Bojana Cvejic : Le dramaturge ignorant. 1Il n’est pas surprenant que nous nous soyons ici réunis pour parler de danse et de dramaturgie, ou de dramaturgie de la danse.
Nous pouvons tous nous vanter d’avoir derrière nous un bon nombre de séminaires, d’ateliers et de rencontres sur le thème de la « dramaturgie de la danse ». Si le sujet attire aujourd’hui l’attention du public universitaire, c’est moins du fait de la grande nouveauté de cette pratique qu’en raison de sa récente reconnaissance ; une pratique qui est peut-être même un métier, dont le rôle dans la création en danse n’a pas été suffisamment exploré. Pirkko Husemann : When the dramaturg becomes obsolete, the dramaturgical remains important.
1.
When Xavier Le Roy planned his production Project in 2002, he didn’t invite a dramaturg to take over the function of an "outside eye" in the working process. He was interested in the idea of turning the production of a dance performance into the performance itself. Ideally, he wanted to produce a presentation format in which process and product would fall together. That is why he was unable to separate the period of conceptual preparation from that of the practical exploration of certain choreographic methods or from that of the analytical observation of the performative result. Accordingly, he searched for participants who were able to play several roles at once. 2. 3. 4. Theaterschrift 5 & 6. On Dramaturgy. On Dramaturgy 1.
A subject. : Networked Publics and Dramaturgy. : Looking without pencil in the hand. “(…) distance is often linked with the most intense state of feeling, in which the coolness or impersonality with which something is treated measures the insatiable interest that thing has for us.”
(Susan Sontag) 1. The request to talk or write about it leads time and again to the same awkwardness: the feeling of being asked to reveal someone else’s culinary secrets or recipes. : From Dramaturgy to Dramaturgical. What is your experience with dramaturges and dramaturgy?
I have, on a very pragmatic level, had basically no experience in dramaturgy. I have barely collaborated with dramaturges, and I've never actually had a position working as a dramaturge. : Frans Poelstra, his dramaturge and Bach. We had only one simple idea for the text in this performance: how to explain everything we do, so there will be no mystifying veil anymore between the dance and its spectators.
We did not want to make a cryptic performance this time, on the contrary, we wanted to explain so much that at the end the public would say to us, yes, yes, leave us alone, and go and do your thing, let us listen to the music of Bach, we understand you both now, Frans Poelstra and his dramaturge are already an open book for us”. We wanted to make an extreme communicative performance. The things which we thought we had to explain can be resumed in the following points. : European Dramaturgy in the 21st Century. I want to start by going back to the previous century.
In 1988 I wrote a text with the title: ‘Wenn ich still stehe, verstehe ich nichts – words borrowed from Hans-Magnus Enzensberger (2006). The subtitle of the article was: ‘Short comments on the notion of European dramaturgy’. : Et "la" danse? : Dramaturgy of and as Collaboration. Timing As the meaning of movements, actions and words fundamentally changes depending on their duration or placement in the time-line of a performance, dramaturgy deals with the (spatio-)temporal evolution of material, in short, with the temporality of events in space.
Dramaturgy is structuring time, giving time, squeezing it, dessicating it, stretching it. It is at once endless and abrupt. : Dramaturgy - Mobile of Ideas. I first developed the thinking on dramaturgy as a kind of mobile in the context of the working process of reportable portraits (2007), a project by deufert+plischke; see: Kattrin Deufert / Sandra Noeth / Thomas Plischke: MONSTRUM: A book on reportable portraits, Gemeinschaftspraxis Hamburg 2009.Dramaturgy – Mobile of Ideas was as well the title of a workshop on the relationship between dramaturgy and choreography that took place at Tanzquartier Wien from 02 – 06 December 2009 and has been chaired by Slovenian director, performer and author Janez Jansa. » A › mobile ‹ does not › suggest ‹ anything: it captures genuine living movements and shapes them. › Mobiles ‹ have no meaning, make you think about nothing but themselves. (...)
No human brain, not even their creator’s, could possibly foresee all the complex combinations of which they are capable. A general destiny of movement is sketched for them, and they are left to work it out for themselves. What is the role of the dramaturge? : Dramaturgie. Le métier de dramaturge en danse est à la fois rare et un peu fictif: le dramaturge est parfois celui qui prépare une pièce par un travail de documentation et de réflexion sur les enjeux du spectacle, il est aussi celui qui vient ordonner des séquences de danse composées par le chorégraphe et les interprètes ou bien l'assistant présenta toutes les répétitions qui prend note de la dérive des enjeux de départ.
Il peut être également le premier spectateur dont les remarques permettent d'activer le travail. Quand Angèle Le Grand, par exemple (qui n'est pourtant pas présente lors des répétitions), joue le rôle de l'"œil extérieur" a la fin du travail sur Con forts fleuve, elle vient signaler l'écart entre ce qu'elle voit et les intentions initiales, elle dit aussi parfois ce que tout le monde pense sans qu'on arrive à le formuler, ou dire que c'est le moment de changer quelque chose dans le processus. Pour certains, la dramaturgie est d'abord une musicalité. : Dance Dramaturgy: speculations and reflections. The choreographer working with the dramaturge in a creative role is a relatively 'new' phenomenon - something which has been taken up in the last decade firstly by a few and now increasingly more choreographers.
This 'newness' and the elusiveness of the definition of the task of the dramaturge (i.e. what are his/ her methods, materials, responsibilities, etc.) bring a sense of instability and intrigue onto the landscape of dance making. The questions are many. Who is qualified to perform this role and why? : And what about ‘dance’? The scenographic and dramaturgic contexts are not established in juxtaposition to the actual dancing. In this sense, it is not what you commonly refer to as ‘context’. Lighting and music do not merely ‘colour’ a dance that remains otherwise whole and itself. The ‘context’ is not something surrounding the dance, a mere adjunct, and even less a way of accessorising the movement.
Rather, it alters the meaning as it is located within. : Heterogeneous Dramaturgies. : Confronter les contemporanéités correctes. : Doing Time. Official / Unofficial Officially I am here to speak about dramaturgy and will do so in a voice that lends itself to such a task, here, sat at the desk, perhaps with some quotations or examples, making statements, constructing theories.