Page 17 - the foreign language of motion

A writing towards multiplicity rather than singular memory.
Interconnections between dance and writing have been conceptualized in diverse ways, for example as external to the ontology of performance and a betrayal of the live, (Phelan, 1993), as “a translation of live art into dead records” (Heathfield, 1997, para. 1) as a form of listening (Minnick, 2003), as a “record and a tool of making decisions about the nature of the work” (Lycouris, 2000, para. 1) “as markers and traces to be used as triggers and stimuli, as a catalyst to artistic creation” (DeLahunta et al, 2004, p.68), and as “a tablet for physicalizing thought without full-bodied dancing” (McGregor in DeLahunta et al, 2004, p.69). Choreographer DD Dorvellier articulates a methodology for studio practice wherein moving, talking, touching and writing are given equal priority and time, with the travel of ideas between forms central to the movement of research. She describes her workshop process as aiming,
to understand assumptions about style, body, self, technique, unspoken rules, expertise, et cetera. The aim is to proliferate unexpected results, to try many things quickly, and to foment revolution. We will explore moving, touching, talking, and writing, together and alone. Please don’t come without a notebook and a pen, and wear clothes you can do these things in (Dorvellier, 2012).
Creating a practice generative of unexpected results demands a strange combination of adherence to structure and commitment to breaking or redefining it. For Dorvellier, the travel of ideas between different formal logics creates spaces for dance research to occur.
the kinesthetic archive project seeks to explore movement-initiated writing practices by researching methodologies that continue the trajectory of performance logics to the site of the page and to the body of the book. It asks: How might dance practice initiate a creasing and folding of language? It investigates ways in which movement practice might enable, create and be in direct relationship with page-related practices, and interrogates methodologies for employing specific technical/ formal/ stylistic approaches to performance writing. The relationship between kinesthesia and text, the ethics of translation, writing the somatic and the affective play of drawing are key subjects in this essay. the kinesthetic archive book explores a design concept concerned with how a page might engage with transition and mobility through attending to aesthetic properties such as surfaces and layers within page design. The methodology for developing this book utilized a process of gleaning ideas, by valuing small details, notes, drawings, memories, images, and conversations, as these gesture towards an understanding of how the logic of dance thinking mutates over time in a highly specific (and often elusive) way. It presents fragments of choreographic materials from an ongoing dance practice, with a focus on affect, partial stories, evoking somatic or virtual moments rather than narrative or description. Kinesthetic and sensory modes of movement practice are
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