rehearsing by emaen

Solo movement by emaen

I experimented with what it would mean to record the 'sound of dance'. The first recording is of a few minutes of our rehearsal process on 2/8/10, in an attempt to capture and explain the complex processes of creating and teaching dance. The passing on of dance is one of the most challenging and important aspects of dance heritage, due to the intangible nature of the medium. Although many aspects of dance can be recorded through tangible means, there is inevitably something lost in the process. Not only is the 'in the moment' experience of watching the dance lost, but so are the processes that go into producing a piece of dance for the stage- the unfinished processes not intended for presentation, that in some ways speak more to the heritages of dance than the polished products.

This clip records several dancers practicing and working through choreography, as well as the choreographer's experiments with some formations. The thuds that can occasionally be heard are the sounds of body parts hitting the floor in a variety of ways, and are the movements which are given the most emphasis in this medium.

The second clip is the sound of one dancer doing some phrasework. This provokes thoughts such as: What movement is or is not emphasised with the use of different media? And what is the effect of this on an audience's perception of the movement? Does one tell us more than the other about what dance is and about the processes of inheriting movement? A quick, dramatic arm gesture that would visually catch the eye does not show up on this record at all. Equally, there is less attention paid to the sound of breathing and swooshes of the foot on the floor when watching the same movement visually.

So much of dance-making occurs with the visual effect given the highest priority. Usually the most prominent sound in a dance is the music, but this prevents the 'sounds of dance', by which I mean the sounds produced by the physical movements, from being heard. What are the implications of making creative decisions in dance based solely on the sounds produced by the interaction of the body and space/surfaces?