{"id":1076,"date":"2021-01-24T08:52:14","date_gmt":"2021-01-24T08:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/22\/?p=1076"},"modified":"2023-03-15T11:26:20","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T11:26:20","slug":"what-if-we-just-dance-an-example-of-interactive-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/22\/what-if-we-just-dance-an-example-of-interactive-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"What If We Just Dance?<\/em> An Example of Interactive Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Paraskevi Tektonidou<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

The project What If We Just Dance<\/font> was performed in a number of Athenian secondary schools before it was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The performance was created as an exploration to bring together contemporary dance techniques, such as release and contact improvisation, with street dance. Its aim was to capture the young audience\u2019s attention and curiosity by triggering associations and dissociations. The feedback session after the performance was structured as an open discussion, in the form of interactive theatre criticism. This kind of reciprocal theatrical criticism relocates the role of the viewer and hence creates a space that transforms the act of learning into a process of emancipation, echoing Jacques Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s thinking on art and education. In other words, the introduction of contemporary art and criticism into public education led the students to the ongoing act of becoming politically aware.
Keywords:<\/strong> dance criticism, contemporary dance, Ranci\u00e8re, education, emancipation, young audiences<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thessaloniki, February 2014: three young boys aged twelve present a choreography based on Rosas Danst Rosas<\/em><\/a> by Anne Teressa de Keersmaeker\/Rosas. One year later, in the same school, about forty pupils form a flash-mob<\/a> in the schoolyard. June 2017, six grade students present a contemporary dance performance.  April 2018, pupils aged eight to twelve re-enact Pina Bausch\u2019s Nelken line<\/em><\/a>. These are some recent moments of my life as a music teacher in primary public schools where I have worked since 2000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over this period, I began to build into my teaching improvisational, active music listening-through-the-body, influenced by my personal experience as an amateur dancer. For the last sixteen years, I have been attending contemporary dance and improvisation classes, and I wanted to share with children the joy that I receive while dancing and the beneficial experience of embodied listening to music. Meeting thousands of children over the years, I have found that by the age of twelve, most youngsters have not been to either a classical or contemporary music concert or a contemporary dance performance, even though almost all of them have attended museums and traditional theatre performances.`<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When choreographer Stella Fotiadi invited me to work with her in creating a contemporary dance performance for young audiences, I accepted the invitation with excitement. Our aim was to produce a show that would be challenging for young audiences, capturing their attention while at the same time triggering their curiosity and interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Inspired by Jacques Ranci\u00e8re\u2019s insights into spectatorship as a \u201cnormal situation\u201d where we \u201calso learn and teach, act and know,\u201d we designed a feedback conversation based on the principles of engagement and equality of intelligence (Emancipated Spectator <\/em>17).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Background of the Project<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Contemporary theatre production in Greece is wide and aesthetically varied. Most of these productions follow older theatrical traditions, including the \u201cclassical\u201d form of representational narrative, while at times embedding some interesting innovative techniques. At the same time, there are theatre directors and radical collectives who are breaking new ground both in dramaturgical structure and in ways of staging. Theatre for children and teenagers follows both trends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

School visits to those theatres, once or twice a year, are part of the Greek public-school curriculum. Since few school educators are familiar with contemporary art forms, they choose to attend performances solely for educational purposes rather than for their cutting-edge aesthetics. The experience of these young audiences is limited to attending the performance, without participating in any kind of feedback process organized by the troupe. Sometimes, after the performance, a follow up discussion may take place back at school between educators and students, about the topics of the dramatic text, rather than its realization on stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whereas dramatic productions frequently use a written text as their starting point, contemporary choreography has historically been based on originality, exploration, and experimentation. <\/strong>For an audience whose expectations might be based on conventional ideas about dance performance, watching contemporary choreographic works can sometimes be puzzling or confusing. Throughout the history of choreography, beholders have become familiar with innovation and novelty, not only because of the persistence of the artists but also because critics and theoreticians have steadily created a language to talk about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What if we just dance?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Choreographic approaches are as abundant as professional choreographers, and each one of them is searching for an idiomatic, singular, recognizable style following a different path<\/em>. One of these paths <\/em>is to explore the in-between spaces that emerge from the blending\/mix of different genres and forms. In 2019, the choreographer Stella Fotiadi, in collaboration with dancers Anastasia Valsamaki, Anna Anousaki and Alexandros Laskaratos, with myself as dramaturg, created a dance performance with the title What If We Just Dance?<\/em><\/a> <\/em>which followed this route of merging different dance and musical genres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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