rss_2.0Sciendo RSS Feed for Nordic Journal of Dancehttps://sciendo.com/journal/NJDhttps://www.sciendo.comhttps://sciendo-parsed.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/64725c44215d2f6c89dc5619/cover-image.jpghttps://sciendo.com/journal/NJD140216https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-0003<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article explores a choreographic approach to the creation of mobile mixed-reality (MR) experiences in public space, with specific attention to how archival material in a cultural heritage context can be turned into a repertoire of site-specific situations. This approach can be described as a montage technique that triangulates the embodied audience member, the digital media via a mobile device, and the site with the aim of evoking somatic and kinaesthetic responses, making the experience felt in the body. To demonstrate this, the creation process of <italic>ENTER Mölndal – Kvarnbyn</italic>, a site-specific MR walk commissioned by Mölndals Stadsmuseum, is discussed. The films, photos, facts, and stories are seen as ‘energetic forces’ that evoke emotional and creative responses. In the MR walk, they become a repertoire of actions and situations experienced performatively by the audience. I share examples of the creative process and choreographic composition strategies applicable to an expanded practice of choreography in the realms of cultural heritage, mobile technology, and public space. Such a choreographic approach can contribute to experiences that activate our senses and critical reflection in an embodied way, which in turn can contribute to keeping our social relations alive.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-00032024-07-11T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-0001ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-00012024-07-11T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-0005ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-00052024-07-11T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-0004ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-00042024-07-11T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-0002<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This study concentrates on an art project in a teacher training program where dance art students and student teachers together develop an art event that is implemented in the school as part of the student teacher’s practice, through The Cultural Schoolbag (TCS).</p> <p>In the design of the art event, the dance art students contributed a segment from another dance production, which served as artistic input in the event. The student teachers contributed with specialised knowledge about the pupils, the curriculum, teaching planning and classroom management. The goal of the art event itself was to create an aesthetic and interactive experience for the pupils.</p> <p>Within the theoretical framework of «the third space», we explore what the students negotiate about in the development of the art event, and how these negotiations are expressed through three qualitative paint-interviews.</p> <p>We describe our empirical material and use art-based methods to analyze this. Through the analyses, we find that the students negotiate feelings, use of time and roles in relation to the artistic expression and the pupil, in the development of the art event. We discuss these negotiations against the significance of «the third space» and the development of competence through «mutual transformation». What the students negotiate about is visualized to identify the negotiation spaces within each individual student, within the subject areas and between the students’ subject areas. We conclude with some reflections on art-based research methods and the need to practice applying them, as well as the potential for nuanced knowledge production as a creative process.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-00022024-07-11T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-0006ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2024-00062024-07-11T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0019ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00192024-02-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0014ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00142024-02-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0017<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>From the streets of Los Angeles in the early 1970s, a dance style named Punking emerged. This occurred at the height of the civil rights movement in the underground LGBTQ+ clubs of LA by a group of BIPOC queer men. A blend of sharp, exaggerated poses and movements borrowed from Hollywood films and pop culture became an art form that reflected their identity and encapsulated the escapism and liberation of a group of young queer people growing up in an environment where being queer was illegal and dangerous.</p> <p>By the late 1980s and 1990s, the dance faded, but it still influenced dance styles such as jazz, house, and even vogue. In the early 2000s, interest in the dance was reignited. However, its name and origins remained elusive, prompting an investigation into its history, shifting narratives and exclusion from dance history. In this article, I will explore how a dance form becomes lost in translation and how this dance can be preserved and introduced into institutionalised spaces to offer resources and legal protection for an art form on the verge of erasure from history.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00172024-02-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0015<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This artistic research article discusses choreography pedagogy in the context of MA choreography studies in respect to expanded choreography and artistic research pedagogy. Both frameworks are means to carve out ponderings on eventual tools for teaching choreography as a research practice. The three potential tools that are explicitly discussed in the article are embodied speaking, intra-active dialogue, and listening. In addition, the article draws connections between experimental dance and choreography pedagogy emerging at the beginning of the 20th century in the USA and the pedagogical considerations of early-2000s Europe at the time of the Bologna Process.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00152024-02-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0018ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00182024-02-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0016<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article presents research focused on the precarious life of an independent dance artist in a European context. The aim of this study was to identify ways to understand and cope with the various unstable aspects of the lifestyle and profession of independent dance artists. Together with a group of fellow dance artists, I explored understandings of instability and stability and investigated how collective action might reinforce a sense of stability. I position this study in relation to current economic trends in which the individual is increasingly in focus, with few social security benefits, and the dancer is often faced with solitary living and working situations. I applied a performative, practice-led research methodology supported by feminist post-human theories. The findings led to discussions of the complexity and entanglement of stability and instability, which evolved into a joint phrasing of in/stability, in which I explored how the fluid practice of dance corresponds with not only a wider socio-political landscape but also an ever-changing world.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00162024-02-02T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0012<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p><italic>Living Documents</italic> is a series of looped live installations developed between 2017 and 2019 based on five artist-choreographers and how they work. The project was initiated by Dominik Grünbühel and Charlotta Ruth as an artistic response to the following research question: <italic>What is liveness and what can it be?</italic> The research was directed towards the necessity—but also difficulty—of documenting live performances. This text reflects how the method of <italic>passing on</italic> (in Swedish, tradera) through the collaborative process with choreographer Anna Öberg, whose practice is based in Swedish folk dance, has come to influence the documentary approach. By resonating how <italic>passing on</italic> in the cosmology of Folk Traditions is different to other methods of physical and oral transfer, Öberg together with Ruth develop how <italic>passing on</italic> can be valuable beyond the realm of Folk Tradition.</p> <p>Specifically, they unfold the ways in which this multi-sensorial transfer of material and knowledge from person to person and context to context can inspire documentary and reflexive translations between media and different aesthetic realms and thereby contribute to creative ways of sharing knowledge in the field of artistic research.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00122023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0003<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>Since the turn of the millennium, there has been a heightened emphasis on the quality of teaching and learning in higher education, with an urge to reform the relationship between teachers and students. During this same period, a growing body of research has been conducted on unequal power dynamics in the teaching of dance technique. In this study, I am doing a literature review of 20 articles published between 1998 and 2020, which especially addressed dance technique and power dynamics in the context of higher education. I am particularly exploring strategies proposed in the literature to challenge unequal power dynamics within dance technique training in higher education. Through a thematic analysis of the articles, I have identified three clusters of strategies in the material: <italic>reflexivity of traditions in dance, activity</italic>, and <italic>embodiment</italic>. The research shows that there is a rather high interest in continuing and reforming the teaching of dance technique, and that there are several examples of empirical research related to heightening the students’ activity in their learning process. However, there is still a need for more research on this topic, especially concerning the connection between embodiment and empowerment.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00032023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0005<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article analyses Ekman’s ballet <italic>A Swan Lake</italic> from the perspective of new materialism, which is understood as the agency of the non-human, particularly the role of water in the creation of movement and in the script of the ballet. The question guiding this article concerns how the materiality of water takes place in Ekman’s ballet. I propose that by paying attention to the corporeality of dance itself as a discursive practice (Barad 2003), it is possible to appreciate the creation of a kind of language or code that can be interpreted. Following Barad, a discursive practice not only is language or what is said but allows certain things to be said. Here, both the bodies of the dancers and the water allow things to be said. In other words, encounters of the materiality of the human, that is, the bodies of the dancers with the non-human agency of the water, provoke new ways of moving and therefore form part of the choreographic composition, thus co-creating the ballet itself.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00052023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0011<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This article aims to explore the experiences of eight dancers, who have Parkinson’s disease (PD), with dance as a performative form of the arts. The data of this qualitative research consists of a semi-structured online questionnaire and a focus group discussion. The data was analyzed using inductive thematic content analysis and approached in an abductive manner in the context of social identity theory. Two main themes emerged from the analysis: embodied social connectedness and de-medicalization of PD.</p> <p>The current study emphasizes social factors regarding identity while performing with PD. The findings indicate that the dancers’ experiences of watching and being watched refer to a communicative body and its dialogical relationship with other bodies. In conclusion, dancing is experienced as an embodied language with which to communicate, allowing the individual to explore how to become visible in a social environment without one’s social identity being tied to PD but with one’s personal identity. Furthermore, the core of the performative experience is artistry, defined as a limitless entity that metaphorically leaves traces, connecting us as human beings. However, further studies with a larger number of participants would be beneficial.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00112023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0009<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>How can dancers control or influence variables such as lighting, music, projections or the overall spatial experience that affect the traditional hierarchy in a performative setting? The dance performance <italic>Digital Footprints</italic> uses advanced technologies that allow dancers to test this question in a live situation. In this article, the choreographer discusses some preliminary conclusions.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00092023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0004ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00042023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0013<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>This research is a multi-sited embodied autoethnography in which I combine methods of multispecies ethnography with the autoethnographic methodology I applied before. This research has been done with butterflies and it seeks planetary feeling through dance, embodied research and ecosomatics. The data of the research was produced in Mexico in 2019 and in Spain in 2021 and 2022. It includes photography, videos, ethnographic field notes and photopaintings. This article investigates how the contact with butterflies can affected to our bodily presence and qualities of movement and dance. I look these findings in relation to ideas and practices of choreographers such as Deborah Hay and Steve Paxton and I elaborate on ecosomatic approach that resonates well with multispecies ethnography. I analyze, how the touch and the dance with butterflies created something similar Hay calls “cellular level presence” and lightness of being. I write about special quality of butterflies dancing with the wind and my dances with the wind. I suggest that sharing spaces and moving respectfully in relation to other species could be inspiring in finding new kind of movement, embodied consciousness and knowledge. These experiences could have therapeutical and healing meanings. I suggest that ecosomatics and ecologically oriented dance art and research noticing the well-being of other species could be important in searching planetary feeling, feeling more deeply our biodiverse planet while same time also working for our own well-being.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00132023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-0010<abstract> <title style='display:none'>Abstract</title> <p>In performance contexts, costume is often perceived as visual expression that is in service of, for example, a choreographer’s vision. I argue that costume is also an aesthetic and poetic language in its own right that allows individuals such as performers and designers to co-conceptualize and co-create performances. In co-creative performance-making processes, I argue that it is critical that designers open-mindedly listen to performers’ experiences of specific costumes and that we (designers and performer) <italic>through</italic> listening co-creatively explore potentialities and challenges that are embedded in a specific costume. In the co-creative process, we must pay attention and listen carefully to how a specific costume affects specific performers in order to explore the ‘hidden’ performative potentialities and qualities that are imbedded in a specific costume. In this article I will unfold aspects of how listening <italic>through</italic> and <italic>with</italic> costume can become a performance-making strategy and unpack details of what listening <italic>through</italic> and <italic>with</italic> the costume imply.</p> </abstract>ARTICLEtruehttps://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/njd-2023-00102023-08-10T00:00:00.000+00:00en-us-1