Contemporary Dance and Narrative Structures

Didactic Unit III

• This unit focuses on dance styles and expressive manifestations.
• The unit explores Dance and Corporal Expression.
• It was created by Beatriz Garrido López, a Bachelor's Degree in Physical Activity and Sport Science.

Choreographic Composition and Dramatisation

• Choreographic composition and dramatisation are inseparable.
• Kinematics (movement) and emotions work together to convey ideas.
• Pavis defines dramatisation (theatricalisation) as a scenic structure.
• It includes: plot (beginning, middle, and end), physical and vocal actions, gestures, dialogues, dramatic tensions, conflicts, characters, staging, costumes, scenery, etc.
• Dramaturgy (Greek, dramaturgia) is the art of composing a drama.
• Dramaturgy encompasses the technique and principles of play construction, needing theatrical rules for creation and analysis.

Brief Historical Overview

• Romantic ballet emphasized continuous, preferably ascending movement, with a focus on airborne, flowing motion.
• This is reflected in dance styles that emphasized continuous, fluid movements.
• The importance of movement as the core element of dance emerged from influential modern dancers like Duncan, Graham, Wigman, and Laban.

Dramaturgy and the Nature of Dance

• Dramaturgy was already present in repertory ballet librettos, dictating the story structure (beginning, middle, end).
• This structure wasn't always clear in 20th-century avant-garde choreography.
• Modern dance pioneers (Duncan, Wigman, Bausch, Hoghe) emphasized a dramaturgy tailored to artistic expression in dance and narrative.

Dramaturgy and Modern Dance

• Modern dancers in the early 20th century shifted from libretto-driven choreography to a focus on current affairs and subjective experiences.
• They moved away from conventional forms of narrative dance and created new forms based on personal expression.
• This shift towards subjective experience marked a break with past traditions in dance.
• Merce Cunningham's post-modern dance explored any kind of movement as valid material.

Contemporary Dance and Modern Ballet

• Contemporary dancers lacked stage justification for their actions through research and imagination.
• Dramaturgy's role in contemporary dance and ballet ceased to be a subject of study by mid-century.
• Choreographers often used resources intuitively and did not always have a formalized methodological approach.

Physical and Technical Demands

• Dance in the 1980s-1990s became more physically demanding and acrobatic.
• Choreographers often challenged performers with fast, precise, and physically demanding movements.
• Influence from other physical disciplines, such as circus and martial arts.
• The emphasis was on physical dexterity and aesthetic performance.

Why Dramaturgy?

• The 20th century's focus on technique over other artistic elements may be why dramaturgy wasn't widely used.

What is Dramaturgy?

• Dramaturgy is a language that serves the same functions as verbal language.
• It focuses on the meaning and intention behind actions.
• It is the means to create a narrative through actions.

Dance-Theatre

• Dance becomes dance-theatre when the starting point is not technique, the plot or the text.
• It instead becomes a field where choreography, dancers, collaborators, and playwrights interact in a new way.
• The dramaturgy of dance strives for coherence through the concrete materialization of elements like actions, steps, gestures, props, rhythms, and tempos.

Choreographic creation and dramaturgy

• Dramaturgy involves the practice of staging text and intending an effect on the spectator.
• Choreographers arrange textual and scenic material in dance, including movement quality, interpretation types, rhythm, costumes, make-up, music/sound, voice, set design, lighting, and other resources like video.

Dramaturgy vs. Choreography

• Choreography is the spatial design of bodies and movements.
• Dramaturgy refers to the narration of intended meanings, whether realistic or metaphorical, for those movements.
• When creating a dramaturgy with movement, there's a focus on a coherent dramatic universe that audience members find credible.
• The choreography itself needs to be planned, clear, and coherent, with no gratuitous elements.

Organizing the Making of Dance

• Reflecting on questions such as intended meaning, purpose, structure, compositon methods and audience is essential when staging a dance piece.

Meaning of Choreography

• The meaning of choreography arises not only from the piece itself, but also from the lived experience of the viewer.
• Choreographers use resources outside the theater for inspiration, looking at the visual arts, music, and other forms of creative expression.

Different Ways to Tell a Story

• Narratives in dance can be linear (chronological order), non-linear, circular (beginning and end coincide), or interactive (decisions affecting the narrative).

Types of Structures

• The types of structures include chronological, in media res, climax-based, disordered, reverse, and non-ending.

Analysis of Creation

• Analysis of a dance show involves investigating both aspects of the production, including the company and the show.
• Levels of questions about the company, the technical-artistic aspects of the show, the viewer's subjective experience, technical criteria for performance, and criteria for collective composition are used for more comprehensive analysis.

The Stage Space

• Questions are asked to analyze the aesthetics of the stage, the form of the stage design, and the relationship between the stage and audience.
• The way scenography changes in a show is also investigated.

Lighting

• The type and use of light in a performance can be categorized as naturalist or metaphorical.
• The relationship of colors in the light to the objects and environments onstage

The Objects

• The analysis of the objects in a performance includes their origins, their multiple functions (polysemy), their utility, their symbolic meanings, and their relationship to the performers and the space.

Costumes and Make-up

• Elements to be assessed in costumes and make-up include their function, aesthetics, and relationship with the performers/bodies.

Qualities of the Actors

• Physical descriptions, relationships, movement and body, voice (quality, diction, vocals) is analyzed here

Function of Music/Noise/Silence

• The analysis of the music, sounds of noises, silence are categorized as type, gender relationships with the movement, moments of intervention, and consequences.

Rhythm of the Show

• The rhythm of the movements and the relationship between the actual duration of the movements and the lived duration are central points of assessment.
• Look for how the music, movement, and overall rhythm of the show works together.
• Examine continuous or discontinuous rhythmic qualities

The History

• Analyzing the concepts, topics, and themes presented and the way they relate to the present day is important here.

The Spectator

• Questions related to expectations, general audience feelings, interesting images/scenes, how the play used audience attention, are examples of analysis.

Final Conclusions

• Analysis of the show's social function and other noteworthy elements for the audience.

Stage Design elements

• It includes questions about scenography, costumes, acting, movement, lighting, and sound to understand how the stages are designed to produce different effects on the viewer..

How to Assign Emotions

• Steps for assigning emotions in a performance (deciding the topic, creating a story, choosing a narrative style, organizing the structure, and assigning emotions to each part of the structure).

Emotions in Performances

• Explores methods to establish the connection between emotions and bodily manifestations (sadness: throat, anger: hands/jaws, fear: stomach, joy: heart. ).

Creating a Dramaturgy with Movement

• The importance of creating a credible dramatic universe through choreographic resources, elements, and coherence in order to make the audience consider the dance piece credible.

Explore the intricate relationship between contemporary dance and narrative structures with this quiz. Delve into the characteristics of various narrative forms, the evolution of choreography, and the significance of dramaturgy in dance. Test your understanding of how these elements intertwine in modern performances.