Comments

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  Manjunan Gnanaratnam October 31, 2013 at 5:02pm

  Hello Jack. Good to hear from you. First, on the video. It is just a design/build experiment  to control this specific synthesizer for applications in dance [western movement vocabulary] where, as you know,  complex rhythmic structures exist due to complex movement structures or vice versa and i use the Raspberry Pi computer to do that  and that it pretty much what this video is about. Hence, within this context, it is not "art" by any means but merely serves a means to an end, here the functionality of a tool.  So, onto the more important stuff, the greater relationship.  You have touched on some intriguing points. First, i am not a mover, however all  my work is as an interdisciplinary artist, a musician within the context of dance [Western Movement Vocabulary] and have been involved in every facet of that relationship for quite a number of years now. My website will give you more info on my work- www.manjunan.com.  Secondly, i now identify dance as inherently a multidisciplinary art form, hence,  traditional "collaborations"  are now seen as only situational, with a beginning and an end date, if you will, and most often with no continuity whatsoever  in understanding this multidisciplinary identity of dance.  Yes, this  situational  relationship does serve a "performative" purpose, enjoyed by all, which sometimes can be a story/theme or "show and tell" of maybe the real work that is going on,  which as you say, that  the space for radical in contemporary dance is within? Maybe in understanding the inherently multidisciplinary construct/deconstruct of dance?  Yes, I do agree with you wholeheartedly that the post modern movement does suffer from this niche syndrome of regurgitation of old concepts and to compound the problem, the visual art and mainstream music worlds have in the past decade or so discovered multidisciplinary art and hence there is much regurgitation in the dance world of old post modern dance concepts as they are now hip in pop culture. Body Lang, Gesture etc etc are all are new concepts in visual art and music worlds but have been negotiated in Post Modern Dance awhile back. To address the point of your musicians and  technology, i would not worry too much about it. They are merely tools in ones creative process, some use them and some dont but unfortunately it is a novelty in pop art, however technology, in any manifestation of its identity has been part of the dance narrative, specifically the post modern dance narrative now for more than fifty years. So to get Choreographers to move on from that purgatory of needing to use technology for relevancy is i think the greatest challenge now.......ramble ramble etc etc ... glad to be provocateur.  my email address is manjunan@gnanaratnam.net for continuation if needed. best. Manju.