Issue #29

Spring 2005

Improvisation Is Dead

Cover of Issue #29

Letter from the Editors

The assertion that improvisation is dead is meant as a provocation, not a statement of fact. Historically, movements and ideas have been declared dead when they are in fact transforming and taking on new life and vigor. Our aim with this issue is to bring to the surface the dissonance and tension that exist around the ideas of what improvisation is, how it is valued, and the role it plays in the larger arena of dance as an art form.

The recent Movement Research Festival 2004: Improvisation Is Hard (November 29th through December 12th) provides a starting point for this discussion. Many of us perceived a new sense of diversity in the Festival’s choice of events, venues, and artists. Structurally, the curation had shifted to a seven-member committee of artists who represented a larger sector of the community and varying approaches to what the festival could incorporate and address. During the Festival, questions arose. Did the curators have a consolidated agenda or vision? How pluralistic was the Festival? Was it thought provoking? What were the artists’ and audiences’ responses to it? What do we consider improvisation, and how is the term being stretched and contracted by current practices? And adding to those: How is the language of improvisation tangential to other art forms and disciplines outside the arts? How is improvisation activated by these discourses, or vice versa? We only began to address these questions. However, in this issue, current thoughts on improvisation are articulated, recipes offered, more questions raised and connections made.

It is a pervasive topic in formal and informal conversations that viable and extensive forums for discourse on experimental dance are lacking; that the preview/review format does not fill the need for a real discussion of the ideas and directions taken by artists; that mainstream dance criticism is lagging behind in its scope and focus. A variety of attempts and exercises need to be formulated to counter this neglect. The Journal is one such forum. Mirroring the approach taken to curate the Festival, a six-member Editorial Team came together for the production of this issue. We gravitated towards Movement Research with differing needs, interests, and proposals, and eventually coalesced around the project of editing the next Journal. It is our hope that by continually incorporating the ideas of various artists in the publication of the Journal, we create a vehicle of analysis and dialogue that accurately reflects the diversity of our community.

Thank you and enjoy,
 Editors: April Biggs, Kimberly Brandt, Levi González, Isabel Lewis, Alejandra Martorell, and Layard Thompson*

P.S. We also invite you to share your thoughts and reactions to this issue by writing letters to the editors. The letters will be read, posted online, and a selection of them will be printed in the next Journal.

Editorial team

Jodi Bender Ingrid Bromberg

Contributing Editor

April Biggs Kimberly Brandt Levi Gonzalez Isabel Lewis Alejandra Martorell Layard Thompson

Ad Layout

Jana DeWitt

Articles

3-3

Letter to the Editor

Congratulations on the MR Performance Journal #27/28. What a great document of the history of Movement Research and the dance field in New York over the past 25 years. However,...

12-13

Reflections On A Panel Discussion “Outside in the City: Reframing the Kinetic Experience of the Urban Environment”

In the last four years I’ve experienced New York City as more labyrinth than landscape. A labyrinth services some master plan; it makes you stumble and backtrack your steps. It...

26-27

The Space of Dancing

The movement between inner and outer landscapes (what the eyes do) The role of space and place in movement construction (the venue) Our focus will be on the in between...