What is it about?
This book chapter describes how a choreographer uses movement, sound, props and video to comment on the gaps between "history" and the actual experiences of historical agents. How is history constructed under the effects of ideological pressures? How oral history interviews with individuals create counter-narratives to those distortions? How does oral history-based performance enact those arguments? The work is described and also contextualized by how previous projects contribute to development of a new genre of performance called "hyper-history."
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Photo by Fares Hamouche on Unsplash
Why is it important?
The "performative" turn over the last 100 years contributes a new perspective on how to understand how we live in a postmodern world. The ways that people "perform" various personae in everyday life in order to cope with complex life-situations can be contextualized by non-Western traditions. For example, in this case, the use of history as a tool in oppressing others can be understood better if powerful, nuanced performance experiences help audiences understand complex conflicts through enacted stage events.
Perspectives
I believe strongly that oral history has a role to play in helping us understand the lived experience of the world around us. Accessing personal narratives that also link individuals to larger historical events and trends around them offers a chance to see ourselves as potential agents of change, not just cogs in a machinery of pre-planned life events. Performing those experiences in staged events can be powerful motivators that help audiences understand their own potential for agency in a complex world that seems to suppress that natural impulse to believe in ourselves.
Associate Professor of Dance Studies Jeff Friedman
Rutgers-New Brunswick
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Minding the Gap: The Choreographer as Hyper-Historian in Oral History-Based Performance, January 2015, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1057/9781137393890_4.
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