invisible histories

Mary Wycherley’s work, Invisible Histories presented in 2018 at Limerick Dance in the Gallery: City Gallery of Art, VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art Carlow, West Process and Memory Cork Arts Centre and Void Contemporary Arts Centre Derry is in step with an international trend exploring the possibilities for choreography and dance when they enter the museum or gallery. Wycherley’s collaboration with Erin Brannigan sound artist La Cosa Preziosa and sculptor Rory Tangney is a performance designed for the gallery context, leaving no trace or remainder in the space and being adaptable to several such spaces. Early precedents for such work include ’s Huddle (1961) at Reuben Gallery, and Deborah Hay’s 26 Variations on 8 Activities for 13 People plus Beginning and Ending (1969) and ’s Walking on the Wall (1970) both presented at Whitney Museum of American Art. Tese were one-of performances, some of which have since been recovered and re-performed in various remounts of work from this crucial period in the dance-gallery liaison. One associated phenomena deserving attention is the coopting and difusion of strategies and practices that have their provenance in dance throughout and across other media in the arts. Tis statement suggests a certain disciplinary integrity that certainly cannot be assumed in the contemporary art scene of the early 21st century. We could cite cases where exhibitions are described as being choreographed, artworks are only realised (once acquired by a collector) as group dances that require paid performers, and performance art that requires physically trained participants who can embody any number of nuanced gestures, complex sequences of movement, or feats of corporeal virtuosity. Disciplinary assertions are complicated in such cases, yet there is something to be gained for dance in insisting on some dance-based knowledges and processes that are easily disappeared in the historiographies of the experimental arts. Some of those elements might include the mind-body, singularity/collectivity, presence/participation, and process. If we can talk about “dance-based knowledges,” and if they might ofer a cue to understanding the current appeal of dance and choreography in the visual arts context, then one element that is central to dance and made its entry into the visual arts after the performative turn in the 20th mid-century

8 9 invisible histories

3 avant-garde is process. Process is the condition of being ongoing, incomplete arts, say, for the emergence of social formations and political maneuvers. For and relatively unstable. In the work of visual artists associated with the performer, academic and dramaturg Bojana Cvejić, “choreography stresses post-war, neo-avant-garde (the period of art that is seen as the provenance the design of procedures that regulate a process … . Tis resonates with of our postmodern, post-disciplinary period), we see the infuence of theatre choreographers’ and performance-makers’ current theoretical, self-refective (which would encompass music, performance and dance) on a new type of obsession with working methods, procedures, formats, and performance 4 art object that retains something of the processual in its fnal form. We can scores.” Te shift towards method over matter in dance, as in the other think, for example, of the paintings of that feature dirt, arts, began in earnest in the mid-twentieth-century milieu. Troughout this grass and mould which will change and transform across the life of the work period, choreographic process was thoroughly worked over, reinvented, and (for example, Dirt Painting [for John Cage] [1953]). In the feld of sculpture radicalized through aleatory processes, game structures, rules and limitations, we could consider A Box with the Sound of its Own Making (1961) by Robert and improvisation. Te legacy of this has had far-reaching efects. Parkinson Morris, which contains a recording of the sounds of the hammering, sawing writes that “contemporary dance is very good at creating original procedures. and sanding that were undertaken in its construction. Morris’ training with We are brilliant at fnding rules and limitations to specify what we do. We are 5 Anna Halprin, Rauschenberg’s collaboration with Merce Cunningham, and always making things up.” During the earlier period and up to the present Morris’ personal and professional relationships with Simone Forti and Yvonne the term ‘process’ has also been applied to other aspects of dance including Rainer exposed these artists to the most processual of the arts – dance. Tat practice and performance. Wycherley has brought together sound, sculpture and dance in her work Te strong afliation that the choreographic arts have with process connects her to this rich history of intermedial exchange and innovation. underlines the comparative material conditions of dance. Choreography is not reducible to a performance, while painting, for instance, can be the Process equivalent of a static, commodifed, singular object. Process is endemic to [Te dance] encounter cannot be “postponed” (diféré). It involves, in itself, the form and is something in which it excels. Improvised performance in any an experience/experiment of perceiving in space and time, an undergoing of media has claims to a special exhibition of process, collapsing composition this experience—on both sides. —Laurence Louppe1 3 See, for instance, my discussion of curator Mathieu Copeland’s use of choreography as a metaphor for curation in Brannigan (2015); “choreography is equated to the exhibited result of curating and organizing materials, bodies, space, temporal frameworks and potential for Process in a dance context is usually associated with composition or subjective feelings, perceptions, thoughts and memories that constitute the phenomena choreography, a stage of development that is invisibilised in a fnal, stable of the gallery exhibition” (“Choreography and the Gallery: Curation as Revision,” Dance outcome. As European-based dancer and choreographer Chrysa Parkinson Research Journal 47:1 [2015], p. 12). In Cvejić’s work on proceduralism and dance she 2 notes, “I registered three felds where choreography serves as a technical term [since 2000]: notes, “most processes are fnished once the piece is constructed.” In fact, molecular biology, information technology, and diplomacy.” (“Proceduralism,” in Parallel choreography has been used as an analogy for many processes resulting in Slalom: A Lexicon of Non-Aligned Poetics, edited by Bojana Cvejić and Goran Sergej Pritas both stable and unstable outcomes including curation, as well as beyond the [Belgrade; Zagreb: Walking Theory—TkH, 2013], pp. 239-240.)

4 Cvejić, “Proceduralism,” p. 240. 1 Laurence Louppe, Poetics of Contemporary Dance, translated by Sally Gardner (Alton, Hampshire: Dance Books, 2010), p.5. 5 Chrysa Parkinson, “We Make up What Matters to Us,” The Dancer as Agent Conference website, November 23, 2013, http://oralsite.be/pages/Dancer_As_Agent_About/. 2 Chrysa Parkinson, “Refecting on Practice,” in 6 Months 1 Location (6M1L), ed. Mette Ingvartsen (Everybody’s Publications, 2009), p.31.

10 11 invisible histories and performance, but also often blurring with methods of training or practice. So practice is both the ground for, and totality of, the work of the dancer- Beyond this special case, evidence of process is available in many forms across choreographer. It resists stabilization through naming, being a process that is the arts (amended manuscripts, brush strokes, technical virtuosity), but these continually changing and developing, and may have a special manifestation in 7 things are most often subordinate to a fnal, authoritative rendering or version. and through performance—both on and of stage. Here I am distinguishing For dance, there is a role for process in all facets of the medium: practice from choreographic process and performance as product. In this way • the ongoing process of technical and creative aptitude that requires it could be linked to training and technique; “habitual or regular activity” in 8 attention to a physical practice; Parkinson’s account. However, I do follow Parkinson in acknowledging the • the labour of composition which can require singular or collective efort codependence of the three felds of process in most dance artists’ working life over time and may remain open to change, i.e. remain in process within as a part of their dance practice. performance; and • the process of performance which can alter any stable or authoritative Composition choreography through context. For French dance theorist Laurence Louppe and others, dance is a process of restriction and restraint, a setting of limits upon the always already Practice expressive body. Tis could be applied to both predetermined and spontaneous Many dance artists see performances as windows onto an expanded choreographic composition. Louppe describes dance as “an art of subtraction situation that encompasses past, present, and future, and a gamut of activities 9 which ofers, said Laban, a restricted gamut of authorized motifs.” Choice- and degrees of perceptibility. Parkinson has written beautifully about dance making—as a form of restraint—is at the heart of dance composition; a practice; something she engages in and mentors others through. Asked to simple but important point given that any-movement-whatever describes the defne practice she states: broad feld of contemporary dance practices. Choice-making as a process can be determined by any number of methods (e.g. random structures, sensory I started with the idea that there’s something I do that is not training, process, stimulation, chance systems, formulas, biographical information), and as or product, and that this thing is what underlies the decisions I make about noted, in most works of art this phase ends once a work is completed. training, process, and product. And I wanted to call that thing my practice … . Ten I thought maybe I could say the underlying, over-arching thing I 7 Australian dance theorist Sally Gardner agrees with this defnition of practice: “Practices do is “giving and getting attention.” Ten, more recently, I thought maybe involve doing things, often without any intention of getting results, if results are evidence my practice is just performance … . Te most important thing to me about of things that already have a name. This openness inheres in ‘the live’, the corporeal, identifying my practice is noticing it change, letting it change … . Once a the somatic aspects of practices.” (‘Practising Research, Researching Practice,’ Cultural Studies Review 18, no. 1 [2012]: p. 141.) practice is static, it’s no longer functional. It becomes a marketable object, a 6 product. Practices have to remain volatile, unstable enough to change. 8 Parkinson, “Refecting on Practice,” p. 26. Parkinson would disagree, making a distinction between training (which is “about learning and improving on specifc tasks… . You’re goal-oriented”) and practice which, “for the most part, is independent of teachers, and intensely subjective” (p. 31). 6 Chrysa Parkinson, “Refecting on Practice,” pp. 24-25 and 29. 9 Louppe, Poetics of Contemporary Dance, p. 76.

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Many choreographers include choice-making options within their Performance work—versions of structured improvisations using some of the mechanisms Te context and event of performance alter the nature of a choreographic mentioned above, or entirely improvised works that represent one end of the work; dancing is afected by the space-time in which it appears with degrees spectrum regarding process as practice. However, American choreographer of consciousness about this. So, in comparison to other works of art, dance Steve Paxton argues for a continuation of choice-making by the dancer in the and performance have the unique capacity to adapt to their environment. Tey act of dancing, no matter how fxed the choreographic framework. Paxton can be in an evolving dialogue with their context, enabling the processual 12 comments on his experience performing Simone Forti’s Slant Board (1961): development that embeds the situation in the work. Paxton’s description of performing Slant Board is one example of the performer’s role in keeping the Simone told us (the initial cast) that she worked hard to have an idea and choreography alive as a process. wanted to see those thoughts without other people’s ideas mixing in ... . But In 2013, Chrysa Parkinson and colleagues curated Te Dancer as upon the slant board or in the fountain of people, I noticed I was constantly Agent conference that aimed “to shed light on performing dance artists” making choices. Tere was no time to get out of my thought to explore hers ... approaches and the impact of experiential authorship on artistic production 13 soon we were involved in making choice after choice after choice, each choice and research.” Questions of agency, authorship and power underlie the 10 amplifed by the sense of will which accompanied it. discussions and uncover the interdependency of practice, composition, and performance. Parkinson writes, “we create a lot of procedures. Often these Paxton refers to a proximity between his own thought processes and the procedures are transferred to other contexts … . Who owns a procedure? How 14 act of dancing that squeezes out external choreographic directives under the do you stop a procedure from moving? Would you even want to?” Te recent command of a subjective “will.” If “action is intention,” an internalization of interest in the dancer as agent is surprisingly overdue and reveals the body the imperative may involve degrees of decentering choreographic commands. archive as an unstable locus of shared knowledges and methods. Alongside an Dancer and academic Megan Nicely echoes this sentiment: “Dances—or unrepeatable combination of experiences, habits, and capacities that constitute more specifcally their choreographic directives—can … be considered less as the idiogest of the dancer are patterns of creative behavior, indoctrinating 11 stable entities than propositions for rewriting through movement.” Which technologies, and shared means of emancipating the body from the same. Te leads us to … medium of the dancer is in constant process; a centre of indetermination and the source of a characteristic instability in the art form. Many dance concepts are drawn together in this discussion of process. 10 Steve Paxton, “Performance and Reconstruction of Judson,” Contact Quarterly 7:3/4 (1982), p.58. Te durational aspects of process are essential to the presence/participation

11 Megan V. Nicely, ‘Dancer Walks Away Unscathed. Or, How to Survive a Dance,’ PAJ 12 See Erin Brannigan, “Context, Discipline and Understanding: the Poetics of Shelley 114 (2016): p. 66. Lasica’s Gallery-based Work,” (Performance Paradigm 13 [2017], 97-117) for a discussion of this in the work of Shelley Lasica.

13 ‘The Dancer as Agent,’ The Dancer as Agent Conference website, November 23-24, 2013, http://oralsite.be/pages/Dancer_As_Agent_About/. The conference was curated by Kristine Slettevold, Chrysa Parkinson, and Cecilia Roos, at the University of Dance and Circus, Stockholm.

14 Parkinson, “We Make up What Matters to Us.”

14 15 invisible histories it involves, its status as an event or encounter that is experienced both Event collectively and as a unique, corporeal experience. Te strong afliations of In Wycherley’s work we have an emphasis on the art event as encounter; dance with process sharpens its profle as unstable, contingent, experimental/ the context and the experience. And encounter is processual; it is experience experiential, multiplicitous and changeable, even in its most conservative as experiment. It involves not only the space-time of the performance, forms as tourable repertoire. UK choreographer Jonathan Burrows has often but the event of composition and the labour of physical production. Tis reiterated his understanding of dance as fundamentally unstable. Here he concern is framed by over-arching themes of time and memory. If space- refers to the relationship between his accounts of his practice in written time is common amongst the arts, both dance and the gallery have a special articles and the practice itself, over time: relationship to memory. Memories are encountered in the mind-body where the virtual past is brought into the corporeal present as sensation. Dance – When we repeat our own history like this, we are trying to make sense of specifcally improvised dance – involves a process of negotiation between the past and also to hold the future steady. We do this although we know past, present and future through the medium of the body, the only medium there is no sense to be made, and no steadiness to be borrowed, but we are where concurrent access to all three shapes the unfolding work of art. Te overwhelmed by possibilities and this repetition is sometimes all we have to gallery as archive is memory as institution; artefacts, art forms, aesthetic 15 guide ourselves by. content and architecture all bring the past into the present through objects and spaces. Introducing dance into the museum or gallery space intersects Repetition and anticipation are key terms in Burrows choreographic these two phenomena, bringing a medium into the institution that can discourse, underlining and playing with “problems” of stability in dance. collapse temporal phases within the physical presence of the body, while also interfacing with the physical surroundings, embodying a dialogue with

15 Jonathan Burrows, “Body not ft for purpose,” Performance Research 20:5 (2015), p. multiple pasts and infnite future potentialities. Dancing in the gallery is thus 82. He is referring to this and another article written for Performance Research in 2003, and a process - an unstable, open-ended, negotiation with multiple unfolding the related works. Burrows referred to dance as unstable at an artist’s talk I attended at temporalities and real and imagined connections, both within the event of the Lightmoves Festival of Screendance 2016, Limerick, Ireland (November 2016). performance, and for every spectator participating in that event.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brannigan, Erin, “Choreography and the Gallery: Curation as Revision,” Dance Research Journal 47:1 [2015] Burrows, Jonathan, “Body not ft for purpose,” Performance Research 20:5 (2015), 81-86. Cvejić, Bojana, “Proceduralism,” in Parallel Slalom: A Lexicon of Non-Aligned Poetics, edited by Bojana Cvejić and Goran Sergej Pritas (Belgrade; Zagreb: Walking Theory—TkH, 2013), pp. 239-240. Gardner, Sally, “Practising Research, Researching Practice,” Cultural Studies Review 18, no. 1 (2012): pp. 138-51. Louppe, Laurence, Poetics of Contemporary Dance, translated by Sally Gardner (Alton, Hampshire: Dance Books, 2010). Nicely, Megan V., “Dancer Walks Away Unscathed. Or, How to Survive a Dance,” PAJ 38:3 (2016): pp. 66-76. Parkinson, Chrysa, “Refecting on Practice,” in 6 Months 1 Location (6M1L), edited by Mette Ingvartsen (Everybody’s Publications, 2009), pp. 24-33. Parkinson, Chrysa, “We Make up What Matters to Us,” The Dancer as Agent Conference website, November 23, 2013, http://oralsite.be/pages/Dancer_As_Agent_About/. Paxton, Steve, “Performance and Reconstruction of Judson,” Contact Quarterly 7:3/4 (1982), p.58.

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