast on prime time television. Belonging to an all-white, all-straight generation of stars achieving success with disco, Dalida typified the very conventional understanding of that music genre in France. On the other hand, Dalida was a mature woman in the 1970s whose comeback as a disco queen coincided with exuberant dance moves, the self-conscious dramatization of her own celebrity, and public declarations of gay allyship. As such, she performed a camp sensibility that defied gender and cultural norms in France, and which contributed—paradoxically—to her severe humiliation in the left-wing press. Examining Dalida’s contribution to disco, this chapter delves into the context-dependent meanings of female glamour, campness, and cultural authenticity
Disco as Open Image: Internet Sightings, Cryptic Denotations, and Disco Dancing Girls
No full textThis chapter explores a riddle: what can we learn from digital images that circulate the internet under a “disco” guise, even when the stylistic and cultural traits of disco are hardly present? Particularly of interest here are several images named as “disco dancing girls” that arguably operate on the register of [disco] “sightings,” activating layered mechanisms of apophenia and stereotyping. When considered as cryptic sightings, these online “disco girls” reveal something important about the images they occupy, as well as about “disco” as a present-day signifier. Firstly, by animating historical girlhood references, these images offer us revelations about internet’s girl cultures today and historically. The duality of objectification and agency, upon a closer look, is found equally in the historic school discos and contemporary “soft girl” bedroom-disco social media posts. Secondly, the disco naming reframes these images as they cluster with other “poor images.” Finally, we learn something significant about the “disco” label as it produces “open images” or opens out the unlikely disco representations toward new realities, narratives, and fantasies
The Choreography of Space: Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe in Context
No full textThis thesis takes the work of Merce Cunningham and William Forsythe as case studies for a socio-historical analysis of choreographic space and, in so doing, develops a sociology of dance around the qualitative study of spatial aesthetics. By locating the spatial innovations of these artists in the social space of their practice and in the light of spatial models inherited by each, it argues that the choreography of space can express ideals of human relationality produced in and productive of its broader societal landscape. Drawing from Henri Lefebvre’s contention that ‘the space of a (social) order is hidden in the order of space’, the thesis takes classical ballet as a primary example of how political ideals come to be embodied in spatial aesthetics and uses the ‘classical model’ to coordinate a sociologically orientated dance-historical context for these artists.
The thesis is structured around four case studies that together form a context for understanding Cunningham’s and Forsythe’s spatial practices. These are: firstly, a sociopolitical history of harmony in courtly expressions of classical ballet from fifteenth- century Italy to late Imperial Russia; secondly, an analysis of George Balanchine’s and Martha Graham’s respective choreographies of the ‘American geographical imagination’; thirdly, a comparative study of Rudolf von Laban’s and Oskar Schlemmer’s theories of space and technology in their pre-war German contexts; finally a contextualisation of John Cage’s 1952 event in relation to Marshall McLuhan’s ‘electronic age’ and John Dewey’s ‘democratic’ social space.
The final two chapters weave these spatial models into comparative frames for measuring the socio-historical specificity of Cunningham’s and Forsythe’s choreographic spaces. Cunningham’s ‘no fixed points’ aesthetic is understood as producing a coexistent space commensurate with McLuhan’s electronic paradigm and Dewey’s democratic individualism. Forsythe’s fluctuating space is understood as producing a ‘space of flows’ emblematic, for Manuel Castells, of a late twentieth-century ‘digital age’
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