GHOST DANCE FOR ONE (2017) RETURN TO DESIGN MENU
Ghostdance for one (2017) is the last part of a tryptic of choreographic works by Alan Parker which explore the relationship between live performance and the archive. In Ghostdance, Parker explores the influence of (now deceased) choreographers and/or specific productions on his own praxis.
The work, through a combination of movement; conversational anecdote (both live and in the video); and an audience participatory ritual invites contemplation on the fleetingness of live art and life more generally. It is both a dance of death and a dance about death. The piece explores memory and influence through recounting Parker’s experiences with particular works/makers, demonstrating the embodiedness of live art by translating remembered choreographic gesture into an embodied mash-up of movement. This jumble of remixed choreographic and thematic citations, are recontextualized and interpreted as a new dance.
The work culminates in a testimonial witnessing of Parker’s own experience of his dying mother’s last moments. This is in turn translated into embodied choreography with reference to Kazuo Ono’s Mother.
The video piece by Rat Western is both a backdrop and surrogate, additional performer representing Parker in an alternate temporal frame. The video alternates, and intermingles three kinds of footage. The first (pre-recorded footage of Parker describing his impetus for the piece) has been visually and audibly styled to reference both a video diary and the narrative found-footage trope of low budget b-grade horror/suspense film e.g. The Blair Witch Project. The intention behind this was to imply that the speaker is alone in his present environs – the past (Parker was in reality filmed by Western). This apparition, speaking from ‘the other side’, aesthetically evokes an associated sensibility with haunting whilst simultaneously speaking about the nature of haunting.
These musings by Parker are then inter spliced with a collage of two other kinds of footage. Momentary glimpses of archival footage of work referenced in Ghostdance (some of which is animated from stills as no moving archival footage exists) are layered over a visual refrain of scudding clouds, flowing water, abandoned buildings, fugitive shadows, changing light, flying birds, aerial shots, tunnels, passages and other similar semiotics.
The work was first performed in Hiddingh Hall, at the University of Cape Town, as part of the Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) Live Art Festival, on 25 February 2017. The work was also performed on the Arena programme of the National Arts Festival in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), in the Nun’s Chapel, from the 4-8 July 2017.
