Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Gained in Translation: Recreation as Creative Practice

2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 34; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01472526.2011.549410

1532-4257

Valerie Monthland Preston-Dunlop, Lesley-Anne Sayers,

Recreation, Leisure, Wilderness Management

Abstract Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Lesley-Anne Sayers, from Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance in London, recently recreated very different dance works from the 1920s. In this article they discuss the value of recreation as creative practice and the discoveries they have made regarding "lost" works, for example, Rudolf Laban's Die Grünen Clowns (Green Clowns) and Nacht (Night) and Sergei Prokofiev, Georgi Yakoulov, and Léonide Massine's collaboration for Le Pas d'Acier (The Steel Step). Considering the potential of educational centers specializing in recreation as research laboratories for the profession, they reflect upon, from two different perspectives, the need to document and disseminate knowledge about creative processes as opposed to simply recording performance. Notes 1. The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, 2nd ed., ed. Alan Bullock, Oliver Stallybrass, and Stephen Tromley (London: Fontana Press, 1988). 2. Mike Pearson and Julian Thomas, "Theatre/Archaeology," The Drama Review, vol. 38, no. 4 (1994): 133–61. 3. Muriel Topaz, "Reconstruction: Living or Dead? Authentic or Phoney?" in Preservation Politics, ed. Stephanie Jordan (Alton, UK: Dance Books, 2000), 100. 4. Kenneth Archer and Millicent Hodson, "Confronting Oblivion," in Preservation Politics, 1. 5. Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Anna Sanchez Colberg, Dance and the Performative (London: Verve Publishing, 2002), 197–217. 6. Ibid., 202. 7. Norbert Servos and Gert Weigelt, Pina Bausch Wuppertal Tanztheater or The Art of Training a Goldfish (Cologne: Ballett-Bühnen-Verlag, 1984). 8. Rudolf Laban, Modern Educational Dance (London: Macdonald & Evans, 1948); Ministry of Education, Moving and Growing (London: Ministry of Education, 1952); Joan Russell, Modern Dance in Education (London: Macdonald & Evans, 1958) and Creative Dance in the Primary School (London: Macdonald & Evans, 1965); Valerie Preston, Handbook for Modern Educational Dance (London: Macdonald & Evans, 1963). 9. The American Invasion 1962–1972, Luis Espana, prod., Valerie Preston-Dunlop, research dir., DVD (London: Verve Publishing, 2005). 10. Rudolf von Laban, Ein Leben für den Tanz (1935), trans. Lisa Ullmann, A Life for Dance (London: Macdonald & Evans, 1975), 105. 11. Valerie Preston-Dunlop, In the Laban Tradition: Sylvia Bodmer, videotape (1986), available in The Laban Collection. 12. Rudolf von Laban, letters to Susanne Perrottet, 1912–1913, The Laban Collection. 13. Detlev Peukert, The Weimar Republic (London: Penguin Books, 1993). 14. Laban, A Life for Dance, 48. 15. Valerie Preston-Dunlop, "The Seminal Years in Munich, 1910–1914," Part 1 and Part 2, Dance Theatre Journal, vol. 7, nos. 3 and 4 (1989): 1. 16. See Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Susanne Lahusen, Schrifttanz: A View of Dance in the Weimar Republic (London: Dance Books, 1990), which includes translations of the first academic journal on dance, Schrifttanz, published from 1928 to 1932 in Vienna by Universal Edition. 17. Laban, A Life for Dance, 99. 18. Evelyn Dörr, "Rudolf von Laban: Leben und Werk des Künsters (1879–1936)," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Berlin, Humboldt Universität, 273. 19. Laban, A Life for Dance, 108. 20. R. Hinton Thomas, Nietzsche in German Politics and Society, 1890–1918 (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1983), 3. 21. Tanzbühne Laban: Kammertanz, program prospectus for 1924, The Laban Collection. 22. See Recreating Rudolf Laban's Die Grünen Clowns, 1928, DVD, dir. and ed. Lesley-Anne Sayers, prod. IDM Ltd., 2008. Available from www.dancebooks.com.uk 23. Laban, A Life for Dance, 48. 24. Laban, A Life for Dance, 41, 42, 44–45. 25. The Letters and Diaries of Oskar Schlemmer, ed. Tut Schlemmer, trans. Krishna Winston (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972), 156. 26. Laban, A Life for Dance, 34. 27. Laban, A Life for Dance, 41. 28. See the lyrics "It's All a Swindle," "Sex Appeal," and "The Smart Set" on Entartete Musik: Berlin Cabaret Songs, CD, Decca, 1997. 29. Laban, A Life for Dance, 41. 30. Bert States, Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theatre (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 31. A full discussion of the project appears in The Dynamic Body in Space: Exploring and Developing Rudolf Laban's Ideas for the 21st Century, ed. Valerie Preston-Dunlop and Lesley-Anne Sayers (London: Dance Books, 2010). 32. The Loss of Small Detail Project is available for study at the Laban Archive, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, London. 33. See David J. Levin (dramaturge for The Loss of Small Detail), "Moving to Language: Ballet and/as Text in The Loss of Small Detail," in Vom Wort zum Bild: Das neue Theater in Deutschland und der USA, ed. Sigrid Bausinger and Susan L. Cocalis (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1992). 34. Sarah Rubidge, "Identity and the Open Work," in Preservation Politics, 212. 35. Anita Donaldson, "Thoughts from Hong Kong: Conference closing address," in The Dynamic Body in Space, 248. 36. Lesley-Anne Sayers and Tim Rolt, dir., Le Pas d'Acier 1925: A Ballet by Serge Prokofiev (London: IDM Ltd. in association with Rapid Eye Movies, 2006). DVD 1 : Le Pas d'Acier: Ballet, DVD 2 : Rediscovering Le Pas d'Acier 1925: A Documentary Film. 37. See Alison Curtis-Jones, "Historical Recreation and Current Practice: What Is the Relevance of Laban's Work for Today's Dance Artist?," Movement and Dance: Magazine of the Laban Guild, vol. 28, no. 1 (Spring 2009): 4–7; Lesley-Anne Sayers, dir., Recreating Rudolf Laban's Die Grünen Clowns 1928 (London: Barefoot-Dancer Productions in association with IDM Ltd., 2008). 38. See, for example, Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art 1863–1922 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1962). 39. See also Leslie Norton, Léonide Massine and the 20th Century Ballet (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2004), 116. 40. Elizabeth Souritz, Soviet Choreographers in the 1920s (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1990). 41. Sayers and Rolt, Le Pas d'Acier 1925.