Coventry University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY National Dance Platforms. A comparative study of the cases in Germany, the UK, Sri Lanka and Israel Fijalkow, Gustavo Award date: 2020 Awarding institution: Coventry University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of this thesis for personal non-commercial research or study • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission from the copyright holder(s) • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 National Dance Platforms. A comparative study of the cases in Germany, the UK, Sri Lanka and Israel By Gustavo Fijalkow PhD September 2019 Volume I 1 National Dance Platforms. A comparative study of the cases in Germany, the UK, Sri Lanka and Israel By Gustavo Fijalkow September 2019 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the University’s requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2 Certificate of Ethical Approval Applicant: Gustavo Fijalkow Project Title: Dance, Dancers’ Physicalities and Representations of the Nation in the case of National Dance Platforms This is to certify that the above named applicant has completed the Coventry University Ethical Approval process and their project has been confirmed and approved as Medium Risk Date of approval: 03 September 2016 Project Reference NumBer: P45476 3 Content removed on data protection grounds. 4 National Dance Platforms. A comparative study of the cases in the UK, Germany, Israel and Sri Lanka. ABSTRACT This thesis explores the hitherto hardly investigated phenomenon of the national dance platform (NaDaP). NaDaPs are dance festivals in which three elements converge: they raise the claim of representing the nation, they present contemporary dance and their targeted audience is mainly (foreign) dance programmers. Despite the phenomenon being a global(ised) one, it only exists through local iterations. The thesis argues that both local and global dimensions interact and influence each other in the phenomenon. The questions leading the investigation are whether NaDaPs mediate or represent a nation, how they claim national-ness and to what extent this reflects back on the structure and content of each iteration. Using the system of cultural flows proposed by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai and called scapes (Appadurai 1990, 1996), this thesis explores the streams of ideas, people and finances that interact at NaDaPs in their local and global dimensions and problematises the contradictory ways in which dance interplays with global(ised) systems of power. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study produces close readings of platforms in Israel, Britain, Germany and Sri Lanka; specifically, International Exposure 2015, British Dance Edition 2016, Dance Platform Germany 2016 and Shakti. A Space for the Single Body, and explores the ideologies that governed the events. 5 NaDaPs emerged in the 1990s, in the context of a globalised neo-liberal economy that favoured the constitution of dance pieces as marketable goods. While the phenomenon of the NaDaP had the positive effect of increasing the visibility and growth of contemporary dance, this thesis investigates the ideologies governing the notion of contemporaneity and questions whether contemporary dance might at times act as the folk dance of hegemonic nations, while NaDaPs act as agents of a neo-colonial system engaged in expanding its markets. Further, under the lens of the financescape the thesis investigates the situationality of dancers with bodies that are described as ‘non-normate’ for not conforming to presumptions of the ‘non-disabled’ dancer. I argue that they subsume both the resistance to and the endorsement of a system that constructs dance as a commodity and propose ‘non-normatisable’ as a denomination that reflects this complexity. The thesis concludes by discussing the existence of Danceland as a non- territorial imagined community (Anderson 1983) that presents many characteristics of a real-existing nation and paves the way for further explorations of the phenomenon of the NaDaP. The concept of Danceland leads to ask what its own NaDaP would reflect and how it would contrast occurrences in other lands. But more importantly, it emphasises the shared responsibility of all actors in the transnational dance community, to co-create their own environments asserting their positionalities with strong political voices. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................. 10 1.1 SETTING UP ......................................................................................................................................... 10 1.2 SEILTANZ (BALANCING ACT) ....................................................................................... 24 2 THE STAGE ............................................................................................................... 36 2.1 INTRODUCTION ................................ ........................................................................................... 36 2.2 LE BALLET POUR DEMAIN ................................................................................................................. 37 2.3 BRITISH DANCE EDITION (BDE) 2016 ................................................................... 41 2.4 DANCE PLATFORM GERMANY 2016 (DPG 2016) .................................................. 50 2.5 INTERNATIONAL EXPOSURE 2015 ........................................................................ 61 2.6 SRI LANKAN DANCE PLATFORM 2016. SHAKTI.AS PACE FOR THE SINGLE BODY ................. 66 2.7 CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................................................ 76 3 LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................................................. 78 4 METHODOLOGY AND METHODS ...................................................................... 95 4.1 INTRODUCTION ................................ ........................................................................................... 95 4.2 METHODOLOGY -O VERARCHING APPROACH ................................ ...................................... 97 4.3 THE SCAPES ................................................................................................................................................. 98 4.4 THE PROJECT’S DELIMITATIONS.C OMPARATIVE RESEARCH (CASE STUDIES) ................. 101 4.4.1 Time…………………………………………………………………….101 4.4.2 Location .................................................................................................. 102 4.5 GATHERING DATA. METHODS ................................ ............................................................... 103 4.5.1 Fieldwork - observing participant ........................................................... 103 4.5.2 Fieldwork - Semi-structured interviews .................................................. 104 4.6 INTERPRETATION OF DATA.M ETHODS ....................................................................................... 106 4.6.1 Quantitative analysis ............................................................................... 106 7 4.6.2 Descriptive approach, exploratory research and contextual analysis ...... 107 4.6.3 Material-semiotic approach. Close reading and interweaving ................ 109 4.6.4 Grounded Theory .................................................................................... 112 4.6.5 Discourse Analysis .................................................................................. 113 4.7 VALIDITIES ................................................................................................................................................. 115 4.8 ETHICS 117 4.9 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 118 5 … THAT LIFE IS BUT A DREAM, AND DREAMS ARE (NOT) ONLY DREAMS ............... 119 5.1 INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................................... 119 5.2 THE CLAIM OF NATIONAL-NESS OR NATIONAL REPRESENTATION ..................................................... 123 5.2.1 National-ness in the NaDaPs’ names ...................................................... 133 5.3 CONTEMPORANEITYOR NOTIONS OF THE CONTEMPORARY ............................................................ 138 5.4 CONCLUSIONS .......................................................................................................................................... 147 6 CASTINGS ....................................................................................................................... 149 6.1 INTRODUCTION .........................................................................................................................................