Annabel van Baren

Springdance 2008 Promo video

The first experience of Springdance 2008 was the symposium Questions of Meaning and Movement on Friday the 18th of April. As its main focal point was the interactive installation Double Skin/Double Mind, said to offer the opportunity to experience the dancer’s experience. Taking this installation as the starting point, the symposium asked how to hold on to dance, as its ephemeral nature slips through our fingers as we watch it: “Words, images, drawings, film material and digital technology can help capture its outward form. But can we also capture the intentions of dance? How can we catch the intangible creative process?” These are questions that the creators of the Interactive Installation Double Skin/Double Mind asked as part of their wider Notation Research Project. The installation allows the visitor, as a “sole participant in a virtual workshop” to follow the example of a digital dancer in the shape of Emio Greco within the installation. Adding to this virtual image on screen were music and sound, supposedly added to allow the participant to get “closer and closer to the intended movement until feel[ing] the inner sensation of the dance. This installation offers the opportunity to experience the dancer’s experience from within.”

The symposium held a total of three paper presentations. Some directly addressed the ins- and outs of the installation, whereas other presentations took the implications of the installation as a starting point. Combining insights from cognitive behavioural science, notation research, theatre and film studies, and media design, the symposium aimed at tackling issues of representation and intention from a diverse range of views.

Nevertheless, the question of what was meant by “intention” still escapes me. More crucially, I wonder what this installation aims to be. If it is positioned as a therapeutic device to allow patients with anorexia nervosa to reflect on their own embodiment and movements by seeing themselves pictured as rectangular shaped blobs, I imagine its strength: rather than being confronted with their weight and shape, patients can view their body in a less implicational and judgemental manner. However, as I am far from being a cognitive behavioural therapist, I cannot say this with certainty. If, on the other hand, this work is placed within a context of art, I feel that its execution could have been more advanced. Namely, had the definition of the images on screen been more high, it would have allowed for a more interactive experience of the work. If the position of the installation is within a dance training setting, I similarly have my questions as to how beneficial this may be. Seeing one’s moving image as a almost random collection of rectangular shapes does not benefit the comparison with the instructor’s movements. Importantly, the absence of any kind of correction undermines it possible status as a training device. One of the core components of any class is the comparison with the intentions (ah, so here it is!) of the author / choreographer / teacher. If, again, the technicality of the work had been more advanced as to include a sensitive tracking device and comparative programming, the participant could track her/his progress. Even so, I could imagine a videotaped or audio taped workshop combined with a mirror to have a similar effect.

It should be noted, however, that the DVD included in the publication Capturing Intention is notably more interactive and compelling. It features close-ups of parts of the body (feet and torso) that are of key importance to the correct execution of the movements, sounds which promote the kind of mental state necessary to ‘enter’ the intended movements, and detailed descriptions of several forms of dance notation, past and present.

Even though I failed to understand the way in which the installation captures intention, the symposium certainly made me reflect on how I position my own research on dance performances. Certainly, I will not venture into the direction of cognitive brain science or notation studies, but stick to positioning dance performance in a wider, cultural studies context.