An investigation into the unconventional ways of site-specific dances
By Devanshi Saravya | 5th January, 2023
Images courtesy: Getty images
Several artists have explored a new pursuit of dance, departing from traditional proscenium stages, that have the ability to challenge perceptions of familiar places by presenting them as sites of play, engagement and interaction as opposed to ‘background’ facades or statutory components of a common cityscape or rural scenery which we pass by or move through en route to somewhere else. These site-specific dances primarily use alternative spaces to re-examine familiar notions of everyday environments, manipulating and redirecting the emphasis wherein space not only becomes a stage for movement but also a partner in dialogue. These hold the potential to create fractures of disruption, a sense of detachment and irony, and a rich tension between space, time, and states of intimacy. While the familiarity helps build an association with the site involved, these temporary in-situ acts of transformation help earse boundaries between the spectator and the performer.
Shining a spotlight on these revolutionary pieces by some prestigious artists, we dive into a new realm expression, ready to be deconstructed by the readers.
Shobana Jeyasingh- TooMortal, 2012
Turbulence and solemnity, and a space that provides freedom for feeling both, is encompassed by an astonishingly powerful performance choreographed by Jeyasingh, within the confines of St Pancras Church in London. The multitude of movements in the pews with modest room around them deconstructs every orthodox notion of the traditionalism associated with the churches, thus making the spectators acutely aware of it. Every leap across the pews by bodies dressed in flaming red, every stretch of the upper body, all the silent gliding motions at the edges of the seats and the synchronized arches of the back try to challenge the space inhabited such that new attributes of the church are highlighted as a result, invoking an emotion alien to the habitual one linked to such historical spaces.
Graham Gussin- Close Protection, 2013
Is privacy a fallacy? Or have we begrudgingly succumbed to a lack thereof? Gussin explores the varied facets of technological surveillance and the phenomenological ramifications it has on humans, especially through Close protection. The site being buried deep in a false UK army base of Longmoor, Hampshire, the artist was inspired by actions and activities carried out in the dark by soldiers during drills and how the body translates certain movements while being psychologically aware of being under supervision, despite the dark. Using night vision technology was one such method that exemplified the perpetual scrutiny on mankind in the present times. Gussin recorded the dancers traversing the space that provided for a certain rhythm dictated by light, shadow, obstacles and intuition. Art created solely to stimulate a discussion for the said issue was his primary aim, making the audience aware of the surveillance around them and how the idea of privacy is changing all across the world, and can be amended for us as individuals if only we are more attentive as a daily practice.
Meredith Monk- Juice, 1969
Being one of the original pioneers of interdisciplinary performance, Meredith Monk contrives to blend in music, dance, film and theatre through a three part performance of Juice, experimenting with spatial and sonic environment. The first installment of Juice was housed in the notable Guggenheim museum in New York, with 85 performers occupying it’s famous central rotunda. The group disperses into smaller clusters at the heart of the performance, setting out to individually exploit the architecture through repetitive, task oriented movements, carrying along with them several set of bodies with observant eyes of the audience. The piece commences with the congregation having different personalities of actions and concludes with the batch dissolving in the main area with a symphony of vocals and dance steps before they run off to the outside as a mark of termination. The importance of these movements alongside the circulation within the museum emphasizes the contraction motion of a muscle, that being the core premise of this corporeal inspiration.
Eiko Otake, Tree Song, 2004
A slow unfolding. Every sensation lived from moment to moment. Eiko Otake, alongside Takashi Koma have based their salient approach towards site specific dances according to this philosophy. Tree Song celebrates trees, their anguish, majesty and resilience in a similar fashion. Commissioned by the American Dance Festival in Durham, North Carolina and performed under a striking tree in Duke University, the dance summoned an innate relationship of humankind with landscape at large. Limbs smeared with dirt and dust, white painted faces gawking at each other with emotions evoked by a falling petal, bodies clad in black, as loose as the autumn leaves holding on to the mighty branches for dear life, the same bodies making unabating mindful shapes, creating gentle flows in passing, sometimes with a blanket of leaves crushed between two bodies, at times a body in black succumbed so tightly into its core against the tree trunk that it resembles a passageway into the tree’s womb, an expression of profoundness while nibbling on delicate yellow chrysanthemums, subtle chirpings and swaying of leaves accentuating the Japanese songs in the evening mist, the artists decomposed and lamented with the tree as it continued to absorb memories, with hands sprawled out analogous to the imposing branches hovering over them.
Here
There
Now
Then
Cheryl Stock- here/there/then/now, 2002
Often working with several multi-site productions, Cheryl Stock manifested “stairs to nowhere here, deep crevices with no purpose there, pillars in dialogue with floating objects then, the inviting void of the black box now”. A collaboration of several independent artists in the realm of dance, music, video, visualization and lighting birthed a thought provoking installation within the confines of Brisbane Powerhouse and its hidden intimate scale and structure. The purpose of the performance was to explore creating narratives through fragmented intertextuality, while being able to guide the audience on how to view the works and from where, in a structured manner. This promenade journey thus enables you to develop a personal relationship with the performance while responding to the spaces they are limited by, and with every story unfolded is a new depth unlocked, of the site and experience akin.
Siobhan Davies- Minutes, 2010
While approaching dance as an inward vision in terms of the composition of movements that produces art along with an outward perception with dance manipulating alternative spaces in the open field of contemporary art, Davies constructed Minutes with extraordinary sophistication inherent with ordinary movements. The dance piece was performed live in Hayward Gallery, London. Since it was to be within a gallery, the execution allowed the audience to move around its five dancers as though a live installation. The dance also formed part of the overall collection exhibited in the gallery. While the audience focused on the subtle articulations of the dancers’ bodies, the dancers enacted and embodied what the site demanded of them. Sometimes they posed as people viewing the exhibition, and other times they glided around, relying on observation and awareness of another body in the vicinity The spectators blurred the lines between the eyes and art viewing the art, discovering and weaving together new modes of perception.