Absence of sci-fi and horror in dance theatre

[Phyrebrat]

Hello.

I'm another sci-fi and supernatural/chiller fan (we all draw our lines in the sand, I suppose, so I don't use the term horror because that makes me think of gore which is not my thing really). However, I came to this site primarily because the writer's resources are so wonderful, but thought I should venture out of the 'comfortry'* of lurking and rarely posting, and put something here.

So, here it is, I am a dance teacher/dancer and find that although the Japanese dance form of butoh usually carries an evisceral stimulus or concept, in traditional western dance forms it is absent. I work predominantly with inner city students of 15 - 20 years old with challenging behavioural issues, and I have found Sci Fi and horror to be a great subject for them to mine (a-hem, okay, okay, rather me pushing them in that direction)

To date I have produced The Fall of The Republic with a group of 18 year olds, which is essentially the Star Wars Prequels overview in 8 1/2 minutes and they loved dancing with the lightsabres (aka painted plumbing supplies so they didn't kill each other). We took this to the Royal Ballet in Richmond Park and performed it to, and amongst a crowd of privileged folk and they were blown away.

Since then I have worked on two of my own pieces - really just sketchy demos which i thought you may be interested in peeking at.

Catching Souls is loosely based on Stephen King's It which is my joint favourite book along with Michael McDowell's The Elementals I filmed and performed it around the then-under construction Olympic site at Stratford in East London.

Swaggering Boney is a bit more personal; as a 39 year old whose body does not always want to do what I want it to do when I dance, and as our solo performance in our final year had to be autobiographic, I blended the concept of my limbs as those of a scarecrow becoming self aware and sad at his own limitations. It is - again - Stephen King-esque, or at least that kind of short story weirdness, and was inspired by Blair Witch and The Wicker Man (Swaggering Boney is the name of a Morris Dance tune).

For me, I'm not interested in producing normal dance pieces in studios and theatres, hence Swaggering Boney is classed as 'found dance' (notwithstanding pretentious labels).

I wish to produce an ensemble piece, another site-specific promenade performance based on Session 9 or an American Gothic type piece. I will bore you with that if anyone is interested.

What is the consensus here? If there is one. Is it something you have ever thought of? Why are fantasy and horror genres so popular in other media but not dance? Personally, I think it is to do with hegemony and elitism; I have seen so much snobbery - indeed when we performed at The Royal Ballet, when they spoke to us about our tech requirements before the rehearsal the snooty, deriding response we got was mock-horror; 'You're doing .... Star Wars?!' although they ate their words which was great because my kids were already out of their comfort zones.

Thanks for listening/reading


*please excuse my made-up word.

 

[TheTomG]

I think in the literary field, and in the movie field, scifi has always had to start out as the disposable pulp trash, according to many, and isn't "real" writing or "real" movie making. Not entirely sure why art should be confined to particular subject matter myself, and why changing the setting makes it impossible to be art, but there you go - all stems from a kind of an intellectual snobbery on behalf of entrenched establishment, if you ask me. Just because it's in the future, or features elves, doesn't mean it can't be art.

I guess the same elitism simply has never been challenged in the field of dance, so good for you in deciding to tackle that! I am certainly intrigued by the idea, though I have no real appreciation of dance as an artistic medium and would not be a good judge of anything That said, I am still intrigued enough to want to see what you did.

Love the idea of the Swaggering Boney, love the title too even! So my consensus is - keep challenging the norms, keep doing what you love, keep bringing to life ideas that are novel and new, and keep showing it to those people who start out with a preconception about it and keep changing their minds!

Well done I say, to you and to your performers. Must have been hard to go out there with your Star Wars show, though I hope the end reactions made it all worth the nerves and fear that must have preceded it!

 

[chrispenycate]

Have you read "Stardance" (Spider and Jeanne Robinson)?
I even got a French translation of it to lend to the various écoles de danse with whom I work (no. I'm a techie; I wouldn't attempt to make this bloated carcass move).

I think part of the problem is that classically stories have to be so short and simplistic to be recounted in movement alone; how many paragraphs do you need to tell the story of Coppelia or Swan Lake? and need to leave space for the stars to shine. The same holds, in a reduced form, for cinema; look at Dune attempts. You can read a book for a week; squeezing the essence into a couple of hours is – challenging. (Would you accept St. Exupéry's "Le Petit Prince" as SF? I've done the tech for that, and "Forbidden Planet" on the original soundtrack)

But the costumes – relating to movies or comic strips, and thus triggering in the audience details of a story they already know – frequently have to carry as much of the narrative weight as the movement, as in oriental theatre; spoken language is so informationally dense relative to body communication (particularly at thirty metres distance) that telling even a short story like "the nine billion names of god" through terpsichorean means would take days.

 

[Phyrebrat]

But the costumes – relating to movies or comic strips, and thus triggering in the audience details of a story they already know – frequently have to carry as much of the narrative weight as the movement, as in oriental theatre; spoken language is so informationally dense relative to body communication (particularly at thirty metres distance) that telling even a short story like "the nine billion names of god" through terpsichorean means would take days.

No, I have not read Stardance, and my notebook now groans as I have added another 'to buy' to the growing list. Thank you for the heads up.

You raise an interesting point and one that I bash on about to the kids I teach. To me the narrative has to be embodied so when they (the students) say to me, 'Yeah, but sir, we're going to be wearing x,y,z' or they rely on a rear screen projection I have to remind them that the dance has to tell the story and that really, one should be able to dance with some neutral clothing and be able to tell any story. Having said that, I am a sucker for spectacle, though, so I love extravangant sets and so forth.

Last year I saw Akram Khan's fantastic Gnosis at Sadlers Wells, in which he tells the story of the Mahabharata - I figure this is not too distant from fantasy, and is obviously a long and complex tale. He managed to distill it effectively (and even show someone burning themselves alive, making it clear, beautiful and 'gettable'). When my kids did the Droid Army section in their dance, it is easy for the audience to get that they are droids and robots. (I hope that is not a specious example.) But, I could not visualise how someone could produce and choreograph Flatland (Edwin Abbott), or The Raw Shark Texts (Stephen Hall). At least not without heavy reliance on screens, scenes and lots of fancy staging. So, for me it is not about the length and complexity of the story or words, but how to get the context across.

That being said, I think it is more than replicating the authors words into dance, and more about distilling the concept or main arc into a piece.

So, I can see your position on why the interpretation of existing sci-fi or horror literature is a challenge logistically, but I wonder why it is a challenge in terms of subject, for the dance mafia. Original sci-fi/horror dance works which are not based on an existing story (thereby precluding the need to convey the author's narrative) are not produced as far as I am aware.

You know what? This has given me a mission; to boldly bring fantasy genres where no fantasy genres have gone before