Re-membering the past of this present

Embodied and choreographic activations of archival records connected to the contemporary dance group Living Movement (Denmark, 1972-1984).

Every present has a past of its own and any imaginative reconstruction of the past, aims at reconstructing the past of this present, the present in which the act of imagination is going on, as here and now perceived.

                     R. G. Collingwood, The Idea Of History.

Dear audience,

I meet you in a future presence, in a moment which is now, then. At the same time, this moment is my past projection of the future, or possibly your remembered past present. Inevitably, different pasts and futures will haunt this present-ation of a process in progress. Are you lost in time?

Despite the inherent plurality of time, I recognize dance as an art form deeply associated with present and presence – within the body, on stage, in relation with its surroundings and the world. Working professionally within the field of dance and choreography, I am also used to projecting towards future presences; towards creating the next movement, concept, performance or collaboration. But the past permeates this focus; the dancers, the movements, the collaborations and connections before this moment in time – (how) are they present to me as a contemporary dance practitioner? In the body of this graduation project, I have sought to raise awareness on the entangled connections between future, present and past dance/r/s.

Digging into a relation

Last fall I became aware of an archive located at the Royal Danish Library here in Copenhagen: Living Movement Åben Scene Arkivet v/ Graziella Hsu. More than 50 boxes of documents, constituting the remains and reminiscenzes of the Danish contemporary dance group Living Movement (1972-1984). I experienced a curiosity, maybe even an urge, to get closer to these colleagues of another generation and so I embarked on a time travel, my sensorial body being my time capsule, the documents of the archive my fuel.

While spending time with photographs, articles, handwritten notes, choreographic notations, applications, rejections, schedules, formal letters, private letters, newsletters, unfinished letters, dreams and statistics – (hi)stories began to crystalize in the crisscrossing between information and intimacies of the archive, synthesized with my own identifications and imaginations. Experiencing the sometimes overwhelming affect in these archival encounters, I began to acknowledge the presence, the agency, of the documents themselves. By touching, I was touched.

Listening, touching, leaning, re-membering

My enquiry deals with explorations of (re)creating meaning(ful) relationships which transcends temporalities. To explore what this could mean in practice, I invited two groups of participants – one of peers and one of students at Johan Borup Højskole in Copenhagen – to try out a number of embodied, choreographic practices in the scope of a two-day workshop. We engaged with a selection of archival records, including photographs, articles, costumes and music, connected to the contemporary dance group Living Movement and thereby also to a specific time in history.

By practicing historicity, by listening to the records and letting ourselves be affected, inherent perspectives of these historical documents would be discovered. When I acknowledged imaginations and facts as equally meaningful, the documents responded, they began to reciprocate, to re-connect, to transform, to matter. Engaging with details and possibilities; with diversity, plurality and contingency instead of attempting a total view, ruptured ideas of history as one linear truth. In the studio, past, present and future met.

By (re)experiencing postures and proximities of bodies caught on photography nearly 50 years ago, we bounced between temporalities and meaning-making. We imagined the gaps, the beyonds and insides of documented moments in time. We touched on precarious working conditions, femininity, force, power, materials, technology, friendship, art and dance, as we noticed the uneven seems of a dress.

This presentation, at the time of the event

Weaving recollections of my personal dance history with notes and perceptions which arose in this project, I will take the opportunity to share some entangled, multi-sited dance histories. I will make use of some of the practices applied in the project, as a way to (re)present and respond to situations, which have come about during the different phases of the process. In the presentation I will also unfold some of the ethical and practical complexities I have encountered and discuss potentials in approaching historicity through relational and embodied activations. 

Welcome!