DANCING DEMOCRACIES

research

DANCING DEMOCRACIES

June - July 2018:

This is a first overview of a three week residency in TantsuRUUM in Tallinn in June-July 2018 titled “Dancing Democracies”. I'll start with describing what's been happening during the time so far and hope to add more thoughts soon.

The aim for research in Tallinn was set to find possibilities of structuring group movement in ways that can be considered democratic. More precisely, to find situations which allow members of a model community of dancing bodies to decide how to implement democratic principles.

For this, 30 volunteer dancers in groups of max 12 people at a time had 2 hour sessions where they had to find ways through different tasks without using any verbal communication. Before every task there was time for individual work to shape one’s values on how to and why to move in that very moment. The duration of this personal build up varied in correlation with the level of complexity of the task to come.

The attributes of deciding were agreed upon before every task. Volunteers could either guide themselves through tasks by identifying similarities and differences to and and from other dancers or using a principle of pure subjective suitability. So they could either choose to be objective and compare themselves to others or they could choose to act subjectively guided by emotion and personal taste in movement. They could of course use both simultaneously.

For example, a group of dancers are moving in the space according to principles and values they’d decided to use. They’re given a task to form 2 groups. When these groups are formed they’re given a task to decide who’s going to be the group leader. These decision can only be reached when every participating dancer feels satisfied with the decision. As said before, no talking is allowed, so communicating individual satisfaction, with each decision made, is an extra challenge.

Every session had 3 or 4 of such tasks, taking up approximately ⅓ of the whole session. Before that, a string of contributory or so-called warm up tasks were performed, gradually leading to decision making. Although every session varied in details, the overall build up and order of the warm up tasks remained similar throughout the research period.  

Every session started with the group of volunteers defining democracy to the best of their knowledge. What they thought to be it’s pros and cons, whether it was applicable in all diversities of life and whatever else they felt needed to be described or defined.

Then, a set of grouping assignments were performed. These contained elements of discussion, basic movement tasks and visual comparison. Some parts of these assignments can be compared to social choreography as defined by 9x9 projects initiated by Christine De Smedt in 2000 - 2005. In this context it was used to inform the volunteers of each other social and political background and to spark discussion. Volunteers were encouraged to notice details and to be very precise in what they say and do. 

That was followed by movement assignments concentrating on shifting focus from one’s own interests and desires to noticing and trying to comprehend similar aspects in the movement quality and patterns of everyone else without losing commitment to their personal choices. In this section talking was no longer an option. This lead to decision making that was described earlier.

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That's it for now. I hope to draw more conclusions after the last meeting with volunteers this Friday the 13th of July. This last meeting this summer is open for all to come and see and join.

12:00 at ETA this Friday.

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