SCRIPT FOR PRESUMED AUTONOMY Conference, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2016  

 

SLIDE 1   AUTONOMY AND THE BODY

 

SLIDE 2   AGEISM AND THE MATURE DANCER

 

INTRO:

 

Sonia York-Pryce, PhD Candidate, I am a mature dancer, I trained at Elmhurst Ballet School, the Royal Ballet School, London School of Contemporary Dance, Laban Centre of Movement and Dance, all in London.

I returned to study at 29 years of age and felt prejudice at being a mature dancer even then!

 

SLIDE 3

The research investigates ageism and longevity of performance in today’s contemporary ballet culture and seeks to explore perceived taboos in and around the question of retirement. There is a need for the mature dancer to be acknowledged not only for their corporeal difference but also, how their practice rather than their age defines them

 

SLIDE 4 - Why this project?

 AS an older dancer I am investigating attitudes towards mature dancers and as to why they are not valued more in the current dance world. I am seeking VALUE- VALIDATION and VISIBILITY of the mature dancer!!

 

SLIDES  5, 6, 7,

Me – the younger dancer

And the older dancer

 

Ageing is a Taboo subject in the dance world– getting old

The normal age for dancers to retire has been 35 - 40, many chose to end their careers earlier:

 

Contemporary dancer Gill Clarke, stated:

 

The premature retirement of dancers was a colossal waste - not only of the dancer but their wealth of experience and knowledge and the futility of terminating their careers so early was an issue that would never happen in other areas of life

 

Youthful versus ageing

 

Marcia Siegel stresses:

Dance is obsessed with youth, like all the narcissistic enclaves of our society. Dance as sport, dance as glamour factory – a passion compounded of physical mastery and an idealisation of the human form.”

 

AGEISM

 

SLIDE 8 - Prima Ballerina Assoluta of the Royal Ballet Company,

Margot Fonteyn, shown here with Nureyev, some 20 years her junior,

Here in her 40s - she danced till she was in her 60s.

 

SLIDE 9 - Martha Graham, The Mother of American Modern dance also danced into old age - though she cannily modified the choreography to suit her own body, retiring at 80.

 

Both of these dancers were mavericks for the time

Graham lamented:

 

A dancer, more than any other human being, dies two deaths: the first, the physical when the powerfully trained body will no longer respond as you would wish but I knew. And it haunted me. I only wanted to dance. Without dancing, I wished to die.

 

SLIDE 10 – THE FLUX – 1991- 4 choreographers

Jiří Kylián, Mats Ek, Hans van Manen, William Forsythe, Known as The European Quartet, were all in their 40s, dancers and choreographers, relevant to their time of life

 

Kylián created a dance company specifically for his older dancers: Nederlands Dance Theatre NDT3 1991 – 2006 Known as NDT3, his dancers,

Sabine Kupferberg, Alida Chase, Nikolas Ek, Gèrard Lemaitre

Never been done before – new ground

 

Kylián stated,

 

These mature dancers that fantastic physicality and physical presence

History in their bodies

 

When I interviewed dancer Sabine Kupferberg in 2015 she remarked:

They thought we would come out in wheelchairs – but people can be very unkind…..

 

Dutch dance critic Eva van Schaik discussed at the time:

 

That attention for the elder dancer should be seen not as a justified cause for the involved dancer but also as an artistic need for dance in general.

 

SLIDE 11   KONTAKTHOF – Created in 1978 by Pina Bausch, for Tanztheater Wuppertal

Re-staged later with a cast of dancers all over the age of 65 – makes the audience face up to their ageist thoughts and watch these mature dancers perform – they are provocative, moving and full gestural movements

 

SHOW pictures of both older and younger dancers performing in Kontakthof

 

Dance critic Judith Mackrell noted: Bausch’s casting exposed the poverty of our ageist culture. She suggests further:

 

The 65-plus cast not only gave the lie to the notion that we become invisible as we age: they demonstrated that we can look significantly more vital and alive.

 

SLIDE 12   younger cast

 

SLIDE 13     EMBODIMENT – explain

 

Elizabeth Schwaiger states:

That the dancers’ body, at any age, carries a specialised embodiment, their

instrument is their physicality. The aged dancer’s body carries such a strong dance vocabulary and should be valued.

 

Schawaiger goes on to challenge:

That the performativity of the dancer could only exist because they hold a lifetime of dance experience within them. This is only possible because they are ageing dancers.

 

The mature dancer’s body is the instrument of their physicality.

The lived body experience of dance and the kinetics of time and space, both inextricably intertwined with dance.

 

SLIDE 14 - QUESTIONNAIRE

Sent to over 35 dancers, some I know and others whom I know by reputation,

 

How do you find your dancing? How do the public view your career as a mature dancer? Gender prejudice? How do you feel as mature dancers?

Is there prejudice about being and seeing mature dancers? Their fitness regimes? Has the approach to performing changed? Staying a dancer or wanting to create or perform? How difficult to keep going?

How do you cope mentally to push the body to its extremes, does maturity help?

 

SLIDE 15  - The DANCERS - LIST

Images of some of the dancers involved in the primary research

 

Leanne Benjamin, Prima Ballerina the Royal Ballet Co, 48

 

She believed her performances were of a high standard, not just performing well for a forty-seven-year old! Benjamin was adamant that audiences kept her wanting to be there – on stage.[i]

 

SLIDE 16 - Louise Lecavalier – Lalala Human Steps, Fou Glorieux, 55, part of Hons too, recently performed in London. Interviewed her during the 2013 Adelaide Festival where I was invited to watch rehearsals,  and attend the performance. Very generous with her time and answers

 

SLIDE 17   Ross Philip – 56, Sydney Dance Co & Australian Dance Artists

 

SLIDE  18 Liz Lea , Liz Lea Dance and Canberra Dance Co 43 & Patrick Harding-Irmer former LCDT and Australian Dance Artists, 68

 

SLIDE 19 – Charlotta Öfverholm 50

Explain about Charlotta Öfverholm AGE ON STAGE the forming of DANCE ON Berlin/ government backing etc and the recent allocation of a EU fund for the two mentioned companies as well as Sadler’s Wells

 

SLIDE 20 Brian Lucas, 55 Chunky Move, Independent dance artist, Australia

 

SLIDE 21 Wendy Houstoun UK, 54 DV8, independent dace artist

 

SLIDE 22 Nicholas Minns, 63 Les Grands Ballet de Canadiens, independent dance artist

 

SLIDE 23 - Pat Catterson, 75 Judson Theater, Yvonne Rainer, USA

 

SLIDE 24 - Eileen Kramer 101 year-old former Bodenweiser dancer

I thought I was 35!! (Eileen)

Well what is my age – (if asked) – I don’t know!

Nobody said ‘what are you doing in this dance company’ nothing like that

Movement makes you feel so much better – quite recently I started exercising in bed, usually I wake up wanting coffee or croissant, then I exercise and completely forget about the coffee and enjoy myself!Then I get up and do a few barre exercises …its so good for the feet, such wonderful exercise. Muscle memory, how quickly it all comes back,

 

SLIDE 25 - Dance On Ensemble Berlin – first company formed with mature dancers since NDT3 1991 – all dancers over 40

 

SLIDE 26 - The Gaze

 

SLIDE 27 - THE BODY

 

SLIDE 28 - CORPOREAL VALUE

Dancers and educators: Mark Edward and Helen Newell discuss the mature dancers corporeal ability, their embodied experience and maturity and state how under-valued their presence is and would be if they were totally alienated. They celebrate the experienced mature dancers embodied corporeal difference[ii] as a welcome difference when compared to the youthful other. They go to discuss a dancer’s body is a phenomenological breathing curriculum vitae,[iii] stating the mature dancer’s body has a lifetime of corporeal experience that should be utilised, celebrated and not discarded because the youthful dancer is considered the preferred form.

 

SLIDE 29 – Elixir Festival 2014 Sadler’s Wells Theatre London

 

SLIDE 30 - Choreographer Maks Ek 69 and dancer Ana Laguna

 

SLIDE 31 – Australian Dance Artists – Soiree Sforza

Not every day you see a 68-year-old dancer slide out of a grand piano!

 

SLIDE 32 – Quote by dancer Ann Dickie (Rambert, From Here To Maturity)

 

At last, people are beginning to recognize what some of us have always known – The value of the creativity and experience of older people!

 

SLIDE 33 Quote by dancer Nicholas Minns

These are not older dancers strutting their stuff past their virtuosic prime – as some older dancers have been known to do – but offering us the rich territory of individual and shared dance experience.[iv]

 

SLIDE 34  Interprète/Inappropriate Behaviour

The Motif – what is it?   a group of steps, movements – dance/Laban 1987/ used many times in my choreography and videos

Sophie Calle’s work Take care of Yourself

Discuss,

Appropriation of idea to have 4 Australian and 4 British dancers who interpret my choreography,to experience and experiment – as theorist Laurence Louppe discusses in her book The Poetics of Contemporary Dance

 

Show film

 

The shift in the western dance world is acknowledging that mature dance is integral with creativity, life experience and corporeal difference, thus enriching the cultural landscape by keeping these mature movers visible.

 

 

 

[i] Leanne Benjamin, interviewed by the author, March 20, 2014.

[ii] Mark Edward and Helen Newell, “Temporality of the Dancing Body: Tears, Fears and Ageing Dears, “ 2011.

(http://www.academia.edu/1699141/Temporality_of_the_dancing_body_Tears_Fears_and_Ageing_Dears

 

[iii] Mark Edward and Helen Newell, ‘Temporality of the Dancing Body: Tears, Fears and Ageing Dears,’ Paper presented at the ‘Making Sense of Pain’ conference, Warsaw, Poland, May 2011, http://www.academia.edu/ 1699141/Temporality_of_ the_dancing_body_Tears_Fears_and_Ageing_Dears.

[iv] Nicholas Minns, ‘Dancing the Invisible,’ Writing about Dance (blog), May 5, 2012, accessed March 25, 2013, http://writingaboutdance.com/?s=invisible.