Abstract:
This research explores failure, its use, representations and perceptions within Western contemporary dance practice and performance. It seeks to consider: How might perceptions of failure in contemporary dance be explored and reflected through my choreographic practice? A practice-led inquiry, it aims to reflect upon current perceptions of failure in the context of this research, Auckland; New Zealand, by allowing choreographic practice to be the mode of investigation. Lingering queries will be used to consider the future representation of failure in Auckland, using local and overseas contemporary companies/artists as comparisons. This research uses the assistance of five dancers who participated in rehearsal processes, choreographic experimentation, and embodied emerging inquiries in the choreographic output to this research: Chapters. Chapters seeks to reflect on the perceptions of failure in Western contemporary dance, by challenging modernist norms associated with conventional dance performance. The nature of modernism’s ‘right’ vs ‘wrong’ and ‘movement for movement’s sake’ notions will be questioned through the performance of Chapters, as well as what it can mean to scrutinize this. Chapters will seek to question these norms using a focus on experimentation, tasking and structurally improvised responses that hold potential for failure to occur. Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s (2007) notions of the rhizome, and the zig-zag, will also inform this research. Both theories allow for discovery to be developed through a non-linear structure (Deleuze & Parnet, 2007; Stivale, 2003). Themes of testing (within practice) are informed by Friedrich Nietzsche (1974) and his early notions of ‘playing the fool’, using consistent inquiry to reveal meaning behind societal systems. This finds further support through Avital Ronell’s The Test Drive (2008). Other choreographic tasking and testing methods are influenced by Meg Stuart, and her choreographic reflection within Are We Here Yet? (2010). This research has seen significant influence through her tasking methods such as ‘Impossible Tasks’, and performance work such as Maybe Forever (2007). Later discussions query a potential avoidance or distaste for failure in Western contemporary dance performance in Auckland, New Zealand. This allows for discussion surrounding possible reasons for this avoidance, such as a lack of government funding (when perceived to be failing), the supposed Tall Poppy Syndrome construct, as well as the social and political conditioning of modernist dance practices.