Editorial

Reflective Dramaturgy

This issue is dedicated to reflections on dramaturgy and the dramaturgical in dance. The texts have been written mostly by authors who work as dramaturges, and we consider that to be a strong point of this thematic issue. All authors examine dramaturgy from practical examples and personal experiences set in the broader political and social contexts of art production. Such writing is rare and therefore more precious, since it demonstrates – with concrete examples and analysis of practice – the importance of a certain level of familiarity with the work processes in contemporary dance and its modes of transformation, while at the same time closely connecting dramaturgical work with the broader aspects of production and the ways in which contemporary dance is understood today. Although dramaturgy has been present in dance for at least a decade (something we first pointed out in our Dramaturgy of Dance issue in 2001), the questions in this issue are different, or rather have a different political orientation, due to the temporal distance and change in approach since 2001. At the start, it seemed that the relationship between dramaturgy and dance was connected to the changes in the dramaturge’s role that had resulted (above all) from critiques of the so-called objective role of the dramaturge as “the one who knows” and suggested more embodied, closer models of cooperation. The dramaturge has become part of the work process and thus moved away from the hierarchic position. Their role became more elusive since it could be argued and captured only through the subjective closenesses of cooperation. Upon reading the texts published in this issue, it becomes evident that a reflection on the dramaturgical must go beyond simple consideration of the changed role of the dramaturge and focus on the specificity of work and collaboration processes in art, the visibility and openness of these processes, and the changes in relation between the process and the product (dance performance). Thus, dramaturgy cannot be understood as a sort of hysterical and elusive practice of closeness, since such dramaturgical work can also be problematically relativised. At the same time, we cannot normatively define dramaturgy or generalize its procedures, since the character of contemporary dramaturgical work lies precisely in the specificity of art processes, its aesthetic and choreographic procedures, and the establishment of aesthetic and political relations within a particular work process. The point here is not that dramaturgical work is always different and therefore impossible to encapsulate in a definition, but that dramaturgical practice can be connected to aesthetic and politically-significant understandings of contemporary dance that are critical of various essentialisms on the one hand (dance is equally a continuous movement, solipsism of artistic position, differentiation between movement and language) and point to the expansion of the dance field into numerous experimental and exploratory formats on the other. Dramaturgy in dance is a sort of misnomer that today refers to experimental dynamics and collaboration processes that are related not only to the role of the dramaturge but pertain to the performance as a whole. “Making the production a shared responsibility entails a redistribution of knowledge as well as a validation of other positions, including the ‘limited insider’s view’ of the performer; this demands conceptual mobility of the dramaturge, and ultimately of the spectator, as well.” In the following articles, dramaturgy is considered a characteristic of a performance, independent of the dramaturgical function or the “dramaturgical person”. This “depersonalisation” can be associated with many other concepts that today accompany contemporary dance production, such as education, research, cooperation, theory, and open work. The change implies that the appearance of dramaturgy is also closely connected to the new forms of dance production and knowledge that arose in the last decade, and to the visibility of choreographic and dance work/process that are now coming to the fore in contemporary dance performances.
It is precisely because of these changes in the field that Maska this year prepared a series of lectures entitled Reflective Dramaturgy, and most of the articles in this issue were written within the context of that series. At the symposium, we wanted to answer the following questions: What is dramaturgy in dance? What kind of work does dramaturgy entail? What is the relationship between a dramaturge and other co-operators in a dance performance? How are social changes manifested in the dramaturgical aspect of a performance? And, above all, what meanings does dramaturgy acquire when it moves from the field of the theatre to other contexts?

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1 Jeroen Peters, “Heterogeneous Dramaturgies”, in this issue of Maska.
2 Bojana Cvejić writes about this in this issue of Maska.
3 Reflective Dramaturgy, a series of lectures organized by Maska and Taking Measures Festival (Ljubljana Dance Theatre 13 – 16 May 2010)

It turned out that these meanings are especially connected to new types of cognitive and affective work in contemporary culture as well as to a different understanding of relations and exchange in dance – especially experimental and exploratory dance and theatre work. All these phenomena are also closely connected to the role of an “autonomous” spectator, who is no longer the object of dramaturgical guidance but critically and creatively establishes a relationship to contemporary performances. Or, as Bojana Cvejić, whose article we added to the Reflective Dramaturgy articles because of its relevance, says: “Instead of giving into the pressure of accessibility, we’re living in in this neoliberal age in which dramaturges must be concerned with how the performance is made public. This is to do with more than just publicity; it is an effort to articulate, find new appropriate formats, in order to make public the specific ideas, processes and practices – the immaterial envelope of labour and knowledge that sustains the very work.”

In addition to the main feature, we invite you to also read two reflections on current performances, as well as an interview with Mette Ingvartsen, one of today's most interesting contemporary dance artists. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the contributing authors; the language editors, Eva Horvat and Camille Acey; and the translators Polona Petek, Aleksandra Rekar, Tanja Passoni, Maja Lovrenov, and Špela Drnovšek Zorko.

Bojana Kunst and Jasmina Založnik