You are muted: multigenerational dance collaboration in the virtual age
The invisibility of older dance artists due to technological advancement is a problem this research project examines. The project centers my existing collaboration with Regina Baumgart, a dancer and teacher working in her late sixties. Through creative processes of critical reflection, my research considers tensions of intergenerational labor. A research journal documenting how artists navigate differences will be produced, as well as new frameworks for multi-generational dance praxis and visibility.
Project Background
This research builds on my existing artistic inquiries as a queer dancer and teacher who critically examines the unsustainability of hierarchical structures in Western dance culture. Over the past years I have been working with Regina Baumgart in three contexts: 1) as a colleague teaching dance and somatic techniques in parallel with her at the BA program Dance, Context, Choreography at UdK / HZT Berlin; 2) co-designing and co-facilitating a course with her for the BA that supports students as they conceptualize and develop their own movement practice; and 3) as a dancer in a choreography titled, Of the Valley, of the Wind, which I authored in June, 2022.
Research Approach & Project Timeline
My project researches multi-generational dance collaborations. My interest in the topic stems from a problem I faced as a dance teacher during the pandemic: dancers of older generations are being excluded by rapid advancements in technology as they pervade the working life of dance artists. How can focused dialogues between dance artists of different generations reveal the tension between perspectives productively? Over the course of six months, I will revisit traces (fragments of memory, video, sound, text) from my history of professional collaboration with dancer and pedagogue Regina Baumgart (age sixty-eight). Through the project, Baumgart and I will further our collaboration, focusing our attention on the quality of exchange, conceptualize transparent generational divides, and test frameworks for future multigenerational collaboration.
Outcomes
The project aims to produce new knowledge about the ways artists from different generations can work together. It illuminates challenging topics such as asymmetrical physical abilities, aesthetic values, gender, and other frames of understanding embodied experience. As a whole, the research project seeks to test new critical approaches to intergenerational collaboration, anticipating a future where older dancers can cohabit with technological environments. This research will become the groundwork for a future choreographic project that poetically expresses the cultural knowledge produced.
