Petrified?Some Thoughts on Practical Research and DanceHistoriography

KATE ELSWIT

Ernst Kállai's 1931 Schrifttanz article bemoanedthe way in which dance at the time was living'above its intellectual means'. The article cited awork by Oskar Schlemmer to exemplify how thetheorization of performances was takingprecedence over their physical manifestationsonstage. In the published rebuttal, Schlemmerclaimed his abstractions of the human form hadbeen misunderstood, thus implicitly supportingKállai's assertion that the primary allegiance ofhis dances, although appearing regularly inperformance, was their conceptual frameworkrather than their performed outcomes. Only atthe end did Schlemmer confront Källai'scomplaint directly, not refuting its accuracy butinstead arguing for the importance ofexperimentation in and indeed as art.Schlemmer's conclusion recalled an extract fromhis diary, likely an earlier draft of the essay,which ended on the speculation: 'For what else isthe meaning of experiment if not the next stepinto the future?' (1972: 284). Perhaps it issurprising that this debate was publishedseventy-seven years ago, given its presenttopicality: the interrogation of the notion thatperformances are constituted by their endproducts. However, despite the present'sheightened critical awareness of such issues, itseems that certain assumptions continue to bemade retrospectively concerning the ftxity ofpast choreography as product.

'Experiments' performed by artist-researcherslike Schlemmer were essential to the historicalavant-garde, ranging from the Brechtian act of

observation, in which performance functioned asa quasi-laboratory apparatus to isolate andexamine natural processes, to the Dadaist andFuturist manifestations whose provocation wasdue in part to the use of the stage as a controlledenvironment for the unknown outcomes of oftenimprovised performances. This article, whichtakes as its starting point Schlemmer's familiaravant-garde assertion of experimentation asbearer of utopie change, is situated in presentperformance research, where so much energy isdevoted to legitimizing aesthetic practice as ameans of generating critical knowledge. Recentlyaddressing the question of what might constitutedance in place of the 'spectacle of kineticism',André Lepecki again identified the keyword to be'experimentation' (2006: 43,40). What follows isa proposal for an alternative dancehistoriography that is based upon what isperceived as a contemporary valuation of processover product in many professional andpedagogical dance contexts, and which has, inturn, troubled the notion of choreography. I willnot contend that the sense of critical practice isnew to choreography,^ however its current statusof articulation affords an opportunity toreconsider the ways in which we negotiatehistorical research.

1 will begin by problematizing certainassumptions that remain common to dance'snegotiations with the past, despite the excitingrecent attention in volumes edited by AlexandraCarter (2004) and Stephanie lordan (2000). Fromthere, I will consider the feasibility of applying

' 1 often find myselfagreeing with Birritiger'sassessment that the recentcritical attention toconceptual dance has atendency to be 'oblivious toalonghlstory of suchvanguard examination'(J005: ï i ) . In manyrespects. Birringer's articlemight be seen to offer acontemporarytoarticulation of Kátiai'sconcern for therelationship between ideaand event.

61Performance Research 13(1). pp.61-69 O Taylor S Francis Ltd 2008• 01: 10 .10aO/135Za iû0802 i .65565

' Here I am thinking ottwo particular sets ofdialogues relating to theretrieval of pastperformances. The firstincludes such archivalarguments as Schneider'sthat interact withDerrida'sfamous'ArchiveFever' essay, and thesecond, operating from aperformance perspective,includes Bertolt Brecht'shistoricization andcontinues through suchrecent discussions asMike Pearson's theatrearcheology.

aspects of Michel Foucault's genealogicalanalysis to certain instances of dancescholarship by ascribing an imaginary lineage ofpractical research methodology to historicalchoreographic intent. Here the notion ofgenealogy is explored in a more compact formthan the extended pathways of historicaltransmission usually advocated by 'genealogiesof performance' (Roach 1996), because thereappropriation of archival records and theidentification of disruptions occur across thelife-span of singular pieces. This stance is thentested on two dances of early-twentieth-centuryGermany, presented by the choreographersthemselves in different instantiations overdecades, but which have since been petrified bythe historical record: Oskar Schlemmer's TriadicBallet and Valeska Gert's Canaille.

Tbere are countless other potentialinternational examples of artist researchers indance, ranging from Katherine Dunham toYvonne Rainer or Loïe Fuller. However. 1 havechosen examples from within the researchmaterials with which I interact on a daily basis.In doing so, I have selected one choreographerwho was situated primarily witbin a pedagogicalinstitution and one situated within aprofessional one, both of whom consideredthemselves and were considered hy theiraudiences to be. as was written about Gert,'Artists who are full of ideas and also want tobring these to form' (Hermann l-Neiße],Akademie der Künste). It is my contention thatthe mutability of tbeir works was not accidental.Rather, the variation between instantiations wasindicative of these works as manifestations ofembodied research practices, led by process toaccumulate a constellation of results. But howcan such a constellation be considered in relationto more contemporary conceptual practices inchoreography? Or might it perform an inverseoperation by lending itself to a reconsideration ofchoreography itself and perhaps even of the waysin which we document what will become futurehistory?

I am interested here in the potential scholarly

strategies and benefits of a compact genealogicalapproach in troubling the 'masterpiece'mentality that is acquired as dance works age. Ifmethodology guides observation, then the goal ofthis article is to do no more than propose analternative historiographie frame, one thatproductively calls attention to the instability ofdance's products. As our relationship with pastperformances often occurs through archives,which house only the objects that remain, it isnatural that the performances themselves slipinto a position of objectification. As RebeccaSchneider writes, 'In the archive, flesh is given tobe that which slips away. Flesh can house nomemory of bone, only bone speaks to fiesh. Fleshis blindspot' (2001:102). It is this bone - thisfixed object-hood in place of what was also once amalleable thing - to which the 'petrified' in thetitle of this article refers. 'Petrified' also marksthe potential anxieties, perhaps about loss ofcontrol, tbat enforce this solid state.

Recent performance scholarship has focusedon deconstructing the fixity of the arcbive andthe need to escape its rigid, often auraticbindings by establishing a new and polyvocalentity that represents the past in dialogue witb apresent context.^ We understand the dangers ofapproaching past work, especially dance: theinevitability of change and the falseness ofverisimilitude, which are countered by a deepanxiety over the need to preserve a legacy ofsorts. Yet most arguments on practices ofrecreation, reconstruction and reinventionassume a degree of finiteness to tbe past. Theysuggest a heterogeneous present, in many ways acubist approach, like Picasso showing a facefrom many angles, buried inside which is animplicit assumption of a single and unified facetobe shown.

F R A M I N G P R A C T I C E I N H I S T O R Y /

P R A C T I C I N G T H E F R A M I N G O F H I S T O R Y

The multiple pasts I propose here do not fitneatly into history's teleological tendencies, inwhich time has an inescapable directedness frompast to present. In one of the seminal texts of

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• Valeslta Gert in Otnatílt,1919, Photoí: Lili Baruch /TheaUrwineníchafilicheSammlung. Univemtät zuKöln.

historiography, E. H. Carr answered his ownquestion 'what is history?' by discussing the'necessary ignorance' that historians mustincreasingly cultivate the closer they came tostudying their own time. For Carr, the historian'stask was to discover the facts that developed thestory of history as they wanted it to be seen, andto discard the rest as unhistorical in service ofcoherence and consistency (1961:14-15). Howeverself-aware such a perspective might be, it stillassumed the need for a single coherent narrative,eventually traceable to the 'origin' Foucaultcritiqued for enabling a false field of knowledgebased upon its recovery, rather tban acceptingand studying tbe presence of the 'numberlessbeginnings' that could never be restored tocontinuity (1977 I19711:145). My desire bere intaking up the proposition of practical research inrelation to past choreographic works is toacknowledge tbis potential for non-coherence. In

doing so, I wisb to offer alternative access tothem, perhaps not as works at all, but asextended embodied inquiries, whicb were notdirected toward a singular outcome as historicalreflection migbt suggest.

Perbaps tben, tbis argument begins in tbepresent witb the heterogeneity of contemporaryartist-researcbers wbose bodies of knowledge areintimately tied to their practice. As I havealluded, practice-led researcb, practice-as-research, practice-based researcb and so fortbwitbin the context of bigber educationconstitutes only one of two correspondent loci,eacb witb its own discussions tbat definechoreograpby in relation to process, thus eacboffering itself as a potential point of access topast works. The complement might be tbosecboreograpbers working witbin tbe realm ofwbat is sometimes called 'conceptual dance', bycreating performances tbat interrogate the tools

3 Given such open timeprocesses, thehistoriography argumentI am making mightcorrespond most closelyto discussions on tbepreservation of morefluid performances. Theopen work, for example,is defined not by a set ofconsistent features butby its ontology of flux, asvisible in the Fluxusevents of the 1960s, andtberefore it has beennoted that any act ofpreservation mustaccount for the salientregularities which canand do change over time.The open work has nooriginal nor singularideal performance tbatprovides a benchmark forall subsequentperfortnanees; insteadtbere exists only a set ofclear originating ideasthat generate allinstantiations of tbeperformance, meaningthat any historicalaccount must address theway in wbich tbeperformance 'has a"career", a bistory, ratberthan an essential nature'(Rubidge 2000)- Unlikemany open works,bowever, wbich ofteneclipse authorialpresence entirely, thehistorical performances 1am considering weredriven towarddifferentiation andvariation by a singlecentral figure and tbatperson's researchquestions.

through which danced expression conventionallyoperates, but doing so through the traditionalmechanisms of professional dance commerce,including festivals and paid puhlic performances.A pertinent example for this discussion of stagepractice that is also research might be Xavier LeRoy's E.X.T.E.N.S.LO.N.S. project, whichattempted to create a situation that, according toLe Roy 'should be at the same time the productand the production of the performance and theresearch on the questions related to it' (quoted inHusemann). The almost-compulsory mentions inarticles and reviews of Le Roy's background as amolecular biologist testify to the perceivedliminality between performance and research inhis work.

The connection between the two contexts ofpractical research, those within pedagogical andthose within commercial frames, can be drawn bysuggesting that hoth participate in what SusanMelrose has articulated as a discipline-specific'expert intuition', the operations of which drivethe exploration of ideas through leaps that areonly later recuperated (2005). Melrose arguesthat all disciplines participate in and are drivenby such intuitive connections. However, it seemsto me that both forms of practical research areunited by a particular shared version of thisintuition, one that can cause problems forarchiving in a present context, as Melroserecently has noted, not to mention for relating tothe past. The discussion of intuition is crucial indestabilizing the solidity of choreographicproducts by drawing attention to the selectionsmade between numerous possible outcomes ateach moment in the process of creation.^ Thecontemporary focus on practical research hasemphasized and articulated the to-some-extentopen nature of all dance-making - its intuition,contingency, and chance - in a manner that canbe applied not only to the present, but to the past.As I can obviously not account for the whole ofpractical research in this proposal, I wish to callattention to the places at which certain of itsprinciples can be seen to correspond toFoucault's genealogical interrogation of history

as a study of origins. It is through these points Iseek to explore an alternative dancehistoriography, beginning with 'dispersion'.

I have argued that subsequent instantiationsaccumulate rather than replacing theirpredecessors. Likewise, Foucault argues that 'tofollow the complex course of descent is tomaintain passing events in their properdispersion' (1977 I19711:146). The witnessing ofsuch dispersion requires that the genealogistpartakes in an exhaustive collection of sourcematerial. Just as a genealogical approach doesnot reject history hut rather demands there-envisioning of it as raw material, practicalresearch involves a shift of artisticconsciousness from product to process, openingboth original creations and historical reflectionon them to doubt by undermining singularoutcomes. Here, Foucault's Nietzsche-inspired'effective' history might be introduced, as itabstains from narratives that generatecontinuity by dealing with relational changes inplace of occurrences. An event in 'effective'history is not 'a decision, a treaty, a reign or abattle, but the reversal of a relationship of forces,the usurpation of power, the appropriation of avocabulary' (154). Thus, a compact genealogicalinquiry into dance history would not privilegethe status ofthe performance's eventhood overthe play of forces within the research practicethat contributed to its coming into being.

Though such an approach implicitly relies onnon-dominant forms of knowledge, includingperhaps kinetic intelligence, this is also whereFoucauit's conception of genealogy appears inmost marked contrast to forms of practical danceresearch. For Foucault, genealogy analyses howtbe body is 'imprinted' or 'inscribed' by history{147-8). It implies a passive body whereas thenature of practical research in dance involves aninverted proposition of agency in whicb thedancing bodies are not only inscribed but alsoinscribing. This active participation generatesheterogeneous and varied results that are notentirely dispersed in the longitudinaltransmission and dissemination of cultural

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practices commonly associated with notions ofperformance genealogy as they have come to beutilized by Roach, Diana Taylor and Ramsey Burt,among others; instead they cluster aroundsingular research figures. Nonetheless, theintersections between genealogical inquiry andpractical research can be used to facilitate themapping of present understandings ofchoreography as process onto the past.

In the two examples 1 have chosen, thechoreographers implemented their practice invery different ways despite their shared epoch,however both practices prohlematize the stabilityof choreography as product when framed in thismanner. Because Valeska Gert was concernedwith issues of the social body, her process wascatalyzed by the presence of her audience, andtherefore her experimentation - her testing ofaccepted limits - occurred in the moment ofperformance. In contrast, Oskar Schlemmer'sinitial laboratory for the abstract body was thesecure framework of letters and diaries in whichhe formulated his ideas. Whereas Gert's stagepractice coristituted her research, it seems moreaccurate to say that Schlemmer's research washii practice, with the performances themselvesas means to share what he saw as predeterminedresults, but which often took on quite othermeanings for his audiences who expected thatwhich was performed to be a stable product. Inboth cases, the staging of production (not onlythe production) ultimately reframed reception,lending itself also to examining the nature of therelationship between the two artists and theiraudiences.

1. S T A G E P R A C T I C E A S R E S E A R C H

All of Valeska Gert's solos followed a basicnarrative structure: an introduction, a tragic orcomic climax and then a resolution, which wasdeveloped in tension between heroverdetermined goals to revolutionize theatreand her beliefs in chance and intuition asentering to assist humans where the cleverestcalculations cease.^ In Canaille, a prostitutesolicited a John, performed her services and then

left. It was a short solo, called in 1921 a 'true workof genius', which appeared repeatedly from thelate teens onwards in Germany as well asinternationally in cities including London, Paris,New York and Moscow. In 1922, Canaille wasstaged in a cabaret curated by Brecht, was filmedby Suse Byk in 1925, and the piece seems to baveremained with Gert for most of her life, because a1977 documentary by Volker Schlöndorffcaptured her a few months before her deathupstaging a young performer to whom she hadtaught it. Given that the nature of Gert's stagedpractice was entirely bound to the relationshipshe maintained with her audience. Canaille alsofunctioned emblematically, with the prostitute asthe social ñgure whose body most often served asa site of public interaction.

Gert claimed Canaillewas not improvisedbecause the movements were set, but that thestructure of the piece allowed her to experience itdifferently each time, due to changes in theunderlying emotion. In various writings, shedescribed how the girl enjoyed her work somedays, despised it others, was indifferent, spiteful,chaste, giddy, depraved. Despite her claim, themovement itself changed too, sucb as the orgasmof the two filmed versions. In the 1925 film, Gertbroke into a Charleston of sorts, with high energyand frenetic kicks, whicb was then emptied oflife as her legs continued mechanically, tossingher torso about. At the same moment of the 1977film, she began with tiny jumps, each jostling herbody, but suddenly stopped and began to singinstead. And it was natural that this samenarrative event had two outcomes in these twotimes and places.

Despite the claim not to improvise, Gert herselfdescribed how she could rehearse a piecelimitless times, but that it would always appeardifferent on stage, no matter how carefully it hadbeen prepared. That this led some reviewers tocritique her for performing 'only variationsinstead of accomplished composition' (Kuc.Isigned] |date unknownl) suggests acontemporary awareness of the ways in whichshe undermined the production of dance as

* Because anygenealogical analysisrequires exhaustive rawmaterial while the spaceallotted for references islimited, I have chosen notto referenceindependently eachquotation or paraphrasein the two case studies,although I am happy toprovide that informationupon request. Allquotations come fromGerman languagenewspapers, books, andmagazines publishedduring the WeimarRepublic, andtranslations are my own.The majority of sourcesare housed in DeutschesTanzarchiv Köln, Archivder Akademie der Künste,and Baubaus Archiv.

object. One review by Fritz Böhme explained thisinstability as arising because her dances werenot a thing learned and subsequently projectedoutside of herself. Rather, they 'become everytime newly created in the moment of production'in such a way that the performance 'guaranteesgenuineness and artistic veracity' (Böhme[1930I). Why I cite this review in particular, of themany that commented on her presentness, is thatBöhme also articulated and praised what I mightidentify as the main line of inquiry occurring inGert's performances: the relationship shesuccessfully established with her audience bydeveloping her artistic forms from a process thatwas experientially of tbe moment, in a scenarioengineered to test tbe boundaries of wbat couldbe accomplished through expression tbat wasboth physical and social. Böhme wrote that 'theartist must every time conquer ber audienceanew, must also be prepared to give berself tothem". He claimed tbat tbe success of her creationwas 'as a unity between artist and spectatormuch deeper, compléter, closer than with a ñxedproduction'.

Gert famously claimed sbe was no solo dancer;tbat the audience was her partner. However Imight push tbat further to suggest tbe audiencewas her catalyst. In the way that some dancers gointo a studio, Gert set herself under a spotlight,situating ber body as a social body and of it. Thiswas true of all ber pieces but perbaps tbeprostitute brought her social body to its mostliteral fulfillment, implicating the audience insucb a way tbat tbe film director SergeiEisenstein described her as "only barely socialsatire. But sbe is one-bundred percent pure nitricacid for bourgeois ideology' (1987:121). Reviewsof Canaille tended to combine ratber graphicdescriptions that comment on tbe social pligbt oftbe prostitute witb observations tbatforegrounded Gert's performance tecbniques,most notably an empatby that enabled onereviewer to understand, as he had not before, tbeintimacies of tbe prostitute's act: how 'pleasureand torment could come from tbe same hole'(Tucholsky 1978119211:204). In Canaille,

audiences saw one of many 'half-naïve, half-depraved' streetwalkers, through wbom inquiryinto tbe social was mapped onto inquiry into theformal: 'Vateska Gert does indeed not uncoverherself, but rather the sexuality of dance' (L.[signedl 1977 I1926I). Tbe same review explainedtbat Gert proved tbe absurdity of bourgeoisdance through a gradual disrobing of identity,witb her effect on an audience accomplished overa long period of development tbat involvedmultiple alterations.

What caused Gert to be labelled as grotesque inher time might alternately be understood as anexperimental study of making visible hodilyexcess tbat had been developed from observationof tbe normal and tbe everyday. These naturalforms were tben dissected and magnified, tbeirboundaries tested in concert witb tbe audience. Asone writer put it, sbe created scraps of dance fromscraps of tbe times. Tbough Gert called Canailleber first socially critical dance pantomime, thedance was not simply a parody, nor even anindictment of a society tbat allowed prostitution.By allowing herself to publicly experience the fulltrajectory of tbe event, from solicitation throughcoitus and aftermath, Gert migbt have beenstudying wbat it meant actually to sell one's body,a practice heightened by the presence of anaudience that had indeed paid to watcb ber bodyundergo the process. The sharing of this eventwitb an audience was in itself a secondexperimental practice tbat actualized the first.

2 . S T A G I N G R E S E A R C H A S P R A C T I C E

Like Gert, Oskar Schlemmer sought to researchformal change but, in place of tbe audience, theneed for aestbetic change itself was bis catalyst.Thougb Triadic Ballet's instantiations are oftenreferenced as a single entity - 'Oskar Schlemmer'sdance-of-tbreeness' - sucb pbrasing suggests anontological stability tbat was incompatible withthe way in whicb bis performances wererepeatedly broken down to tbeir constituentelements and reassembled. Pbotographs andprogrammes clearly demonstrate the multiplereconfigurations that 7Viûdic ßu//et underwent

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from its 1922 premiere with three dancers andtwelve costumes in a three-color series. It is thisTriadic Ballet, discussed in Schlemmer's famous'Man and Art Figure' essay, which is most oftendescribed in place of acknowledging theheterogeneous subsequent instantiations, ofwhich I count seven primary ones, with anadditional one planned but never carried through.These reduced the work from evening-lengtbconcert dance to smaller works and hybrid formsfit into a variety of performances venues. Theorder of the colour series was first rearranged andthen that division eliminated altogether; themusic was changed at least three times; and thenumber of dancers quadrupled to twelve, thendropped to seven. Not only did the number ofcostumes change, but at times they were even lentto other performances, one of which retained thesame title.^ If such mutability of aestheticidentity defined Triadic Ballet's modernity, as hasbeen suggested, it was not because the productswere deliberately multiplied but because theperformances were constituted by theirprocesses.

Where Gert had used the stage for researchinto human social nature. Schlemmer searchedfor a purely physical nature: the laws of thehuman body that freed it not only from societybut from emotional affect. It is clear thatSchlemmer was never interested in themechanization of the body for its own sake, butinstead wanted to explore the potential forphysical mechanics as starting points foraesthetic transformations. However theplacement of any form of research within thepublic domain performs a solidifying operation,making it a cultural object, and cultural objectsare always tied to a valuing group. ThoughSchlemmer's writings articulate repeatedly hisdesire to display the inherent mechanisms ofdancing bodies, most contemporaneous reviewsmake reference only to the mechanization of hisdancers, whicb is more than a semantic issue.

In part, this may be due to the fact that, asmanifestations of research ideas, tbeperformances may have been overloaded by

Schlemmer's expectations of them, as Kállaisuggested. Schlemmer wrote at length about tbedevelopment of Triadic Ballet out of his personalquest for a 'metaphysical revue', which bebelieved would manifest most prominently withtbe costumes used in the original last section ofthe dance. It was this third series whereSchlemmer demanded the most of his costumesin transforming the human bodies that worethem, and thus here that the audiences werecalled upon to make the greatest imaginativeleaps in order for the performance practice tofulfill the intentions of Schlemmer's research.One critic described how the 1922 audiences weretaken at first hy the merriment of the dance'spicturesque costumes, but that, as the pieceprogressed, and Schlemmer's deeper ideasbecame evident in tbe third series, it was thatsection 'which initially appears foreign andalienating. Thus was pleasure and applause afterthe first series much stronger than at the end.'Similarly, many reviews from early instantiationscomplain of Schlemmer's attempts to fix toomuch meaning through readings of Heinrich vonKleist's essay on the puppet theatre, referencing,for example, his burdening of Kleist as a'compurgator' and suggesting that the piece

• Karl Heining, Daisy Spiesand Carl von HachI in TriadicBallet, Donaueschingen1926 Atelier Crill, CourtesyDeutschem Tanzarchiv Köln

•> The most startlingmutation, in 192b, waswhen the costumes wererented to a revue at theMctropol Theatre inBerlin for three months.Although the version wasactuallychoreographedby a Russian balletmistress anti featured alltwelve costumes onstageat once, reviews of theperformance and evenSchlemmer himself didnot distinguish thisinstantiation from any ofthe others, referring to itonly as'OskarSchlemmers TriadicBa//ef'. This chronologyis most clearly detailedby Scheper (1977).however, telltale signs ofit appeared inSchlemmer's diarieswhen he, for example,discussed the hiring ofmultiple female dancers.

^ Toepfer notes that.because the Bauhaus wasa plastic art schoo] andnot a dance institution,the lack of obhgation to astructured movementcurricula resultedpositively in theexperimental nature oftheir works, bul it alsomay have prevenledfuSfillnient of certaindancerly possibilities inthe performances (1997:

would be far better if its theoretical search forlegitimacy were left aside so that its playfulframework not be overextended.

In place of utilizing the era's increasedtechnological capacity to create dazzlingdisplays, Schlemmer had sought to show thenatural mechanics already inherent in bodies. Inthe process, he forced human bodies to bear theweight and limited range of motion from theawkward costumes, leaving many reviewerstroubled by tbe difficulty tbe dancers faced inmanaging the costumes of Triadic Ballet, whichremained rigid rather than conforming to themutability of the human form. Obviously, thiswas exaggerated by contrast to the particularsuppleness traditionally expected of dancers.And it is also likely that those audience memberswho commented on the 'failure' of the perfornnersby traditional standards of excellence missedthat the dancers were first serving another idea.But it was also particular to the fact that, asmany reviewers commented, Schlemmer'sdancers were not always capable of physicallyfulfilling the tasks he conceived for them, due toa lack of tecbnical training.^ One reviewdiscussed Schlemmer (under bis stage name) asdemonstrating 'an almost touchingunconsciousness of technical incapacity' (O.K.Isigned] 1922). Similarly otbers describe his'inadequate troupe' and mention that it mightbave been Scblemmer's own fault that TriadicBallet did not receive tbe recognition heanticipated since

|hle allowed his work to be presented by a troupethat did not possess today's intensive body- andspatial-feeling, which he himself so often hasproclaimed as the prerequisite of his own dancerlyideas. Because of that, the performance remained infact only a Bauhaus fashion show, driven byconventional balletic grace. (Michel 1932:13)

A C O N C L U S I O N BY W A Y O F A F E W

T H O U G H T S O N T R A N S - H I S T O R I C A L I T Y

A review of Triadic Ballet from a 1932 dancecompetition in Paris noted tbe 'welcome novelty'of tbe 'exact mathematical deliberation' wbicb

bad not been fully animated by tbe dancers.Interestingly, this review finished by noting tbatScblemmer had an impressive idea wbicb 'mustbe followed up with diligence,' as thougb it were anew work and not already ten years old. Myinterest in approaching bistorical dance works aspotential practical researcb is to ftnd ways todeal with exactly those idiosyncrasies andincongruences tbat might otherwise beoverlooked without tbe discontinuities enabledby the dispersion of a genealogical approacb. lnparticular, as in both examples, tbe reframing ofsome historical performances as part of practicalresearcb processes may help to address certainissues in their reception. Having said all tbis,however, I am uncertain I will ever becomfortable witb the anachronism of applyingthe term "practical research' to bistoricalprocesses, in place of the term 'experiment' tbatwas so often used. Altbougb it migbt, to someextent, be valuable to push forward in making tbefull analogy between Gert's staged practice asresearcb and the audience-centric researcb ofconceptual dance or between Oskar Schlemmer'srelationship to the Baubaus and tbe moreinstitutionalized forms of practical researcb inhigher education today, I am concerned about tbescholarly ethics of such a full-fledgedproposition.

A recent article has taken up tbis prospect todiscuss Scblemmer's research practice, bysituating him as an anomalous example of'"post-modern work' on tbe grounds of his'embodied thinking' (Trimingham 2004:128,132).Such extraction of Schlemmer from bis owncontext may not allow for the complexity of hisrelationship to his own time, nor tbe possibilityI raise here, that his performances constitutedonly one of many such contemporaneous projectsof experiment through performance. To drawattention to my own process, I might admit thatI found myself drawn to a line in tbe originalPerformance Research call for papers tbat began:'If choreograpby begins to cballenge conceptionsof bow bodily movement produces dance as anobject...' It seems to me tbat dance may not

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always or ever be an object in its own time but isoften petrified in retrospect through themechanisms of preservation and the operationsof historical reflection. Still, I remain tornwhether it is more important that we usecontemporary terminology to facilitate increasedintimacy with historical choreography orterminology ofthe time in order to contextualizeit. In this case the contemporary formulationmay be useful in private, itself just a process andnot a product, as a means to approach the past'smore fleshy possibilities.

R E F E R E N C E S

Böhme, Fritz (1930) 'Valeska Cert. Schwechtensaal",Deutsche Altgemeine Zeitung, Archiv der Akademie derKünste, 21 November.

Carr. E. H. (1961) (1987) What is History!', London:Penguin.

Carter, Alexandra (ed.) (2004) Rethirtking DanceHistory: A Reader, London: Routledge.

Birringer. lohannes (2005) 'Dance and Not Dance', PA}80:10-27.

Eisenstein, Sergei (1987) 'Im Weltmass-stab überValeska Gert' in Frank-Manuel Peter (ed.). ValeskaGert: Tänzerin, Schauspielerin, Kabarettiótin, Berlin:Edition Hentrich, p. 121.

Foucault, Michel (1977 I1971I) 'Nietzsche, Genealogy,History', trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon,in Bouchard (ed.) Language. Counter-Memory. Practice,Cornell University Press.

Hermann (-Neiße). Max (date unknown) 'Valeska Gert',Berliner Tageblatt. Archiv der Akademie der Künste.

Husemann, Plrkko (2007) Choreography asExperimental F^actice: The Project Seriese.X.T.e.N.S.I.O.N.S. by Xavier Le Roy, October <http://www.insituproductions.net>

Kállai. Ernst (1990 I1931I) 'Between Ritual ad Cabaretlexcerptsl'. in Valerie Preston-Dun I op and SusanneLahusen (ed. and trans.) Schrifttanz: A View of Dancein the Weimar Republic. London: Dance Books,pp. 16-20.

Kuk. (signed) (date unknown) 'Tanzabend ValeskaGert", Welt am Abend, Archiv der Akademie der Künste.

L. (signed) (1977 [1926]) 'Tanz: Valeska Gert', in DerKritiker: Wochenschrift für Politik. KunAt. und

Wissenschaft. 7-9,1925-1927. NendeinA,ichtenstein:Klaus Reprint, 169.

Lepecki. André (2006) Exhausting Dance: Performanceand the Politics of Movement, New York: Routiedge.

Melrose, Susan (2005) * "... just intuitive ..." ' (May)<http://www.sfmelrose.u-net.com/justintuitlve/>

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