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A
COMMITMENT TO PARTICIPATION AT IMPULSTANZ
By Nicole Haitzinger
This summer, the theory format "Analyzing
Dance" at ImPulsTanz stands alone by itself, but is still closely connected with
the dance practice workshops. In principle, the big difference from the
research area already introduced to the workshop festival is that my two-day
course is marked with an "o". This means that it is open and accessible for
everyone who is interested. Like many other mediators of dance technique I
don't know who is going to take part. Theory and practice are treated equally
with respect to their formal framework conditions. As a theoretician, I have
been allotted the same "playground" as the other "teachers". This aspect alone
is so tempting that I'm looking forward to my third term of participation at
ImPulsTanz.
To a certain degree, one cannot fortell
what's going to happen. That's comforting, and at the same time it opens up
possibilities I haven't got in other contexts – not in this density, at least.
Of course one can determine a structure, but within that structure there still
is room for improvisation (in thought and action). The process is also
influenced by the multiplicity of the heterogeneous group that forms.
Paradoxically (?), this contemporary format resembles historical situations in
dance. In Europe – spanning several historical formations – it was a form of
knowledge which was situated below the required scientificality just because of
its conglomerate of performative aspects and multidisciplinarity, and which for
a long time had no academic status. Dance generated a heterogeneous, nomadic
type of knowledge which was staged and archived by means of various media
(body, writing, image, space).[i]
And now, an important aspect in the current discourse of dance studies – the analytic – is invited to find a temporary (reflexion) home at a contemporary, mainly
practically oriented dance festival.
Invited guests – Anja Manfredi as an artist
working with the medium of photography, and the dancer Lisa Hinterreithner – take part in the shaping of an afternoon's process and multiply the creation of
theory. The relation of theory and practice in performing and graphic arts here
is understood to be partial and fragmentary.[ii]
This change of perspective brings about a turning away from the search for
rules, systems, orders which allow an allocation of meaning, towards an
observation of doing, staging, executing, performing.
The pairing of different forms of
knowledge, especially that of referential and motorical knowledge, not only
requires creativity in thinking but also repeated (new) finding, transformation
and critical investigation of the methodical approaches. Every medium as well
as the (experienced) event of a performance opens up a specific approach to
analysis. The theme here is communication which from a performative view forms
dynamically and "in actu". Analysis in this setting is not result but dialogue
and interaction, execution and special attention. And thus understood, it can
provide impulse for performative studies and images, and also bring forth
theoretical texts.
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From the series Grete Wiesenthal and Linda Samaraweerová, 2008 © Anja Manfredi
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[i] Also see: Nicole Haitzinger, Baukasten : Schaukasten, Die virtuelle
Tanzuniversität als Propädeutikum für eine praxisorientierte Tanzwissenschaft,
in: GTF Tanzausbildung und -forschung, (in print).
[ii] On the fragmentary and partial relation of theory and practice cf.
the conversation between Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, Die Intellektuellen und die Macht (The intellectuals and power), in:
Michel Foucault, Von der Subversion des
Wissens, Frankfurt am Main, Fischer Verlag, 2000, 106-116.
(July 6, 2008)
Nicole Haitzinger on the website of Salzburg University
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