AIC 53rd Annual Meeting

The research project Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum (2021 to 2024) funded by the Australian Research Council brought together artists, researchers and museums to discuss the best ways in which to support the choreographer and the museum. Choreographic artworks within the scope of visual arts and museum contexts considers dance as a contemporary art medium, as distinct from contemporary dance presented on the stage.  Collecting, and therefore conserving, choreographic artworks by museums is relatively new, with the first choreographic work collected into a museum was in 2016 with Dance Constructions by Simone Forte acquired by Museum of Modern Art, New York.  Tate acquired its first choreographic artwork three years later in 2019 and now has three choreographic works in its permanent collection. 

The project placed communities of artists, choreographers and performers at its centre, and engaged with artists to commission six new artworks.  Two of the commissioned artists were core researchers throughout the project enabling the exploration of what is needed to conserve such artworks working in partnership with the communities that create, produce and present such artworks.  The exploratory space of research facilitated a level of autonomy and agility to consider new ways of doing between disciplines, institutions and worlds of practice that might not have come together through the usual institutional pathways of acquisition or display.    The presentation reflects on how moving towards a social model of conservation, that places the community centrally, is required. People have always been at the centre of choreographic artworks, and the need to work collaboratively across our practice, building trust, nurturing relationships is critical.  It is these instances of social connection that have enabled choreographic works to materialise and thrive in their future lives.  

A focus in this presentation, beyond the wider research project, is one the commissioned artworks, A Sun Dance by artist Rochelle Haley, also a core researcher in the project.  This work was co-commissioned and presented with the National Gallery of Australia in February 2024.  At the heart of the work is a relation between sunlight, dancer and architecture.  A Sun Dance is a site-harmonising performance made in relation to sunlight streaming through architectural forms, providing a changing ‘set’ for dance over the course of a day.  Documentation strategies, informed through the relational practices across the conservators, performers, archivists, artists, curators and producers formed a key part of the working process for the authors, with engagement and partnership stimulated by both the commission and associated research shifting into practice.  A performance manual was developed alongside the work and tested in a subsequent presentation of A Sun Dance at Tate St Ives in September 2024, further revealing a collaborative approach to the translation and transmission of choreographic artworks in different spaces and contexts.  It also revealed how A Sun Dance is materialised and mobilised through the social connections surrounding it, what holds the work together, and how to preserve what is valued across the networks and relationships of the communities that sustain such works.