In a studio at École supérieure de ballet du Québec, Joysanne Sidimus is staging the first movement of Balanchine’s Concerto Barocco. A student drifts toward the phrase shape of Bach’s Double Violin Concerto in D minor, following the melody the way a dancer trained on musicality might. Sidimus stops her. “Don’t listen to the music.… Continue reading The Répétiteur: When the Score Is a Person
The Arrow Points Left: Reading the Tweedle Dee Half of a Paired Costume
An arrow points left. Above it, in letters that look like they were cut from a carnival sign and shaken loose, the words TWEEDLE DEE sit stacked over I’M WITH DUM. The arrow is not decorative. It is a grammatical instruction: the body wearing this shirt is the referent, and the partner is somewhere off… Continue reading The Arrow Points Left: Reading the Tweedle Dee Half of a Paired Costume
The Jam: Contact Improvisation’s Ungoverned Institution and the Politics of Who Touches Whom
On a Tuesday night in a church basement in any mid-sized city, a dozen people take off their shoes and stand in a circle. Someone says, “We’ll start with a warm-up, then open jam.” There is no teacher, no choreography, no membership card. Two hours later, strangers have rolled across each other’s backs, held each… Continue reading The Jam: Contact Improvisation’s Ungoverned Institution and the Politics of Who Touches Whom
How the Demand to Title a Work Before It Exists Deforms What the Work Can Become
The deadline is Tuesday. The studio in Brussels smells like rosin and the particular staleness of a room that has been closed over the weekend. Monday afternoon. The choreographer — let us call her M — sits on the floor with her laptop open, her back against the wall, her left knee bent at an… Continue reading How the Demand to Title a Work Before It Exists Deforms What the Work Can Become
How the Body Carries Political Meaning Even in Abstract Movement
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How Choreographic Scores Prescribe Without Determining: What Notation Systems Reveal About the Body’s Argument
It happened in a rehearsal studio in the third week of February. A dancer I had been watching for an hour—the second cast, learning the phrase from the first—stopped mid-phrase, shook her wrists loose, and ran through the next eight counts at roughly thirty percent capacity. Her arms traced the right shapes but arrived late.… Continue reading How Choreographic Scores Prescribe Without Determining: What Notation Systems Reveal About the Body’s Argument
Why You Should Watch Dance Made by People Who Do Not Care If You Enjoy It
There is a particular kind of discomfort that arrives in the first ten minutes of a performance when you realize the choreographer has not made a single concession to your pleasure. The lights may be too bright or too dim. The sound may be a low hum that never resolves. The dancers may be moving… Continue reading Why You Should Watch Dance Made by People Who Do Not Care If You Enjoy It