Re: de-corporalize me

Jeffrey Gray Miller (jgmille2@students.wisc.edu)
Sat, 24 Jul 1999 14:58:40 -0500

>Dance is of the body -- period -- the human body. At best, it is amusing to
>watch the attempts of "techno-artists" make to disintegrate the body, to
>render the senses useless. At worst, (take Seth Riskin) it is pathetic to
>observe the total lack of understanding of tactility and purposeful
>connection to the audience integral to dance.

Ok, there's one aspect of this that hasn't been addressed. All of our
arguments about virtual, video, and other dance has presupposed a recorded,
edited version of the dance (or a created image, for example a 3d model).

So what about live video feeds? If you show an audience a projected image
of a dancer on a screen, where they can see, for example, facial
expressions, which are responding and "connecting" to the audience, is that
dance?

If it is not, (because of the point of view) then I have trouble
understanding how a large venue, where the performers are life-sized to some
but mere specks to others (smaller, in fact, than they would appear on a
video monitor) everyone is supposedly seeing a "dance".

An example: Bill T. Jones "We Started Early-Visibility Was Poor". The
middle section is done in semi-darkness, where at best the suggestion of
forms is evident on the stage (beautiful, by the way). I was in the
balcony--I'm sure that I saw far less of his choreography than those in the
1st row. Yet we all saw dance, apparently, simply by virtue of the venue,
whereas "Untitled" wasn't dance at all...

It's not that I insist on validation of my own works, because I enjoy
performing live as much as I enjoy showing work (in some ways, more so).
It's just that I have trouble with the definition of dance that's being put
forth here. I agree with Merilyn's definition of dance; I simply don't see
why it is restricted to live venues.

Speaking of Mr. Jones, FYI, there is a site called "zinezone.com" which is
advertising an online chat session with him on April 3 (the dance-tech zone,
I was pleased to see, is among the listed resources for dance).

Now I'm going to shut up for a while, promise.

Jeff