This introduction explores the etymology of the word “anima” (Latin for soul or breath) and the contradictions inherent in thinking about dance: a force which cannot be fully controlled or contained but which is also an extractable energetic capital with humanist value. A media-historical approach reveals the various cultural techniques that stem from the practice of dance (notation systems, mocap data, screendance) and positions the idea of dance itself as a cultural technique (following Michel Foucault and Bernhard Siegert) and (...) as a mechanically reproducible force (Walter Benjamin) used to ensoul non-organic figures, cartoons, and robots. Citing non-dance scholars such as Susanne Langer, Anne Anlin Cheng, and Sianne Ngai to foreground the biopolitics of dance as it relates to race and “vital gesture,” the introduction to this book suggests that dancing bodies have been instrumental in the development of photography, film, and digital choreographic tools and that dance therefore facilitates an exploration of two interrelated realms: emergent technologies and the ontology of the human. (shrink)

This introduction explores the etymology of the word “anima” (Latin for soul or breath) and the contradictions inherent in thinking about dance: a force which cannot be fully controlled or contained but which is also an extractable energetic capital with humanist value. A media-historical approach reveals the various cultural techniques that stem from the practice of dance (notation systems, mocap data, screendance) and positions the idea of dance itself as a cultural technique (following Michel Foucault and Bernhard Siegert) and (...) as a mechanically reproducible force (Walter Benjamin) used to ensoul non-organic figures, cartoons, and robots. Citing non-dance scholars such as Susanne Langer, Anne Anlin Cheng, and Sianne Ngai to foreground the biopolitics of dance as it relates to race and “vital gesture,” the introduction to this book suggests that dancing bodies have been instrumental in the development of photography, film, and digital choreographic tools and that dance therefore facilitates an exploration of two interrelated realms: emergent technologies and the ontology of the human. (shrink)

This article presents an interdisciplinary conversation between the authors discussing the potential of cultivating a feminist, embodied, ecological approach to screendance and environmental attunement in video dance performance. It draws from Lux Eterna’s artistic research and body of work including the film AURA NOX ANIMA (2016) filmed on the sandy dunes in Anna Bay, New South Wales, Australia, and her current development in dance film production: THE EIGHTH DAY (2023) in conversation with Sarah Pini to consider the presence and (...) embodied situatedness of the artist-maker in shaping visual experience in screendance. Through open-ended interviews to one another, the authors ask if the cultivation of an ecological perspective can offer forms of resistance to hegemonic modes of seeing and experiencing the body on screen. These reflections are theoretically contextualized through establishing their relation to ecological frameworks, feminist literature and an ethnographic approach to dance and the lived body. With this dialogical article, the authors invite a reconsideration of the notion of place and emplacement as key elements informing processes of screendance and aesthetic experience. (shrink)

Este trabajo surge como resultado de una investigación cuyos objetivos son identificar los tipos de espacios escénicos, suelos y localizaciones que utiliza la videodanza. Para ello hemos analizado 152 videodanzas escogidas de las selecciones oficiales de los festivales españoles específicos, desde su creación, hasta el año 2018. Para el análisis hemos creado un modelo ad hoc de nueve variables y 44 categorías. Del análisis podemos concluir que la videodanza utiliza preferentemente encuadres centrados en espacios abiertos y normalmente planos, que se (...) ubican en entornos urbanos, generalmente en interiores, con suelos específicos que aportan significado a la coreografía o a la narrativa de la videodanza. (shrink)

Este trabajo surge como resultado de una investigación cuyos objetivos son identificar los tipos de espacios escénicos, suelos y localizaciones que utiliza la videodanza. Para ello hemos analizado 152 videodanzas escogidas de las selecciones oficiales de los festivales españoles específicos, desde su creación, hasta el año 2018. Para el análisis hemos creado un modelo ad hoc de nueve variables y 44 categorías. Del análisis podemos concluir que la videodanza utiliza preferentemente encuadres centrados en espacios abiertos y normalmente planos, que se (...) ubican en entornos urbanos, generalmente en interiores, con suelos específicos que aportan significado a la coreografía o a la narrativa de la videodanza. (shrink)

The short experimental film Shifting Perspectives stems from a collaborative research project initiated in 2019 in Sydney, Australia, during the 'Choreographic Hack Lab-a week-long laboratory co-presented by Critical Path and Sydney Festival in partnership with the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (MAAS), which asked artists and academics to rethink and respond to the idea of the Anthropocene (Pini & George, 2019). The film was later developed in 2020 during a Responsive Residency at Critical Path, Sydney, awarded to anthropologist and (...) choreographer Sarah Pini in collaboration with Jestin George, biotechnologist and visual artist, and Melissa Ramos, visual artist and filmmaker. This work aims to open a multivocal interdisciplinary dialogue across screendance, performance and synthetic biology. Inspired by a recent conversation between two leaders in the field of synthetic biology (Sarah Richardson and Tom Knight) and their divergent approaches to working with microbial life (Agapakis, 2019), the film invites to consider how collaborating with microorganisms can reshape our future in a more-than-human world. (shrink)