As I explained in our first entrance quiz, which detailed our current knowledge of the field, I use technology for work not play. I feel after this course I at least know how to play in the virtual space and I am willing to use the web, digital media, and the like in ways that are demanded by our current modes of communication.

I still value above anything the actuality of the body, motion, and ideas in physical creations of choreography, but I recognize that the virtual realm, the information space, must be explored in dance. Dance, as do all art-forms, reflect, abstract, and discover our human reality – right now that human reality is virtual!

What is your relationship to technology?

I am most interested with the idea that improvisation parallels/reflects the type of communication we engage in on a daily basis, in our everyday lives. We communicate improvisationally in conversation, in response to situations and stimuli, and in response to our inner awareness of emotional, physical, and intellectual processes that we navigate continuously. Improvisation in dance works similarly in that the mover is in a constant state of awareness and response, yet the vocabulary is of abstract movement and form.

Given the premise of this parallel relationship between dance improvisation and life improvisation, what meaning emerges in the viewing and doing of dance improvisation?

Through the abstraction of movement language as apposed to language and symbolic gesture, can dance improvisation offer a deeper understanding of the inter-personal space that we are continually negotiating in every-day experiences and communication? By stripping away the very symbol systems that we have created to better understand one another are we able to establish a level of communication that is pre-verbal, primal, and in essence, human?

In dance the art object can be an improvisation, a piece of set choreography, or an experiential performance where the audience becomes a part of the piece. My understanding of postmodern dance is that the dance vocabulary challenges what constitutes dance movement and the performance venue itself is taken out of the confines of the procsenium arch. But none the less, postmodern dance still engages in the creation of an art object. Jerome Bel challenges the very creation of an art object in his latest work. Ideologically, his work is of the postmodern vein, but is it an art object that the audience can engage with? The art object is a discussion forum, not an ‘other’ being.

What do you think – those of you that saw Jerome Bel’s piece or those that have ever been to a discussion forum, crafted in a way that is almost an art object?  

There is a stark contrast between Pichet’s movement form and its meaning and the modern dance post-modern form. The piece itself is in the style of deconstruction-where there is not crafted dance but instead talking and discussion about what is the nature of performance in the two cultures.

In this piece, I missed the experience of aesthetic viewing that dance so often offers. I was not transported to an “other” space where my mind and body experience art. Yes, I was intrigued by the discussion, the demeanor of the two dance artists, the way in which they sat facing each other for about two hours, and the cultural investigation.

I reflected on dance and the performance medium in this work rather than use dance and the performance medium to reflect on my humanity. It was an experience; but it was not the otherness of an aesthetic experience that makes art art.

Have you experienced work like this? How is work like this be understood from the perspective of viewing/experiencing art when it does not engage in the “otherness” of creation?

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