Stories We Perform/Own/Share/Space
by Ariadne Mikou and Sinibaldo De Rosa

Are stories, ideas and gestures owned? What happens when movements are performed in contexts, sites and bodies that are different to those where they emerged from?
In dance and choreographic practice, body movements are transmitted, deconstructed and re-invented, often resulting in a gradual crystallisation of a dance vocabulary, a dance style or even a choreographic signature. As scholar Carrie Noland remarks: ‘(...) gestures migrate (as well as disappear) and (...) in migrating they create unexpected combinations, new valences, and alternative cultural meanings and experiences. In a world of inescapable global circulation, gestures, too, undergo appropriations and enjoy afterlives that change their initial function’ (2008: X). Innovations, new discoveries and bodily sensations, bricolage and fusions are the result of a process of retrieving gestures from the past, as well as of their borrowing from other cultures, contexts or techniques. This spatio-temporal migration of movements and gestures is however not only a matter of inspiration or artistic exchange, for inspiration suggests acknowledgement, and exchange implies fairness and equality in sociopolitical terms. Movement migration combined with disconnection from a specific context and re-contextualisation in the form of unauthorised borrowing raises questions of cultural appropriation, which stands as ‘taking – from a culture that is not one’s own – of intellectual property, cultural expression or artefacts, history, and ways of knowledge’ (Scafidi 2005:9). Although appropriation as an art form^[1] has the potential to produce political and cultural subversions, institutional critique, and counter-narratives, it often gets difficult to draw a line between cultural appropriation, appreciation and critique. Cultural appropriation usually manifests at a superficial level without depth of engagement with those generating the practice, who are often not given credit for their work and artistry, and remain forgotten or marginalised. The history of colonisation and slave trade is full of examples that testify to the complexity of cultural appropriation, usually involving single-direction dynamics of power: someone in a position of privilege – overwhelmingly white – borrowing from the colonised or a minority to use this material in a decorative, speculative or even racist manner.

Ballet repertory is full of asymmetric borrowings. Consider some of the well-known 19th century ballets such as La Bayadère and Le Corsaire that are inspired by Indian and Ottoman cultures respectively, or even The Nutcracker that uses stereotypical representations of nationhood in the divertissements of the last act. In the frenzy of orientalist fantasies that characterised the late 19th and early 20th century, white American early modern dance pioneers such as Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis also made use of non-Western traditions as evidence of admiration for the “Orient”. This appreciation led the way for later inviting foreign dancers to perform at Jacob’s Pillow, introducing in this way diverse movement genres to the dance audience.

Unauthorised borrowing penetrates extensively into popular culture where, for instance, hip-hop often may be performed as an imitation of postures and attitudes deprived of their context. Dance scholar Rosemarie Roberts (2013) critically analysed the circulation of movements in hip-hop dance by confronting how Black embodiments have normally been under-theorised, rather than acknowledged as sites of knowledge production. In the music industry various dance genres are being culturally appropriated and commercialised, and uneven economic benefits towards the individual or the institution in power complicate further the discourse. American pop singer Madonna made an extended use of Voguing sequences in the music video of Vogue (1990), which turned into a big success that promoted Voguing along with the Black and Latino queer artists of New York city’s ballrooms. But this operation of cultural appropriation conveyed Madonna’s position of power as a white wealthy woman who ‘controls and takes center stage within the music and dance imagery’ (Dodds 2009: 256). In 2011, another American icon, Beyoncé, in the music video of Countdown appropriated sequences from Rosas danst Rosas (1983) and Achterland (1990) by experimental Belgian choreographer Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and their film adaptations. Although Beyoncé flipped the racialised order in the history of cultural appropriation, Countdown remains a rare example of an affluent Black artist borrowing from a White artist and popular art appropriating from the avant-garde within a frame of economic imbalance. Borrowing also permeates the field of contemporary dance. Choreographer Joshua Monten notices how ‘taking disparate movement styles and quoting from them directly, assembling dance spectacles eclectically, borrowing freely from various sources’ (2008: 52) have become the common devices of postmodern choreography. Nonetheless, raising awareness and delving with a critical eye into phenomena that exert any form of cultural appropriation remains vital if we aim to make space for an ethical and multi-directional exchange of movements, stories and ideas. In this respect, the roundtable Stories We Perform/Own/Share/Space is an attempt to reflect on the slippery borders between transmission, ownership and free exchange of ideas and movements in artistic processes grounded in the body. 

How to speak about intercultural borrowing and its inevitable association with cultural appropriation without oversimplifying it? How to shape our contribution to a discussion on these issues while acknowledging the privileges which we might enjoy as white Europeans operating within the frame of an international contemporary dance festival at the wealthy core of Europe?
To try and answer these and other questions in a way that challenges hierarchical patterns of knowledge exchange, we came up with the idea of devising our roundtable as a score so as to allow for a more experiential and relational format that invites intersectional thinking. Devising this score as a simple game of cards, we wish to make space for an element of playfulness and chance operation which might suggest a way of defying deep-seated power dynamics. We consider that the collaborative character of such a format speaks concretely and non-authoritatively to the themes that we aim to discuss. By sharing experiences, concerns, advice and questions as part of our score, we hope to come to grips with uncomfortable experiences and share good practices while envisioning a fairer performing arts ecosystem.

^[1] Here, we are particularly referring to appropriation art and its roots in collage and photomontage, Marcel Duchamp’s ready-mades, Andy Warhol’s re-use of consumer products and Guy Debord’s ideas about détournement.


Bibliography
Dodds, S. (2009) “From Busby Berkeley to Madonna / Music Video and Popular Dance” in Malnig J. (Ed.) Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake. A Social and Popular Dance Reader, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 247-260.  

Monten, J. (2008) “Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed” in Bales, M. and Nettl-Fiol, R. (Eds) The Body Eclectic. Evolving Practices in Dance Training, Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 52-67. 

Noland, C. (2008) “Introduction” in Noland, C. and Ness, S. (Eds.) Migrations of Gesture, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. IX-XXVII.  

Roberts, R. A. (2013) “Dancing with Social Ghosts: Performing Embodiments, Analyzing Critically.” Transforming Anthropology, 21:1, pp. 4-14.  

Scafidi, S. (2005) Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law. New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London: Rutgers University Press.