What an intensely busy and enjoyable couple of weeks it has been since my last blog post. I have a list of posts I plan to write on what has been happening in my sphere of practice (e.g. Queering the Somatic: Interrupting the Narrative at Middlesex University, new creative process with collaborator Rosie Tong, and researching into views of the role of the performer within Thinking Through Dance (2013)) - however my blog posts over the next few days are going to focus on the current event I am attending.
I am delighted to be at One Dance UK's bi-annual African Diasporic dance conference ReGenerations, and have just returned to my accomodation after a full-on first day.
This time the event is being hosted at The Lowry, Salford (Manchester), after being held at the mac Centre in Edgbaston (Birmingham) previously, and gathers voices from across the arts sectors with a focus on the dance of the African Diaspora and the role of digital (?) within it. Instead of giving a dialogue and narrative / review of what's been going on, I'm instead going to give some of the questions which have been raised throughout this first day (either by presenters, delegates or myself) - and some of these will hopefully resonate with anyone reading. See below;
Digital Manipulation - All in the edit
Karen Gallagher MBE (Keynote Speaker Day 1)
- Is there a need to rethink how dance is transmitted to audiences (in terms of access / artistically / qualitively)
- How do we become more seeing?
- Dance is a human act - yet we are constantly pushing it into conversations with technology
- Harry thought - Why haven't I yet met any one at this symposium who is a non-dance technological specialist? Does there need to be a push to further open the conversation to outside of the sector?
- How do we consume culture? And how do "the powers" dictate what is "good" or "worthy" culture?
- Work and practice should reflect self, and reflect other (coming from Gallagher's perspective of programming)
Gonzalo Preciado-Azanza and Dr Adesola Akinleye, and Louise Katerega
- Human connections - how does digital fit into this?
- How can we use technology to dance together? (in relation to Preciado-Azanza and Akinleye's work they are making in both Latvia and England simultaneously via digital spaces)
- What is the humanity of what we are making - how are we moving and living?
- Treating choreographic process as algorithm
- Harry thought - Katerega pointed out her use of Prezzi as a digital presentation style. I think the result was hugely effective. In the eventual final report from I wonder if there could be some way of echoing the network / layered approach to the presentation presented today (which made so much more sense than a PowerPoint. Prompted me to have thoughts of how I can present non-physical artefacts (i.e. written questionare), in a physical way.
Ghislaine Boddington, and Susannah Simons
- How do we define digital, and digital in relation to dance and our practice? Boddington sees digital in her work as distribution.
- Issues with copyright - need for artists and organisations to look at potential directions of work at the beginning of process and make decisions over how the work will be affected by copyright (Harry thought - doesn't this destroy the notion of the creative process and not having preconcieved notions of eventual output?)
- Harry thought - In relation to Marquee TV, questions around who decides what is worthy to be programmed - linking back to Gallagher's thought at the beginning of the day over the "powers" within the sector)
