1.  INTRODUCTION
 
Dance is a human expression that - in the western world – evolved away from daily routines and activities. Dance is performed by professional dancers. The audience observes and the performer is being observed. The performers experience dance as an embodied praxis, while the audience experience the dance only through viewing. The characteristics of the relationship between performer and audience have had a long history, rooted in the Greek definition of theatre θέατρον théatron, as “a place for viewing".

Maaike Bleeker (2008, 2011) proposes theatre as ‘the place from where the theatrical event is seen’. This definition implies that there is something to look at, the dance and someone looking at it, the audience. The gap between action and observation within the ‘apparatus of theatre’ seems to have grown throughout our history, creating a lack of understanding.

Rituals are on the other side of this spectrum as the place where the relationship between those engaged are equal and based on the idea of transformation and transaction. Dances within rituals are normally performed as  ceremony and have been established and agreed upon by a community. The physical experience of the participant is required to be engaged with the intentions of the ritual. As Richard Schechner proposes, ‘if the performance’s purpose is to effect change, then the performance is a ritual. If the performance’s purpose is mainly to give pleasure, to be beautiful, or for passing time, then the performance is entertainment.’ Dance as a shared embodied praxis, such as the ritual, may establish a new perspective for contemporary dance studies and research projects. For example, what if performer and audience share similar experiences creating a more emphatic relationship? The interactive installation “Pre-Choreographic Movement Kit“ proposes an innovative perspective towards the transmission of dance and movement principles. It has been developed within the frame of the interdisciplinary research project Pre-choreographic Alphabet initiated by dance company Emio Greco | PC at the ICKamsterdam Choreographic Arts Center in Amsterdam under coordination of dance researcher Bertha Bermudez.  The development and creation of the interactive installation is part of the European project LABO 21 (2012-2014), the laboratorium of the 21th century, a platform that encompasses different autonomous research projects based on artistic methodologies in four European countries:
Belgium - Troubleyn/Jan Fabre
The Netherlands – ICKamsterdam
Croatia - BADco
UK - Wayne McGregor/Random dance / Centre of Dance Research (C-DaRE) at Coventry University.

Labo 21 strives to enhance a better understanding of the performing arts by connecting the knowledge of performance and dance to other fields, such as cognitive science, biology and technology research, social science and philosophy.  
During the “Pre-choreographic Alphabet” research project, different disciplines have been implemented: motion tracking, interactive environment, cognitive linguistics, dance analysis and dance education.
The “Pre-Choreographic Movement Kit“ is part of the research using motion tracking and interaction. Exploring the potential of sound as feedback and the use of objects and their manipulation through movement and transformation is an interesting case study of the quantification of qualitative principles. The installation is a proposal of a playful interactive environment where dance principles can be discovered in moving the objects and executing instructions, receiving specific sound feedback.The “Kit” will be finalized as a pilot at the end of the Labo 21 project July 2014. It is being developed as a collaboration between dance researcher Bertha Bermudez with digital media artist Chris Ziegler and composer Todd Ingalls, both affiliated with AME (School of Arts, Media and Engineering) at ASU (Arizona State University) Phoenix, USA.



back - page 2 of 12 - more