UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Mobilizing the Score: Generative Choreographic Structures, 1960-Present a Dissertation Subm
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Mobilizing the Score: Generative Choreographic Structures, 1960-Present A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Alison D’Amato 2015 © Copyright by Alison D’Amato 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Mobilizing the Score Generative Choreographic Structures, 1960-Present by Alison D’Amato Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Susan Leigh Foster, Chair Since the late 16th century, choreographers have documented their work using notated scores, many of which rely on standardized codification to facilitate accurate choreographic reproduction. This dissertation focuses on scores developed in the last fifty years, which, by contrast, suggest notation’s generative potential by deploying indeterminacy, audience participation, and non-reproductive documentation. Not only do such scores reconfigure roles for choreographers, performers, spectators and readers, but they also elucidate how schematization lends choreographic material increased mobility. That is, while the scores addressed in this analysis might record and represent choreographic material, they also render that material responsive to change by welcoming unpredictable instances of application and reception. With respect to generative scoring, New York City's experimental arts community between 1960-61 stands as a touchstone, giving rise to a wealth of unconventional scores by choreographers, composers, writers, directors, and visual artists. This investigation examines scores from that period (Simone Forti's writings in An Anthology and Jackson Mac Low's The ii Pronouns), as well as later works that draw on key concepts and strategies of the time. Recent examples include: Deborah Hay's Solo Commissioning Project, William Forsythe's Synchronous Objects, Ralph Lemon’s Geography Trilogy, and dances by Yvonne Meier, Ishmael Houston- Jones, and Julie Tolentino. Such works illustrate the enduring influence of early 1960s innovation while attending to the ways in which contemporary choreographers continue to push the score in new directions. In each case, I emphasize the rootedness of the score within a clearly defined choreographic practice. I also use concrete examples to reflect upon broader theoretical questions that come to the fore in light of the shift toward generativity: specifically a constellation of issues concerning textuality, participation and the archive. By focusing on the score as a concrete manifestation of choreographic thinking rather than its residue, I approach the representation of dance as a creative act that dovetails with physical practice in distinct, and sometimes surprising, ways. My goal is to supplant theoretical generalizations about the relationship between dance and textual representation by attending to the many ways in which contemporary choreographic practices revel in their intertwining. iii The dissertation of Alison D’Amato is approved. Anurima Banerji Liz Kotz Lionel Popkin Susan Leigh Foster, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv Table of Contents Abstract of the Dissertation ii Vita vii Introduction 1 Project Overview 9 Methodology 18 Looking Ahead, Looking Back 23 Chapter One 27 Reworking the Score, 1960-61: Jackson Mac Low and Simone Forti Precedents in Dance: Connection and Diversion 30 Precedents in Music: Midcentury Disturbance 34 An Interdisciplinary, Post-Cagean, Score Culture 39 Jackson Mac Low: Writing Dances for the Dancers 44 Simone Forti: Crystallizing Choreographic Concepts 58 Conclusion 74 Chapter Two 77 Language Made Bodily: Deborah Hay and Yvonne Meier From the General to the Work-Specific: Theorizing Multiple Relationships Between Movement and Language 84 Deborah Hay: Learning the Body’s Lessons 96 Yvonne Meier: Establishing and Dismantling Choreographic Authority 112 Conclusion 127 Chapter Three 129 Participatory Scores and the Choreographic Encounter: Ishmael Houston-Jones and Julie Tolentino The Politics of Participation: Theorizing Engaged Spectatorship 132 Ishmael Houston Jones: Interrogating Desire and (Incomplete) Surrender 144 v Julie Tolentino: Being Together, Shaping a Dance 159 Conclusion 177 Chapter Four 180 Generative Documentation: Ralph Lemon and William Forsythe Dance and Ephemerality: Distancing Documentation and Loss 183 Ralph Lemon: An Archive of Excess 199 William Forsythe: From Dance to Data to (Extra-Bodily) Object 213 Conclusion 227 Conclusion 230 Toward Generativity References 241 vi VITA Education Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London, UK 2005-2006 MA in European Dance Theatre Practice with Distinction Thesis: “Choreographic Textuality: The Dancing Body Confronting Words” Readers: Martin Hargreaves, Valerie Preston-Dunlop, Tony Thatcher Choreographic Presentations: “She’s Unfaithful,” Graduate School Showcase “How Did We Cheat?,” Graduate School Performance Sharing Haverford College, Haverford, PA 1998-2002 BA in Philosophy with Minor in Dance (Bryn Mawr College) Teaching California Institute of the Arts Modern Dance History Fall 2015 UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Individually designed & taught courses Writing the Language of Movement: Dance Notation in Theory & Practice Spring 2015 Beginning Modern/Postmodern Technique Winter 2014 Teaching Assistant/Associate Introduction to Dance Studies (with Susan Leigh Foster) Spring 2014 Documenting Culture (with Aparna Sharma) Winter 2014 Arts Encounters (with David Gere and Meryl Friedman) Fall 2013 Senior Honors Projects (with Lionel Popkin) Winter & Spring 2012 History of Modern/Postmodern Dance (with Janet O'Shea) Fall 2011 Haverford College Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Introduction to Philosophy Fall 2001 Publications Interview with Prumsodun Ok. Native Strategies: Next Steps. No. 2 (Winter-Spring 2012): 26-31. “Fleshmitten.” Itch. Volume 14 (Winter 2012): 20-23. “She's Unfaithful: A Script for Performance.” Choreographic Practices. Volume 1, Issue 1 (February 2011): 53-59. vii Conference Presentations Society of Dance History Scholars/Congress On Research In Dance 2014 Writing Dancing/Dancing Writing, University of Iowa (Iowa City) “Performing Interpretation: Writing for the Body in Three Indeterminate Language Scores” Dance Under Construction/CORD Special Topics 2013 Tactical Bodies: The Choreography of Non-Dancing Subjects, University of California, Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA) “Anna and Lawrence Halprin: Choreographing Body and Environment with the RSVP Cycles” Dance Under Construction: Reimagining Archives in Motion 2012 University of California, Riverside (Riverside, CA) “Re-choreographing the Archive: Simone Forti in An Anthology” Society of Dance History Scholars 2012 Dance and the Social City, University of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA) “Bodies Under the Influence: Anne Bass, Sy Sar, and the Politics of Patronage” Objects of Knowledge, Objects of Exchange: Contours of (Inter)disciplinarity 2009 Mellon Graduate Student Conference, Harvard University Humanities Center “Legible Bodies: Movement, Meaning and Ethical Engagement in Performance” Laban International Conference 2008 The Dynamic Body in Space, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance “Choreography and Excess” Honors and Awards University of California, Los Angeles Collegium of University Teaching Fellows 2014-2015 Dissertation Year Fellowship 2014-2015 Graduate Research Mentorship 2012-2013 Graduate Summer Research Mentorship ` 2011, 2012 Wayland D. Hand Award 2011 Dean's Non-Resident Tuition Scholarship 2010 Regent's Stipend 2010 Jack Kent Cooke Graduate Scholarship 2005 viii Introduction Written or oral, graphic or language-based, detailed or sparse, contemporary choreographic scores distill and transmit information in as many different ways as there are dances. A dance’s score might be tacked to the wall in a rehearsal room, comprehensible only to those who have been trained to parse its representational codes. It might be hidden away in a choreographer’s notebook, a cryptic and personal visualization of the structures being fleshed out by dancing bodies. Conversely, it might be much more widely legible, perhaps even shared with a dance’s spectators so that they might better follow along with its action or understand how it was made. A score might bear words or images, conveying spatial patterns, timing, or movement ideas. It might even represent the shape of a dancer’s thoughts, containing the images or principles that govern her attention over the course of performance. In short, a score might be any document, object or statement that conveys choreographic structure. In doing so, scores occupy a territory between concept and event. They mediate and translate, standing somewhat apart from dancing to materialize choreographic structure in language and code. Though scores fulfill any number of practical purposes – perhaps mapping a choreographer’s ideas in the first stages of a creative process or serving the performer as memory aids further along – they also manifest deeper conceptual and ideological frameworks, particularly those that shape various forms of engagement with the dance. Scores address potentially responsive dancers, spectators and readers; they likewise delineate, and sometimes shift, choreographic labor, giving rise to shared vocabularies that open up the work (and 1 pleasures) of dance making. In what follows, I hope to illuminate the principle functions of an array of scores in the context of contemporary