| Creators | Sporton, G., Sandra Norman, Janet Tovey and Andrew Knight-Hill |
|---|---|
| Collaborators | Sandra Norman (Dancer), Andrew Knight-Hill (Composer) and Jan Tovey (Cinematographer) |
| Description | This project was a development of work on a dance recreated by the same dancers more than 30 years apart. The performance and rehearsal process threw up a range of issues that support the notion of a dance as a series of successive approximations rather than deriving from an authoritative version, challenging the conventional scholarly view of dances as text. The example work combined in performance video of the dancers from 1986 with the same dancers adapting the work for performance in 2016. This entails more than a negotiation with steps, but also about meaning, where the impact of life is more than merely physical but plays a role in our perception of the performers. The project had four major outputs and a minor one, with two performances for the camera, a conventionally staged version and a 360 degree version, a conference paper that deals with the archiving of performance, and a longer essay that uses the performances as an example of the unique qualities that dance possesses, dealing with the shortcomings of intellectualised accounts of dance that dominate dance scholarship. It presents challenging evidence about why some precepts that are simply assumed (that the essence of the dance is located in the steps, and the integrity of a restaging requires faithfulness to them). More than this,it rejects the proposition that intellectual or philosophical accounts of dance have much credence given their limitations as a reflection of what is seen and processed outside the framework of the physical. |
| Portfolio items | Double Take Live Performance |
| The body and the intellectual | |
| The Life of a Dance: Double Take, Part II | |
| Double Take: Looking Back at Yourself... | |
| Year | 2018 |