Choreo-graphy The Deinstitutionalisation of the Body and the Event of Writing Je Yun Moon Visual Culture, Goldsmiths College, University of London For the Degree of Ph.D. October 2016 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------7 Introduction. Choreographed By, Not Curated By-------------------------------------------------------------------9 Losing One’s Way, Mapped: the Contemporary Disciplinary Crisis in Art-------------------14 Choreography in the Curatorial----------------------------------------------------------------------22 Choreo-graphy as the Event of Writing-------------------------------------------------------------30 Chapter 1. What Makes Dance Dance? – A Reformulation of the Body and Its Institutionalisation Two Points of Departure------------------------------------------------------------------------------38 Institutionalisation of Dance in the West----------------------------------------------------------43 Jérôme Bel’s Pichet Klunchun and Myself----------------------------------------------------------51 The Body Under the ‘Garment of Grace’------------------------------------------------------------61 Not Everyone Charmed by Charmatz’s Enfant------------------------------------------------------65 Chapter 2. What Makes Dance Choreography? – Binding the Body with the Technology of Writing Tactics in the Institutionalisation of Dance--------------------------------------------------------72 Writing Emerging as a Deconstructive Strategy--------------------------------------------------79 Foundational Instability of Logocentrism---------------------------------------------------------82 Choreography Precedes Dance----------------------------------------------------------------------88 2 The Choreographer’s Body Never Refers to Itself-----------------------------------------------90 Signature Event as a Breaking Force----------------------------------------------------------------94 Signature Event in Bel’s (In)felicitous Instructions--------------------------------------------100 Chapter 3. What Makes Choreography a Truth Game? – Disturbing the Modern Subject Machine Choreographic Production of Subjectivity-------------------------------------------------------105 Rethinking the Choreographer-Master via Foucault’s Rethinking of Power--------------108 Foucault’s Genealogical Investigation into the Practice of Self-Examination-------------112 The Body to be Interpreted-------------------------------------------------------------------------118 Problematising the Mode of Operation as a Choreographer----------------------------------121 Neither De Smedt Nor Platel------------------------------------------------------------------------126 De Smedt/Platel/Burrows/Salamon/Le Roy---------------------------------------------------130 Chapter 4. What Makes Choreography Research? – De-Signifying the Body within the State of Not-Yet-Knowing Reconstituting the Field of Knowledge via a Foucauldian Conception of Power----------138 Dance-Theatre as a Form of Research------------------------------------------------------------141 Free Time and/or Work Time----------------------------------------------------------------------145 Can One Learn Butoh in Two Hours?--------------------------------------------------------------150 Joseph Jacotot’s Radical Pedagogy-----------------------------------------------------------------156 Turning Knowledge of Ignorance into an Epistemological Game----------------------------163 3 Chapter 5. How Does Choreography Reinvent Spectatorship? – Bringing About a Space of Appearance for Other Bodies An Internal Contradiction in the Victimisation of Spectatorship----------------------------169 Archaeology of the Demonisation of the Demos--------------------------------------------------173 The Unrealisation of Given Roles------------------------------------------------------------------180 The Agora Project as the Process Itself------------------------------------------------------------183 An Aesthetic Revolution: Subverting the Given Distribution of the Sensible--------------189 The Performance of Equality: Reactivating Spectatorship------------------------------------194 Becoming a Virtuosic Spectator in the Process of Negotiation-------------------------------200 Chapter 6. How Does Choreography Reconfigure the Body as an Event? – Slipping Away From the Logic of Representation Rethinking the Body via a Space of Appearance------------------------------------------------204 Rethinking Choreography via Nancy’s Conception of the Body-----------------------------208 Rethinking the Spatiotemporal Conditions of Dance------------------------------------------214 Rewriting of Dance-Theatre as Exhibition-------------------------------------------------------219 The Event of Being a Body With Other Bodies---------------------------------------------------225 The Choreographer’s Body as a Tipping Point Between Memory and Anticipation------228 Conclusion. Conditions of the Questions-------------------------------------------------------------------------234 What makes dance dance?--------------------------------------------------------------------------236 What makes dance choreography?----------------------------------------------------------------242 What makes choreography a truth game?-------------------------------------------------------248 4 What makes choreography research?------------------------------------------------------------251 How does choreography reinvent spectatorship?----------------------------------------------255 How does choreography reconfigure the body as an event?----------------------------------259 BIBLIOGRAPHY-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------263 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS-------------------------------------------------------------------------274 5 All the work presented within this dissertation is my own. NOTE: Citations are footnoted in Chicago style 6 Abstract Choreography is commonly understood as a technical term that describes what the choreographer does in a literal sense: writing the dancing bodies according to a master’s set narrative. However, recent events in contemporary choreography suggest a different possibility of articulating choreography as a technique of offering rather than a technique of domination over other bodies. Through an analysis of some groundbreaking choreographic experiments by Xavier Le Roy, Jérôme Bel, Boris Charmatz, Eszter Salamon, Christine De Smedt, Jan Ritsema, and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, which have gained visibility since the late 1990s in the global art scene beyond the Western institution of dance, this thesis aims to theorise this shift in what choreography is and can be. In an attempt to theorise choreography as a technique of offering, this thesis illuminates the relationship between some of the tactical operations in contemporary choreographic experiments and the post-structuralist rethinking of power, institution, the body, subjectivity and knowledge production. Turning to Michel Foucault’s rethinking of power and Jacques Rancière’s challenge of the position of mastery, it aims to articulate the tactical deconstructions of the choreographer-master in contemporary choreographic experiments. Borrowing Hannah Arendt’s notion of a ‘space of appearance’ and Jean-Luc Nancy’s rethinking of body, it attempts to articulate how choreography as a spatiotemporal technique offers spaces of appearances for other bodies. This thesis also highlights a different possibility of articulating choreography by positioning it in the critical field called the ‘curatorial’. Reflecting the contemporary disciplinary crisis in art, where the given methodologies and tools no longer do the job that they used to do, there are increasing demands from cultural producers for different 7 modes of operations in order to open up new critical possibilities of interdisciplinary research. In thinking through Le Roy and De Keersmaeker’s ‘choreographed’ exhibitions, this thesis aims to rethink choreography in terms of the curatorial. This also means to rethink the curatorial in terms of choreography, where both theatre-making and exhibition-making can be rearticulated as a matter of body in relation to other bodies. 8 Introduction. Choreographed By, Not Curated By ‘BZZZZZZZZZZ’ is the jolting sound I hear as I enter the empty gallery at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies in Barcelona. Inside the gallery, there is nothing but six performers who dramatically cease all activity on my entrance into the exhibition space. And the noise they make seems to function as a reset button that prompts three performers to exit the room swiftly, only to return moments later and encircle me. Dispersing and then organising themselves into a preconceived arrangement across the space, the performers return to what they were doing before they were interrupted by my appearance. This is what happens during the first few moments of my entrance into Retrospective (2012), a solo exhibition choreographed by the French choreographer Xavier Le Roy. I hear three performers saying out loud the production dates of Le Roy’s choreographic works. Then, these performers perform them in chronological order, to their own varied rhythms. But the ways in which they re-enact Le Roy’s works here are all different. One performer is stuck in an image extracted from one of Le Roy’s solo works, as if he is a human sculpture. Another performer, like a video, repeats a loop of choreography.