文学部「芸術学D」レクチャー・サマリー ："Poetic felt space: embodying poetry through dance movement, projected visual images and sound." by Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk

12月17日、文学部「芸術学D」（金曜2限・森下担当）のクラスにMaria Adriana Verdaasdonkさんがゲストで来訪。
ご自身の博士論文"Living Lens: exploreing interdependencies between performing, bodies visual and sonic media in immersive installation" (Queensland University of Technology, 2007, http://eprints.qut.edu.au/16631/) に沿ってレクチャーをしていただいた。
そのレクチャーをまとめた文章をアート・センターに寄せていただいた。
ご自身もダンスユニット66b/cellとして舞台に立つダンサーだけに、博士論文の審査ではパフォーマンスを行い、論文にも映像を収めたDVD が添付されている。

66b/cellのダンス作品は、コンピュータでつくった映像と音を駆使して、プロセニアムの舞台ではない空間で演じられる。ダンサーもモーションセンサーを首や手に装着して、ダンサーの動きに応じて映像が変化するインタラクティヴな作品となっている。
レクチャーでもいくつかのパフォーマンスのシーンを動画で見せていただいて、Marianaさんたちが追求する身体表現を紹介、解説していただい た。
コンテンポラリーダンスの位置づけだが、興味深いことに、土方巽の舞踏譜の舞踏のメソッドを応用している。具体的には、和栗由紀夫さんの「舞踏 譜」の言葉を引用し、和栗さんの「動き」そのものではなく、言葉に見出される「動き」の創造のメカニックやプロセスを自分たちのダンスに取り入れ ている。
レクチャーのあとでは、学生たちからのいくつもの 質問に応じて、英語混じりの日本語、あるいは日本語混じりの英語でディスカッションしていただいた。

Overview of lecture, December 17, 2010:

Poetic felt space: embodying poetry through dance movement, projected visual images and sound.

Poetic felt space is a concept coined to describe organic and sensory connections between performing bodies, visual and sonic elements, in an immersive performance installation entitled Living Lens. An ongoing project developed both in Australia and Japan since 2006, Living Lens is a collaboration of dance artists, visual and sound artists, and computer programmers.

Living Lens is inspired by butoh-fu – a kind of imagistic dance notation developed through the Japanese dance-form butoh – using text-based or pictorial images as the basis for developing dance movement. Living Lens particularly references the butoh-fu of Tatsumi Hijikata, as transcribed by his student, Yukio Waguri, in the CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Butoh Kaden (1998/2004). The poetic phrases identify the bodily sensory world as an extended nervous system:

Her nerves crack a tiny whip on her fingers...

Hands are touching the surface of a wooden door in front of you,

Antennae stretching out of your fingertips,

infinitely trace the grains of wood...

The imagery of extension/retraction of nerves through the fingertips helps to enhance a dancer’s tactile sense, with the fingers actively palpitating the air. Having “antennae-like fingertips” is a way for the dancer to extend her/his touch range to imagine invisible connections to space, such as to projected visual images on a screen surface. By the same means, a projected visual image of a skeletonised leaf with lace-like veins, for example, can reciprocally evoke ligaments or nerves within the human body. Sound helps to further activate sensory dimensions, for example, the sound of heartbeats, or electric pulses reminiscent of synaptic firings in the brain, are invisible, yet tangible presences, in the installation. Thus, butoh-fu is a poetic and practical means for integrating the elements of performing bodies, visuals and sound. The following butoh-fu has great potential for such an integrated scenario, setting the atmosphere for all three components: the “behaviour” of the dancers, the moving “wall” or projection screen/surface, and the tense “insane air” augmented by sound effects:

World of the neurology ward

A mad woman appears.

The walls and air of the room are insane.

What are you doing?

Her behaviour and sensitivity have become frighteningly precise

and she herself is frighteningly beautiful…

In summary, the concept of poetic felt space has a multifunctional role: to conceptualise the affective nature of the immersive environment with its components of performing bodies, visual images and sounds; and, in relation to the butoh-fu, to refer to the way a dancer becomes attentive to felt sensations within her/his body and subsequently, to manifest these feelings as outward expression.

Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk (Netherlands/Australia)

From the early to mid-1990s Maria Adriana Verdaasdonk (Mariana) studied aikido at Yoshinkan Hombu Dojo and butoh at Asbestos-kan studio with Akiko Motofuji. In 1994 she co-founded media performance unit 66b/cell as a result of work combining body movement and multimedia. In 2007 she completed a practice-led PhD at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia) investigating interdependencies between performing bodies, visual and sonic media.
Performances and presentations include Ars Electronica 2002, ISEA2002, 2003 Seoul International Dance Festival, 2008 World Dance Alliance Global Summit and 2010 World Dance Alliance Event. She received an RSA Encouragement of Arts Award for visual research on the Japanese art concept of 'ma' in 1996 and the Peter Elkin Drama Prize for Faust II Project in 1997.
Media performance unit 66b/cell: http://www.66bcell.com