Does screendance need to look like dance?

Kappenberg, Claudia

doi:10.1386/padm.5.2-3.89/1

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…When disabled dancers are involved, the distinction that Kappenberg makes between "body as tool" and "body as site" in screendance, is blurred if not removed altogether (96). 15 The body is unavoidably a tool for inscribing a particular (and individual) experience of embodiment whilst also a site for the exploration of limitations and possibilities in a generic sense. Thus the individual body inadvertently stands for a collective body; a body as site for contemplation of a universally coded condition of disability.…”

Section: Sarah Whatleymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Spectacle of Difference: Dance and Disability on Screen

Whatley¹

2018

IJSD

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T he way in which disabled dancers appear in performance and are represented through performance has been the subject of discussion for a number of writers in recent years.1 These writings have drawn attention to how disabled performers challenge dominant views of disability as variously standing for less than, as other, as diminished, and as equated with loss. These writings, though relatively few in number, have been important for those working within the professional dance community. They have also stimulated further thought about how audiences view and form judgments about disability in performance and how disability presents useful challenges to the prevailing dance aesthetic. But, much of the existing writing is confined to addressing and critiquing the live performance event, whereas the focus for this essay is dance and disability on screen, which might raise different questions about how the viewer encounters and experiences disability, about the communion between viewer and screen and which also gives rise to a spectacular event: the spectacle of difference.I am aware that looking at disabled dancers on film might usefully draw on different registers for sense-and meaning-making. As Sandahl and Auslander point out, disability is something one does rather than something one is (10).2 For people with disabilities, their experience of being 'out of the ordinary' and 'out of place' means that disability is already a kind of performance for them. By looking towards a broader theoretical framework, I want to explore what impact the framing of the screen has on the identities of those who dance with disabilities, how disabled dancers perform their own identities, and how this is read and interpreted by the viewer. So, my focus is on the screening of disabled dancers within dance films and how readings of disability on screen might generate a theory of looking; might disrupt a presumption of the relationship between screendance and mobility; and therefore make clear the political implications of screendance. In each of the screendance examples I refer to, the body itself is therefore fundamental to my reading and response.Disability theorists Mitchell and Snyder discuss how the relationship between screen and viewer calls on particular notions of spectatorship.3 They interrogate the nexus between spectator and the filmed disabled body as a spectacle by delving into "the psychic structures that give meaning to disability as a constructed social space" (157). I acknowledge that I am not a neutral spectator. By writing from my own embodied, subjective position I accept that I am not writing as a viewer with a disability, 4 and whilst I do not wish to ignore the viewpoint of audience members with disabilities, it is not the main purpose of this essay to explore what might be seen as a disabled gaze in relation to film. Nonetheless, I wish to distance this study from those projects that might treat disabled bodies as research objects of investigations: a position where "bodies marked as anomalous are offered for co...

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Section: Sarah Whatleymentioning

confidence: 99%

The Spectacle of Difference: Dance and Disability on Screen

Whatley¹

2018

IJSD

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“…2 The direction of this expansion is highlighted through Kappenberg's line of questioning: "Does screendance need to look like dance?" 3 Such questions have brought about a broad diversification in screendance practice. In addition, the screendance canon has experienced an expansion that borders on all-inclusion, as the reconceptualization of the dance in screendance has led to the re-classification of a whole host of vintage avant-garde films.…”

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Understanding The “Dance” In Radical Screendance

Heighway¹

2014

IJSD

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There was a time when screendance implied a dancing body. The “dance” may have taken the shape of formal vocabulary or a looser interpretation of movement as dance, but common to either approach would have been the sight of humans in motion. Certain recent screendance films, however, such as David Hinton’s Birds (2000), Becky Edmunds’s This Place (2008), and Constantini Georgescu’s Spin (2009) are void of human presence. Yet whilst screendance making revels in the freedom of reconceptualization and reinvention, questions arise with regard to the experience of viewing, namely: what is the “dance” in screendance now that the human body has left center stage, and do audiences have the requisite concepts to identify and appreciate works that have outgrown traditional models? This paper investigates just what is required of viewers’ perceptions that might allow them access to screendance today. It also explores the field’s current relationship with dance through an analysis of those works that lie at screendance’s outermost edges, which here shall be referred to as “Radical Screendance.”

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The efficacy of Laban movement analysis as a framework for observing and analysing space in Rosas danst Rosas

Prinsloo

Munro

Broodryk

2019

Research in Dance Education

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Tarryn-Tanille Prinsloo (PhD) is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst™ and lectures part-time on Body pedagogies in Live and Digital Performance studies at the University of Pretoria. Her interests include the relationship between the camera and the moving body and intermediality among different mediums. She has written five feature film screenplays, all produced in South Africa.Marth Munro (PhD) specialises in bodymind and voice in behaviour and performance. She is a Certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst™, and Master Teacher of Lessac Kinesensic Voice and Body Training®. She is also a Certified NLP Business, Executive and Life Coach, Qualified Sound Therapist, Qualified Hatha Yoga Teacher and a Bio-, Neurofeedback practitioner. She is a professor extraordinaire at the Drama Department, University of Pretoria. She teaches Performance voice, movement and acting. She has taught in South Africa, United States of America, Finland and Croatia. She facilitates workshops in business communication and emotional competence. She still finds time for various artistic endeavours and practice-based research publications.Chris Broodryk (PhD) lectures Drama and Film Studies at the Drama Department of the University of Pretoria. He has published articles and book chapters on Afrikaans and South African cinema, and he has delivered conference papers internationally on the same topics, addressing the failures of multiculturalism and the exploring the notion of political cinema in a South African context. His research interests include the intersection of psychology, theology and film, as well as the Digital Humanities and social media studies.

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Does screendance need to look like dance?

Abstract: This is an edited version of a paper, which was first presented at the American Dance Festival (ADF, 2008)

Cited by 5 publications

References 2 publications

The Spectacle of Difference: Dance and Disability on Screen

The Spectacle of Difference: Dance and Disability on Screen

Understanding The “Dance” In Radical Screendance

The efficacy of Laban movement analysis as a framework for observing and analysing space in Rosas danst Rosas

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