Terpsichore Online is inspired by Sally Banes' seminal text "Terpsichore in Sneakers". Where Banes wrote a survey of Postmodern dance via the artists that defined the form and its influence during a specific time period, my research is a survey of the intersection of dance and the internet via the form itself and how it influences the production and distribution of dances online since the advent of social media platforms. This paper will focus on three topics within the greater survey: framing, authorship, and legacy. Utilizing the scholarship of Arthur Danto, the physical frame of the smartphone and its influences on online content is explored. The smartphone frame coupled with social media applications democratizes all art, all content by removing categories. The cultural production within the frame is absorbed into the content industry as it is the content industry that has come to define the frame. Shoshanna Zuboff's "Surveillance Capitalism" is used to question who is the true author of online dance? More than other arts, dance is primed to influence and be influenced by the internet due to the lack of intellectual property protections and the temporality of dance. Legacy is seen through my pedagogical experience of becoming an authorized teacher of Cunningham Technique and how the internet was/is essential to keeping the theory and methods of a dance form alive. Terpsichore Online explores dance as part of the Internet of Things, and how the internet can erase dance authorship and contribute to dance legacy.

Authors:
Garth Grimball, City College of San Francisco, United States

About the Presenter(s)
Garth Grimball is currently on faculty at City College of San Francisco. My interests include the intersections of dance, performance and the internet as they pertain to authorship, legibility and formalism. My current project is Terpsichore Online.

See this presentation on the full schedule – Thursday Schedule

Bookmark