SIBMAS-TLA Conference: Working Session One

July 9th, 2014 | Conferences, Events, Related Organizations, SIBMAS

Working Session I:  Revealing the Unseen:  Reflections on Dance, Documentation, and Ontology

Chair: Leahkim Gannett, University of California, Santa Barbara

 

 

The Digital Archiving of the Dance Rehearsal Process in Siobhan Davies’ RePlay: Sharing Hidden Knowledge

Sarah Whatley, Coventry University, Coventry

 

Ms. Whatley discussed creation of the archive of the work of Siobhan Davies (called RePlay); the artist’s involvement with the archive; and of Ms. Davies’ use and re-use of the material in the archive.  Included in the archive are the “scratches;” which are little bits of film of the dancers in Ms. Davies’ company as they work on their contributions to the dance piece.  MCS Whatley talked about the archiving of this raw footage; and how the dancers had later used them.

 

 

 

 

Recording, Revealing, and Reading the Work: The Ontological Implications of Digital Scoring Practices for Dance

Hetty Blades, Coventry University, Coventry

 

Blades spoke about the digital scoring of dance and used Deborah Hay’s work No Time To Fly for William Forsyth’s Motion Bank as an example. She addressed the inadequacies of the usual dance notation systems, Laban Notation and Benesh Movement Notation, in capturing the body centric type of dancing of Ms. Hay (or any dancer).

 

 

 

 

 

Hold Your Breath: Motion Capture and Breathing Patterns in Dance Transmission

Laura Karreman, Ghent University, Ghent

 

Ms. Karreman talked about motion capture and its history as a method for capturing/archiving dancing.  She also showed film of some of Rosas danst Rosas by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, pointing especially to how the breath is essential to the performance and how that is lost in motion capture.

 

 

 

In the questions segment, the three speakers discussed the ever-looming copyright issues in archiving performance; 3d video for dance archiving; the importance of the breath to the dance; and some other performers who have been motioned captured (Marcel Marceau), and have used it in dance creation (Bebe Miller).

 

Beth Kerr
University of Texas at Austin