Dance Writing, Archives & Documentation (DNCE90016)

Dance Writing, Archives & Documentation focuses on the way dances are transmitted and how we respond to and engage with the traces that remain. It takes advantage of shifts in the last decade in dance historiography that move beyond the Western canon of modern and postmodern dance and the idea of linear temporal progress, to consider dance history through different registers of representation, global geography and space.

Methods of movement writing; oral traditions of dance; cultural heritage; mapping technologies; multi-modal documentation; video capture; living dance archives; notation, scores and diagrams are some of the tools through which to convene relations between performance re-enactment and contemporary dance practices.

In addressing how we talk about past dance with respect to the present, this subject addresses how dance travels and moves between bodies, materialities, media and histories. It will cover areas of focus including choreographic objects, cultural commons, costumes, cultural heritage and performing the archive in relation to museum and gallery collections.