Location: Shu Box, University of Regina

• Andrew Denton, Jennifer Nikolai, “Live and Digital Performance Processes: Choreographic Camera Dramaturgy”

As creative collaborators in moving image and dance processes and performance/exhibition outcomes, our process departs from a dyadic relationship between moving subjects with recording devices; in the hands of the actor/dancer scene partner, or as a scene partner being passed, amidst improvisation. Through this praxis process workshop: we will facilitate a range of emergent approaches towards problem-finding as a dramaturgical approach to making, viewing, recording and shaping as we move, dance and observe; the outside-inside eye. 

How can a recording device in the hands of the improvising performer, enhance critical choreographic choices in moment-to-moment or retrospective decision-making in creative practice? The historical landscape of moving image includes a vibrant narrative of dance on screen, dance film, dance and camera, which highlight the similarities between choreographic and cinematic practices. Historically the similarities between choreographic and cinematic structures reveal a compatibility of the forms we apply to live and digital performance outcomes. As scholars and artists, we turn to moving image pioneers for provocations and subsequent contemporary contextualisation around making moving image with moving bodies, via dramaturgical inquiry.

In this workshop, the maker, mover, and scene partner in all roles at once, acts as instigator and provocateur, with dramaturgical approaches to improvisation that open perspectives otherwise not considered. Perhaps it is how we as moving/image/makers react to discoveries at the moment, or as retrospective possibilities that open investigations on moving image and performance praxis as a form of choreographic camera dramaturgy.

Biographies

Andrew Denton

Andrew Denton (PhD) is an artist, filmmaker and scholar who is the inaugural director for the School for the Arts at The University of Saskatchewan.  

Jennifer Nikolai

Jennifer Nikolai’s (PhD) practice-oriented methods are grounded in over two decades of experience as a performance studies scholar, researcher and teacher in the tertiary sector.