By Peggy Phelan[1] & Helen Thomas[2]
In here, I will use both of the articles that we were given to study.
They both refer to the present life that performance has. “Performance cannot be saved […]: once it does so, it becomes something other than performance”, says Peggy Phelan and Sigel agrees as “[Dance is] an event that disappears in the very act of materializing”.
Maybe keeping a description of the performance, would be a good try of maintaining the work, but in that way, what really happens is a transformation of the work in the words of this script. Indeed, on the one hand, a review or a script can fundamentally alter the event, on the other hand, though, it is a way to preserve it.
“Performance’s challenge to writing is to discover a way for repeated words to become performative utterances,
rather than constative utterances”-Benveniste
Until now dance has no retrievable past, as “[it] has been pushed to the margins of aesthetic and philosophical discourse” (Elton, 1992, p.22). So, what we have is the gap between the text and the performance, the “arrangement” of the work, as Helen Thomas wants to name it, from debates and discourses. This gap is desired, intended and logically required.
The debate for the aura, the authenticity, the repeatability and the reproducibility of the works still goes on among the theoreticians of dance.
Tomlison prefers using the term “authentic meanings” to “authenticity”, because we cannot possibly know with any degree of objective certainty the composer’s true intentions in creating the work. In that way, we become less absolute on our conclusions on authenticity and use our beliefs and memories. These memories are a mix of every “thing outside of the work” that makes the work understandable to the audience. Again, this brings us to the second paragraph that introduced the “alteration” of the work.
Peter Kivy follows with 4 different interpretations to authenticity:
- Faithfulness to the composer’s intentions
- Performance practice and original sound in the composer’s lifetime to the performer’s own self
- Original way of playing
- (through) performance
Maybe, the writing should come from the performers and the composer themselves and then from audience and critics. Maybe, this is what Franko means when he writes about “dance theorizing” that should replace repeatability.
[1] Phelan, P. (1993). Unmarked: the politics of performance. London: Routledge
[2] Thomas, H. Reconstructing the Dance: In Search of Authenticity. The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. pp. 121-145
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