Releasing the Archive

Releasing the Archive asserts the possibility for performance to remain rather than disappear, through activating the corporeal traces of movements held in body archives. The project repairs the tear between Ausdruckstanz’s Central European origins in Vienna and its Australasian development through the embodied legacy of Gertrud Bodenwieser (b. Vienna 1890 d. Sydney 1959). It does so through experimenting with early somatic foundations of the Bodenwieser Method informed by the Bess Mensendieck system, in particular her feminist nude culture of a body ethics. What concept of a dance does this work propose now? The Feldenkrais Method provides the contemporary somatic connective tissue within the research between a recovery of pastness and the present corporeal condition. 

This research draws on embodied traces of the work of Bodenwieser, as transmitted to Carol Brown and Thonas Kampe through the teachings of Shona Dunlop MacTavish (Dunedin, NZ 1920-) and Hilde Holger (London 1905-2001). The project is being developed through collaboration with the New Zealand Dance Company.