Choreographic entanglements in the analogue and digital

Kingston University London

Penrhyn Road Campus, Main Building, Clattern Lecture Theatre

Tuesday 18 July 2017, 2-5pm

Free entry & drinks

with Charlotte Spencer, Gabriele Reuter, Janine Harrington, Hetty Blades, Stefanie Sachsenmaier and Daniela Perazzo Domm

The School of Performance and Screen Studies at Kingston University London invites you to an afternoon of talks, installations and discussion on the topic of the intra-action between the analogical and the digital in current dance practices.

The last decade has seen the proliferation of research on performance and digital culture, advocating the potential of digital practices to transcend physicality and extend its performative possibilities. In the field of dance, recent years have witnessed the emergence of digital projects and archives, both internationally and in the UK, aiming at the development of tools that expand our ability to engage with dance objects and processes. This event re-thinks the digital/analogical nexus in contemporary choreography and proposes to reframe the relationships between these two modes and processes in non-oppositional terms, by interrogating their entanglement.

Exploring the complexity of analogue structures by drawing attention to the richness and heterogeneity of their codes, the event investigates the productive convergence between new technologies and physical (material, cultural, experiential) bodies in the work of choreographers Charlotte Spencer (UK), Gabriele Reuter (Germany/UK) and Janine Harrington (UK/nomadic), who will present and discuss aspects and examples of their practices. They will engage in conversation with Dr Hetty Blades (C-DaRE, Coventry University) and Dr Stefanie Sachsenmaier (Middlesex University) and will invite the audience to experience their creative processes through video projections and audio recordings. The roundtable will be chaired by Dr Daniela Perazzo Domm (Kingston University London).

We invite all to join us for an afternoon of discussion, sharing and networking.

For further information email Daniela Perazzo Domm at D.Perazzodomm@kingston.ac.uk

Charlotte Spencer works as a choreographer, facilitator, curator and performer nationally and internationally. Her interdisciplinary work rises from the landscape and is often designed for outdoor public spaces. Through each artistic project she strives to build community and instigate change by inviting people to re-encounter themselves in relationship to their lives and their environment. Critically acclaimed Walking Stories, an audio-walk for parks, was created in 2013 through a unique touring project, Cycle Stories. Her latest project, Is this a Waste Land? (2017) is a performance through headphones for a disused urban space, which invites us to consider how we value space, waste, home, belonging and community. Charlotte is a Sadler’s Wells Summer University Artist 2015-18 and Artist Activator at Greenwich Dance. Charlotte worked with Siobhan Davies Dance 2010-16; other recent commissions include Salisbury International Arts Festival 2016, Brighton&Hove Libraries, Jerwood Gallery and Turner Contemporary. She is a guest lecturer at various universities. https://charlottespencerprojects.org

Gabriele Reuter is a dance artist and urbanist based in Berlin and Nottingham. She has been creating her own works in collaboration with other dancers, photographers and musicians since 2003. Gabriele was Artist in Residence at Dance 4 in 2008 where she developed her first solo Inventory/Räumung, which premiered at nottdance08 and toured internationally. Gabriele’s group piece Tourist premiered at Uferstudios Berlin in September 2010; it was co-commissioned by the Southbank Centre, London, and nominated for the prix Jardin d’Europe 2010 at idans festival Istanbul. Her recent collaboration with sound artist Mattef Kuhlmey has led to the creation of the sound installations Hidden Spaces (2014) and Hidden Traces (2017) and of the performance, lecture and installation The Amplitude (2016), which explores the simple idea of the acoustic wave and reveals the relationship between sound and movement by remixing their channels of perception. Gabriele holds a BA (hons) in Contemporary Dance and Arts Management (DMU Leicester and LCDS London), an MA in historical Urban Studies from Technical University Berlin and is a qualified Design Thinker (d- school HPI Potsdam). She teaches Contemporary Dance, Improvisation and Contact Improvisation regularly in dance institutions and universities in Germany, the UK and internationally. http://www.gabrielereuter.de

Janine Harrington is a choreographer and performer born in Canterbury, currently living and working nomadically. Her work, which is usually for non-theatre contexts, foregrounds ideas about relationship, agency and attention and explores embodied interactivity and game-playing. In recent years, she has been commissioned by Brighton Festival, South East Dance, AIR Studio/ Islington Borough Council, Siobhan Davies Dance, Big Dance, The Hepworth Wakefield and Gi20. In 2016 she was in residence at Villa Empain, Brussels where she presented Satelliser: A dance for the gallery, in the context of Répétition, curated by Asad Raza and Nicola Lees. In September 2016, she was artist in residence at Brandwatch as part of Brighton Digital Festival and through partnership with South East Dance. In January 2017, her new project screensaver (1, gallery version) was presented at Villa Empain in the context of Décor, curated by Asad Raza, Dorothea Von Hantelmann and Tino Sehgal. Janine has recently completed two choreographic commissions to showcase artists’ jewellery pieces (Maison Boghossian and Alexander Calder). She also writes, teaches, sings, beatboxes, works as an outside eye for other's processes, assists, produces, collaborates. http://www.janineharrington.com

Hetty Blades is Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry University, where in 2015 she completed her PhD, under the supervision of Sarah Whatley and Scott deLahunta. Her thesis considered the ontological implications of digital scoring practices for dance. She was the 2015 recipient of the Ede and Ravenscroft Postgraduate Award for Academic Excellence. Hetty holds an MA in Dance Studies from Roehampton University (2010) and a BA (Hons) in Dance Theatre from Trinity Laban (2007). Her research concerns the philosophical questions posed by dance works and practices, with a focus on digital technology, value, and epistemologies of movement. She has published in Performance Philosophy, Choreographic Practices, Performance Research Journal, The International Journal of Screendance. She is editorial assistant for the Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices and was Researcher in Residence at the Digital Catapult in 2016.

Stefanie Sachsenmaier (PhD Middlesex University, DEA Sorbonne Nlle, MA Goldsmiths College) is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Arts at Middlesex University, Programme Leader of BA Theatre Arts (Performance) and HEA Fellow. Her research interests and publications relate to the processual in creative practice. She has published several articles emerging from her long-term research with choreographer Rosemary Butcher including ‘Just in Time: Rosemary Butcher, Making Memories and Marks’, co-written with Susan Melrose and Rosemary Butcher, Performance Research Journal “On An/Notations”, 2015. Stefanie has co-organised, together with Noyale Colin, several research events on the politics of collaboration, and their co-edited publication Collaboration in Performance Practice: Premises, Workings and Failures, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2016. She has a background as a performer and trains and teaches tai chi at Wu’s Tai Chi Chuan Academy London, Bethnal Green, and regularly enters national as well as international competitions.

Daniela Perazzo Domm is a dance and performance scholar whose research interests revolve around questions of subjectivity and collectivity in contemporary choreography and dramaturgical processes, with particular attention to interdisciplinary and experimental practices. Since 2014 she has been a lecturer in Dance at Kingston University London, having previously taught at the University of Surrey. She holds an AHRC-funded MA (distinction) in Performance and Culture from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and received her PhD in Dance Studies from the University of Surrey, funded by a university scholarship. Her doctoral research constructs a poetics of the work of Jonathan Burrows. She contributed to Decentring Dancing Texts (Lansdale, 2008), has published in academic journals (Contemporary Theatre Review, Choreographic Practices) and has written for dance periodicals (Dance Theatre Journal, Danza & Danza). Daniela is a founding member of the performing arts festival ‘Uovo’ (Milan, Italy), which supports forward-thinking and socially engaged arts practice.

Photograph by Pari Naderi (Charlotte Spencer Projects, Is this a Waste Land?, 2017)