The Self/portrait Effects and Dance Performance / Tomić-Vajagić, Tamara

Tomić-Vajagić, Tamara, «The Self/portrait Effects and Dance Performance». Performance Research, 19,  5, (2014), pp. 82-92

Abstract
This article considers performances of dance as sites of performers’ self-portrayals. The focus is on two works, from the context of visual arts and theatre, both featuring fluid instances of performers’ self-presentations in the works that are conceptualized by someone else. The after-effects of their actions are denoted as self/portrait effects – subtle disturbances of the material, which open for possible decenterings of the work as a text. The examples are from Rineke Dijkstra’s The Krazyhouse (2009), a visual art video installation in which dance performance is used as a medium of portraiture; and from William Forsythe’s plotless choreography the second detail (1991) – a theatre dance work whose performers are seen to produce similar self/portrait effects on stage. The analogies with portraiture and self-portraiture emerge through a close reading of the specific performers’ approaches, and drawing upon Bal’s (2009) discussion of ‘portrait effects’, as well as Freeland’s (2010) observations about blended binaries between ‘self-impersonations’ and ‘out of pose’ projections in portraiture. Additional kinships observed relate to the social characteristics of identity projection in (pseudo)selfies. The self/portrait effects observed on the one hand reinforce the idea that the performance opens possibilities for communication of the dancer’s ‘self’ through an infinite web of discourses (after Dennett 1991), and on the other, they reveal layers of dance performance as an open-ended network of intricate, shifting agencies in cohabitation.

Other data

ISSN: 1352-8165
DOI: 10.1080/13528165.2014.958362
URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2014.958362
Language: EN
key: GILNBRRQ