Move: Choreographing You
Hayward Gallery
Part play-ground and part installation, Move: Choreographing You explores the relationship between bodies and space through the language of movement and choreography, contextualized by an extensive Archive of movement based work, from dance through to performance art. It’s an engaging experience that brings forward the contemporary polemics surrounding the body and the stimulus it responds to, be it the narrowness of an alleyway or the voice of a choreographer.
The installations in the exhibition are based around the idea of restraint; a material, room, surface or prop that interacts with your body and affects the way you walk, move, step or react, engaging you in a performance of a public nature. The social nature of the whole exhibition poses direct questions on the relationship between public and private, as well as creates a dialogue between body, sound and architecture. William Forsythe’s The Fact of Matter is an installation that invites you to swing and climb through a forest of suspended rings of various heights. It’s a celebration of weightlessness and the dynamics of the body. In opposition is Bruce Nauman’s Green Light Corridor, which forces you to walk sideways through a thin corridor lit with fluorescent lights. The space constraints and the length of the corridor force the visitor to constantly re-assess his/her position in the space. Both installations are cleverly intercepted by La Ribot’s Walk The Chair; a collection of chairs with different messages inscribed which are left around the galleries for the visitor to carry and move around. The rhythm of the constant repositioning of the chairs is at odds with the localized performances of each installation, creating an engaging intrusion into the space.
Amanda Levete Architects have constructed a series of giant paper concertinas that provide a visual disruption to the space, bringing coherence to the disparate installations and a physical link to the Archive interactives. The sounds and rhythms of the ambulant, visitor manoeuvred chairs and the elegance and constant movement of the concertinas bring the concrete space to life whilst maintaining its very public nature. The private also has a strong presence within the exhibition, in works such as Mike Kelley’s Test Room Containing Multiple Stimuli Known to Elicit Curiosity and Manipulatory Responses. The intimacy and narrative of the work provide an extremely engaging experience of play and response in the safe confines of a black space that only houses one audience member at a time. This intimacy allows the visitor more freedom to experiment and play. Often ushers don’t feel comfortable to allow visitors to fully engage, and their gaze affects the freedom of the body to play, affecting the language of the exhibition.
Move is underlined by an invite to self-reflection, and an embedded criticality towards the choreographers and their collaborators. Each engagement attempts to bring awareness of the choreographic process but also its external influences, particularly in works such as Tania Bruguera’s Untitled, an installation with nine screens which constantly invites you to change positions in order to engage with the footage, exploring the connection between movement and ideology. This however remains underdeveloped in the exhibition, partly due to the mode of presentation of the installations, and to the lack of guidance for the visitor.
A significant amount of the installations are both relics and stages- reproductions of props for dance pieces, or installations commissioned for performances during the exhibition. This challenges the live element of the exhibition and, complimented by an extensive, historical and contemporary Archive of dance and performance art pieces, from Merce Cunningham to Pina Bausch, from Yves Klein to Rebecca Horn, provides a constant critical framework for viewing dance, movement and the wider socio-political dialogues.
The exhibition focuses on the physical experience, and for that reason, criticality often takes the form of an encounter and leaves little room for context or meaning outside of the social and physical rules of each installation. What remains an interesting space for discussion is the jump the visitor is invited to make from the reality of their own physicality, as the exhibition doesn’t hold a strong sense of journey or progression outside of its historical interests. The link that the artists have developed over time with the wider social world, and the relationship between movement and dance, are sometimes underdeveloped in the exhibition, left as underpinning references rather than underlying narratives.
Move: Choreographing You explores the interaction between dance, performance and socio-political developments of 1960s up to now. It creates a dynamic, exploratory timeline interested in artistic process and artists’ engagement with movement in its widest sense. It also brings forward a new polemic on our engagement with physicality, bringing a collaborative art form closer to the public.
Image copyright Egbert Trogemann
Tagged: Dance, Exhibitions, Hayward Gallery, Southbank Centre