Model Laboratory Dance
The current dance scene as a testing ground and paradigm for interdisciplinary work? As a field that reflects (self-)critically on itself and its methods, its institutions and working conditions, as well as on its status in the midst of other arts? This description certainly fits the Tanzquartier Wien (TQW), founded in 2001, and the spring edition takes a look at the broad array of examples of dance, performance, discourse and crossover practices that have developed in and around this workshop. A small cross-section of the approaches that have developed or crystallised here seeks to show how this sphere can be understood as a role model for other artistic genres.
Tanzquartier Wien has achieved a great deal in the eight years since it was set up: liberating dance performance from the straitjacket of companies and the production-oriented festival business, for example, as well as having an exemplary impact on the institutional profile of comparable establishments across Europe. In conjunction with artists and theoreticians, producers and trainers, it indicates a way out of the classical genre framework, and indeed does much more than that: TQW itself became the pivotal point at the centre of an international movement that does justice to the new geographies as well as to changing modes of artistic work. As a consequence various new formats, from laboratories to research to training, are proud to announce they were developed here. In this respect it should be noted that many of the approaches that encouraged radical new formations in the movements and positions of artists and audiences were triggered by input from the self-critical and genre-critical processes of the avant-garde and neo-avant-garde in the fine arts, and were inspired by their conceptual and post-conceptual strands. That alone is reason enough to sketch out these cross-fertilisations.
The main section of this springerin in essence reflects figures or groups that have played a role in shaping Tanzquartier Wien. The texts examine particular areas, pick up on their vocabulary, track down topics in various realms of practice, refer to the mentalities and attitudes in a field that is in constant movement – in both senses of that notion. There is a particular focus on monograph essays about exemplary artists, such as Meg Stuart or Philipp Gehmacher, for whom Tanzquartier has played a central role as a venue and partner in the evolution of their work. In addition, we reproduce some excerpts from individual productions that in many quarters are considered as central works, such as Tim Etchells’ »Void Story« from 2009, which is part of a long series of guest pieces by Forced Entertainment at TQW. Or Rabih Mroué’s lecture performance on political readings of street posters in Beirut, which at first glance has little to do with the classical dance/performance realm but when considered more closely reveals a great deal about the situative interaction of critical discourse, local manifestations of Visual Culture, and physical rootedness in a particular geo-political hotspot. Finally, a third cluster of texts concentrates on cross-fertilisation with various spheres in the fine arts (for example in Annemarie Matzke’s essay) or with a general critical theory of education (for example in Boyan Manchev’s piece).
In all these cases an interdisciplinary approach is not just inscribed in the sphere of possibility of an institution like Tanzquartier, but also begins to take shape on the basis of this fertile institutional ground. In this sense the work that has been done over the past eight years in TQW is and remains inherently unfinished.