http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/blog from dance to data to objects Wed, 01 Feb 2012 19:15:37 +0000 en hourly 1 http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/blog/2009/05/synco-laban-and-dance-history-student-perspectives/ http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/blog/2009/05/synco-laban-and-dance-history-student-perspectives/#comments Mon, 11 May 2009 17:14:08 +0000 admin http://synchronousobjects.osu.edu/blog/?p=463 Mara Penrose, an MFA student, and Hannah Kosstrin, a PhD student in the dance department at the Ohio State University, offer insights about Synchronous Objects from the perspective of Labanotation and dance history in a recent interview with graduate student Lily Skove.
Lily Skove: Can you speak to your interest in Labanotation in relation to Synchronous Objects?
Mara Penrose: Systems of annotation represent the movement they describe. Therefore, dance notations need to be specific to the piece itself and the intended audience. The question is, to use a valuable word offered by this project, “traces,” what kind of traces are appropriate for the work? Synchronous Objects’ purpose is not to reconstruct One Flat Thing, Reproduced using Labanotation or some other form of dance notation. I see Synchronous Objects as a generative and creative new construction of One Flat Thing, Reproduced. Translation of a dance can take many forms, and what is of interest to me is the way that my knowledge of One Flat Thing, Reproduced is deepened through Synchronous Objects. Alva Noe in his talk during the Forsythe Symposium held at the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio spoke to the project as a model for understanding, and this got me thinking about how Rudolf Laban created notation as a model for understanding as well. The intention behind Laban’s notation and Synchronous Objects has parallels: both aim to discover new theories or ways of perceiving a dance.
Lily Skove: How do you view the Synchronous Objects as a dance historian?
Hannah: I am interested in looking at Synchronous Objects from within the trajectory and scope of William Forsythe’s entire body of work. In previous projects and particularly in this one, my attention shifts from the work itself to the process of making the work. The tools on the Synchronous Objects’ website help to expose not only the structure of One Flat Thing, Reproduced but the principles that guided Forsythe and interested him choreographically. Counterpoint, alignments, and cueing systems are aspects of the dance that I understand as pliable and flexible principles that could take many forms, from One Flat Thing, Reproduced, to the Data Fan (computer generated imagery). Synchronous Objects invites dialogue about the process of making, and coming from a historical perspective, this dialogue enriches my understanding not only of Forsythe’s pieces but his methodology.

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