Site-Based Dance and Urban Spatial Politics
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Moving Publics: Site-Based Dance and Urban Spatial Politics by Alana Rosamund Gerecke M.A., Simon Fraser University, 2009 B.A. (Hons.), Simon Fraser University, 2006 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of English Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences © Alana Rosamund Gerecke 2016 SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY Spring 2016 Approval Name: Alana Rosamund Gerecke Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Title: Moving Publics: Site-Based Dance and Urban Spatial Politics Examining Committee: Chair: Michelle Levy Associate Professor and Graduate Program Chair Peter Dickinson Senior Supervisor Professor Carolyn Lesjak Supervisor Associate Professor Susan Bennett Supervisor Professor Department of English University of Calgary Rob Kitsos Internal Examiner Associate Professor School for the Contemporary Arts Rebecca Schneider External Examiner Professor Theater Arts and Performance Studies Brown University Date Defended/Approved: April 4, 2016 ii Ethics Statement iii Abstract Moving Publics develops a set of strategies for analyzing how professional site- based dances refunction and reframe the public spaces in which they are set. Using a site-specific methodology, I focus on five case studies in Vancouver (Canada) to advance a theory about the reciprocal relationship between ground and movement—a notion of “choreographic topographies” that is sensitive to the socially and politically inscribed grooves that constitute a given dance’s local emplacement. I examine an archival dance, an “urban proscenium” dance, a vertical dance, a danced walking tour, and a tactile dance to analyze how different forms of site-based dance hail audiences in their bids for curbside attention. These performances, I argue, contain important information about the relationship between a temporary public and the address (in the dual sense of salutation and location) around which that public coheres. I contend that choreographic explorations of public places bring us together to move, or in stillness to watch, in ways that challenge our atomized movement through city spaces. In doing so, these dance-based practices pose questions of aesthetics, use, access, exclusion, density, and mobility in resolutely physical terms. Framed by kinaesthetic concepts (arriving, gathering, following, turning, lifting, passing, and adjusting), Moving Publics proposes a model of choreographic thinking that takes movement as a critical lens as well as an object of study. Extending outward from my study of the choreographic object, I bring a movement interpreter’s attention to the physical arrangements of audiencing bodies in and around the dances I study. I analyze the consequences of coding as theatrical both the publics and the public spaces in which these dances are set, and I examine what dance—a form that regularly relies on directed, delegated, and aesthetic labour in the context of collaborative co-presence— can expose about how we move in and through our cities, with and past one another. The dances I study foreground how the city (a built, legislated, lived, and perpetually unsettled structure) orchestrates a set of quiet choreographies of the everyday even as they reimagine a “relational kinaesthetics” at the threshold of vicariousness. Keywords: site-based dance; temporary publics; relational kinaesthetics; choreographic topographies; audiencing bodies; urban proscenium iv Acknowledgements Thank you to the artists who invited me into their processes, who allowed me to engage with their archives, and who were willing to re-animate their routes with me. Karen Jamieson, Paul-André Fortier, Julia Taffe, David McIntosh, Martin Chaput, and Martial Chazallon—and the performers who interpreted and embodied your work with their own: for your generosity, my gratitude. I only hope you find your work well represented here. Thank you to those who managed my access to various sets of archives: Amy Bowering, Miriam Adams, and Cindy Brett at Dance Collection Danse, as well as Pamela Tagle, Gilles Savary, Julie Barbiteau, and Chani Caron Piché. Thanks also to a wider set of artists, researchers and government employees who have spoken with me and helped me frame this project: Ginelle Chagnon, Olive Berienga, Otto Ramstaad, Magalie Bonneau, Douglas Durrand, Brian Macdonald, Julie Poskitt, Polly Argo, Shelagh Flaherty, Marc Lemay, Robert Hunter, Rochelle Hum, Marlene Alt, Terrill Maguire, Caleb Johnston, Lindsay Eales, Kaija Pepper, Megan Andrews, and Allana Lindgren. My resounding thanks to Peter Dickinson, who has contributed immensely to this project and to my development as a researcher and thinker more generally. For managing to strike the delicate balance between giving me enough guidance to feel supported and enough space to move, I am grateful. I could not have hoped for a more available, encouraging, and respectful supervisor. Thank you to Carolyn Lesjak, who has kept me thinking about the larger questions. Thanks also to Susan Bennett who has generously helped me find my critical voice from afar, and who continues to model professional rigour and commitment. Thank you to members of SFU’s English Department and School for Contemporary Arts for the ways in which you have influenced me, supported me, and/or proceeded alongside me: in particular, Jeff Derksen, Christa Gruninger, Alison Dean, Sarah Bull, Sarah Creel, Carolyne Clare, Wendy Harris, Maureen Curtin, Tom Grieve, Clint Burnham, Henry Daniel, Judith Garay, Rob Kitsos, and Diana Solomon. My research has also benefited from feedback at numerous conferences and seminars over the years; a particular thank you to the organizers of and participants at the 2014 “Performance, Placemaking, and Cultural Policy” Workshop at York University and the 2013 Mellon Dance Studies Summer Seminar at Brown University. v A Trudeau Foundation Doctoral Scholarship, CGS SSHRC, Queen’s Fellowship, Ann and William Messenger, Aphra Behn Scholarship, and various university scholarships have generously supported me through this research. A particular thanks to the Trudeau Foundation community for all the ways in which exposure to its members has nuanced my thinking, my approach to scholarship, and my understanding of the relationship between the academic and the public. In particular, thanks to Pierre-Gerlier Forest, Josée St-Martin, Jennifer Petrela, Elizabeth Rivera, Lara Rosenoff-Gauvin, Danielle Peers, Steve Loft, and Janine Marchessault. A professional dancer in Vancouver, I owe thanks to Peter Bingham and my fellow EDAM company dancers as well as the wider contemporary dance community for grounding my thinking. Thanks also to my co-founders of the Behind Open Doors Arts Collective—the practices and curiosities of this group have been germane to my thinking: Lori MacDonald, Chris O’Conner, Catherine Andersen, Jessica Barrett, Caelan Griffiths, and—a good friend of BODAC—Zac Rothman. Special thanks to Melanie Kuxdorf for collaborations ranging from the culinary, to the academic, to the artistic. Thank you to my parents, Jamie and Mark Gerecke, for always encouraging me to explore, dance, and generally move large. Thank you for your support during these past years: for visiting, for hosting, for asking to read my work, and for the delicious meals. Thank you for teaching me about support. Thank you to my sisters, Jenn, Lib, and Gwyn for all the ways you constitute me. And a special thank you to my twin sister, my long time interlocutor, collaborator, and co-conspirator, Megan Gerecke. Thank you for talking to me when I needed support; not talking to me when I needed to work; and gifting me with infant giggles when that was just the thing. Profound thanks to my Vancouver family: especially to Gerrie and John Giesbrecht for going above and beyond with your availability, childcare, technical assistance, and steadfast support and interest. Thank you for making my work possible, and for the example you set in gracious generosity. Finally, thank you to Theo—whose arrival made my world a new and wondrous place— for your patience, your smiles, your emphatic hugs, and your enthusiasm. Mommy is “all done” her “dih-er-tay-yun!” And my deepest thanks to my own grounding and my partner in everything, Ian Giesbrecht, with whom I continue to face all manner of personal and professional sites, shifting grounds, entanglements, and adventures—side-by-side. vi Table of Contents Approval ............................................................................................................................ ii Ethics Statement .............................................................................................................. iii Abstract ............................................................................................................................ iv Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ vii List of Figures ................................................................................................................... ix Introduction. Appearing ................................................................................................ 1 “The Politics of the Public Body” ........................................................................................ 6 On Moving Publics ..........................................................................................................