Risk-Taking and Large-Group Dance (Improvisation)

Improvisation in dance is often conceived of as a practice that involves a kind of risk-taking that is occasioned by spontaneity and a ‘stepping into the unknown’. Choreography, usually considered to be the ‘other’ of improvisation, on the contrary, is associated with ‘knowing’ and repetition, and as such with a lack of risk-taking. My main concern in this research is to investigate the nature of risk-taking in dance beyond these assumptions, in particular dances that engage large groups of dancers. In this thesis I examine two such dances: Faust (1993) by American choreographer and educator Mary O’Donnell, a dance for 13 dancers that is highly structured but clearly improvised, and Pororoca (2009) by Brazilian choreographer Lia Rodrigues, a dance for 11 dancers that is meticulously choreographed, but often perceived as improvised.

I argue that an understanding of what risk-taking in such large-group dances entails comes most clearly to the fore when one perceives improvisation and choreography as always dynamically related, tangled up in the various ways of knowing that a particular dance fosters and requires. This includes understanding the potential encounter with the unknown contained within the dance. Thus, even in a dance as meticulously choreographed as Rodrigues’s Pororoca, not only there will always be room for improvisation, but improvisation will always take place, however minimally. This suggests that improvisation and choreography as well as the unknown and the known are dimensions of any dance danced by a human, dimensions that are always present, but to differing degrees, depending on the particular dance. These dimensions are never total, absolute or fully determining. Consequently, in this thesis, risk-taking itself cannot be total, absolute or fully determining. It is rather a highly hybrid and dynamic object. (Latour, Beck) Through an examination of the generative aspects of my two case studies I show how this is so.