Research Timmy De Laet

Abstract

The heritage of 20th century dance in Europe islargely invisible and in real danger of being lost. Worksthat are no longer being performed – even from the recent past – are forgotten, their memory confined to small and fragmented communities of artists and practitioners. DanceMap proposes an ambitious strategy for safeguarding and promoting dance heritage. It is a map both in the geographical sense, showcasing examples of successful dance heritage initiatives all over Europe and making them accessible for a wider global public, and in the sense of a blueprint or roadmap towards effective and sustainable policy solutions at regional, national and European level. Combining excellence in research and extensive experience of delivering innovative dance heritage initiatives at the national level, the DanceMap consortium has developed an integrated, cross-sectoral approach that incorporates research, data science, artistic practice, outreach, advocacy and policymaking. The consortium is a 16-strong alliance of research centres, universities, archives, arts organisations and leading policy experts, who recognise that dance represents values which are central to the European project: It is a collaborative, non-logocentric, embodied practice that mirrors European conviviality and draws on marginal experiences and perspectives, which – along with connotations of femininity and queerness – have contributed to dance's low status and lack of funding relative to other art forms. With this project, the consortium makes the case that European dance heritage is overlooked in its ability to build a contemporary image of the EU as a progressive, diverse and inclusive political entity. One of its aims is to ensure that dance is included in the common European data space for cultural heritage (ECCCH) as a use case for other embodied practices.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The central theme of this postdoc challenge is the role of adaptation in interrogating and deconstructing established cultural canons, with the aim to critically examine traditional notions of canonisation through the lens of adaptation studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
• Co-promoter: De Laet Timmy
• Co-promoter: Willems Gertjan

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Repertoire theatre is at odds with the current diversity debate. The texts and the portrayal of those pieces on stage, are often not inclusive enough: besides an acute shortage for complex roles for minorities, other identity markers (ability, age, ethnicity, skin color, gender,..) aren't always considered when working with the dramatic repertoire. However, in the wake of #MeToo and Black Lives Matter a change seems to occur: art schools and the theatre landscape are looking for a thorough reformation of repertoire theatre according to the needs of our current society. This project wants to meet those needs by looking at repertoire theatre from an intersectional perspective and by applying this to our artistic theatre practice for the first time. Intersectionality states that identity and discrimination aren't unambiguous concepts, but are the result of different overlapping aspects, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, ability… This project aims to develop strategies for a more diverse repertoire theatre that can be used by students, teachers and theatre makers/directors. This project focuses on three main research lines: text, casting and performance. For every aspect Lauranne Paulissen creates strategies with in the end a play as a synthesis. Other output contains an artistic handbook with strategies for a more diverse repertoire theatre, publications, artistic evenings, an Instagram page and a podcast series.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research network wants to provide a vital stimulus for the expansion and anchoring of dance studies in Flanders and Europe. Even though Flanders is internationally known as an important hub for dance, this domain has still not acquired the same institutional embedding and visibility within the Flemish academic context. Research on dance is currently highly fragmented and mainly takes place within university departments that do not focus specifically on dance, but rather on other branches within the humanities, such as (art) history, cultural studies, theater and film studies, philosophy, sociology, or media studies. This interdisciplinary connection with other research domains is characteristic of dance scholarship, but the actual potential of this interdisciplinarity can only be fully exploited through a common network that enables dance scholars to bring their different methodological approaches into dialogue with each other. The national and international research units that are members of "CoDa | Cultures of Dance" bring together at least three fundamental pillars that are still too often treated separately in contemporary dance studies: (i) dance as an aesthetic practice (micro-perspective); (ii) dance as a sociocultural phenomenon (macro-perspective); (iii) dance and embodied knowledge (intra-perspective). Combining these perspectives enables the development of new interdisciplinary methodologies that increase both the scope and depth of dance studies. In addition, the research network allows to bring together the expertise of both national and international partners and to immerse future dance scholars in a top-level research environment through training activities, Spring Schools, or networking opportunities. With these and other initiatives, CoDa will make a significant contribution to expanding both the visibility and existing expertise in dance research at Flemish and other European universities within the international field of dance studies.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy
• Co-promoter: Iwaki Kyoko
• Co-promoter: Vloebergs Sander

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This research will study how literary texts gave rise to choreographic experiment in the work of Judson Poets' Theater and Judson Dance Theater. The widespread acclaim for the contribution of Judson Dance to the development of contemporary dance overshadows the key role that the more literary-oriented Judson Poets played in the historical development of the art form. This study's focus on the literary undercurrent in both their oeuvres departs from the dominant tendency to privilege the visual arts as the spark of this choreographic innovation. By examining hitherto unstudied collaborations between both groups, it will offer a new perspective on the cross-disciplinary nature of their innovations.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy
• Fellow: Lambert Rosa

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The interaction between dance and religion has become a research area of considerable growth and innovation. However, Catholic theologians do not participate in this research area, and choreographers hesitate to work with Christian rituals. Yet, during the twentieth century there have been precedents of "liturgical dance". Especially in Belgium, liturgical dance was rooted in a fruitful collaboration between artistic modern dance and the Catholic Church. Today, this liturgical dance practice has been virtually erased from the collective memory. So far, studies have not explained these peculiar changes. Moreover, no liturgical dance practices exist in Belgium, despite contemporary dance's interest in ritualistic performances and reenactments. The project proposes to utilize this unique opportunity to initiate a dialogue between dance studies and liturgical theology. It will use the artistic method of choreographic reenactment to research liturgical dance as a contemporary artistic and liturgical-theological phenomenon. To perform this practice-as-research, the project will address the historical changes and renegotiate the objections against liturgical dance, raised by Catholic Church authorities with special attention to the topics of "sacramentality", "inculturation" and "active participation". These reenactments will offer new insight in these three crucial topics, resulting in a pioneering study in "dance theology" as a theoretical and practical branch of theology.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy
• Fellow: Vloebergs Sander

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

With Vlaemsch (chez moi), Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui wants to enter into a direct confrontation with the Flemish roots he has inherited from his mother's side. As the child of a Flemish mother and a Moroccan father, from an early age he developed a crossroads identity that would also determine his choreographic oeuvre. Cherkaoui walks the grey zone between local anchoring and intercultural dialogue. His work cannot therefore be pinned down to a specific region, but it does open up the borders to let other worlds in. De Munt, Eastman and KVS joined forces and chose to have the premiere in Brussels. A conscious choice, made in the context of Troika. Vlaemsch - not coincidentally in a 'wrong', old spelling - is a reminder that language too is a product of its own time. The piece opens the door to a mythical past that nevertheless departs from concrete objects and figures. The stage serves as a memory place where past, present and future meet. Movement becomes a form of memory work in which the roots of a personal, intimate Flemish identity are dug up, uprooted and rearranged. For this production, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui works together with visual artist Hans Op de Beeck, musician Floris De Rycker and costume designer Jan-Jan Van Essche. Four contemporary Flemish makers who together explore the role of their shared origin in their artistic signature. The visual work of Hans Op de Beeck is known for its ingenious play with grey values. The greyish Flanders that can be read from the landscape, weather and architecture is given a visual translation. Together with his music ensemble Ratas del Viejo Mundo (literally translated as 'rats of the old world'), Floris De Rycker usually explores the sound colours of polyphonic music composed before 1600. As a lute player, he discovered how Arabic musical culture has been decisive for Western music, although that line of influence is often erased from music history. For his fashion designs, Jan-Jan Van Essche is inspired by different cultures with special attention for sustainable, local production. His clothing lines do not follow the rhythm of the seasons, but rather the stratification of the individual. Opposite to the Flemish profile of the artistic team, Cherkaoui places a group of international performers. Their origin covers all corners of a world in conflict with itself: Japan, America, Russia, Ukraine, Congo, Canada, Germany, Israel and so on. The cross movement between West and East or North and South is characteristic of Cherkaoui's choreographic oeuvre. With Vlaemsch, he continues this movement, but chooses a different point of departure. He reaches out a hand to the dancers to enter the mythical universe of so-called Flemish culture. The aim is not to impose supposed Flemish values on them, but rather to look for a form of cultural contamination. How can each person share his or her culture with the other without immediately falling into the trap of annexation or unlawful appropriation. Are we safe with each other? Vlaemsch wants to enter precisely into this tangle of cultural roots, which have numerous political, social and economic ramifications.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project investigates the possibilities of choreography as an intermedial practice to relate to today's societal urgencies, particularly relating to the migration and environmental crisis. For about a century, documentary theatre has reconstructed factual information in order to analyze a specific event or phenomenon. Visual artists and filmmakers have joined this trend and demonstrate through their work how factual information can be altered and questioned. Even though the field of contemporary dance is driven by critical experimentations, until recently practitioners seemed less prone to include extra-aesthetic materials in their work. When considered as an intermedial practice, however, choreography is able to weave together factual information and embodied practices in order to question social and political realities as well as the idea of the documentary and authentic subject. Taking shape through different media and performance contexts, this PhD will develop new artistic methodologies that confront reality through the imaginative reuse of facts. The project will focus specifically on the intersection between choreographic and documentary practices and the possibilities of this hybrid cross-over to articulate new modes of engagement and intervention in social and political topics. The research questions what role dance can play in the critical reimagination of today's social and political realities. By combining extensive archival search with other investigative methods, the project will lead to a genuinely intermedial form of documentary choreography.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This project focuses on dance epistemology, as it deals with dance as the aesthetic expression of corporeal thinking. The goal of this artistic research is more specifically to investigate how somatic practices and technology can mutually enhance each other in order to develop techniques for dance improvisation. As such, it will specify how dancers make decisions in an improvisation and when the instant of composing takes place. Somatic practices use improvisation to train sensitivity and reactivity of dancers. However, they often still miss the tools to grasp the fleeting nature of its knowledge production through visualization, improvisation, and verbal reflection. In dance education too there is a need for specific techniques to support corporeal thinking. This research will make embodied cognitive processes (which are often tacit and implicit) more concrete by revising "Nervous Systems," a somatic practice for the human nervous system developed by Klaas Devos, with electronic tools. By developing new software (MAXMSP), the research practice can experiment with the implicit knowledge production of dancers and gain control over principles of improvised composition. The software generates live movement tasks, mediated in-ear or on monitors, and as such it trains the decision-making in improvisation. By thus integrating electronic choreographies in somatic practices we can expand the consciousness of cognition in dancers and critically reconsider the common principles of somatic research, including self-inwardness, solitary technics, soft and slow dynamics, and synthesis through storytelling.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

Traditionally, text and language have been central elements on the theatre stage. The first and foremost function of these texts was 'mimesis'. 'Mimesis' describes the use of the drama text as referring to, or evoking an external reality. Through the text the actors pronounce, characters of all sorts can emerge. Today, a broad range of theatre, performance, and dance practices do not employ texts for mimesis, but rather for kinesis. These texts do not imitate reality, but generate movement, because they are uttered in a distinctly rhythmic manner, and because the performers' bodies start to move on the rhythm of these texts. This project will offer the first, in-depth study of this recent tendency by examining how contemporary theatre, performance, and dance artists are rethinking the interaction between text and movement in ways that prevailing interpretative frameworks in academic research on the performing arts can hardly account for. The increased interest in what this project calls 'kinetic textuality' necessitates a different perspective on the relation between language and movement, that illuminates its underlying aesthetic strategies and makes the intertwinement between text and motion comprehensible.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Laet Timmy
• Co-promoter: Van Den Dries Luc
• Fellow: Lambert Rosa

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

The recent history of Western postwar dance is often construed as a one-way narrative in which the center of artistic innovation moved from the United States of America to Europe from the 1980s onwards. This stereotypical view, however, disregards the transatlantic exchanges that underlie this shift and rather reproduces what has been called the "American Century," a period that roughly started around 1900 and which marks the supposedly sweeping dominance of the United States across the globe. This project will provide a much-needed corrective to the predominant historicization of postwar dance by tracing how transatlantic currencies have been instrumental to the field as it stands now. Taking the dance scene in Belgium as an exemplary test case to investigate the formative influence of the mutual relationships with the USA, the project will illuminate a hitherto understudied part of dance history from a perspective that considers both local and international tendencies. Starting from the 1958 World Exhibition in Brussels, the period under scrutiny will run until 1991, the year when the American choreographer Mark Morris ended his term as Director of Dance at the Brussel's Royal Theatre La Monnaie and was succeeded by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and her company Rosas. Combining dance aesthetics and cultural history with archival research and in-depth interviews, the project will offer the first thorough historical study of transatlantic currencies in postwar choreography.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project website

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project

Abstract

This is a fundamental research project financed by the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO). The project was subsidized after selection by the FWO-expert panel.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: Vanhoutte Kurt
• Fellow: De Laet Timmy

Research team(s)

• Research Centre for Visual Poetics

Project type(s)

• Research Project