e-Dance: relocating choreographic practice as a new modality for performance and documentation

This paper identifies new practices and possibilities at the intersection of Dance and e-Science. It is particularly concerned with the complexity of the concept of ‘location’ in relation to internet enabled performance practices. Julia Glesner provides a useful analysis of spatio-temporal relationships in internet performance: “telematic and distributed performances dissolve the spatial (but not the temporal) unity between performers and spectators and distribute the scenic space into diverse remote sites. This paper considers the ways in which the e-Dance project is formulating a new mode of choreographic practice that engages with this dislocation in the co-dependent interrelationship of space and time. This new modality is distinct from existing on-line compositional practices such as ‘hyperchoreography’ and ‘hyperdance’ and as a result of recent advances in Access Grid and Hypermedia Discourse technologies, is also distinct in form and process from ‘distributed choreography' and other telematic choreographic practices. The research for this paper has emerged from the first sixmonth’s findings of e-Dance, a two-year interdisciplinary practice-led project bringing together practitioner/academics from the fields of Dance and e-Science, in a unique collaboration across three UK Research Councils.