sarma

1. When Xavier Le Roy planned his production Project in 2002, he didn’t invite a dramaturg to take over the function of an "outside eye" in the working process. He was interested in the idea of turning the production of a dance performance into the performance itself. Ideally, he wanted to produce a presentation format in which process and product would fall together. That is why he was unable to separate the period of conceptual preparation from that of the practical exploration of certain choreographic methods or from that of the analytical observation of the performative result. Accordingly, he searched for participants who were able to play several roles at once. They would be performers, choreographers and dramaturgs in one and therefore would be able to perform, produce and analyse the choreography at the same time.

2. In similar ways to Le Roy, Thomas Lehmen was looking for participants who were willing to be involved and distanced at the same time. For his project Funktionen (2004-5) he developed a methodological toolbox with a set of choreographic systems that could be given away to other artists. That transfer was meant to lead to a potential multiplicity of improvised choreographies. But these systems were not only productive tools to produce works that were no longer Lehmen’s own. He also wanted them to have the potential to reflect the communication processes that are happening during an improvisation on stage. Accordingly, he did not look for performers who would merely execute certain instructions but for ones who were ‘mature’ enough to contribute to the development of his methodology as well as to its exploration, analysis, appropriation and transformation.

3. In both these cases, I entered the projects with what I had brought with me: my non-professional dance experience, years of studies in theatre, film and media and a strong interest in Le Roy’s and Lehmen’s work. Even though my official job title was ‘dramaturg’ at the time, I didn’t join their projects in this particular function, because a ‘pure’ dramaturg wasn’t what was needed. So I entered without knowing my own role in advance but it quickly transpired that I became even more than a performer, a choreographer and a dramaturg: inspired by the experience of being involved in the working process on so many different levels (without feeling particularly competent for this triple responsibility) I started to document, analyse and put into words what was going on. This was nothing really special, because it was exactly what all the other participants did too. The only difference was that I slowly began to develop an interest in theorizing these choreographic modes of work.
I asked myself which kind of working processes and methods, which forms of collaboration  and formats of presentation Le Roy, Lehmen and their participants used to approach their conceptual goals. My theoretical interest and qualitative approach emerged from within the choreographic practice and was made possible not despite but through my rather unclear function. From today’s perspective –– looking back at these collaborations after completing my doctoral dissertation on Choreography as Critical Practice I can say that an access to such personal relations and partly fragile situations needs involvement and distance at the same time. One has to experience the creative process, to get fully absorbed, and one has to find a way to withdraw from it again in order to reflect upon it. So what is needed is an understanding through both doing and reflecting. Just diving into the creative process can easily lead to an over-identification with the artistic practice. Just reflecting upon it entails the risk of applying external criteria which may have nothing to do with what is at stake. So theorizing choreographic modes of work requires a constant change of position between an insider's and an outsider's perspectives.

4. This personal story of a dramaturg who wasn’t needed as such but instead as a multi-tasking participant and who turned into a researcher with an interest in theorizing choreographic modes of work reveals one characteristic trait of "the dramaturgical". I speak of "the dramaturgical" here intentionally in order to highlight a quality instead of a function. A dramaturg has much more areas of responsibility than watching, writing and giving feedback but one central aspect of dramaturgical work is the oscillation between inside and outside. Sometimes it is problematic because it is always neither/nor. In other situations this switching of perspectives comes quite naturally, however. And with regard to my particular object of study (choreographies that are made to reflect their own making), the dramaturgical could even be considered as one possible access to a practice-driven theory. Not theory that is imposed on practice and uses it for its own purpose; rather a theory of practice that derives from practice and goes along with it. This kind of theorizing has a lot to do with not-knowing: not knowing which direction a creative process will take and not knowing the result, but still knowing how to deal with such vagueness according to the contingencies of a given situation.

REFERENCE
Husemann, Pirkko (2009) ‘Choreographie als kritische Praxis: Arbeitsweisen bei Xavier Le Roy und Thomas Lehmen’, transcript: Bielefeld.