Research Timmy De Laet

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

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

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

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

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

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