Postscript

Abstract

An issue of a journal that focuses on just one art work may be unusual, but the range and the breadth of the perspectives adopted by all the authors included here demonstrate that there is much to appreciate in this single work. Such attention given to All This Can Happen (ATCH) might also suggest that, as editors of this issue, we regard it as a landmark screendance work, and in many ways it is. It arrived at a time when changes were taking place in the art world. ATCH reflects, or perhaps contributed to, some of these changes, including: that of the shifting relationship between dance and visual arts that has subsequently posed a challenge to established hierarchies, the fascination with early technologies as source material in the production of new art work, and a growing interest in reconnecting with the past through reusing and reimagining archival content.Keywords: archive, Siobhan Davies, David Hinton, Channel 4, Etienne-Jules Marey, Screendance Symposium At the time of its first showing, ATCH also seemed to mark a departure for Davies from her live dance works although it actually revived a relationship with film that had begun much earlier. Davies was one of the first dance artists to take part in a Channel 4-backed project, Dance-Lines 1 in 1987, which brought together British-based choreographers, dancers, and filmmakers to learn about each other's craft and make work. This experience seeded Davies' affinity with the film medium and led to her acknowledging soon after this time that her dance work was more closely related to film than other performing arts, for its poetic and multi-layered compositional possibilities. But ATCH was her first partnership with filmmaker (and veteran screendance maker) David Hinton. Their partnership has clearly been a strong one from the start, built on years of respecting each other's practices, growing through more than 30 years of making dance and screen work.