Introduction. Welcome to Body of Work. Doing Dance Heritage

In this introductory episode we lay out the episodes of this season of the Body of Work podcast, and take the opportunity to speak with Delphine Hesters, coordinator of dance heritage at STUK. 

Sound featured in the episode: Stage recordings from Bartók / Beethoven / Schönberg, by Rosas/Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, recorded by Olivia Rochette and Gerard-Jan Claes. Music: Grosse Fuge, op.133, by Ludwig van Beethoven, played live by Ictus — Field recordings from THE DOG DAYS ARE OVER 2.0 rehearsals, by Katharina Smets — Live sound from Out of Context – For Pina, by Alain Platel. Music: Sam Serruys, featuring the voices of the cast. Recorded by Beeldstorm, March 2023 — Theme music composed by Inne Eysermans.

Voices of: Delphine Hesters, Naomi Gibson, Laura Maria Poletti, Clinton Stringer, Jacob Storer, Ross McCormack, Tale Dolven, Timmy De Laet, Madeline Ritter. 

Narration: Tessa Hall

Transcript

We go to museums to see famous paintings. We travel the world to admire ancient architecture. And from our couch at home we can get lost in books written centuries ago. 

This is cultural heritage — created in the past and still cherished today — shared points of reference that shape our cultural identities, and bring colour and reflection to our lives. 

When it comes to certain art forms, getting up close to the past is possible. Paintings, sculptures, books — these objects are tangible, you can physically touch them. But what happens when the artwork we’re dealing with is not made of stone or canvas, but a performance? What happens when the object is movement? 

Dance is ephemeral. Live. Performed in the present, and then gone. 

But the thing is, like any other art form, dance also has its ‘classics’ — works of art that are just as skillful and culturally significant as paintings you find in museums — choreographers whose pieces are being taught and analysed in art schools around the world. The difference is that these pieces can’t be found sitting in frames or resting on pedestals. 

(Sure, archival material, like videos and photographs of dance, can be found in collections, but we’re talking about the encounter with live dance itself.)

So, how can we experience choreographies from the past, the same way we can experience paintings in a museum? How do these intangible artworks survive across time? How can they be seen (or danced) by generation after generation? 

Welcome to Body of Work — a podcast that explores the question of ‘doing’ dance heritage. This is a podcast by STUK, House for Dance, Image and Sound, in the city of Leuven. My name is Tessa Hall. I’m a dancer myself and also a dance heritage researcher. At STUK, we’ve been researching the heritage of the contemporary dance scene in Flanders, and with this series we’ll share that with you. 

If history is about looking back on the past, heritage is a little bit different. It’s about engaging with our past, now, in the present. When you’re busy with your heritage you’re linking your past, present and future. But when it comes to dance, who carries that past to the present? How is it carried? 

To keep dance alive, it needs to be transmitted from body to body, audience to audience. 

Choreographies from the past, revived, and performed in the present—this is what we call 'repertory', and it’s a way of keeping dance alive and connecting us to dance heritage.

So, with the Body of Work podcast, we talk to all kinds of people who are connected to the practice of contemporary dance repertory. From dancers, to rehearsal directors, and (even) physiotherapists and academics, you’ll hear their thoughts and stories; their experiences and expertise.

VO: The idea for this podcast came from Delphine Hesters, who leads dance heritage work at STUK:

Delphine Hesters: STUK’S commitment to dance heritage comes from the belief that we should not only invest in developing and creating new dance works, but also in ways to give existing works a longer life. And also to make sure that future generations can have access to dance work from the past.

In Flanders, we have a rich contemporary dance field - which has grown and diversified since the beginning of the 1980s - but at the same time it remains very vulnerable. If we don’t find ways to preserve the richness that has been developed, it can be irrevocably gone pretty quickly.

I work as the coordinator of the dance heritage programme at STUK. 

The starting point of that programme is the question: how we can pass on or transmit dance to new generations - both new generations of dance makers, but also of audiences. 

So, on the one hand, we want to develop ways to support the dance practitioners in our field in the preservation and transmission of their practice. But on the other hand,  at STUK, as an art center we can also connect to the audiences.  So how to connect generations in their love for dance?

It’s so beautiful to have or create shared points of reference - a grandfather taking his grandchild to see a piece he saw when he was a young man. To share that experience…  and in that sharing also being able to explore the differences, to sense the time that has passed. Between the grandfather and the child. Between what dance is now and dance was back then. And between the society we are now and back then. What changes and what remains the same?

The moment where we bring this all together is our yearly Body of Work festival at STUK - the festival of living dance heritage. There we connect new creations to old pieces / research and practice / younger and older audiences / heritage and innovation. 

I have worked in the field of dance for a while now, but I love how this notion of ‘cultural heritage’ really opens up a new dimension or perspective. It really makes me look from a different angle. Cultural heritage is about the community, cherishing and reflecting on elements of culture from the past, and carrying them into the future. And that community includes the audience.

VO: And one of the ways to share cultural heritage with the public is by staging repertoire. Just so we’re all on the same page, we’re not talking about Swan Lake, we’re talking about contemporary dance repertoire. But what do we even mean when we say ‘repertoire’?

Naomi Gibson: Repertoire in general, I would say is just previous pieces that have been created by the choreographer and that are being brought back or taught to a new cast or slightly edited and made into a new version, maybe. Because people still want to see it. That they're being brought back in the big sense of, like…we're doing this again. Like taking a step back from something and coming back towards it. I think that's also quite a big part of it for me.

VO: So, this is Naomi Gibson who you’re going to meet in the first episode. Repertoire doesn't have just one definition, but I quite like her take on it. She’s part of the original cast of The Dog Days are Over. This piece, by Jan Martens, has been revived 11 years later with a new cast. We’ll meet the choreographer, rehearsal directors, and some of the new dancers to hear why The Dog Days Are Over has been given a 2.0. This is a story of trial and error, of adaptation and continuation.

The second episode doesn’t start from one specific piece of repertoire, but instead zooms out to the bigger picture of ‘doing’ repertory work. To learn about the complexities and joys of this, we meet 3 dancers of Rosas, Laura Maria Poletti, Clinton Stringer and Jacob Storer…

Jacob Storer: With any repertory, it's the role of the rehearsal director to be like, "okay, how is the best approach?"

VO: A rehearsal director is responsible for passing on a work to new dancers. But what does it take to be a rehearsal director? What does the transmission of repertoire involve?

Clinton Stringer: I'm digging through the iterations of each role, and trying to understand what the original intention of the writing was, maybe to find the version that I, as an archaeologist, am happy with and proud of to put on stage. I really see it as that — as an archaeologist, a dance archaeologist, a d-archaeologist.

VO: And what does it take to perform a role that wasn’t actually made for you? 

Laura Maria: It's like you wear a costume. That piece of repertoire is like a costume that you wear, and it's not necessarily fitting you. But then if you do that work, that physical work, it comes from a very relevant place, it comes from your own body.

Jacob Storer: I've danced many people, so to speak, I’ve been many people, yet always me. And so it's interesting to face that and to realise, like okay, there's not one definition of who I am. I'm still me. Yeah, that's the lesson I learned from repertory in general.

VO: The third episode moves on to Out of Context – For Pina, by Alain Platel. Here we take a different angle on repertory. In our common understanding, we think of repertoire as a piece that is passed on from body to body. But Out of Context is different. It’s never been passed on. Instead, for 15 years the same group of dancers have kept on performing it.

Ross McKormack is one of the 3 dancers who shares with us what it’s like to carry a piece through time, not as a relay, but as a marathon. Just you and your team. 

Ross McCormack: Oh man, what if we just did this work forever? What if we did this work until we couldn't move? It was about our bodies to begin with, but it was about our bodies whilst they were in a very dynamic virtuosic peak state, and what if we just kept doing this with our bodies as they slowly became affected by just our age?

VO: In episode 4, we move back in time to one of the most iconic pieces in Flemish contemporary dance history—Fase, Four Movements to the Music of Steve Reich by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Back in 1982, De Keersmaeker and her collaborator Michèle Anne De Mey premiered this work as young women. What’s it like to perform Fase?

Tale Dolven: It's very special performing a piece that people have a history with. 

VO: The story of Fase is now over 40 years old, and Tale Dolven is one of the dancers who’s part of the chain.

Tale Dolven: It’s very unique in Belgium I think, that the general audience has this history with dance, that they have seen the pieces throughout the years, with the different dancers and that they can see it again and say “I remember I saw it 20 years ago, these kind of experiences are so… special. 

Delphine Hesters: At STUK we’re currently part of a European research project and network called DanceMap. This podcast, and also the research it’s based on, is part of DanceMap’s endeavour to research and highlight European dance heritage, with the goal of supporting the future of our field. 

VO: After talking with the dancers and other people who make all this happen, I went to meet academics and cultural heritage workers connected to DanceMap. For the last episode, I wanted to ask their opinion on what it means to ‘do dance heritage’, and to ask it from a zoomed out lens. We’ll hear from people like Madeline Ritter - the initiator of our DanceMap network. 

Madeline Ritter: Imagine you don't know the name of your grandmother. Imagine you had no stories about how your mother was brought up, in what kind of surroundings, in what city, imagine there would be no stories about anything before your own time.” 

Delphine Hesters: What Madeline said really touched me. Like in any other art form - or even every part of life: if you know about your history, and learn from those who came before you, you strengthen your own way of doing what you do – and you position yourself. It supports you to become more fully and consciously immersed in your present. 

VO: For the last episode, we’ll dive into questions, like…How can archiving play an active role in the intangible history of dance? 

What are the sticky points of heritage—the problems, the issues, the stumbling blocks? 

As we continue ‘doing’ dance heritage, what can be reimagined, repurposed and refocused?  We’ll hear from people like professor Timmy De Laet, from the University of Antwerp. 

Timmy De Laet: Why do people go to museums? What does a museum do? -  It brings together very different artworks from very different periods, and then you can start to see cross connections. What stays, what disappears, what transfers there, what comes again? What? And then it becomes interesting. So when there is no repertoire, there is also no memory of dance and hence no history. And there it stops. And then we can continue going on in circles again and again and again.

Delphine Hesters: It is important to make sure that dance repertory can exist. But it’s also not enough. It is a starting point for diving deeper. To make connections, to weave a web of stories and to give meaning to the traces that we still have in the archives, even though what happened on stage is gone. 

Therefore, it’s also very important to document performances and dance practices more broadly, to tell the story of a dance field as a whole – from what happens on stage to what happens off stage, from new creations to repertory. Repertory is only the tip of the iceberg.  

So dance heritage is something we actively do today: we need to actively keep on adding layers to our dance history. To add voices and perspectives and singular stories, because history is never finished. 

In this podcast, we consciously focus on the perspective of the dancers within repertory work. It is surprising how obviously central dancers are to the dance field, yet how underrepresented their voices and knowledge are in our dance history. 

And there is still so much else unexplored! So many dance artists, of many different generations, and different genres in dance. But also teaching dance artists, dramaturgues, critics, light designers, … We’re only just starting. 

VO: You are listening to Body of Work. A podcast created by STUK, House for Dance, Image and Sound, in the city of Leuven. This series is developed in the frame of DanceMap, a European research project and network, funded by the European Union (Horizon Europe). 

The interviews featured in this podcast have been conducted by myself, Tessa Hall, in the frame of our DanceMap research, as well as Katharina Smets and Delphine Hesters as part of STUK’s ongoing commitment to highlighting and strengthening dance heritage here in Flanders. 

Body of Work  was conceived by Delphine Hesters.

Katharina Smets worked on the edit and the scenario.

Tessa Hall, that's me, I did research and narration.

Teressa Van Eycken assisted the audio production.

The theme music for the podcast was composed by Inne Eysermans.

And the mix was done by Inne Eysermans & Yves De Mey.

You heard the voices of: Naomi Gibson, Jacob Storer, Clinton Stringer, Laura Maria Poletti, Ross McCormack, Tale Dolven, Madeline Ritter, Timmy De Laet, and Delphine Hesters.

And special thanks to Klankverbond, for using their studio at Passa Porta.