A Work of Art from A Work of Art - Becky Edmunds                                

In the 1999 study into the preservation of dance, entitled Securing our Dance Heritage, Catherine Johnson says,

Preserving the remnants of an art form and cultural activity dependent on time and space requires no less creativity than that needed to create the dance itself (1999).

Dance documentation is rarely regarded as a creative act. The use of video as a tool for the documentation of dance art is often seen as producing a secondary product - one that is inferior to the live event.  Artists can struggle to create effective screen re-presentations of their work that remain accurate to the spirit of the original live event, whilst also existing as compelling video works in their own right.  Most video documentation is rarely seen outside of the professional and academic realms of the dance world, and little is intended as work to be viewed and enjoyed for its own sake.

I initially trained and worked as a dancer and choreographer, moving to a screen-based practice in 2000.  I now make video documents of dancing. I record and re-present the actions of dance makers, whether that be representation of their creative processes, or of dance in performance.   Giving a choreographic attention to the composition of movement within the space of a frame, and the composition of movement in time as constructed in the edit, I compose these recordings to create ‘non-fiction’ dance video. I make documents, documentation and documentary.

Video seems to be the obvious tool to use in the attempt to preserve dance. It would appear that one can easily point the camera and press record, gathering sound and image, with a sense that a live event has then been 'saved' and can be returned to. Video offers a sense of security in the thought that one has 'captured' something. The use of the word 'capture' in photography is widely used, suggesting that something has been seized or taken control of.

However, it is not simple, because in reality nothing of the performance or process has been 'captured' or seized. Video merely makes marks on a magnetic tape - marks which offer no guarantee of knowledge of the object that it is representing.

The debate on how to create successful dance recordings is not a recent one. Writing in Dance Magazine in 1965, Allegra Fuller Snyder defines two types of documentation recordings which serve different purposes.  One of these definitions is of a recording that serves as an ‘accurate’ form of notation -  a record for study and for reconstruction. Fuller Snyder explains,

Film as notation is purely a technique, and the more methodical and mechanical it can be, the better the results. At minimum, it requires setting up a stationary camera in a position to see the full stage area and filming a dance from beginning to end without stop. Here then is a record for study and partial reconstruction  (1965 p.35).

Here then also is a very dull video. Whilst undeniably useful for researchers, who can use their expert knowledge to fill in the gaps, and therefore remain interested, there is very little in this type of notational video document that would hold the attention of a wider audience.

The screen dance artist Billy Cowie recognises that notational documents are often uninteresting and surprisingly uninformative. He says,

In documentations of live dance performances there is a tendency to show everything coupled with an anxiety not to miss anything out. This usually ends up with extensive use of long shots where, ironically, the lack of choreographic detail ends up in nothing of interest being shown and nearly everything important being missed out (2006 p.125-126).

These notational documents, that can fail to interest the viewer, are not enough if the intention of the artist or the documenter is to distribute information about dance art to a wider audience. The American dance artist Daniel Nagrin recognises that poor or uninteresting video documentation can be counterproductive, asking, ‘What's the good of a history if it degrades the quality of the art?’ (1988). The problem is that in the attempt to represent the live event accurately, these videos fail to represent the work appropriately for the video medium.

There is a possible solution to be found in Fuller Snyder's second definition of a dance recording, which is of one that uses the techniques of filmmaking,

not to record technical details (as in the notation film), but to record the experience of seeing a dance on stage, using the natural selection, focusing and editing which the viewer's brain and eye and emotions do in a live performance (1965 p. 35).

This definition unearths myriad questions regarding what the experience of viewing a dance, or of witnessing a process, actually is. It will differ from one viewer to the next, from one day to the next, from one dance to the next and from one performance of the dance to the next, and so this type of film is subjective. Assuming that any videographer who is making such a document will have their own individual experience of the dance, we can then say that the document produced will be a record of that individual's experience.

This is the area of documentation that I work in. I collaborate with dance artists to find ways in which we can create videos from live events that have the potential to exist as works in their own right. Whilst not ‘accurate’ they aim to be appropriate. They document my process, my looking, my decision making, my experience of the dance.

On Fragmentation.

Herbert Moulderings recognises that,

Whatever survives of a performance in the form of a photograph or videotape is no more than a fragmentary, petrified vestige of a lively process that took place at a different time, in a different place.  (Moulderings, 1984 pp. 172-3)

Within my own practice I recognise the fragmented aspects, or the partial views that documentation offers, and rather than view them as a problem, I aim to utilise them as a point of interest and exploration. There is a gap that exists between the live and the recorded representation and I can see that there are three ways that one might deal with that gap.

1. Ignore the gap.

2. Attempt to lessen the gap.

3. Enjoy the gap. Step into it, widen it, make use of it. This is what I do. The purpose of the documents that I produce is to provide small pieces of information through which a viewer might be able to actively reconstruct an imagined version, myth or memory of what the event might have been. And, because there is no such thing as an absolutely accurate recorded version of live performance, my practice questions how much information is needed in order for a viewer to be able to construct a version in their own imagination from the ‘fragmentary, petrified vestige’ that I can provide them with. My work points to all that has been omitted, as much as to that which I have decided to include.

In order to explore this sense of fragmentation, I have experimented with 'in-camera' editing. In-camera editing heightens and celebrates the sense of the fragmentary, by deliberately only recording parts of an event. It is the practice of attempting to create a video composition by stopping and starting the camera in order to make edit points, as opposed to filming everything and choosing which shots to use at a later point, and assembling the composition in an edit suite.  Initially, these in-camera edit experiments were the result of identifying certain frustrations with the video documentation process.  The ease of use and affordability of the materials needed to make video (as compared with film) can lead to imprecise methods of gathering and composing footage. It is a perfectly affordable option to leave a video camera running in the hope that it will catch something interesting. Film is so expensive, that every shot must be made with great care. In addition, as the Polish film director Andrzej Wajda explains,

Video is a technique that offers no resistance. The lighting is always sufficient, the camera movement incredibly light and facile - too facile - and what is more, if you don't like what you just did you can simply erase it and start again from scratch. This means that you work without tension, without the familiar atmosphere of being on the edge, constantly at risk. The problem, of course, is that that tension, that sense of risk, is precisely what characterises the work in a good film (1989 p43-44).

An in-camera edit puts this sense of tension back into my video work. It encourages me to pay close attention to the patterns that I am gathering, to the marks that I am making on the tape.

A Duet.

In recent years, I have been working with dance artist Fiona Wright to document her performance practice. Previous to our working together, Wright was resistant to what she terms, the 'surreptitious documenting camera at the back of the theatre space'. Having never found those notational performance documents satisfactory, she rarely documented her work on video at all. Then she worked with video maker Lucy Cash, who created a video that documented a performance entitled kneeling down softly/and what is something to cry about then (2002), which was performed for two audience members at a time. Cash created a split screen document, showing two different performances running side by side, highlighting the similarities and differences between two separate performance events. For Wright, this drew attention to a detail of performance that other documents had failed to make visible - that the performance that one witnesses is unrepeatable, completely unique to the time that an audience sees it. Wright says,

There's a tradition, or culture that says 'this is the piece' and I've always had the idea that even set material is flexible. So I don't know what my relationship is to preserving dance in one correct form. I question the idea that there is a definitive version (2006).

Wright and I began to work together because she was researching the notion of 'duet' and she invited me to duet with her. We did not know exactly what this meant, but since I make documents and she performs, we began to define a working relationship between those two roles.  Our intention was to make our duet a visible event. We decided that I would document a series of performance lectures that she was giving, entitled Other Versions of an Uncertain Body (2005), and that I would be present in the performance space with her while I did so. I recorded fragments of the performances, editing the video in the camera, shooting not for maximum coverage of the event, but with a eye to the patterns that were being created on the video tape. The material then went through a second editing process in an edit suite, where I trimmed some of the edits and eliminated compositional decisions that were less satisfactory to me.

I repeated this process at two other performances of Other Versions of an Uncertain Body, collecting a series of in-camera edits, each one being roughly six minutes long. Wright would place a projection of the documentation of the last performance within each new performance - I would film that performance and the presence of documentation would be documented. When it appeared in the performance space the projected document would remind the audience of why I was in the space and of what I was making.

The final video version of Other Versions of an Uncertain Body is an edit of those in-camera edits. It serves as an analogue for my viewing experience of the work. It records the patterns that attracted my attention. It documents my preference for close-up, for partial views of the body. It is not a 'complete' version of what occurred in the performance. Is it a problem that this document is not attempting to be a full representation of Wright's work? It is not an inaccurate representation. It shows what happened, although not all of what happened. Its aim is to provoke a viewer to imagine the rest, by showing fragments.  Wright says of the final video,

It replaces the work and it becomes the interpretation of the work. In fact to completely resist video documentation as secondary and as less valid than the live work is confused thinking because there is no correct version to hold onto. So I've opened up to the idea of the video as part of the work. Not essential, but informing the work. (Wright 2006)

I aim to make clear that the documents that I make are not attempting to be accurate representations of the whole. The work draws attention to the gaps that representation creates, by intentionally offering restricted views of the body and small glimpses of the action. In making it clear that I am not offering a representation of the whole event, I highlight the fact that I am the maker of this video work and that I have made the decisions on what to show, and on what not to show. The viewer is encouraged to be aware of the gaps, and aware of my presence as the maker.

My role in the making of this video was one of active participation. I was not aiming to be neutral, and I was not on the outside of the work. Wright drew the act of documentation into being a part of the live event, giving me an opportunity to engage with the performance, and therefore, a greater understanding of what it was that I was involved with. I was not trying to second guess how Wright might want me to represent her work - I engaged with her work as an artist and collaborator. In turn, Wright was clear on my processes and on the fragmented nature of the results, and accepted it.

In her research into the documentation of practice, Sophia Lycouris poses useful questions that challenge assumptions about what purposes documentation can serve, asking,

What is representation? is representation reproduction? is then representation about "sameness" as opposed to "otherness"? does "sameness" imply recognition? is(should?) the work (be) recognisable in the document? what is the document? (Lycouris, 2000)

Her questions raise the possibility of the document as an artistic representation of reality. In the same way that visual arts portraiture is understood to be an artist's vision of their subject, Lycouris raises the possibility of documentation being a subjective and expressive view of events. If dance makers and their video collaborators can rigorously work towards an expanded notion of what constitutes a document and of what purpose it can serve, then the documentation of dance will no longer be defined by its failure to reproduce the original. Could then the documents be reconsidered as art works?

Susan Sontag said,

The photographer was thought to be an acute but non-interfering observer - a scribe, not a poet. (1971 p. 88)

This paper proposes that it is possible for the document maker to approach their work creatively, not merely as a scribe or technical recorder, but as an artist. If documentation can be viewed as a part of the live event, not as an after-thought, but as a valued aspect of the process, then the documentation of the performance or process can be as creative and as challenging as the live event. Dance artists and their collaborating documenters can create new languages for documentation and, through doing so, can find new and interested audiences, who might come to dance through its un-staged mediatised image.

References:

Auslander, P. (1999). Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture. London: Routledge.

Fuller Snyder, A. (1965). Three Kinds of Dance Films: A Welcome Clarification. Dance Magazine, 39, 34-39.

Johnson, C., & Fuller Snyder, A. (1999). Securing Our Dance Heritage: Issues in the Documentation and Preservation of Dance. Retrieved October 8, 2005, from Council On Library And Information Resources Web site:

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub84/preservation.html

Lycouris, S. (2000). The documentation of practice: framing trace. Working Papers in Art and Design 1. Retrieved February 13, 2006, from University of Hertfordshire Web site:

http://www.herts.ac.uk/artdes1/research/papers/wpades/vol1/lycouris1.html

Molderings, H. (1984). Life is No Performance: performance by Jochen Gerz. In G. Battock and R. Nicklas (Eds.), The Art of Performance: A Critical Anthology.

166-180) New York: E.P. Dutton.

Nagrin, D. (1988). The Art of Videotaping Dance. Retrieved January 20, 2007, from artist's web site:

http://www.nagrin.com/frames.htm

Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge.

Sontag, S. (1971). On Photography. London: Penguin Books.

Wajda, A. (1989).  Double Vision: My life in film.  New York: Holt.

Wright, F. (2006). Interview conducted by Becky Edmunds at The Place. February 20, 2006.