last week Friday I realized that two of the 6 presented 1-min. extracts from the Anniversary performances at tic tac art center in Brussels echoed two dances of mine, remarkably close, and during the same evening that Wendy Perron performed a touching and beautifully crafted personal solo there.
here are the links to recordings of the dances, followed by the dances that I recognized in them:
https://www.instagram.com/p/C-xQUlWMRQx/?img_index=7
Corbul/Raven (2009)
https://www.instagram.com/p/C-xQUlWMRQx/?img_index=5
Sokrates (2001/2014)
the latter obviously is connected via the costume. this costume is one that I "borrowed" from Elaine Summers and her use of it in her pieces like theater piece for chairs and ladders (1965) and walking dance for any # (1969) incl. a concert at St. Mark's Church in New York city. it became a kind of trademark for my own "white" series of dances that I began around 1997, which were out in the open, quite friendly-connective, and community-oriented, incl. Kruisingen (crossings) Heemraadsplein (2009) and its continuation into Delfshaven Dans!
more thoughts
copying can definitely be a form of flattery, especially when the copyist re-creates something instead of re-using a ready-made for personal gain and career, without having to invest more deeply in the source, let alone not naming the sources, no matter how seemingly obscure or 'unimportant'. the echo of the Raven solo at tic tac art center beautifully re-creates the costume (all black) the flurry moves forward and backward, the silence, and the expressive hands.
during my own career i have used liberally from Elaine Summers and Trisha Brown, as inspiration, strategies, vocabularies etc., as well as from many others, for various reasons. more than one piece of music, fine-arts etc. has found its way into my own works.
if indeed both choreographers echoed works of mine, then I am happy to see that neither of them has my body-type.
professional ecology
acknowledging one's sources openly would make our ecosystem in dance more complex, a bit less "simple" but like other credits they could help funnel means, energy-attention, awareness to dancers who may not have the same means or inclination of dissemination, but do have enough to create their work, on their terms, and meaningful enough to be copied from or echoed.
in an environment structured from a false and untenable interpretation of "survival of the fittest" and feudal-neoliberal (pseudo)Darwinian competition for (artificially low-kept = ) scarce means, such a strategy takes away from the "new", "lonely genius", etc. but it does make for stronger inter-connectivity as an eco-system over time.
fortunately there is by a now a greater conversation about culturally formed privileges, who gets to do what when and why, intersectionality, etc. etc. etc. one may say this is public honoring of lineages could be a further extension of such net-working, open-source. each one of us has a different (personal, professional) situation, and so will make different choices.
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