Dancing Recurrences

Brynjar Åbel Bandlien

Dancing Recurrences – a performative practice within the field of dance and dance making by Brynjar Åbel Bandlien My research project aims to articulate and develop a performative practice that I have been working on over the last fifteen years. This practice can be applied to artistic processes within the field of dance and dance making. When a creative process is fully underway, certain situations, events, actions, movements, and states can be recognized as recurrent within the process. Recurrences, rather than being created or produced, manifest or emerge from the dancer´s practice. Once they have been recognized they can be understood and pursued as a forming aspect of artistic processes. The artistic aim has been to follow, participate, co-create and navigate in artistic processes using recurrences. The performative practice of recurrences is articulated by the presentations of #dancingrecurrences and the reflection materials of my dissertation. My two research questions are: How can the practice of recurrences become a way to understand artistic work as it develops?  How can working with recurrences become both a performative practice within artistic processes and an artistic work in and of itself? I have been researching these questions from the position of a dancer, and I have asked these questions in different ways; through dance, through drawing and by interviewing other artists, dancers and dance makers. I have initiated my own research process; #dancingrecurrences, together with four other dancer researchers, starting from practice and from there moving on to reflection. I approach recurrences both as a practice and a reflection, with the assumption that within a dancer´s practice the mind and body are so deeply connected that they cannot be considered separately. Reflection is a physical process as well as a mental one, and practice is a conceptualization process as well as a physical activity. At the same time as I have been researching these questions on my own, they have been explored following the artistic processes of the project Amphibious Trilogies by Amanda Steggell, professor of choreography at Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO). This makes the project an interesting collaboration both structurally and in content. However, in the final presentation of my work the focus will be on Dancing Recurrences and #dancingrecurrences. The work has resulted in a final publication of my reflections based on the findings informed by the artistic processes. The performative practice has resulted in three public presentations.

DANCING RECURRENCES-a performative practice within dance and dance-making

Brynjar Åbel Bandlien is a dancer, a facilitator of dance and Ph.D.-candidate at Oslo National Academy of the Arts - Department Dance. Over the last weekend of November 2019, Bandlien presented the result of his artistic research project Dancing Recurrences – a performative practice within dance and dance-making in the Studio at Henie Onstad Kunstsenter at Høvikodden.

Bandlien coins the term recurrences to describe the situations, events, actions, movements and states that recurs in artistic practice and that come out of group work that uses a process-based approach to dance and dance-making. He has let the recurrences lead the way through the process, starting from his two research questions: How can the practice of recurrences become a way to understand an artistic work? How can working with recurrences become a performative practice and an artistic work in and of itself?

The performative practice #dancingrecurrences was shared over three hours in which the audience was invited to come and go, in and out of the Studio. It is this performative practice that is the main result of the project. In this way, the audience got a glimpse into how Bandlien together with the four other dancer researchers Ann Christin Berg Kongsness, Roza Moshtaghi, Magnus Myhr and Marte Reithaug Sterud research recurrences within different movement qualities translated from videos on Instagram account https://theinstaprofile.com/p/dancingrecurrences

The artistic reflection of Dancing Recurrences is written in three volumes that consist of texts, illustrations, and interviews from the three-years artistic research process. It was displayed on the walls of the Studio and in this way made available for the audience to read. In this way, the reflection created a context for the performative practice, at the same time as it was possible to experience the performative practice danced out within the reflection.

The project draw lines back to the work of the choreographer Amanda Steggell, professor of choreography at Oslo National Academy of the Arts-Department Dance, who is known for her work on dance and new technology at a.o. Henie Onstad Kunstsenter in the mid-90ies, and to the work of the choreographer Michael Klien, professor of choreography at DUKE University College in North Carolina, who worked with dance and algorithms at Frankfurt Ballet in the early 2000s.

To access the different stages of the process, documentation of the final presentation, source of inspiration and the critical reflection of Dancing Recurrences, please open the expositions below.

Artistic Research Project by Brynjar Åbel Bandlien

Dancer researchers are Brynjar Åbel Bandlien, Ann Christin Berg Kongsness, Roza Moshtaghi, Magnus Myhr and Marte Reithaug Sterud

Special thanks to Chrysa Parkinson, Kai Johnsen and Amanda Steggell

Supported by Oslo National Academy of Dance, Norwegian Artistic Research Program; now Diku and Henie Onstad Kunstsenter

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