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.

Recurrences within the process of creating the performance STORMEN 2013

Recurrences within the process of creating the performance O

In the process of creating the dance performance ”O” (2005), a work aiming to outline the presence of absence, we worked with the task of physically addressing holes, without the use of words. The practice; following every thought and impulse with actions and movements in an interrupted flow, tried to fill the ever-present hole of the room, created by the floor, the walls and the roof. After a certain amount of time, approximately 15-20 minutes into this practice, all four dancers had done all the actions and movement they possibly could think of doing, and arrived to a natural stand still. (See images _DSC0792NEF to _DSC0798NEF below.) This pause recurred every time we practiced, and finally it became a leading element building the structure of the piece.

Recurrences in the process of creating the performance

Until the moment when God is destroyed by the extreme exercise of beauty (2006)

by Vera Mantero

In the first two months of the practice based process of creating the performance Until the moment when God is destroyed by the extreme exercise of beauty together with Antonija Livingstone, Brynjar Bandlien, Loup Abramovici, Marcela Levi, Pascal Quéneau & Vera Mantero, I noticed two recurrences fell out of the practice: Firstly, that I lost a feeling of a self, of my independency, and secondly, that my body and mind dissolved and melted into one big body and mind together with the other five artists. To me this experience seemed recurrent to the process, so I pursued this feeling both in content and form. Towards the end of this process, I was given the task to structure the material, and I pursued this individual recurrence and it became an important element of the final performance.)

The orange/pink wave vs the blue/blue wave in front of the parliament on 16 of October 2013, the day of the installment of the right wing government, with Pernille Holden, Venke Marie Sortland, Marte Reithaug Sterud, Eivind Seljeseth, Marianne Skjellbred, Sigrid Kopperdal, Kristin Helgebostad, Ingerleiv Berstad og Brynjar Åbel Bandlien.

Photo by Signe Becker

During the practice based process of creating the performance Stormen 2013 these eight/nine recurrences continually emerged and became manifest each time the dancers would practice:

walking, running, rolling, swimming/drowning, singing, dancing, melting and disappearing.

I proposed to make these the main recurrences of the work, and they became both the content and the form of the final performance. I call these common recurrences as they emerged simultaneously for all the nine artists in the practice.

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