i Ungoverning Dance ii Oxford Studies in Dance Teory MARK FRANKO, Series Editor French Moves: Te Cultural Politics of le hip hop Felicia McCarren Watching Weimar Dance Kate Elswit Poetics of Dance: Body, Image, and Space in the Historical Avant- Gardes Gabriele Brandstetter Dance as Text: Ideologies of the Baroque Body, Revised Edition Mark Franko Choreographies of 21st Century Wars Edited by Gay Morris and Jens Richard Giersdorf Ungoverning Dance: Contemporary European Teatre Dance and the Commons Ramsay Burt iii Ungoverning Dance Contemporary European Theatre Dance and the Commons RAMSAY BURT 1 iv 1 Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Burt, Ramsay, 1953– author. Title: Ungoverning dance : contemporary European theatre dance and the commons / Ramsay Burt. Description: Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2017. | Series: Oxford studies in dance theory | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifers: LCCN 2016000082 | ISBN 9780199321926 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780199321933 (pbk. : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Dance—Europe. | Dance—Social aspects—Europe. | Modern dance—Europe. Classifcation: LCC GV1643 .B87 2016 | DDC 792.7094—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016000082 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Paperback printed by WebCom, Inc., Canada Hardback printed by Bridgeport National Bindery, Inc., United States of America v CONTENTS List of Figures vii 1. Contemporary European Dance and the Commons 1 2. Transatlantic Comparisons 31 3. Rethinking Virtuosity 57 4. Dance and Post- Fordism 81 5. Laughter from the Surround 99 6. Alone to the World: Te Solo Dancer 117 7. Performing Friendship 141 8. Dancing Relationality: Responsibility without Obligation 165 9. Te Politics of History and Collective Memory in Contemporary Dance 187 10. Virtual Dance and the Politics of Imagining 211 11. Conclusion: Keywords 231 Acknowledgments 239 Bibliography 241 Index 251 vi vii LIST OF FIGURES 1. Frédéric Seguette and Claire Haenni in Jérôme Bel (1995). Photo by Herman Sorgeloos 43 2. Fort Blossom Revisited by John Jasperse (2012). Photo by Lindsay Browning 44 3. Te Café Müller section of Fake It! (2007) at Exodos Festival. Photo by Nada Zgank 78 4. BADco. in 1 Poor and One 0 (2008). Photo by Ranka Latinović 88 5. Natalie Bookchi, Mass Ornament (2009). Exhibition view When We Share More Tan Ever, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, curated by Esther Ruelfs, Teresa Gruber, architecture and graphic design Studio Miessen, Studio Mahr©Henning Rogge 93 6. Xavier Le Roy in Self Unfnished (1998). Photo by Katrin Schoof 131 7. Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker in 3Abschied (2010). Photo by Anne Van Aerschot 136 8. Mathilde Monnier and Maria La Ribot in Gustavia. Photo by Marc Coudrais 147 9. Jonathan Burrows and Matteo Fargion in Cheap Lecture (2009). Photo by Herman Sorgeloos 157 10. Olga de Soto holding up a screen on which is projected a video of Suzanne Batbedat in histoire(s) (2004). Photo by Dolores Marat 200 11. Martin Nachbar in Uhrleben Aufeben (2008). Photo by Susanne Beyer 204 12. Ivana Müller’s While We Were Holding It Together (2008). Photo by Karijn Kakebeeke 220 viii ix Ungoverning Dance x 1 1 Contemporary European Dance and the Commons Kaaitheater, Brussels, March 24, 2015. I was glad that I was in Row B and not further back when Xavier Le Roy came and stood between the front row and the stage to talk to the audience at the start of Sans titre (2014) (Untitled 2014). Te frst of three parts of this piece was titled ‘Sans titre, a Lecture’. Le Roy began by announcing that the performance couldn’t go ahead as planned. His task for the frst part of the evening was to have lost his memory. So perhaps the audience could assist? He read out the programme description which men- tioned an earlier piece Sans titre to see if this might help. Tis work had been presented anonymously in a few theatres in 2005 and had been performed on a stage so dark that no one could properly make out what was happen- ing: ‘With that aim, the movements were composed to produce zones of in- determinacy between animate and inanimate, object and subject, visible and invisible, and it was staged in a very dark situation.’1 It was not even clear from the programme whether Le Roy had created this earlier piece or even performed in it. He asked if anyone had perhaps seen it and could remember anything about it. Awkwardness spread through the audience. A few people were brave and said something; some seemed helpful, others expressed irrita- tion in a provocative way. Te second part, ‘Trio Sans Titre’, seemed very like the description of the 2005 performance. Te stage was so dark that it was very difcult to see an- ything. A recording of Béla Bartok’s piece Music for String Percussion and Celesta (1936) provided an atmospheric background. A dancer could just be made out coming on from the back and moving while lying on the foor in what at frst looked like a pile of cloth. Gradually, as the lighting became a 1. Xavier Le Roy, “Sans titre (2014),” programme notes, Kaaitheater (2015). 2 2 U NGOVERNING DANCE little less obscure, there seemed to be a second dancer and perhaps a life- size dummy, but if so, there still wasn’t light enough to make out which was the dummy and which was the live dancer. Movements seemed to ebb and fow in ways that ofered new possibilities for hearing the intensities of mood in Bartok’s music. By the end of this part, the lighting, though still difuse, was clear enough to make out a puppet on ropes that Le Roy was manipulating while executing a duet with it. Both were wearing what looked like coarse hes- sian onesies that covered the face in a dehumanising way. Te efect seemed similar to that described in the programme of the 2005 piece, which evoked ‘zones of indeterminacy between animate and inanimate, object and subject’. Te lights were clear enough in the third part, ‘Solo Sans titre,’ performed to two tracks by DJ Shadow, the frst quite mellow and bluesy, the second with a stronger hip- hop beat. Wearing the same onesie but with his head now un- covered, Le Roy started again lying down and gradually came up to stand- ing while performing very similar movement material to the previous section, uncanny and puppet- like but looking diferent because of the diferent music. Le Roy is a self- taught dancer, so his dancing does not seem to have any con- nection with conventional dance vocabularies; but, afer more than twenty years of performing professionally, his movements attest to an extraordinary physical knowledge and a clarity of focus in his body. Nevertheless, there is nothing remarkable about his movement, which potentially any non- disabled dancer could execute. Afer a bit, Le Roy disconcertingly started screaming and kept it up continuously for three minutes. In fact, all three parts he per- formed were disconcerting in diferent ways, the frst because of the request for the audience to participate in the discussion, the second and third because of the seemingly non- human nature of the movement material performed. Te most awkward and challenging part of the evening was the frst part. Although it was called a lecture, from my point of view as someone who teaches in a university, it was more like a seminar where the students are extremely reluctant to say anything. Whereas in such situations, the tutor tries to get a response from the students, Le Roy remained quite neutral. Ann Moradian, reviewing Sans titre (2014) in Paris, observed, ‘He asks us, indistinctly, for ideas on how to proceed, but doesn’t follow any suggestions ofered.’ She goes on, ‘Someone proposes that the audience perform part one (which of course, Le Roy nixes as he has every other proposition we’ve given— either a lame excuse or by ignoring the suggestion altogether).’2 Tese difcult interactions with the audience, I propose, were in themselves the 2. Ann Moradian, “Impressions from France: Xavier Le Roy’s ‘Sans Titre,’” Dance Enthusiast, December 22, 2014, http:// www.dance- enthusiast.com/ features/ view/ Xavier- Le- Roy. 3 Dance and the Commons 3 point, rather than any ideas raised in the discussion. Tere have been simi- lar interactions between performer and beholder in earlier pieces by Le Roy, including his lecture performance Product of Circumstances (1999) and sub- sequently in Product of Other Circumstances (2009), production (2010), and low pieces (2011). Discussing interactions between performers and individual visitors in the gallery- based work production, Le Roy observes that the piece is successful as it transforms and acts on the time that the visitor spends with the work.