#dance research

How would you define contemporary dance to someone without a background in dance?

“It’s always a tricky question. I recently took a job teaching dance at a public high school. While some of my students are highly trained, others are new to dance. When I explain contemporary dance, I often tell them it’s a dance form that prioritizes expression, but it’s tough to define what it looks like because it can be presented in so many ways. It can be done to any sound score: pop music, spoken word, classical music, silence. There’s a range of performance spaces, from a proscenium to a warehouse, from site specific to film. As far as choreographic creation, contemporary dance can run the gamut. There’s a lot of freedom and variety in the way choreography is generated, more than what is often found in a traditional or classical setting. There’s often a focus on research and improvisation to generate material. What I end up saying to my students is that contemporary dance can look like almost anything, and is largely defined by its intention to be contemporary dance.”

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What do you perceive is your own contribution to the field of contemporary dance?

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Thanks to all that came to the showing last weekend at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land Studios. It was wonderful to have so many folks there to warmly welcome this new work! I was touched that twenty-eight of you were present for this first showing, including many of the MSc Students in Dance Science & Education, pictured below!

(Students of the MSc Dance Science & Education at the University of Edinburgh’s St. Leonard’s Land Studio during the first open development showing of “The Art of Treepling” last week, photo by Lindsay Corr)

As I prepare for the second open development showing, I am going back Flett & Flett’s original chapter, reading, re-reading, and thinking so much about the ways they documented “treepling” in Scotland, “the art of beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet.” (1) Such rich description, their writing takes us to times and places where treepling was part of life, not only a means of movement, but a mode of socialisation. Their descriptions of the sounds of this dance form are especially rich: “Tacketty boots rattling away,” (1) “capering, rattling, shuffling.” (2) More on this soon!

If you missed the first showing, here’s a short clip of a section called “Treeple Time (3/4 + 3/2 excerpt)″. Special thanks to Lindsay Corr at the Scottish Storytelling Centre for capturing this moment! There will be a second public development showing on April 4th, hope to see you there!! 

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 2

Thursday, April 4

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

First Footing is a collaboration between dancer and dance researcher Nic Gareiss, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.

(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

(photo by Michael Erlewine)

I wanted to put together one last micro-post in advance of today’s free open development showing of The Art of Treepling, happening yes, TODAY from 4-4:30pm in St. Leonard’s Land Dance Studio, Holyrood Road on the campus of the University of Edinburgh.

The Art of Treepling (working title) is a new solo step dance work-in-progress that engages the work of dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett from their 1964 book Traditional Dancing in Scotland. In the final chapter of their text, the Fletts describe treepling, “beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet” (1) as an integral part of the landscape of Scottish Traditional Dance. Taking its name from this chapter, the solo step dance work The Art of Treepling engages with the Flett’s research in Scotland, as well as with other traditions of percussive dance from Ireland, Canada, and Appalachia, re-imagining treepling as a creative locus of interpretation for traditional music & dance from Scotland and beyond.

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 1

Thursday, March 21

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

First Footing is a collaboration between dancer and dance researcher Nic Gareiss, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.

As I prepare for tomorrow’s showing, I’ve been thinking about the ways that treepling, percussive stepping indigenous to Scotland defined by dance collectors Joan and Tom Flett as “beating out the rhythm of the music with the feet” (1) could act as a creative locus in encountering music from geographies outwith Scotland. If the defining characteristic of treepling is the articulation of musical rhythms using our southernmost appendages, how might we “treeple” rhythms and melodies from places that might not have their own version of treepling? How would our treepling need to flex in order to dance these other rhythms? What could we learn from this music as we embody it?

This made me think about music and dance from Norway, especially the hardanger fiddle repertoire so symbiotically connected to Norwegian traditional dance. One particular tune type in this repertoire, the Norwegian hamborgar, is a circling polka round dance form in which dancers occasionally stamp to punctuate their steps. (2) This aspect of the hamborgar seemed an entry point for exploration of treepling out this music. Here’s a version of a hamborgar as performed beautifully by Britt Pernille Frøholm and Irene Tillung, a Norwegian hardanger fiddle and accordion duo I first heard perform at the North Atlantic Fiddle Convention in Aberdeen, Scotland.

(Frøholm/Tillung perform Andrea Berge, Hamborgar)

I’ve been a fan of Frøholm/Tillung’s sparse but deeply rich and colourful arrangements of traditional Norwegian dance music for over a decade but never thought about how to evoke the rhythms of their melodies and arrangements if I were to perform them solo. This posed a unique challenge: If I were going to articulate the rhythms of Andrea Berge’s hamborgar using percussive treepling footwork, how would I do it? And what of Frøholm/Tillung’s arrangement, to what extent would I need to evoke the extra-melodic musical choices they made to frame the tune, surrounding it like the setting around a precious stone in a ring? How would this stretch treepling? And how could treepling become music of its own, inspired by the specific melody, the performers, and culture from which it originates? Here’s an attempt...

Don’t miss tomorrow’s performance of Andrea Berge (Hamborgar) during the first Art of Treepling free open development sharing.

“The Art of Treepling,” development showing 1

Thursday, March 21

4-4:30 pm

Dance Studio

St. Leonard’s Land, Holyrood Road

University of Edinburgh

First Footing is a collaboration between dancer and dance researcher Nic Gareiss, the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.

(1) Traditional Dancing in Scotland. Joan and Tom Flett, 1964, p. 260

Greetings from my home state of Michigan where I spent this week reconnecting with friends (including my first clogging teacher Sheila Graziano), lovers, family, and performing with traditional musicians from the American Midwest at the Ann Arbor Ark! The Ark, which has been presenting folk and traditional music for over 50 years hosted their 24th annual Crossroads Céilí, a midwinter celebration of Celtic music, song, and dance. As always, this show was curated by Mick Gavin, a fiddler and melodeon-player originally from Co. Clare, Ireland who moved to Detroit in 1974 at age 28. Mick has mentored countless Michigan musicians and dancers and has been tremendously encouraging to me, sharing thoughts, history, and traditions of dancers from Ireland. I remember he once mailed me a VHS tape of Irish old style dancer Paddy Bán O'Broin when I was twelve! In 2018, the Michigan Traditional Arts Program recognized Mick with a Michigan Heritage Award for his dedication to teaching and performing traditional music in Michigan. 

I had the pleasure of performing a duet with Mr. Gavin during the concert, including the mazurka Shoe the Donkey. A popular couple's dance at Irish céilís (an Irish social dance event, similar to a Scottish ceilidh), Mick and I performed the piece as a duo. The fact that Shoe the Donkey is considered a couple’s or "social dance" also presented an interesting challenge - how to evoke the joviality, the physicality, and the specific gestures of a pas de deux with only one dancer. 

(Shoe the Donkey, www.TheSession.org)

In the first part of Shoe the Donkey traditionally, dancers execute subtle brushing steps imitating the phrasing of the tune. In performing the piece with Mick, I wanted to retain that mimetic element, using the melody as inspiration for the footwork. During the performance, I began by using the actual steps from the couple's dance, duple sets of brushes preceded by a hops, then extemporized on them, while continuing to imitate the melody percussively. In the second part of the couple's dance, pairs of dancers walk four steps with hands crossed and joined, then turn 180 degrees in tandem. I've always enjoyed the playfulness of this repeated re-orientation and wanted to pay homage to it by turning, returning, and re-turning with each phrase in the second part of the tune. I found the challenge of corporeally referencing the ways bodies turn in the traditional version of the piece to be eminently enjoyable. The 180 degree turn itself is a gesture which feels so good. Thinking about my own experience as a queer person combined with the sensation of this specific movement also reminds me of the ways that we use the term "orientation" in terms of identity, gender, and desire. There is labor, but also pleasure re-orienting repeatedly. 

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A post shared by Nic Gareiss (@nicgareisslfi) on Dec 30, 2018 at 9:07am PST

I like the idea of performing a tune typically used for partner-dance with only one dancing body - or more accurately two bodies, both of which are moving and making sound simultaneously. {After all, there's no sound without movement} In the performances in Ann Arbor this weekend, Mick Gavin and I both made sounds - and while there was no physical contact between Mr. Gavin and myself, it still felt as though we were dancing together. This reminds me of something Jazz, House, and Lindy Hop dancer LaTasha Barnes said once about solo dance: in solo dance forms, we don't touch each other but rather, we "touch the music." In my chapter in Clare Croft's book Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings, I write about this dancer+musician connection as a rapport between bodies in motion: 

Though I am the only dancer onstage and he is the only fiddler, somehow I do not feel like a soloist, but rather his dance partner ...  lifting, bearing each other’s weight, initiating sound and gesture through a reflexive, mutually-dependent process of affectual suggestion. (1)

Finally, just a quick reminder to post your First Footing dance videos, photos, and reminiscences tonight as the bells ring out for New Year! Be sure to use the hashtag #FirstFootingDance on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram!! 

First Footing is a collaboration of the Traditional Dance Forum of Scotland, University of Edinburgh Moray House School of Education, and the School of Scottish Studies with support from Creative Scotland. For engagement opportunities check out the First Footing website.