New publication discusses textual approaches to choreography
Writing Choreography: Textualities of and beyond Dance, published in March 2024, brings forth textual processes related to choreography.
Writing Choreography: Textualities of and beyond Dance, a new international publication by Routledge, examines language and writing-based approaches to choreographing. The publication presents a new strand in expanded choreography and inspires its continued evolution.
Head of the Uniarts Helsinki’s Research Institute, Professor of Artistic Research Leena Rouhiainen and University Researcher at the Research Institute Kirsi Heimonen have participated in the publication as editors and authors. In addition, Simo Kellokumpu, lecturer in the master’s degree Programme in Dance Performance, has contributed an article to the publication.
The collection includes perspectives from 15 dance-artists, choreographers, dramaturges, writers, interdisciplinary artists, and artist-researchers. Aside from the above mentioned they include Emma Cocker, Nikolaus Gansterer and Mariella Greil, Marie Fahlin, Lynda Gaudreau, Martin Hargreaves, Rebecca Hilton, Vicki van Hout, Jennifer Lacey, alys longley, Chrysa Parkinson, and Amaara Raahem.
The publication consists of three parts. The first part examines the transcription of performance into text. The articles present different approaches to transcription as a method, such as performance texts and the entanglement of choreographic and writing practices.
The second part experiments with forms of writing considered as choreography, such as a letter, an email correspondence, a ship’s log, and a restaging of a historical figure’s journals. The articles highlight how practices of embodiment and embeddedness exist through writing, sometimes purposefully and sometimes inadvertently becoming choreography.
The third part addresses choreography and writing in collaboration with other human and more-than-human agents. The articles explore collaborative endeavours in relation to other artists, places and things, interlinking writing with other expressive media, materials and environments not necessarily associated with either literature or choreography.
The publication is aimed at students, scholars and researchers of choreography and dance studies.
The publication is available at Uniarts Helsinki’s Sörnäinen library both as paperback and e-book.