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Videodance — Technology — Attitude Shift

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Vera Maletic
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Extract

In the late Sixties, Nam June Paik, one of the creators of videoart, expressed his concern that “it is about time we make the distinction between video art and video taped art.” Looking at TV and video dance of the Seventies and early Eighties one feels compelled to agree with Paik, realizing that a distinction must finally be made between video dance and video taped dance. Even when given the opportunity to create a work for video, rather than adapt a proscenium piece, choreographers frequently continue composing dances from a theatrical point of view which are then more or less successfully captured by the media. In other words, instead of creating videodance — a blending of structural and perceptual elements intrinsic to dance and the media — makers unintentionally slip into the genre of video translations of existing works or of videodocumentation. It appears that this state of affairs is chiefly due to two factors. Dancers and choreographers, on the one hand, do not always seek opportunities for hands-on experiences in a television studio or even with portable video equipment (other than shooting a record tape in place of a dance score). Such a practice does not allow for an understanding of the nature of the medium and excludes a creative integration of its expressive potentials. The number of media artists, on the other hand, who are familiar with the nature of dance is small. Independent artists, such as Charles Atlas, Doris Chase, and Jeff Bush or TV directors Fred Barzyk and Rick Hauser, are a minority, and individual dance/performance/media artists, such as Birgit Cullberg, Amy Greenfield, and Elaine Summers are still exceptions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , Winter 1988 , pp. 3 - 8
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1988

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References

NOTES

1. Cf. Paik, Nam June, “Videa, Videot, Videology”. New Artists Video, Battcock, Gregory, ed. (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978), p. 125Google Scholar.

2. Videodocumentation includes live coverage of an ongoing stage performance, such as “Live From Lincoln Center” (PBS), which is recorded on multiple cameras for simultaneous or delayed broadcast. Videotranslations are programs, such as “Dance in America” (PBS), where dances, originally created for the stage, are adapted for multiple cameras of the television studio. Videodance is a collaborative work especially created for the medium, such as productions of the WGBH Boston “Frames of Reference” series.

3. Cf. Mason, Nancy S., editor, Dance and Television: A Transcript-Handbook From the National Conference on Dance and Television, (Watertown, MA: WGBH Educational Foundation, 1976)Google Scholar, and WGBH New Television Workshop Newsletter, (volume 2, 1979–1981)Google Scholar.

4. The terms “video” and “television” are frequently used interchangeably. Although forms of the same technology, their potential target audiences are different. While videoart is presented mostly in galleries without specific time constraints, commercial television, and to a lesser extent public broadcasting, is organized in fixed time patterns, such as a 28 or 58 minut e danc e programming. In his article “Experiments in Videodance,” Richard Lorber writes that “the very term ‘video’ is used in preference to ‘television’ to point to the horizon of expressive possibilities of a language rather than the work convention of its speech”. Dance Scope, XI, No. 1, (Fall/Winter, 1977), p. 8Google Scholar.

5. In a television interview on the “Eye on Dance” series (Arts Resources in Collaboration, Inc. Videocassette #43), Koner describes her explorations in “cameragraphy,” seeking for aspects of dance which could not be done on the proscenium stage.

6. “The State of Television Dance: Some Words on the Nature of the Medium”, The New York Herald Tribune, September 19, 1948Google Scholar, reprinted in Terry, Walter, I Was There: Selected Dance Reviews and Articles - 1936–1976, (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1978), p. 215Google Scholar.

7. Ibid, p. 216.

8. Ibid.

9. Cf. the issue on Cine Dance, Dance Perspectives No. 30, 1967.

10. Cf. ibid. articles by Hilary Harris, pp. 44-47, and Maya Deren, pp. 10-12; also “Choreography for Camera”, Dance Magazine, October, 1945, pp. 10–14Google Scholar.

11. Cf. Dance Perspectives No. 30, 1967, article on pp. 48-51.

12. Produced in 1980; hand-held camera work by Richard Leacock.

13. WGBH Boston, 1981; producer Fred Barzyk and director Rick Hauser.

14. Cf. Zettl, Herbert, Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics, (Belmont, CA; Wedsworth Publ. Co., 1973), pp. 207–214Google Scholar.

15. WGBH Boston, 1983; producer Susan Dowling, director Charles Atlas.

16. Cf. Grossman, Peter Z., “Talking with Merce Cunningham About Video”, Dance Scope, XIII, No. 1 (Winter/Spring, 1979), p. 65Google Scholar.

17. Fractions I was produced by Cunningham and Atlas in 1978 and subsequently transposed into a theatre piece.

18. A WGBH Boston production, 1978; producer Nancy Mason, director David Atwood.

19. WNET, Channel Thirteen, 1977; a videocollage by Nam June Paik consisting of the CBS production of Merce Cunningham's “Blue Studio: Five Segments” as part one, and a transition to part two, “Merce and Duchamp.”

20. In a studio production, transitions are achieved on the switcher i.e., the console with a set of buttons for selecting cameras and other sources, further levers for dissolves and fades of images, and a selection of special effect. A one camera or portapak production, on the other hand, depends on editing and assembly processes in post-production.

21. Cf. pp. 20-23 in Dance and Television: A Transcript-Handbook From the National Conference on Dance and Television for a discussion by Birgit Cullberg; a perceptive description of the Cunningham-Atlas piece can be found in Lorber, Richard, “Experiments in Videodance”, Dance Scope, XI, No. 7 (Fall–Winter, 1977)Google Scholar.

22. Tharp's Making Television Dance was produced in 1981 by CBS; Dancing on the Edge was produced by WGBH Boston, 1980; producer Susan Dowling, director Fred Barzyk.

23. From a discussion of her work Sara Rudner, theme and two variations, in Robert Ellis Dunn's lecture on Videodance given on June 14,1984, at New York University.

24. See note 21 Ibid.

25. Bush, Jeffrey and Grossman, Peter Z., “Videodance”, Dance Scope, IX, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 1975), p. 15Google Scholar.

26. Ibid. p. 16.

27. Cf. Becker, Nancy F., “Filming Cunningham Dance: A Conversation with Charles Atlas”, Dance Theatre Journal, No. 3, 1982Google Scholar.

28. Lorber, Richard, “Toward an Aesthetic of Videodance”, Arts in Society: Growth of Dance in America, Volume 13, Number 2 (Summer/Fall, 1976), p. 253Google Scholar.

29. Fuller, R. Buckminster, “Introduction”, Expanded Cinema, by Youngblood, Gene, (New York: Dutton & Co., Inc., 1970), p. 35Google Scholar.

30. Producer Susan Dowling, Director Dick Heller.

31. Grossman, Peter Z., “Talking with Merce Cunningham about Video”, Dance Scope, XIII, No. 1 (Winter/Spring, 1979), p. 68Google Scholar.

32. From Robert Ellis Dunn's program notes for his lecture on Videodance (see note 23): “A discussion and presentation of works integrating choreography and video techniques … the work of the camera and editing devices as itself a moving meditation on dance and the body.“