Practicing Composition: Making Practice Texts, Dialogues and Documents 2011–2013

Practicing Composition: Making Practice Texts, Dialogues and Documents 2011–2013 KIRSI MONNI & RIC ALLSOPP (EDS) 06 KINESIS Practicing composition: Making Practice Texts, Dialogues and Documents from Erasmus Ma Intensive Projects 2011–2013 HZT, Berlin & TeaK, Helsinki Erasmus IP Partner MA Programmes: MA Solo/ Dance/ Authorship (SODA), HZT – Inter-University Centre for Dance Berlin, DE MA Choreography, School of Dance, ArtEZ, Arnhem, NL MA Choreography, Theatre Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, FI MA Dance Theatre: The Body in Performance, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, UK Dance Programme, Falmouth University, UK MA Perfromance Dramaturgy, Academy of Drama Arts, University of Zagreb, HR MA in Performing Arts Practice and Visual Culture, University of Castilla-La Mancha, ES KIRSI MONNI & RIC ALLSOPP (EDS) Practicing Composition: Making Practice Texts, Dialogues and Documents 2011–2013 KINESIS 6 ISBN (print): 978-952-6670-60-7 ISBN (pdf): 978-952-6670-61-4 ISSN (print): 2242-5314 PUBLISHER University of the Arts Helsinki, Theater Academy © 2015, University of the Arts, Theater Academy, Editor & Writers Kinesis 6 The Erasmus Intensive Project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. GRAPHIC DESIGN BOND Creative Agency www.bond.fi COVER IMAGE Jarkko Partanen IMAGES Marion Borriss, Jarkko Partanen, Kirsi Monni LAYOUT Annika Marjamäki, Edita Prima Ltd PRINTED BY Edita Prima Ltd, Helsinki 2015 PAPER Scandia 2000 Natural 240 g/m2 & Scandia 2000 Natural 115 g/m2 FONTS Benton Modern Two & Monosten Contents Introduction: Poetics and Procedures 9 KIRSI MONNI 1. Poetics, Ontology 34 Work, practice, event: on the poietic character of the work of art 34 MIIKA LUOTO Notes on Poetics and Choreography 58 RIC ALLSOPP Composition: Relatedness and collective learning environments 90 KIRSI MONNI & VICTORIA PÉREZ ROYO Subjectivation in Solo Work 114 VICTORIA PÉREZ ROYO Some Thoughts on the Intensive Project 121 EMILIE GALLIER 2. Form, Open Form 125 Something Else: On Latency and Composition 125 RIC ALLSOPP How Do I Know That I Don’t Know? 154 JOÃO DA SILVA AND RIC ALLSOPP performless: dramaturgies of performing less 168 KONSTANTINA GEORGELOU Operations of dis|owning (choreography) 189 KONSTANTINA GEORGELOU Co-Dependent Creation 194 ARI TENHULA Things I Put in My Pocket 207 ELLEN JEFFREY 3. Framing Reality 212 Framing Reality and Self as Other – choreographing the daily 212 SOPHIA NEW & SAARA HANNULA Utopian Choreography: Developing Tools and Techniques for Choreographing Reality 226 SAARA HANNULA Letter to Parents 235 NIELS BOVRI & KIRAN KUMAR Self and Other 240 MARTIN HARGREAVES & SOPHIA NEW 10 Questions about Documentation during Creation 244 SCOTT DELAHUNTA 4. Interruption, Action 248 The Silent Discourse of the Incomplete Work 248 GORAN SERGEJ PRISTAŠ Post-hoc Dramaturgy 261 GORAN SERGEJ PRISTAŠ Performing Lectures 264 KONSTANTINA GEORGELOU AND JASNA ŽMAK Performing Lectures: a workshop 276 KONSTANTINA GEORGELOU & JASNA ŽMAK Speculating About the Past, Looking into the Future 282 SERGIU MATIS & MILA PAVIčEVIć 5. Appendices 292 Appendix A: Erasmus IP overview 292 KIRSI MONNI Appendix B: List of Participants 302 6. Contributor’s Biographies 306 Photo: Kirsi Monni 9 Introduction: Poetics and Procedures KIRSI MONNI This collection of texts reflects some of the different discourses, practices and approaches that were explored by the participants of the Erasmus Intensive Project (IP) Practicing Composition: Making Practice initiated and co-ordinated by the MA SODA (Solo/ Dance/ Authorship) programme at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT), University of the Arts, Berlin (2011–2013). The IP aimed to provide a framework for the live, interactive sharing, discussion and analysis of dramaturgical, compositional and choreographic approaches to the making and composition of physically-based performance that are currently in use in a number of practice-led graduate dance and choreographic Master’s programmes in Eu- rope. The central investigation of the IP was to ask how these approaches differ from or complement each other; and what kinds of pedagogical methods or approaches are used to develop, train and teach practice-led education in the composition and making of performance.1 In the field of performing arts education the IPPracticing Com- position: Making Practice was quite unique; it gathered together for three two-week long annual meetings the students, staff and lecturers from seven European universities and six MA programmes 1 This is how the main objectives were described in the initial Erasmus IP application. See ‘Practicing Composition: Making Practice’ in Compendium of Selected Intensive Programmes with German Project Coordination 2011/12 ed. Beata Körner, Bonn: DAAD, pp. 9–12 (in Online Brochure www.eu.daad.de) PRACTICING COMPOSITION: MAKING PRACTICE 10 in addition to guest lecturers from academia and the arts.2 Not all the persons were present at all times; the students attended either once or twice depending on annual or biannual intakes; the MA programme in Madrid was a new participant for the third round (2013) and keynotes, lecturers and workshops varied every year. But the main participating MA programmes and universities stayed, with HZT carrying the role of the initiator and main co-ordinator, with the second IP (2012) organized by the Theatre Academy, Helsinki.3 The collection of texts which makes up Practicing Composition: Making Practice includes some of the keynote lectures that were held during the IPs as well as descriptions of most of the workshops, but also some new texts, dialogues and articles that are inspired by the encounters that happened and the new research relationships which were created. So this book is neither a pure documentation of the IP nor simply an account of its proceedings, but more like an enhanced documentation that goes one step further. As Goran Sergej Pristaš notes in his article in this book, “[a]ll the encounters are aleatory and their affects random”. Therefore I make no attempt to even try to guess, summarize or predict those consequences, ex- periences or outcomes that are followed by these encounters in the IPs. Instead I will note just a few things which would give reasons for this book being other than just documentation, but might also give a little bit of an overview. One word or concept that objectively describes the IP would be ‘difference’ – of student backgrounds, of their phases as artists, of their artistic approaches, of theoretical discourses, of references. 2 See Appendix B for a full list of participants from 2011–13. 3 See Appendix A for an overview of the context and contents of each IP. 11 This partly also includes staff members, our differences in discursive familiarities or interests. In spite of differences in backgrounds the common approach to the studies as well as the mind set of the students was very ambitious and discursive, marking a clear step further from BA to MA level in art education. There has been a gradual but nowadays paradigmatic change in art education from purely vocational training to investigative curricula, to studies that are integrating practical and theoretical modes of studying, and that paradigmatic change is what this publication reflects, documents and contributes towards. In many cases the challenges of these kinds of IP events are not only to do with the subject matter, but also with social situations and the collaborations they demand with many unfamiliar people. In these situations the lack of a common conceptual clarity and the sometimes sporadic nature of communication on the one hand is balanced by the richness and diversity of approaches, views and discourses on the other. In spite of the many challenges that arose during these IP gatherings I would like to note the overwhelming openness and kindness of the participants. I do not remember ex- periencing anything other than people treating each other with kindness, support, patience, openness and courage. The Book During the IP a lot of student feedback and other documentation material was produced, gathered and compiled. The materials varied from official reports for the EU to personal study diaries, com- mentaries, video recordings, photos and reference materials. Not all of it is still available or meant for public distribution, but some were, namely the workshop descriptions and some of the keynote lectures. During the final IP the idea of this present publication PRACTICING COMPOSITION: MAKING PRACTICE 12 was established and the guidelines for it were drawn up. The idea of sheer documentation was not intriguing. Instead enhancing the encounters and elaborating some of the themes that were introduced and handled during the IP seemed appropriate. Hence the idea of setting up dialogues between the contributors. The IP title Practicing Composition: Making Practice is quite in- teresting in that respect. During the first IP it became apparent that the actual concept of composition was not part of the study curricula in most of the programmes.4 As Victoria Pérez Royo states in this book, she has seen a tendency for many of the modules that used to be called ‘Composition’ to change their names to new terms, such as ‘Research Methodologies’ or ‘Introduction to Prob- lems of Research’. This is to avoid the “danger of proceduralism or narrow understanding of composition as an application of ready- made procedures without any deep questioning of their pertinence in relation to the research processes”.5 That was also the case in the IP workshops; in the title, ‘composition’ was a core concept of the IP but it was not actually explicitly dealt with as such. Instead diverse strategies for performance creation and artistic research were introduced. Still the question of composition lingered in the air. Another core question arose around the function and understanding of the role of tools (practices, methods, strategies) in con- temporary art pedagogy.

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