Jon Refsdal Moe The practice question in dramaturgy. On the promise and perils of dramaturgy-as-art
As a discipline straddling divisions of art, theory, practice and reflection, dramaturgy constantly fluctuates between positions, discourses and institutions. Departing from this unsettledness or in-betweenness, this lecture will discuss some recent movements within dramaturgy, anchoring them to its roots in the public sphere as well as to recent developments in contemporary performance. What happens when dramaturgy becomes art? What are the possibilities and what are the problems?
Jon Refsdal Moe is Professor of Performing Arts with specialization in Dramaturgy at Stockholm University of the Arts. He has written two novels, one doctoral dissertation, several essays and lots of criticism. He currently works with Findlay//Sandsmark, Mette Edvardsen and Vinge/Müller in various capacities. He was artistic and general director for Black Box teater in Oslo from 2009-2016. A new book – And then comes the chorus – will be published by Varamo Press in November 2022.
Bojana Cvejić ’Empty Hands: for a Dramaturgy of the Ongoing
As a watchword, ‘empty hands’ reminds us of the incompleteness of any dramaturgical endeavor, including any quest for wresting positive knowledge and specific terms (let alone norms) about creation processes. The motto (‘be empty-handed’) expresses a definitive preference for contingency that the dramaturg must accept: after the performance has lapsed, the work of dramaturgy melts into air. A sound lesson learnt from the past two decades of dramaturgical practice taught me to accord dramaturgy a speculative position: how to recognize the need to feign a conceptual order and to prop one’s fantasies about a performance to emerge with dramaturgical tools. In this talk, I will lay out the speculative questions and parameters that I return to when I collaborate as a dramaturge in the experimental field of contemporary dance in Europe.
Bojana Cvejić’ research spans performance theory, philosophy, and dance studies. Among several books, she is author of Choreographing Problems (2015) and most recently Toward a Transindividual Self (2022, co-written with Ana Vujanović). As a dramaturg, she has collaborated with many choreographers and collectives on performances and independent self-organized platforms for artistic production, theory and education in Europe and former Yugoslavia.Since 2017, she divides her time between Brussels, where she teaches at P.A.R.T.S. and Oslo, where she is Professor at the National Academy of the Arts.
Marta Keil What are we doing here? A political potential of dramaturgical practice
In my talk, I will propose to zoom out a bit and offer an extendend view of dramaturgical practice. Broadening its understanding as an instituent practice and observing its various forms of entanglement with curatorial practice, I will try to trace its political potential. How can dramaturgical practice become a tool for questioning the conditions in which we work? How can it challenge the modes of production in the performing arts field and create a space to co-create new ones? What is actually at stake when we introduce, articulate and defend the importance of dramaturgy? Sharing a few examples from my practice, I would like to discuss the politicality of dramaturgical practice as one that offers conditions for thinking-with.
Marta Keil is a freelance performing arts curator, dramaturge and researcher. She lives and works between Warsaw and Utrecht. Her curatorial and research practice seeks for alternative processes of instituting and for redefining modes of building transnational alliances in the performing arts field. At the moment she curates an artistic research project Breaking the Spell, co-produced by Residenz Schauspiel Leipzig, München Kammerspiele, Performing Arts Institute in Warsaw and Viernulvier (Vooruit) in Ghent and collaborates with the New Theatre Institute in Riga and Rosendal Teater in Trondheim for The Shakedown project. She edited several books on curatorial practice and contemporary choreography and regularly teaches curatorial practice. Marta is a member of the Performing Arts Institute (InSzPer)collective in Warsaw and holds PhD in Culture Studies.
Ulla Kallenbach Dramaturgy and Imagination
This paper will discuss the concept of imagination in relation to dramaturgy. Imagination is a multifaceted concept with a history of astonishingly different interpretations (see e.g. Ulla Kallenbach, The Theatre of Imagining, Palgrave 2018) that more broadly question the relation of the body and the mind. Especially recent theories of imagination emphasise the suspension of the boundaries between the mind and the body or the real and the imaginary. The concept of imagination is highly pertinent to the theatrical experience of the spectator and to the ways in which the drama text, libretto, choreography and performance dramaturgically anticipate, frame and structure the theatrical experience of spectating. In this paper, I will present three principal dramaturgical aspects of imagination: ascription, mode and dynamics.
Ulla Kallenbach, PhD, is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies, University of Bergen. Her principal field of research is the cultural history of imagination and dramaturgy. Her monograph, The Theatre of Imagining – A Cultural History of Imagination in the Mind and on the Stage, (Palgrave 2018) was the first comprehensive study of the cultural history of imagination in the context of theatre and drama. Kallenbach is President of the Association for Nordic Theatre Scholars, Head of the Norwegian research group for theatre history and dramaturgy, and steering committee member of the Centre for Historical Performance Practice, Aarhus University, Denmark. She currently heads the research project Artistic Exchanges: The Royal Danish Theatre and Europe, which develops digital methods for investigating artistic exchange and performative representations of Europe through the unique archive of the Royal Danish Theatre.
ullakallenbach.net
Yon Natalie Mik Between theory and practice. Autotheory as a method in dance research.
The presentation aims to answer two main questions by giving insight into the
methodology of my current research: First, why I use autotheory to research dance,
and second, what possibilities I see in this methodological approach especially with
regards to issues of intersectional/postcolonial dramaturgy and the responsibility of
the dance researcher to build bridges between dance theory and dance practice.
Yon Natalie Mik is a Korean-German-American dancer and dance scholar based in Berlin/Los Angeles. Mik was trained in Ballet and Korean Folk Dance before earning her BA and MA in Asian Studies. She currently works as a research fellow at the Graduiertenkolleg Normativity, Critique, Change of the Free University of Berlin. Her dance studies Ph.D. dissertation is on transnational migrant choreographers of Asian descent, who use dance to archive censored or marginalized lives.
Zee Hartmann Saying No: Dramaturgical Strategies in the Dance-Making Process
Saying No: Dramaturgical Strategies in the Dance-Making Process is a week-long workshop developed in 2018 in which I lead experienced dancers through a compositional dance process that aims to strengthen collaborative work while maintaining individuality and personal conviction. Positive reinforcement methodologies are set aside to employ a sceptical thinking initiative where questioning takes precedence over answering. Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process is progressively adapted to reflect a new dramaturgical approach that places emphasis on the dynamic intricacies between the dance-maker and the responder. Participants learn productive strategies of how, when and why to say “no”, both in their own creative processes and in the creative processes of others. The workshop has been presented in San Francisco, Chicago, Brooklyn and Berlin. I have presented my research at the University of Berkley, TISCH NYU, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Cape Town.
In their talk Zee Hartmann will present the outline of the workshop and the theoretical underpinnings that contributed to their thinking in the development of the workshop.
Zee Hartmann holds Masters degrees from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, as well as from the University of Cape Town in South Africa. They are a multi-disciplinary artist specialising in dance, dramaturgy, clothing/costume design and photography who also maintains an erratic critical & creative writing practice. They currently live in Berlin, working on a freelance basis with both locally- and internationally-situated artists specifically focusing on queer & feminist subject matter. http://www.lineandlightdance.com/
Gaia Clotilde Chernetich Perspectives on the positioning of a dramaturg
From the perspectives of my recent experiences, I will consider some issues deriving from my practice and my engagement as a dance dramaturg in Italy, where I collaborate with theatre and dance companies, festivals, and different sorts of performing arts and research projects. I will try to share some questions, problems, and ambiguities which are part of this role, wishing to outline some perspectives regarding the positioning of a dramaturg in my current context and the available tools to face everyday complexities.
Gaia Clotilde Chernetich is an independent dance scholar, dramaturg, writer and former dancer based in Italy. Starting from this season, she is the curator of Oriente Occidente Studio in Rovereto, Italy. As a dance dramaturg she works internationally accompanying artists and choreographers in the development of their creative processes and in the finalization of staged, participatory, and site-specific performances. As a writer she collaborates with magazines and publications specialized in the contemporary culture of the performing arts. After her academic studies in France, in 2017 she completed a European PhD in Arts, with a specialization in Dance, at the University Côte d’Azur (France) and in Humanities at the University of Parma (Italy). She participated in the European project “Dancing Museums. The democracy of beings” as a post-doc researcher in 2019/2020. The focus of her study is the transmission of knowledge and the uses of memory in the contemporary dance culture. Her studies and published writings deal with the epistemology of contemporary dance, oral history, museology, and dramaturgy.
Panel
Keld Hyldig is professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Bergen. He teaches among others Norwegian and European theatre history, dramaturgy and aesthetics of theatre. He has published widely about the Ibsen tradition in Norwegian theatre and other topics within the field of Theatre Studies. His latest book publication is Ibsen og norsk teater. Del 1: 1850-1930 from 2019 (part two (del 2) about the period 1930-2020 is expected to come out early in 2023). Main fields of scholarly interest are Ibsen in the theatre, aesthetic theory, dramaturgy in theory and practice, classical and contemporary tragedy.
Elin Amundsen Grinaker has broad and complex experience as a dramaturg both in the independent field and in institutional theatres. She is educated at the Department of Dramaturgy at Aarhus University, and is employed as a program dramaturg at Black Box theater and works freelance as a dramaturg and lecturer. Grinaker works closely with Cornerstone and the Bergen Dramatikkfestival, where she also sits on the jury for the published texts.
Mirte Bogaert is a Belgian dance artist, based in Bergen, Norway. She graduated from School for New Dance Oslo in 2014, and finished her studies at Research Studios 2017-2018 at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels. Bogaert develops performing arts projects where she employs different strategies to integrate body, movement, sound, light and text with each other. Thereby she aims to question existing hierarchies and conventions in the theatre. Through her interest in sound and language, she explores possibilities for dance creation through methods of translation and observations related to speaking and breathing. She is interested in the relation between language and body, as well as translation as a source for developing new understandings through misunderstanding.
Moderator
Melanie Fieldseth is a freelance writer and dramaturge. She has previously worked for Arts Council Norway as performing arts advisor and more recently with research and evaluation projects. She was dramaturge at Black Box teater 2016-2018. As a writer and critic, she has contributed to numerous publications and was co-editor of the arts journal 3t. Her latest book, Navnet forplikter (Fagbokforlaget 2021), explores the history of the theatre Teaterhuset Avant Garden.
