Object Oriented Choreographies: Rethinking Agency and Materiality in Dance
In today’s age, all of our surroundings are affected by human presence. Microplastics are found in ecosystems all over the world, oil leaks occur constantly, water pollution result in coral reef decline and mass extinction of global organic life; even if - through a magical snap of the fingers - humans would suddenly disappear from planet Earth, human presence would live on like a poltergeist in a horror mansion, like a specter, a phantom, a ghost, haunting all organic and non-organic life for the millennia to come. Humans will be absent, but still omni-present.
Dance, in many ways, is fundamentally anchored in the human body. Even when choreographers experiment with scenography, costume or technology, the dancing body remains the central site of meaning, expression and agency. But can dance exist without the direct presence of a human body? What does ‘absent presence’ of the human body look like in dance? When does dance stop being human? Can non-human bodies co-constitute dances and choreographies? Can we create dance environments where (assemblages of) objects are the central choreographic agents?
It is our goal to find ways of dealing with today's inevitable questions more-than-human agency. Our motivation to focus on these issues stems from the belief that a posthuman approach to movement can lead to more inclusive artistic practices, thereby decentering individual identities and foregrounding interconnectedness, vulnerability and reciprocal care.
Results
Across two years, this research will generate performances, installations, workshops, and written material that explore object-oriented choreography.
In Choreographed Objects, we will develop a collection of dance-objects and sculptural forms emerging from our practice of “dance as object-making.” These works will be produced in collaboration with the Academie and prepared for presentation as an installation suitable for a museum context. Audiences will encounter objects whose shapes, surfaces, and material combinations record and translate choreographic processes.
Moving (with) Objects will result in an extensive filmed archive of material–movement constellations, capturing different ways bodies and objects co-generate motion. This phase also produces a workshop for dancers focusing on relational embodiment and choreographic modes that foreground the agency of materials.
In Constellations, we will create a performance in which objects, materials, technologies, and dancers operate together as an assemblage. Presented in a black-box environment, this work will offer audiences an expanded sense of what moves, what performs, and how choreography can emerge between bodies and things.
We plan to create several public moments to share Constellations, including at Artist-Commons, INSIDE OUT festival of Radar Mechelen, Playground festival / Museum M, and/or STUK.
All phases will be documented through film and essays, culminating in a final text that we aim to publish in FORUM+.
