Quotation Marks Me, a performance by Alice Chauchat

Quotation Marks Me
2001

photography: François Desautels

Quotation marks me was my first solo work. Rather than a negotiation between people, choreographic writing places itself as a negotiation between traditions.
Quotation marks me questions how choreography situates itself in relation to the numerous conventions defining what a choreography might or should be.
Based on two paradigmatic texts of twentieth century dance practices, The Art of Making Dances by Doris Humphrey and the no manifesto by Yvonne Rainer, Quotation marks me embraces the conceptions proposed by both texts, taking their contradictory approaches to choreography as a possibility to articulate a new position.
Without taking sides for one text or the other, Quotation marks me attempts to question the all-powerful authority which those can have and proposes a conceptual articulation of choreographic expression whilst investing dance itself as art of the moving body.

"For her first solo “Quotation marks me”, made in 2001 and which will be shown tomorrow in the i-camp, Chauchat confronted two important texts from dance history, Doris Humphreys ‘rule manual “The Art of Making Dances” from 1959 and the famous “no manifesto” by Yvonne Rainer, which the heroine of post-modern dance hurled in 1965 against the traditional understanding of dance. Chauchat tries to make it right for both and fiddles with a piece that brings out the effects desired by Humphreys and simultaneously negates them, as Rainer requires. It’s important for Alice Chauchat to deal with dance history. In her mid-twenties, she sees and understands her medium as counterpart to the visual arts, with all possibilities of analysis, self-reflexive relations and meta-theories. That, despite a strict conceptual approach, her works don’t appear brainy, but intelligent and sensual, is what distinguishes them." (Katja Schneider, Süddeutsche Zeitung, august 11th 2004)

Credits

Choreography, dance, production Alice Chauchat; Thanks to Künstlerhaus Mousonturm

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