MA PhD received her MA in musicology from the Ludwig Maxmilian University, Munich, Germany. A scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service supported additional study at New York University. In New York she participated in choreographic workshops at Dance Theatre Workshop under the direction of Bessie Schönberg. Renate served as associate lecturer and lecturer at different German and British universities before becoming a senior lecturer at the University of Northampton. Her PhD. (Middlesex University London) concerns the relationship between music and movement in dance and film. Her main research interests are choreomusical relationships and choreographic processes and she has published widely in both her native language and English.
Renate Bräuninger
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Articles
The documentation of Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker’s choreography in A Choreographer’s Score
Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker has published three different volumes of A Choreographer’s Score in which she explains her choreographic processes. Each of the volumes contains interviews and parts of the choreography which are recorded on DVDs and published in writing together with the scores. The need for those publications might have been triggered by Beyonce’s use of de Keersmaeker’s choreography in her video Countdown and by a general need to create a legacy for her work. The question that such a publication poses is: what is documented here? Is it based on an idea of the work or a choreographic process or is it an instruction manual for performance? How does de Keersmaeker’s attempt relate to the archive as a place of reinforcing patriarchal law as stated by Jacques Derrida or is it rather an open approach to dance and performance as an art form, able to escape that law as Rebecca Schneider has discussed?
Knowledge of the body established through personal identity and exposure to dance cultures
The development of British contemporary dance practice has been dependent upon the assimilation of cultural forms. The outcome of this process of absorption could be perceived as the British relativist style, situating the European performer between the dominant influence of American 20th century theatre dance and Asian dance traditions. In this paper we aim to break down choreography as a methodological process, proposing that there cloud be a clearer distinction between choreographic methods and compositional practices to allow for discussion of particular stages of the artistic development process in creating a choreographic work. At the core of this dialogue are the compositional and teaching experiences of an American trained British dance practitioner in different parts of South East Asia. The encounter with what could be referred to as the cultural ‘Other’ allows us to trace the use of the body and mind (conscious and unconscious) in the development of compositional practices. The paper negotiates between compositional and choreographic methods and the theories of Françoise Lyotard and Henri Bergson to allow for an integration of the processes of. creation within the interpretation of choreography