If choreography is usually perceived as an act of writing dance, what does it mean for choreography to be perceived as an act of reading dance? How does the choreographic engage in the present with what is already there, the past, the historical, but also the forgotten or irretrievable?
Taking cues from Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote on the positive dimension of forgetfulness, Efrosini and Susanne attempt a performative dialogue that explores choreography’s potential to playfully oscillate between the remembered and the irretrievable, the unforgettable and the inaccessible. They engage with these ideas by bringing fragments from their own and others’ work, into the space, combining showing and telling, reading and reflecting.
This talk was part of Crossing Borders 2018 and was presented in partnership with Roehampton University.
Learn More:
Aleida Assmann – Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives
Gabriele Brandstetter – Choreography as a Cenotaph: Memory as Movement
Efrosini Protopapa is a London-based choreographer and scholar. Her research interests lie in experimental and conceptual practices across dance, theatre and performance and especially notions of thinking, negotiation, disagreement, friendship, value and labour in performance. She has presented choreographic work across the UK, The Netherlands, Germany and Greece, and has most recently toured a commissioned work by Siobhan Davies Dance. She has co-edited ‘The Practice of Dramaturgy: Working on Actions in Performance’ (Valiz, 2017) and is currently working on a project entitled ‘the friend at work’. Efrosini is Reader in Dance at the University of Roehampton where she convenes the MRes Choreography and Performance programme. She also teaches internationally and has published in journals, arts publications and catalogues for performance festivals.
Susanne Foellmer, PhD, is Reader in Dance at Coventry University/Centre for Dance Research (C-DaRE). Main research areas embrace aesthetic theory and concepts of the body in contemporary dance, performance, and in the Weimar Era, relationships between dance and ‘other’ media, temporality, historicity and politicality of performance. Most recent publications include: On Leftovers (ed. with Richard Gough), Performance Research 22(8), 2018; Performing Arts in Transition. Moving Between Media (ed. with Maria Katharina Schmidt/Cornelia Schmitz), Abingdon: Routledge, forthcoming (2019). She also has been working as a dramaturge and artistic advisor for Isabelle Schad, Meg Stuart, and Jeremy Wade among others.
Adapted from bios written in 2018.
