Spatial Translation and ‘Present-ness’ in Site-Specific Dance Performance

Downloaded: 23 Feb 2012 IP address: 131.227.185.53 PROJECT 3 ( July 2007) was developed as a site-specific durational dance performance situated in a gallery-esque site – the orangery and adjoining conservatory spaces within the mansion of Bretton Hall1 (see images opposite). The aim was to construct a work that relied upon the choreographer’s and per formers’ embodied site-responses as rev ealed through pheno men o logical move ment inquiry and to employ this material as the sole form of bodily and kinaesthetic com mu nication between per former and spectator. This resulted in a quest to produce a per formance experience that moved away from exploring a site’s formal, historical, and contextual components2 and aimed instead to encourage the audience member to engage with the site through a corporeal, experi ential encounter with the site pheno menon. Put simply, this project aimed to produce a sense of ‘fit’ (see Wrights and Sites in Wilkie, 2002) in which the final work constituted a performance of site in the moment as opposed to a performance about the site and its architectural, historical, or factual components. Project 3 explored the potential for sitespecific ‘encounters’ to increase the audience members’ awareness of site through their engagement with the live, real-time perfor mance event, leading to the potential invo cation of an increased awareness of self in the here and now. As opposed to feelings of selfconsciousness, the term applies here to an individual’s increased awareness of them selves in the site leading to an increased sense of ‘present-ness’. To this end, a creative approach aimed at producing a work with a congruous sense of fit was developed to prioritize the individual’s engagement in a self-aware and present manner. Through the application of an organic3 form of creative and choreo gra phic process, the project explored how the moving, dancing body could be the main facilitator of this process, effectively bringing the individual ‘closer’ to an embodied experi ence of the site, reliant upon their corporeal and kinaesthetic experience. The purpose of this particular site-specific work was to explore an interaction with the site which would in turn invoke for both per former and audience member an increased awareness of self: in this place, at this time, in this moment. During this process of ‘exchange’, the dancers’ skills and spatial ‘tuning’ was employed to produce a form of site-specific encounter facilitated by the