NARRATIVES IN MULTIPLE TEXTS

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1 Published in Stephanie Burridge (ed.) (2006) Shifting Sands: Dance in Asia and the Pacific published by Ausdance (the Australian Dance Council). NARRATIVES IN MULTIPLE TEXTS In 1927, Isadora Duncan wrote: It has taken me years of struggle, hard work and research to learn to make one simple gesture, and I know enough about the Art of writing to realize that it would take me again just so many years of concentrated effort to write one simple, beautiful sentence How can we write the truth about ourselves? Do we even know it? i Duncan articulated some of the challenges facing dance researchers who work with the multiple texts that are the language of dance. To begin this article I will present some examples of early dance research in Australia. In Australia, major anthropological studies of Aboriginal social and cultural practices in remote indigenous communities occurred in the 1950 s, for example, Charles P. Mountford s major American-Australian Scientific Expeditions to Arnhem Land ii. Yet the focus was typically on the function of ritual, associated kinship systems, the calendar of events of the community rather than details of the ephemeral activities, including dance, associated with this. Men established the field and in Aboriginal societies many secret/scared rituals occurred whereby the opposite sex were forbidden to watch or participate. Descriptions of women dancing were rare from these early accounts and it was generally believed that their role in ritual was minimal. Much later, female anthropologists, for instance Dianne Bell in 1983 iii, documented the extensive ritual practices of the Yuendemu women of the Australian Central Desert and their function within the community. Margaret Clunies-Ross, Drid Williams, Andre Grau and others also contributed important studies to the role of women in the communities they visited. Dance historians and critics were active in Australia from the early days of the British penal colony (colonized in 1788). Convicts built the first theatre in 1798 to stage their own productions and within 50 years, a thriving scene of theatre and dance flourished. Australia s first full-length ballet production of La Sylphide opened the Queen s

2 Theatre in Melbourne in Troupes continued to tour Australia presenting the latest productions and artists from Europe. During this time there was scant interest in the arts of the indigenous Australians. In his book, Balletomane's Album the British critic Arnold L. Haskell makes what must be one of the first and rare acknowledgments of Aboriginal culture as something worth examining as a source of artistic inspiration. He accompanied the tour of the Covent Garden Russian Ballet to Australia in 1938 and observed: It may be argued that the U.S.A. and Australia are not countries that inspire choreography Let us take Australia, which may seem the most unpromising field of all There are museums rich in the lore and decorative art of a primitive race to whom dancing is a vital necessity all art, whether primitive or sophisticated, should be studied by the descendants of Noverre. iv Haskell also includes the now famous photograph of an Aboriginal dancer, One Pound Jimmy Tjungurrayi, alongside that of ballerina Tatiana Riabouchinska with the caption: He is a great dancer... so is she. v Since the mid-1940 s, Australian choreographers have been influenced by indigenous dance vi. In 1955, American dancer, choreographer and anthropologist, Beth Dean (founder of the Pacific Island Arts Festival), and her husband Victor Carell toured indigenous Australia in order to learn about Aboriginal dance and gain source material for her choreography Corroboree (1954) vii. It is interesting to note that she focused primarily on the men s dancing and created and performed the role of a young boy initiate in her ballet. The detailed account of her travels and experiences remains an invaluable contribution to Australian dance history and research. Posters, programs, early films and reviews exist that document these performances along with mentions in various personal diaries, letters and the like. The Australian National Library Archive, the National Gallery of Australia and the Performing Arts Collection at the Victorian Arts Centre have valuable collections of these materials including examples of costumes, set designs and much more today, these are available to researchers, students and the general public.

3 The above examples from Australia give an insight into some directions in the field of dance research and documentation. As a dancer and anthropologist, Beth Dean straddled two sides of the field as both an observer and a choreographer/performer. The links between these areas merged in her ballet, Corroboree (1954), epitomizing a common and sustained area of research amongst choreographers. Choreographers around the world continue to combine ethnographic field research with creative practice and seek inspiration by delving into their roots and cultural histories. Knowledge embodied through the dancer, then transmitted bodily from one dancer to another, remains the primary means of passing on dance from choreographers to performers, teachers to students, elders to the uninitiated. In this context the text is the body itself encoded with the process, the product and the analyses of the research exploration - this may co-exist with film, video, articles, books and reviews. Performances may take place in a variety of platforms including traditional theatre, designated sites, nightclubs, art galleries, the street and cyberspace. Writing, filming, notating and documenting are another set of texts that function in different ways. They may form part of a multi-modal, interconnected and integrated performative text they may also function as a substantiator or witness to the event or act as an equal primary text. In dance research, these fields can merge, be separated into two parts by an individual working as practitioner/researcher, or remain entirely separate fields. Perhaps the most important written text of the dance is dance notation. In particular, Labanotation has become a central tool for the recording, analysis, understanding and reconstruction of dance for all genres around the world. More than that, it has played an important advocacy role in education systems that require an empirical language to support the largely ephemeral nature of dance. Dance scholars reflect, analyse, research and write about dance they may work as critics, archivists, performers, creators, educators, notators, designers, film-makers, photographers and more. Through new technologies, an ever increasing diversity of

4 fields include virtual dance, E-books, on-line dance chat rooms, blogs and other electronic media representations, among others, contribute to the ever increasing field of dance research. The medium itself is vibrant, hybridized and globalized with cross-referencing to other art forms and contemporary lifestyles. All of these modes of research and documentation have led to a wealth of available material on the dance profession with instant access to information about the newest and established companies, traditional dance genres and journal articles and on-line critical discussions with numerous topics and points of view. How to investigate and what frame to look through, to sort, to collate and evaluate information is now a fundamental component of dance research. In this context, globazation has not only impacted on the field of dance choreography with well traveled and curious creators embodying a culturally informed, rich eclectic dance vocabulary but also on researchers who bring their own epistemology to their ways of knowing and seeing dance. At present, a significant body of dance research occurs through higher degree study projects by post-graduate students and the faculty at tertiary institutions. Dance students work within the expectations of dance praxis whereby performance, documentation, and articulation in multiple texts, with the body as the predominant channel for creative expression, co-exist. Studies of personified bodily texts, whereby the body is both the subject and the research, holds many dilemmas and challenges - objectifying the subjective being the primary task. Concepts, contexts and philosophies about the body expounded by the likes of phenomenologist Merlot-Ponty, deconstructionist Derrida, and post-structuralists Deleuze and Guattari, often influence current work by the dancer/choreographer/researcher seeking to articulate the dancing body via a variety of qualitative and quantitative research methodologies and critiques. Program notes highlighting the artist s perspective giving insights about their feelings, intuition and inspiration come from the inside/out contrasting with the outside/in analysis from audiences, critics and scholars. Discussions with artists in conjunction with performances, preview show and tells with selected audiences as part of a

5 choreographic work-in- progress, and creative arts centers that encourage discourse on dance have become part of the fabric of dance performance. Exchanges of information through conference presentations and publications have led to an informed industry with an array of forums for dialogue. Through associations such as the World Dance Alliance, dance is a world leader in bringing together all aspects of the profession including performing artists, students, teachers, critics and scholars. As part of a wider expression by artists in all mediums, dance through history has responded to developments in politics, world events, social changes and philosophy as well as technology and globalization. Questions about tradition, contemporization, fusion, intercultural collaborations and globalization continue to be predominant topics for debate amongst dance researchers, ethnographers and practitioners. Coupled with this comes the leading examples of the responsibility of respecting the rights of indigenous peoples to their cultural heritage, copyright concerns regarding the ownership of the dance, shifts in the context of the dance, and the like. The Conversations section of this book provides many examples of creators in the Asia Pacific region working with their cultural heritages in a myriad of ways. Dance research today is a broad and evolving field. Crossovers into the fields of psychology, physiology, neuroscience and many more sit alongside studies in dance education, dance therapy, dance history, performance studies, dance ethnography and inter-disciplinary arts. It is a rich area to pursue with much work to be done. Dance professionals continue to work with optimism as they strive, often against considerable odds through limited funding, resources and support, to ensure the area of dance research is rightfully placed as not only a legitimate field of study, but as one of the most relevant in terms of what it can contribute to a civil and humane world. References: Bell, D. Daughters of the Dreaming, (McPhee Gribble Publishers, Melbourne, Australia, 1983). Brisbane, K. (Ed.) Entertaining Australia: The Performing Arts as Cultural History, (Currency Press, Sydney, 1991).

6 Dean, B. and Carell, V., Dust for the Dancers, (Ure Smith, Sydney, 1955). Desmond, Jane C. (Ed.) Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance (Duke University Press, Durham & London, 1997). Duncan, I. My Life, (Boni and Liveright, New York, 1927). Grau, André. 'Dreaming, dancing, kinship: the study of yoi, the dance of the Tiwi of Melville Island and Bathurst Islands, Northern Australia', a thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, (Queen's University of Belfast, June 1983). Haskell, Arnold L. Balletomane's Album, (Adam & Charles Black, London, 1939). Jowitt, Deborah. The Dance in Mind: profiles and Reviews (David R. Godine Publisher, Boston, 1985). Laban, Rudolf. The Mastery of Movement, third edition, revised by Lisa Ullmann, (MacDonald & Evans, London, 1971). Livet, A. Ed. Contemporary Dance, (Abbeville Press, Inc. New York, N.Y. 1978). Merleau-Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception, (Routledge Kegan, London, N.Y. 1962). Mountford, Charles P., Records of the American Australian Scientific Expeditions to Arnhem Land: 1 Art, Myth and Symbolism,( Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, Australia, 1956). Williams, Drid. 'The role of movement in selected symbolic systems', (St. Hugh s College, Oxford, 1975). Journal article Clunies-Ross, Margaret & Stephen A. Wild. 'Formal performance: the relations of music, text and dance in Arnhem Land clan song', ( Ethnomusicology Journal, May i Duncan, I. 1927, p1. ii Mountford, Charles P., Records of the American Australian Scientific Expeditions to Arnhem Land: 1 Art, Myth and Symbolism, iii Bell, D., iv Arnold L. Haskell, Balletomane's Album, 1939, pp. 9 v Ibid, p25 vi Terra Australis, (1946) choreographed by Edouard Borovansky, Corroboree, (1950) choreographed by Rex Reid vii Dean, B. and Carell, V., Dust for the Dancers, 1955.

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