Emergence in dance: the performance vs. choreography debate
As part of its computational sensibility, the emergent character of dance is to be found in all creative processes of choreographic and performative thinking. However fixed the choreographic score may be, preceding processes of creative thinking and later interpretations during performance are both in constant fluidity and transformation, so that performances of the same work may differentiate from each other. Choreographers do not produce static works. They are like playwrights or composers – conceptual artists who “do not directly produce the tangible stimuli that any given audience will experience, but instead produce what might loosely be described as a blueprint for performances. They produce performance types as opposed to performance tokens” [1].
An analysis of the choreography of William Forsythe’s One Flat Thing reproduced (OFTr) pinpoints elements that indicate how transformations are in constant flow during a dance performance: these are elements of counterpoint, cueing, and alignment. Counterpoint is the “field of action in which the intermittent and irregular coincidence of attributes between organizational elements produces an ordered interplay” [2]. Cueing is the triggering of events by aural or visual signals between dancers. And alignments are “short instances of synchronization between dancers in which their actions share some, but not necessarily all, attributes. ... Alignments occur in every moment of the dance and are constantly shifting throughout the group” [2]. With their openness to the “unexpected,” these communicative elements are indicative of how each performance differs from the previous and next ones.
Exact replicas of dances, whatever the type of dance may be, are hard to be found. As already argued, every performance is slightly different despite choreographic restrictions, and follows the momentary transformations or changes in the relationships between bodies or between bodies and the environment. These are the same changes that Sondra Fraleigh points to, when claiming that in choreography we set aside from performance and view time and space as objects, whereas in dancing, time and space become part of our subjective experience. As we dance or even watch a dance, we do not measure time; rather, we experience time through “our body-of-time” and we immerse in it.
In such an immersion collective intelligence evolves and dancers become members of an emergent complex system. Such phenomena are captured by Ivar Hagendoorn in his equation performance = choreography + ε, where ε is defined as the residual term that is left to dancers to fill in with their own movement. Although performance and choreography are distinguished in this equation, this separation does not imply an absence of either collaborative practices or emergence already in the choreographic process itself. They do exist and contribute to the final form of the choreographic score. Cognitive scientist David Kirsh and his collaborators describe these collaborative practices as acts of distributed creativity, where each member of the group (i.e. choreographer or dancer) works as a model or reference for the others; the other members react to his/her movement, adopting qualities that enhance the choreography and let it develop.
In the choreography vs. performance debate, determinism is the apple of discord and it’s important to see the contribution of this debate to a better understanding of dance technologies and their use. Namely, it is one thing in dance technology to track a choreographer and is another thing applying this technology to a performer. In the latter case, the original (choreographic) intention comes to second place, because focus is given to the interpretational elements provided by the dancer. This does not devalue tracking at the choreographic level. On the contrary: it makes the different goals being served in each case clearer: tracking the choreographer (and his/her original intention) can work better for educational or preservation purposes, whereas tracking the performer can be used in digital performances, which focus on how movement may generate visual or sound effects. In the context of dance technology as a form of performative art, such performances attain significant interest in artistic development and praxis.
References
[1] Saltz, D. Z. (1997). The Art of Interaction: Interactivity, Performativity, and Computers. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 55(2), 117-127.
[2] Shaw, N. Z. (2009). Introduction: The Dance. Synchronous Objects. Retrieved from http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/blog/introductory-essays-for-synchronous-objects/.
