From production to consumption: inscribing dance in digital environments

Over the last decade or so, digital technologies have enabled dance artists and their collaborators to experiment with new forms of dance inscriptions. These inscriptions might enter the dance at different stages: as part of the dance making process, as part of the work’s dissemination or as a mode of documentation to support the distribution and preservation of the work. This paper considers the particular contribution that digital technologies have had on documenting dance after the event, but will chart the way in which artists have used these experiences to rethink or re-conceptualize their making and performing process, thus influencing how digital technologies might intervene before or during the work’s creation, questioning the ontological nature of the dance event itself. It will ask: what is the impact of digital technologies on artists’ creative strategies and on the viewer’s experience of dance? With specific reference to the recent projects of British choreographer Siobhan Davies (1950 - ), the paper will examine how she has engaged with contemporary forms of dance inscription to influence her process of thinking, moving and making to ask a number of questions: What role do digital archives play in constructing our dance history? How might digital technology reveal more about the anatomy and genealogy of the dance? How does this reflect back on how artists make work, on how they engage with their own histories, and on how their work is remembered, reconstructed and reused? Finally, this paper discusses Davies’ projects within the context of other creative initiatives that have brought dance artists and researchers together to explore choreographic thinking and new modes of inscription in real and virtual spaces.