Andrew Dance – Andrew Wood's dance diary

Captioning Contact Improvisation 1972

This year 2022, is regarded as the 50th anniversary of contact improvisation. In 1972 there was a performance – recorded on film – at the John Walker gallery in New York City showing contact improvisation. To aid understanding by everyone, I created a set of captions for the film which you can see online and download. The captions are a transcription of the film’s narration by dancer Steve Paxton.

Dancing with Georgica Pettus

Dancer Georgica Pettus and I created movement sequences at the end of June which she set to music with ‘nonsense’ captioning. The result is ambiguous, comic and arresting. The strong graphic elements of the dance space – a dojo (martial arts hall for Aikido), combine with improvised dance practice, and leave us wondering and questioning.

Corona chaos 2022!

In the winter of 2021, I started to plan for a return to dancing in physical contact (no social distancing) at Oxford Contact Dance. However, a new variant of Covid – the Omicron variant – stopped that. Eventually, I restarted the class and dance sessions for contact improvistion on 29 May 2022 – almost two and half years since the start of the pandemic.

Circle dance

In April this year, I visited Aarhus, Denmark. One of the principle visitor attractions is the ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum – an art museum which has a circular walkway atop the building. Visitors can be seen walking in this circular structure as it has glass sides or walls creating a passageway. Hence, a circle dance is its product.

Remembering Hugo Demartini, artist

On 10 February 2022, I stood in University Parks, Oxford with 100 small sticks and paper slips between my cupped hands. Raising my hands upward, the sticks and paper were lofted into the air. As they were rising they slowed until, for a moment, they were suspended, neither rising nor falling – a cloud of sticks before me, about to scatter and return earthward in a shower.

Invitation to dance: Cube

In February 2022, I invited members of Oxford Contact Dance to join me in creating a landscape dance called ‘Cube’ which involved dancing with two concrete cubes set in the countryside near Oxford.

Dance as sculpture | dancing as sculpting | dancer as sculptor

I began to research art manifestos with a view to writing one for dance. Taken together with my recent practice research for the dance ‘Torus 2.3.3’ then I came to the conclusion that dance could be re-contextualised and situated as sculpture.

Torus 2.3.3 – a dance #LandscapeDance #FoundDance #Voluism

This dance was recorded on two occasions in January 2022. While this is a solo performance. It is also a duet. For I dance with the embodied memory of my previous dance. Thus the past is present: always present.

Pathway – an invisible dance

A path is made by travelling – often repeatedly – along a route and trampling the ground. There is a performative element to it, and the path is a memento or record of movement making a pathway. We could say that we ‘path the walk’ though we usually say that we’ve walked a path. Here is documentation of a walk on the edge of a woodland near Horton-cum-Studley in Oxfordshire which I made in October 2021.

Behold! The Aikido headstand! #HeadstandChallenge

My research into headstands, led me to consider a different stance to one which I’d normally use, and where the outside of my hands rest on the ground, supporting. Hence, the Aikido headstand!!