Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance - Praxispace
←
→
Page content transcription
If your browser does not render page correctly, please read the page content below
2/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
Exploring the use of
Speech or Text in Dance
Performance
Karin Barber’s journal article, Text and Performance in Africa, is a
significant starting point for investigating the use of dialogue or texts to
influence and enhance performance, whether it is dance, physical theatre or
visual art. Barber’s notion that in the moment words are uttered, it captures
a prominent instance in the performance.
The text is a permanent artefact, hand written or printed, while the
performance is the unique, never-to-be-repeated realisation of the text, a
realisation that ‘brings the text to life’ but which is itself doomed to die on
the breath in which it is uttered.
This particular aspect of the performance could be the most memorable as
the audience leaves the theatre and it is a unique experience for those
individuals. Various performances and perceptions of eclectic writers can
develop a performance and how it gets produced from narrative texts, most
specifically prose, drama and poetry.
There have been many Physical Theatre companies who have introduced
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 1/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
There have been many Physical Theatre companies who have introduced
speech into their choreography to express emotions and within a narrative
context. An example of this would be DV8 and their production of Strange
Fish, choreographed by Lloyd Newson. Newson created DV8 in 1986. He
focuses on the fields of contemporary dance and theatre performance, most
notably physical theatre. His pieces are based around cultural and
sociological contexts such as sexuality, religion and the economy. He felt
that the narrative pieces he created would appear aesthetically pleasing on
film and he has worked with filmmakers including David Hinton and Clara
von Gool. Newson’s work is original as he did not wish to reinterpret ballets
or plays. Most recently he has been looking more into the relationship
between interview-based texts and movement.
His performance of Strange Fish looks into the themes of love, segregation
and fear of isolation. The use of language enhances the personas of the
characters and allows the audience to understand the complex situation on
stage or how the performers are feeling. Nigel Charnock’s section of the
piece with him speaking gibberish, adds to the comic value of the
choreography. However, the deeper the audience delve into this section of
the piece, the more they become aware of the isolation of Charnock’s
character and the need he has to be touched affectionately. The chosen
choreography and his manner of speech heighten this concept. The dialogue
emphasizes his struggle almost to the point of his madness. Much of what
he speaks of is connected with intimacy and comfort; it is at that point he
tries to hug the other dancers who almost reject his character because he is
perceived differently to them. The use of voice is also apparent at intervals
throughout the piece with one of the performer’s singing. It sounds almost
operatic, ghostly and unnerving for the audience to take in, yet it adds
another level to the performance as the sound is a backdrop for the
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 2/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
another level to the performance as the sound is a backdrop for the
happenings on the stage at the time.
Newson also created another piece for DV8 called The Cost of Living. This
piece, like the fore mentioned, combines dance with theatre and dialogue.
To an audience member the themes within this piece explore economic
decline and the struggle to make a living through references to the issues
caused by lack of tourism once the summer holiday season is over and
people are left unemployed. Additionally the dialogue creates links to
religion. The main protagonist questions whether God exists which then
heightens the struggle of the performer because he is seeking help from a
higher power due to his current financial situation. The language was also
part of working with performers with disabilities and explores how they are
perceived by society. In one section of the piece the disabled dancer is being
filmed by a spectator, while the spectator asks him unfair questions about
him and his body. For an audience member it is an uncomfortable scene to
watch as you can’t stop the bullying that is going on in the scene and it
opens the eyes of the audience to the repulsive behaviour of some human
beings and the way they treat people with disabilities.
"Cost Of Living" Trailer
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 3/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
In an article written by Philipa Rothfield, Points of Contact she discusses
the model of language and linguistics within dance and other art forms from
a structuralism and post-structuralism concept. Furthermore she creates a
connection between language and the body. The article suggests that she
argues that viewing dance from a linguistic perspective allows an audience
to find more meaning and connect that with modern societal and cultural
views. A physical theatre company that seems to follow a similar idea is
Frantic Assembly. Similarly to DV8 they create pieces based around every
day scenarios and humanity struggles such as love and loss among other
themes. The company was formed by the artistic director Scott Graham
along with Steven Hoggett and Vicki Middleton in 1994.
In a piece called Lovesong, which was written by Abi Morgan (The Hour,
The Iron lady) and choreographed by Graham and Hoggett, it is formed
from cross disciplines by combining theatre actors and dance. Actors
including Edward Bennett and Sian Phillips are part of the cast and using
Morgan’s writing portray two couples, old and young and it explores the
past present and future of a man and a woman from their 20’s to mid-60’s,
the conflicts that arise and how their love overcomes boundaries. Frantic
assembly also work with the words of William Shakespeare’s play Othello.
The performance is set in a bar, a modern setting for Shakespeare’s 17th
century words. Again the words enhance the storytelling of the performance
as it is paired with the dance movement and heightens the emotive and
dramatic nature of the characters. The modern context in which it is set
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 4/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
would appeal to the audience that watches it as its part of their culture and
the costume, set and body language are an expression of 21st century
attitudes and styles.
Other companies, similar to Frantic Assembly,
practise the language of Shakespeare to create
and expand the level of performing dance.
Choreographer, Rennie Harris, combined the
words of Romeo and Juliet with rap and urban
dance in his piece Rome and Jewels,
choreographed for his company Puremovent which was founded in 1992.
Lorenzo ‘Rennie’ Harris is a teacher and choreographer who specialize in
urban dance using influence from his African American background and
incorporating past traditions into his work. The dialogue spoken in Rome
and Jewels, by the dancers, assisted in telling the story as well as applying it
to movement. This then opened up a different perception of the audience
whose knowledge of the story and characters is altered. Juliet or Jewels is
not a female dancer or character but a spectre and the cast is all male hip
hop dancers.
Urban dance has become a popular part of western dance culture. It has
been considered to be a form of traditional folk dance as it was performed
in an open space such as streets and not in a studio background. Various
styles of urban dance such as hip hop were created in the 1970’s in the USA
within African- American and Latino societies. Harris’ choreography would
be influential for dancers in the field of this type of performance because of
the tradition and cultural influence from their background. It would also be
more engaging for a younger audience due to its commercial recognition
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 5/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
g g g y g g
through television, film and everyday social contexts. This includes shows
such as Britain’s Got Talent or films like Street Dance 3D. Incorporating the
16th century language of Shakespeare with this current trend in modern
dance allows the performers and audience to gain a sense of history yet
remaining in tune with the current performing styles.
Shakespeare’s influence has also been used by Candoco Dance Company in
their piece Imperfect Storm based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The aim
of the piece was to combine movement with text and meaning with humour.
The choreographer, Wendy Houstoun, has a well-known dance background
with company DV8 and was a performer in the fore mentioned performance
of Strange Fish. Housten commented on her piece “At first I didn’t even
want it to be apparent that we understood it was from a play, but just using
the stage directions from a play.” (Houston 2010) The choreography was
created from various improvisations influenced by the stage directions of
the play. Housten wanted to work with different verbal ideas, such as the
different levels of a storm could be displayed as different stages of emotion.
One of the performers, Annie Hanauer, opens the piece with an
introduction explaining what the piece is about, incorporating humour into
the mix. She comments in an interview that speaking the introduction at
each performance becomes more difficult as she has to keep it fresh and
honest as if it is the first time she has ever said it. This links back to
Barber’s idea in her journal article about the words dying on the breath
when spoken.
The stories created by Shakespeare and other writers are influential within
performance art and there are many dance performances that are based on
stories such as fairy-tales, Greek myths and nursery rhymes. Classical
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 6/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
ballets such as The Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Swan Lake are based on
fairy-tales by authors including The Grimm brothers and Hans Christian
Andersen. The original stories are much darker than the stories perceived
on the stage as it has to appeal to the audience that watches it as many of
them are young children. For example the original Cinderella story included
concepts of amputating limbs and having eyes pecked out, which is
considered entirely unsuitable for an audience and its not the only fairy
story that has an assortment of taboo themes.
However many of the romantic ballets were created in the era of the
Romantic Movement, where such themes were not included in artistic
culture. Ballet grew alongside the popularity of art, literature and theatre.
Interestingly these ballets portrayed women as more fragile beings, because
of the way they moved and also what they wore which were mainly pastel
colours. This held a strong influence in audience perception.
In the late 19th and early 20th century the Women’s Suffrage Movement
began to take hold in society. The outcome identified womankind in a
reformed light and has influenced the equilibrium that exists in the modern
world of work and social status. In modern contemporary ballet,
choreographers like Matthew Bourne have a unique take of the ballet stories
and puts them into a different historical context, such as Cinderella in the
Blitz of Paris, Swan Lake with men as the swans, and Sleeping Beauty with
vampires. As contemporary dance has become vastly more popular since it
was introduced in the early 20th century, this portrayal of traditional stories
appeals to the audiences of the 21st century and there seems to be more
egalitarianism between male and female dancers. The males appear more
graceful, particularly in Swan Lake and the women are perceived in a more
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 7/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
masculine light as they often lift the men and are not seen as the vulnerable
and sylph like women from the 19th and early 20th century classical ballets.
Another choreographer who used dialogue as a
method of connecting with the audience was
Pina Bausch. Bausch was trained at the
Folkwang School in Essen under the guidance
of Kurt Jooss, who was a follower of pre and
post-war modern dance. As Bausch was
surrounded by other art forms at school such as painting, opera and
photography, it became an influential part of her choreographic work with
Tanztheatre Wuppertal, where Bausch was appointed director of dance in
1973.
Her choreographic piece called Komm tanz mit mir, which translates as
Come and Dance with me, incorporates speech that taps into the emotions
of the dancers and also the audience. Bausch wanted to cross disciplines
and combine dance and theatre together. The idea was that the ‘dancer
speaks, actor dances’ (Servos, 2008). Bausch viewed this as a way of
exploring a different type of power and actuality. The piece itself looks into
the theme of power and about who rules who. The staging made it appear
like a winter backdrop and Bausch incorporated a German children’s
nursery rhyme, to contrast with the cold hearted nature of the piece.
Another way in which dialogue was used expressively was when the
argument between two protagonists ensued. The woman would begin by
flirting with the man singing the rhyme ‘Come and dance with me’.
Interestingly, the manner in which she speaks the rhyme changes, ranging
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 8/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
from tender to childish begging to demanding, stubborn and then ends with
shrieking and screaming. The man remains calm and indifferent throughout
which heightens the concepts of power and who is in charge, making a
stereotypical notion that woman are more emotional than men and
therefore more vulnerable. The moment when the dancers connect with the
audience directly is the end of the performance. The audience is dismissed
with the dare: ‘Come and dance with me’. This phrase is a recurring motif
throughout the piece and likewise with the quote from Barber, the words
have a lasting impact with the individuals that hear it uttered.
Contrastingly, Bausch has been noted to reject the concept of literary
narrative by suggesting that dance itself can narrate via the sheer physical
presence of the dancing body and that the body can express what words
cannot. However the choreography must help tell the story either through
the dance movement a gesture or a mime. This concept from Norbert
Servos’ book Pina Bausch Dance Theatre then links back to what Rothfield
mentioned in her journal article about transferring language onto the
dancing body and finding meaning from it.
There is however a choreographer that managed to create a dance piece
with no text and no meaning behind it; it was just pure movement that had
no story behind it. Yvonne Rainer’s choreography for Trio A was created
from Rainer’s No Manifesto. There was no links to sexuality, style, or
emotion and yet it was choreography, it was dance and it was a
performance. This piece of work contradicts the idea that text and speech
influences a dance performance and opens up a wider perspective of
performance as a whole, such as walking from one end of a street to another
could be considered choreography, yet there is no textual meaning behind it
d hi i id i j d i i i li
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 9/162/8/2021 Exploring the use of Speech or Text in Dance Performance | The Artifice
and nothing is said. It is just pedestrian movement. From an existentialist
experience we are in a way, dancing through life and we choreograph our
own bodies to do everyday tasks. It reminds me of something Shakespeare
wrote in his play As You Like It “All the worlds a stage, And all the men and
women merely players”. (Shakespeare, 1599)
The classical ballet Swan Lake
Speech and text intensifies aspects of performance culture by its
connection with societal issues, such as economics, religion, emotional
entanglements, tradition and explores literature, song and other texts.
Mostly an audience would merely absorb the movement and the aesthetics
without focusing on how the piece was derived and constructed. However
words have a powerful influence over the art form of dance as well as
theatre or music. However sometimes an audience doesn’t need to hear the
words to know that there is a story behind it and dance performance
collects no meaning or inspiration for speech or writing.
What do you think? Leave a comment.
https://the-artifice.com/dance-performance-speech-text/ 10/16You can also read
