Re: de-corporalize me

Richard Lord (richard@bigroom.co.uk)
Sun, 25 Jul 1999 18:56:46 +0100

The rapid development and deployment of personal computers in the last
twenty years has opened up a number of new media, like the web and
CD-ROM. Amongst the artists exploring these media are a number of
choreographers. Venturing into these media, we take with us the tools we
have learnt to use and the experience of using them. That is, we are
choreographers in a new landscape. We explore the creative possibilities
of this landscape, developing new skills and gaining new experience, but
always relying on our skills and experience as choreographers of live
dance to inform and enrich our work.

When venturing into these new media, we don't slash and burn the land as
we pass, destroying bridges behind us, denying the existence of the place
we are travelling from, for it is that place that gives us our strength.
I know of no choreographers using new media who wish to decorporalize
dance. Live dance using real people will always be at the heart of what
dance is, but some believe that isn't all it is. Perhaps we are wrong,
perhaps creating dance in these new media will prove impossible; only
time will tell.

There is no doubt that the journey changes us. For me, the exploration of
technology with dance has happened alongside the developing appreciation
of live dancers as individuals, each with unique characters and
characteristics, such that my live work is always created with and for
the dancers I am working with at that time and not for some abstract
human body.

One thing about which I have no doubt - live dance will be with us as
long as the human race exists. Just as film didn't destroy theatre, and
television didn't destroy film, so the new media will never destroy live
dance. We may be forced to reassess what dance is and reconsider what the
strengths of live performance are, but that will only develop the
artform. Any percieved threat of destruction is imaginary.

That's what I think anyway.

Richard

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Richard Lord richard@bigroom.co.uk
Big Room http://www.bigroom.co.uk/
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See the web dances at http://www.bigroom.co.uk/edances/
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