Movement – and its dialectical relation to non-movement – is fundamental to dance, on stage, but also to film and to virtual reality as form and experience. Choreography or direction moves the body on stage, film and in virtual reality, but on film and in virtual reality choreography or direction also moves the gaze, and in virtual reality, through immersion in digital technology, (self)choreography or (self)direction moves the body and the gaze of the spectator; turned performer. The body, the gaze and the spectator are objects of dance crossing over, as media cross over. Over to institutional spill-over. The festival is bound to dance as form, but also expands dance as institution, dance emerges in public context and space, be it as exhibition, intervention, discourse, education or community. Welcome to the expanded field of contemporary dance.
In defence of short form. Short form, dance or not, contends with a bias, as if short were to mean superficial or marginal, as if full, total meaning were only extensive or elaborate. Gist, symptom, insight or paradox tend to be short, they carry complex, though fragmentary meaning. Though bound to short form, the festival allows for a complex, though fragmentary, full, total spectating, as it brings together the body and the gaze of the spectator in duration, and a complex, though fragmentary, full, total “reading.” Welcome to the expanded field of contemporary dance.
Public context and space. The festival explores the relation “Body of Identity, Identity of Body.” The body, personal or communal, is fundamental to identity – and its dialectical relation to non-identity – complex, though fragmentary, non-full identity is assigned or affirmed by the body, though, the body “naturally” moves beyond identity, personal or communal, as non-identity, binding it and evading it, signifying it but also resisting signification viscerally, having a life of its own, (re)constituting identity, never in full, though as the body in full, as embodied love, security, imagination, race, exhaustion, gender, ecology, refusal, politics, history or repetition. The relation is that of falling short, excess short. Welcome to the expanded field of contemporary dance. Na knap. Excess short.
