The participants of Critical Endeavour are looking forward to read and react on your comments and ideas. Please send an e-mail to: critical.endeavour@impulstanz.com.

First let me say something general about the various talks taking place at the project space- Kunsthalle Wien, during this festival.

The fact that they are happening is great. No matter what the topic of the day is.

It’s a fantastic opportunity to meet people in an intense and time limited frame, where everyones voice can be heard.

I joined the “New York Not Nostalgia” talk a bit later and unfortunately missed the presentation of the invited guests: DD Dovillier, Ori Flomin, David Zambrano, Trajal Harrell, Penny ARCADE and Jennifer Lacey. Gradually the discussion shifted into a generation issue. I think it’s never a good move to turn a complex topic into a generational division. It is true that the working situation in repertory companies has changed over the years. Ori Flomin gave a good example for it. He remembered joining the Stepen Petronio Company as a young dancer and being introduced to the new movement language over a long period of time. He spoke about the importance of deepening the dancers understanding towards the unfamiliar repertory before going on stage with the material. Every dancer, of every generation will always prefer having appropriate working conditions. We know that is no the situation in most of the repertory companies today. Therefore, simplified, the questions should be: How did we get this far in terms of having to deal with quantity before quality. How can we change this? I believe that some of the guests present at the talk have a certain amount of power to change the circumstances they are lamenting about. But I got the bad feeling that this obstacle was accepted as a matter of fact and out of our hands. Surely it isn’t helpful to create a generational division. I can see a tendency in dance to create artificial borders instead of uniting the community. I’m not convinced that this is contributing to the art form. But it has been sort of a tradition in dance to weaken the already fragile construct of a dance community from the inside. I don’t understand the endless discussions of ballet dancers versus contemporary and modern dancers, amateurs versus professionals and vice versa. Not to mention all the unconstructive talks about unfair distribution of finances between the institutions and freelance artists. As if the dance community wasn’t suffering from sufficient outside attacks. Let’s not forget that we are living, working and loving the same art form.

 

Nathalie Nad-Abonji