Sketch of an exchange of thoughts with Bettina Henkel
The relationship between the physical image and the form of “computer animated” body is negotiated from the performative interaction between gestures of imagination and gestures of memory—one could also say: the creation and tradition. The body of the dancer, reduced to its informational content, thus becomes a control center for the generation of meaning in its multiplicity as a natural, technical, social, and cultural medium. It is shown as a medium of memory as well as space of recollection. During the process of getting used to the dance, the dance and cultural body images stored in the body memory are quoted, negated, and also re-established and filled with meaning, whereby unconscious and habitual storage deposits play a decisive role. This significance, generated in a process-like way, is also nourished by an intensive dialogue between the dancer and the body which she imagines during the working process. Here, we are dealing with the training of an intense imagination of the self aimed at making the body available. Seen in this way, there is no solo dance, as the body memory, in playing with the imaginary as a method of analysis, never functions solely through vision, but always through the physical enactment of movement. To this extent, we have available an offer to work on the relativizing of a physical image, which is currently occupied by ideas of the closed body. Let's dance!
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