Performance Generating Systems in Dance

Dr. Pil Hansen is professor of the performing arts at the University of Calgary in Canada, President of Performance Studies international, general editor of the Expanded Dramaturgy book series (Routledge), a founding member of Vertical City Performance, and a dance/inter-arts dramaturg. Her empirical and PaR experiments examine cognitive dynamics of memory and learning, and social dynamics of connection, in creative processes. Hansen has dramaturged more than thirty works in Scandinavia and North America and authored or edited over forty publications. Her latest co-edited books are Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement (2015) and Performing the Remembered Present: The Cognition of Memory in Dance, Theatre and Music (2017).

Acknowledgements

List of Figures





1. Introduction: Performance Generating Systems in Dance





Conceptualizing and researching performance generating systems
Three analytical and dramaturgical frameworks in application

- Dramaturgy

- Psychology

- Performativity




PART ONE: DRAMATURGY



2. The Dramaturgical Agency of Performance Generating Systems





Developments in dramaturgical agency
Departures from choreography
Differences from improvisation
Concepts of memory at work
Memory and agency in performance generating systems


3. Analyzing and Notating Performance Generating Dramaturgies as Dynamical Systems





Notation challenges
Dynamical Systems Theory
DST-based tools of analysis and notation


4. Recycled Choreographic Memory in relay: Henderson





Futuring memory
The dynamics of futuring memory
Ethics of affecting memory




PART TWO: PSYCHOLOGY



5. The Cognitive Demands and Learning Effects of Performance Generating Systems





The emergence of dance psychology
Notes on methodology
An earned presence

- Kinaesthetic perception and perceptual integration

- Recalling and perceiving through memory

- Constraints and distributed, extended cognition

- Implicit and explicit learning

- Disrupting and manipulating implicit processes

- Unlearning and recalibrating perception


6. Learning in Whole in the Head: Forsythe





Improvisation Technologies: imaging movement modalities
Building an ensemble: collective memory and skill development
Opening the near closed ‘soft clock’

- Generating components within narrow boundaries

- Self-organizing dynamics and the attractor of emergent performer agency
Closing the near open ‘supernova’

- Expanded generating components and exploded boundaries

- The self-organizing attractor of ensemble memory and agency
Learning WitH an ensemble


7. Unlearning in I’ll Crane for You: Hay through House







Testing the boundaries of performance generating systems with Hay through House
Generating components

- Practice

- Adapting performer

- Score

- Agreement

- Transferability
Learning to unlearn






PART THREE: PERFORMATIVITY



8. Affecting the (Im)possibility of Change: Performativity and Trauma





Moving from dramaturgy and psychology through performativity
Performativity: discursive
Performativity: posthuman
Potential of change in performance generating systems: phase transitions
(Un)changeable conditions: trauma
Performative Agency 


9. Transition from Dissociation to Intimacy in Crave: Kaeja





Craving touch: sourcing dissociation
Creating ‘touch’
Safety through transfer
Phase transition towards relational, performative agency 
Process strategies 


10. Environmental Entanglement in the Dance Machine: Lee





Querying belonging: sourcing displacement
A simple dance: devising a consensual feedback system 
Generating components and phase transition: listening to collective/environmental interaction

- Transitions from hesitant/unconnected performance to engagement 

- Immersive rest and robust forms of creative engagement 

- Invited forms of collaborative engagement 
Performative strategies 


11. Conclusion: Affecting Agency, Learning, and Change through Performance Generating Systems





The conceptualization of performance generating systems
Dramaturgical, psychological, and performative case insights 
The combined theoretical frameworks and their future application 






Appendix: Methodological Negotiations

Bibliography

Index