photomusée de la danse

 PHOTOMUSÉE DE LA DANSE
A Project by Tim Etchells
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In the frame of
une école dʼart
for the festival dʼAvignon
Collaboration on production Noémie Solomon
with contributions from:
Jonathan Burrows / Hooman Sharifi / Julie Tolentino / Wendy Houstoun/ Raqs Media Collective /
Jérôme Bel / Heather Kravas / Emanuele Quinz / Janez Janša / La Ribot / Rebecca Schneider /
Sandra Noeth / David Vaughan / Annemie Vanackere / Lois Keidan / Barbara Browning / Rachid
Ouramdane / Phil Hayes / Jan Ritsema / Mehmet Sander / Martina Hochmuth / Beatriz Preciado /
Vlatka Horvat / Lin Hixson / Janine Antoni / Jenn Joy / Gurur Ertem / Mette Ingvartsen / Gisèle
Vienne / Pascal Rambert / Fred Moten / Elena Bajo / Heman Chong / Boyan Manchev / Hugo
Glendinning / Romeo Castellucci / Isabelle Launay / Ron Athey / Noé Soulier / Xavier Le Roy /
Mustafa Kaplan and Filiz Sizanli / Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker / Chase Granoff/ Vania Rovisco
/ André Lepecki / Tehching Hsieh / François Chaignaud / Raimund Hoghe / Adrian Heathfield /
Nelisewe Xaba / Fabian Barba / Kate McIntosh / Fumiyo Ikeda / Simone Forti / DD Dorvillier /
Simon Vincenzi / Chantal Pontbriand / Jalal Toufic / Latifa Lâabissi / Barbara Campbell / Ong
Keng Sen / Sergej Pristaš / Mark Franko / Christine De Smedt / Cyril Teste / José Sanchez /
Bojana Kunst
The PHOTOMUSÉE DE LA DANSE is a temporary assemblage of photographs around issues of
movement, dance and the archive across contemporary cultures. It gathers images donated by a
range of international writers, artists, theorists, choreographers, dancers, theatre makers and
other cultural commentators, displayed in small clusters to form a partial, idiosyncratic platform
reflecting on dance and its functions. Participants in the project were invited to choose one single
image which they found resonant in relation to dance or to ideas or realities of movement in quite
different spheres. The images could be sourced from a performance or from daily life;
representing an old or recent action; figuring bodies or not; moving or inanimate… In fact, the only
constraint indicated in the invitation was that the images donated made something apparent for
the contributors in relation to questions of movement, while pointing to some of the creative and
critical possibilities dance draws.
2 Tim Etchells
Birds, Croatia, September 2008
3 Jonathan Burrows
The photograph was taken in 1973, and shows the boys team in a warm up for the one day a
year Whit Monday dancing in Bampton.
I like it because itʼs an image of how dancing in a group is sometimes one of the best ways to be
alone.
4 Hooman Sharifi
Martin Lervik, impure company/Hooman Sharifi
5 Julie Tolentino
Duvet and chain / submission
6 Wendy Houstoun
Leaping, 1989
Photo by Hugo Glendinning
There is something very essential to me about this image. It creates a kind of black whole for me
and the black whole is memory. I can remember the day of taking the photo but have little
recollection of the move itself.
The move is stored deep in my sensation bank (a speechless place crammed full of bodies and
time stretched acts) and contains my main motivating forces in movement: fight, flight, retaliation
and escape. Itʼs in there very close to the top with a label marked “Freedom.”
7 Raqs Media Collective
Seen at Secunderabagh
8 Jérôme Bel
Le Corbusier – Amphithéâtre, Centre Culturel de Firminy, France
9 Heather Kravas
Photo by Jason Starkie
10 Emanuele Quinz
Robert Morris, Neo Classic, Tate, London, 1971
11 Julie Tolentino
Staircase and shadow / time
12 Janez Janša
Life [in Progress], Centro Municipal de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 2009
13 La Ribot
Depression
We are all in the piece of Bruce Nauman, in MUNCHEN Dokumenta, one hour from Kassel,
Germany, summer 2007. The title of the piece was very good, something like, DEPRESSION, or
inclination, something related with the sculpture that we were inside.
14 Rebecca Schneider
Dance is everything everywhere (like photography) in the dirt. Gesture is just a fact, hardworking
and diligent, trained on repetition (like photography), shot through with beauty and horror and
grace, and cast again and again into air to lie among other facts on some hillside in the wide wide
world. This one: on an ancient path in an abandoned quarry, leading one way to colossus, the
other to a parking lot. Some of it live. Some not yet live. Some long past live. All of it in the dirt.
And all of it (like photography) dance. 15 Sandra Noeth
I was thinking about Superman and I think what should be mentioned is what is written on the
wall, which is “Even heroes have bad days.” It has been written/installed on respectively in front
of the wall of the Jewish Museum in Berlin in 2010, in the frame of an exhibition entitled “Heroes,
Freaks and Super-Rabbis. The Jewish Dimension of Comic Art.”
16 David Vaughan
Merce Cunningham in Changeling, 1957
Photo by Richard Rutledge
17 Annemie Vanackere
Football Fans, Rotterdam
Photo by Otto Snoek
18 Lois Keidan
Photo by Hugo Glendinning
My image is of Franko B dancing with a large taxidermy bear. They are both painted black. The
image is from a live action he presented during his recent exhibition, I Still Love, at PAC in Milan.
Franko now plans to make a dance performance, Dancing With Myself, in which he will dance on
stage with a bear (stuffed). Iʼve chosen this image because I love Franko, I love bears, and I love
the idea of one of the great visual and performance artists of our times setting out to make a
dance work and, in the process, reflecting just how fluid contemporary art practices are. 19 Barbara Browning
Lent Satie
Still from Youtube Video
20 Rachid Ouramdane
Cactus
21 Phil Hayes
The picture comes from a special time when i was living illegally in another country and
wondering about coming “home” -- with no idea where that actually might be. We had these
parties in a big tent regularly where everyone would dance till the next day it was quite wild, we
were all drinking a lot then, like too much. Then some bad and sad things happened, someone
died and I realised this life I had with these people was more important to me than any sense of
“home” I might have had for somewhere else. I still live in this country. This captures a very
particular moment in time, about 15yrs Ok maybe but I can feel it, hear it, dance it and smell it just
by looking at it.
22 Jan Ritsema
A scan of the page of an article by Quentin Meillassoux, “Time Without Becoming” in Everything
Under Heaven is Total Chaos, Stockholm, Fall 2010
It seems impossible to photograph an object or something that in one way or another is not
related “to questions of movement, while pointing to some of the creative and critical possibilities
dance draws” (as you ask for); therefore I did chose this page of an article that tries to move our
way of thinking radically; it questions: can we know what there is, when we are not. those who's
answer on this question is “no” use the “argument of the circle.” the circle represents movement.
an argument of the circle, nonetheless refutes any possibility of thinking that tries to escape from
the designed circle. Meillassoux tries not to think this prison, but tries to think the absence of
reason for any reality, therefore he is a platina representative of critical possibilities dance (could)
draw.
23 Mehmet Sander
Single Space
Photo by Alan Crumlish
The subjects of each dance are the movements themselves. Dance is to be performed and
perceived primarily on a physical level. Accordingly, risk taking is an essential factor when
performing a task in order to defy the audienceʼs analyzing process. The tasks should be used to
create a sense of urgency. A risk-taking technique enables the dancers to be both observed and
experienced physically first. Furthermore, creating dance on an emotional basis is self-indulgent,
since as human beings we are already emotional. (…) 24 Martina Hochmuth
I was in Beirut in April 2010 for Home Works and went on a tour with architect Tony Chakar
through Achrafieh which is a Christian district of the city, there I took this image. The graffiti was
saying/quote Tony Chakar: behind this wall in 1984 nothing happened (relating to the bombings
on residential areas during the civil war). The question of movement is both in the erasing of
reality and what it (un)covers; we know that more than 800 000 people left Beirut during the civil
war -- migration being one of the biggest movements?
25 Xavier Le Roy
Photo by Vincent Cavaroc
26 Beatriz Preciado
Postporn Workshop at FeminismoPornoPunk, a theory & practice event curated by Beatriz
Preciado, Arteleku, 2008
Photo by Maria Llopis
27 Vlatka Horvat
This is a picture of a picture of my parentsʼ wedding, April 1970 in Belica, Croatia. Village
weddings in this part of Croatia at that time were marathon 2-3 day-and-night affairs, with the
guests arriving in the morning on Friday or Saturday and staying through for 48 hours or so
(eating all the time, sometimes crashing, waking up for more food and dancing, etc.). This picture
was taken in the morning on day 2 – a moment in the event when the cooks and servers are
setting the table for a meal inside the house so all the guests and musicians go out during that
time and dance on the road. The picture was taken from the house where my dad grew up – this
is just outside. Dirt road still by the look of it. My dad is the one more-or-less in the middle, behind
the trumpet player, dancing with someone who is not my mom. She would have been inside
working / cleaning / setting up with the rest of the women from the family.
28 Lin Hixson
Sunflower Seeds, Ai WeiWei, Turbine Hall Tate Modern, October 2010
I walked into WeiWeiʼs installation at the Tate Modern on opening day and millions of
handpainted porcelain seeds moved under my feet. The floor of seeds rolled toward the ocean.
Children stretched out on seed blankets under the ceiling sun.
When we dance, do we dance on a stage or do we dance on sunflower seeds? Is history danced
by us or are we danced by history?
29 Janine Antoni
The Futurists associate progress with movement
30 Jenn Joy
Two Figures with Box 1, 2011
Photo by Bill Durgin
31 Gurur Ertem
22 to 11
Photo by Aydin Silier
I am attaching you a photo which for me evokes fragility and resilience of the body and infinite joy
of movement. The photo is taken by Aydin Silier and the model is our happiest cat “Supurge” who
is completely paralysed from waist below due to an accident. The doctors wanted to put her to
sleep -- since they thought she could not live on like that. But, obviously, we refused and moved
her to our apartment. We need to assist her by massaging her belly for toilet needs twice a day.
She moves in joy, nevertheless, and its front legs have gotten stronger and stronger. Now she
even runs, really fast, too, after other moving objects. I named the photo “22 to 11” for that
strange shape of the tail in regard to the paralysed legs as she was posing for us.
32 Mette Ingvartsen
Why we love action
Photo by Peter Lenaerts
33 Gisèle Vienne
Last Spring: A prequel (2011) Conception: Gisèle Vienne and Dennis Cooper
34 Pascal Rambert
just that. Kate Moran. In Martin Margiela. In With my own hands/solo by Pascal Rambert Paris
2007
Photo by Sybille Walter
35 Fred Moten
My youngest son in red doing his favorite little move in Piazza Dante, Naples. 36 Elena Bajo
Illusion, Delusion, Allusion, (Studies for a Movement at 66 rpm) The Order of Anarchy.
Performance by Elena Bajo in collaboration with London based dancers Mariana Tarragano,
Mara Domenici, Paola di Bella.
Photo by Luke Banks
A new site-specific performance piece that confronts an anarchist manifesto, movement, objects,
time, space and sound. The three dancers are given an anarchist manifesto to read that will
generate their individual movements. The music of the performance is generated by translating
each word of the anarchist manifesto into musical notes. The dancers have no knowledge in
advance of the music that they will be dancing to or what the other dancer's movements will be.
The process of not-knowing, indeterminacy and improvising is made visible, a space devoided of
hierarchies is created, a space full of potentialities, a space to interact with each other's individual
movements... to build up a new movement, a new collective choreography...? 37 Noé Soulier
Painting by Jean-Baptiste Simeon
The bubble soap will explode. The scene appears as if we were not witnesses.
38 Boyan Manchev
Dancing complicity
Anonymous, acquired from Krassimir Iliev and Kalina Serteva
The characters on the photo are two of my friends from the 80s, Krаssi “Dechev” and “Raka”
(“The Cancer”). I found the image hilarious and spontaneously choreographic, in some weird,
unexpectedly sophisticated way.
Is it a “staged” image? Perhaps it is not, even if it looks like one: as if my old friends were
performing Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi while making a PIL-graffiti in the cosy grey and empty
streets of the old central parts of Sofia in one of the last ʻsocialistʼ years, when anarchy was de
facto the state of rule: youngsters were occupying urban space while nomenclatura and special
services were beating retreat, in fact busy with preparing to become capitalist.
I was wondering: why this image affects me?
Today I think I have the right word for its attraction: complicity. Perhaps it is not even worth to
know if it was staged or not: in any case it is a dancing image, “stolen” by the technical device of
the camera from the “authentic” choreography of “non-composed” movement. Even if it was
staged, it is not in the banal sense of artificial organisation of movement, because the demand for
representation is replaced by the trill of complicity. The presumed spontaneity of staged
movement in fact translates the spontaneity of pleasure: precisely this is complicity.
What we have in front of us is the moving presence of an affect -- a movement of affective
choreography. It is appealing: the complicity is an appeal to us. It could still attract us if we are
still able to be complicit in its movement.
39 Heman Chong
Sign, On a long walk, Nowhere, January 2010
40 Hugo Glendinning
Bolshoi Theatre Moscow, 1992
41 Romeo Castellucci
Trappola
Found image (internet), unknown photographer
42 Isabelle Launay
Ivory box, early eleventh century
Photo from Jean Claude Schmitt, La raison des gestes, Gallimard, 1990
A jumping Christ for Avignon. To put this gesture back at the heart of the city and why not to ask
again religious, moral, sexual, aesthetic, and technical questions that he has crystallized since
antiquity until today. But what is a jump? Or rather what makes us jump? And what would forbid
us to jump today, to take our momentum away?
43 Ron Athey
Holy Woman (1994)
Photo by Elyse Regehr
44 Rachid Ouramdane
Portrait of Carlos, Cover (2005)
Photo by Patrick Imbert
45 Mustafa Kaplan and Filiz Sizanli
Uyumlama (2000)
Photo by Isabelle Meister
46 Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker
Cesena / Rosas & Graindelavoix, Concept Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker & Björn Schmelzer,
Scenography Ann Veronica Janssens
Photo by Ann Veronica Janssens
47 Vania Rovisco
“Metaphysical Materia” Live Installation (2010)
Photo by Paulo Melo
In the work i felt an enormous desire to gather insight on the notions of the imposed social female
body. (…) As movement of dance, a seemingly tied up, “stilled” body finds itself nevertheless in
full dance! The work led me to ground an understanding of a “mechanism” where communication
proliferates through a physical plane, affecting, inducing, letting emerge, etc what we possess in
our heritage as human beings.
48 Ong Keng Sen
Garden, Suzhou, China, 2010
49 André Lepecki
This is a document of the aftermath of a short performance by Nevin Aladag for 6 female dancers
titled Raise the Roof. It was taken in London, at the Hayward Gallery, in a chilling morning of
November of 2010. Capturing the aftermath of the impact of dancing feet on the floor becomes a
revelation that steps leave not only tracks, but most of all, a resonance. 50 Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh, One Year Performance 1978–1979. Taking a walk in the cage.
Photo by Cheng Wei Kuong
51 François Chaignaud 52 Simone Forti
Elephant delicate sensing with trunk
53 DD Dorvillier
Double road above St. Erme, one year later; Double road above St. Erme, 2008
54 Rachid Ouramdane
Russie
55 Simon Vincenzi
Photo by Henrik Thorup Knudsen
One of a series of photographs taken by Henrik as a character within the show invisible dances…
from afar. His task was to capture and archive moments of stillness as the performers finished
physically demanding sections of dance. He took it with a continued strobe flash -- creating an
additional tension from the movement of the camera.
56 Chantal Pontbriand
Photo by Babette Mangolte
When Babette Mangolte took this photograph of Trisha Brown's Roof Piece, it was 1973. A very
different time from ours. New York was still the center of the world. Global geo-ecology was
marked by huge differences, almost insurmountable ones, between continents. America still
presented itself as a world leader, capable of exorcising the earthʼs demons and to promote a
democratic agenda of renewal on a large scale. Times have changed. The drift of continents has
changed ecology and leaders appear elsewhere, thus India, China, Brazil. Revolutions are
elsewhere, as the Arab Spring has shown. What does this picture tell us? The roofs of New York
are here an arena for a choreography where the bodies are sending signs that will be relayed,
one might think, indefinitely. At each stage, the signs are transformed, they become other in
sameness. So goes the world, a world where bodies that talk to each other return multiple
signals. Perspectives have continued to multiply and diversify.
57 Raimund Hoghe
Kazuo Ohno after a performance in the early 80s, Munich
58 Janez Janša
Leap in the Museum
Photo by Nada Zgank
59 Adrian Heathfield
Mum, keep fit association, mid 1970s
60 Nelisewe Xaba
Motorbikes crossing a bridge, Bamako, January 2010
61 Fabian Barba
A Mary Wigman Dance Evening
Photo by Franziska Aigner
The voice is a metaphor I like thinking about. Maybe it has in common with the ghost that it has
no materiality, that seems no to have a physical presence. When I think of the voice I think of it
dissociated from its source of emission: I couldnʼt say where it comes from. Most of the times this
voice doesnʼt say anything concrete, something that could be easily transcribed into words. This
voice behaves precisely like the humming of a ghost: its source and its meaning are of a nature
as evasive as that of the ghost. Yet the voice is not a single one, there are many and they get all
mixed up, like different radio frequencies caught by the same antenna. These voices overlap,
sometimes making harmonies, sometimes contradicting one another. These voices sometimes
are flickering and soft as ideas-butterflies, sometimes theyʼre hard and tyrannical like injunctions
and prohibitions; you might hear them, but you won't be able to record them or prove they're
there.
62 Kate McIntosh
Gibbon skeleton
I thought a lot about photographs, frozenness, stillness, or rather how the camera freezes and
stills, and how time itself can be broken into a infinitely small series of pieces. The thought
process wasn't helpful for choosing an image but it reminded me why I don't enjoy being
photographed so much! I was thinking too about how the still form of something tells a different
story to it's movement, about how no moment can ever exist separated from those before and
after. And about how that kind of unbreathing stillness might be somehow deathly.
In the end my eye fell on this image -- already frozen, without movement -- permanently stopped.
In this case the camera couldn't really do anything extra, except remove one dimension. Anyway - reminding myself that this is not about photography but about movement I also think about
dance and the body, about the dancer-habit of thinking of movement in relation to the insides -the joints and the structures and how to imagine them. So that even as I see this body I identify,
and strangely, want to be it. And find it very beautiful. And of course makes me think of
differences in bodies.
And lastly how much enjoyment there is in moving and how movement is, even at the tiniest level,
the only assurance of being alive.
63 Fumiyo Ikeda
in pieces / Tim Etchells and Fumiyo Ikeda
Photo by Herman Sorgeloos
64 Les Girls
An American
Chocolat dansant
in Paris
Heart of Glass
Over-Sensitivity
Singin’ in the Rain
Jalal Toufic 65 Latifa Lâabissi
Habiter
Photo by Jocelyn Cottencin
66 Bojana Kunst
Borometz, Lamb-Plant or The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
Unknown author
This is Borometz, famous Lamb-Plant from Asia, which fascinated poets, travelers, philosophers
and scientists for centuries. When the flower of the plant comes into bloom, a little lamb is
revealed inside. The lamb can grow and live so long, as it is possible for it to reach and eat the
grass and herbs around the plant. When the stalk of the plant becomes to high, the lamb dried up
and died, or in some more optimistic interpretations of the image, it is turned into a seed.
Borometz is at the same time plant and animal, a creature of continuous transformation, a perfect
analogy of movement between species. At the same time this image is also early image of a
cotton flower, which when recognised as such in nineteenth century, starts to be one of the first
natural resources exploited by the transformational forces of capitalism. Borometz shows
movement as transformation. A liberative movement between life forms, a continuous creation of
change. And a still movement of growth, where transformation leads to destruction.
67 Mark Franko
Alessandro Pasolini
68 Christine De Smedt
Photo by Phile Deprez
It is an image of my parents dancing a short dance, in 2006. They are doing a part of
choreography from the project 9x9 (a project on mass and choreography that I realised between
2000 and 2005). The small dance in this choreography is called the shrimp choreography,
created by Marten Spangberg. 9x9 was a very close collaboration between Marten and me. 15
times we created a new show with 81 volunteers. But in this moment of the picture, in 2006, it is a
20 years celebration of the company Les Ballets C de la B, of which I am part of since 1991. The
organisers of the party had secretly taught this choreography to my parents, and to a 100 other
people of the guests.
69 Cyril Teste
5ʼ95s
A few words about the image without thinking too much…
The issue of bas-reliefs and Egyptian paintings in which movement and depth in the image were
not the major issue yet, but rather the sign -- movements and signs. The shortcut and torsion in
sculpture arriving way later.
The WALK SIGN -- the WALK is interpreted in the SIGN? From the SIGN to the
SIGNALISATION.
It also refers to the question of the partitioning of urban movement of pedestrians (rather than
bodies). To CROSS or to STOP -- the pedestrian thus partitioned in a (binary) security code,
evolving in an environment in which movement canʼt be specific to each -- even arbitrary. For
security of others, the partitioning is the safest value. Partitioning bodies.
Hence, the lost of free and responsible movement through the streets. Even intuitive in our
displacements.
The functioning of any crossroads with streetlights also involves an incompressible minimal of lost
time. Thus, the red of release which conserves a buffering period between two phases, both to
allow the crossroads to empty itself, but also to preserve security margins.
Movement and time: looking for efficient movement -- time shouldnʼt be lost!
The interactive mode remains I think very poor (binary rhythm) but remains one of the so-called
most efficient means as for time managing and security of movements in space. 70 José Sanchez
La Forêt de la Blanche-neige
Photo by Olga Mesa
Thinking of dance as my experience of watching dance, trying to project myself into the
experience of someone dancing. I cannot represent that experience, I just can have that
experience. What I can represent is the absence: traces of movements, echoes of bodies, the
gap between the bodies. Gazing the same in different directions. And yet we communicate. It is
always intentional. That is what is art about: playing with intentions, before and after. Among the
codes, remains the experience.
71 Chase Granoff
I had a difficult time figuring out how to approach this project. I could send a photo that
documents my relation to dance through an image that shows a still of my work... but I think that
becomes something more like a portrait or a reflection of a movement, a staged moment. Then I
thought I have some interesting pictures that show various re-stagings of historical pieces I have
done like Simone Forti's Huddle. That would play with this idea of archive. But instead I decided
to go with my original thought/intuition and what I feel most captures my current relation and
interest to dance and movement. An honest approach to movement and play without the burden
and weight of history and technique and concept and... this image is a frozen movement of
honest sincere movement and play.
72 Barbara Campbell
Barbara Campbell, Inflorescent, performance, Macleay Museum, Sydney (1999)
Photo by Neil Roberts
In a tight museum space was this body as odalisque -- that is, required by art history not to move
-- compelled to reveal a mysterious luminescence by the slight but constant motion of a fan.
Another movement not shown here is of viewers jostling for best position.
73 Sergej Pristaš
Work & Labour (BADco)
Photo by Dinko Rupnic
74