Translation and recreation

							Translation and recreation.
A workshop exploring the interrelation of dance and other artforms

Introduction

Historically, the physical emotional responses to performances (and to the surrounding culture of
celebrity) have stimulated other works of art and even the creation of new genres. The move from a
religious to secular context has often been central to this process of recreation. This workshop will
focus on the areas of narrative translation (the use of folk tales/ plays/ novels for dance works, for
example), non-narrative translation (use of non-narrative artforms such as visual art or sculpture for
creation of dance work), translation cross-culture (use of foreign source material for indigenous work,
and the problems associated with "reading" work from another culture), and on translating dance itself
into other media.
Questions informing the workshop include:
      When does the representation of a performance itself become a new work of art? What are the
         distinctions between anthropological and artistic recreations of performance?
      What does it mean to "translate" or "re-create" performance in a different place or within a
         different genre?
      How different is the creative process of translation from the creation of an original work?
         What is the difference between a translation from one form to another, and the use of source
         material for the creation of an independent creative work?
      What are the problem associated with "translating" works across cultural boundaries?
      Why are performative elements so important in religious/spiritual life? To what extent do
         secular performance literatures and artefacts trace back to ritual contexts? How have the
         taboos and prohibitions of religious performance impacted on other modes of performance?


Dance and translation – introductory thoughts from the chair

Dance and gesture are ancient, primeval forms of communication. Among humans, dance can
communicate beyond language, to the places where language cannot reach – to the gods or the forces
of nature to worship and to propitiate; or to the ancient spirits or ghosts of those recently departed.
Dance is still used among tribal communities to spread news or warning of war, marriage, disease, and
to celebrate victory or reconciliation; dance troupes are now an inventive method of spreading the
message of AIDS prevention among rural African communities, for example.
In the modern context, dance crosses language barriers, and creates a mode of communication for
itinerants or refugees from different language areas. In South Africa, new arrivals speaking languages
as diverse as Zulu, Pedi, Sotho and Xhosa can come together and share experiences and emotions
through dance. Asian migrants to the UK originating from different areas of the Indian subcontinent,
who may share no cultural, linguistic or religious commonalties, can and do find a collective root in
classical dance forms taught and performed in Britain.
Gesture itself constitutes a significant part of Indian classical dance forms, which we will be discussing
later in this paper; and sign language, another form of non-verbal communication, has been a source of
information and inspiration for modern choreographers such as Philippe Decoufle, as a way of
combining movement and meaning.
As well as being a force of communication, dance is itself a physical translation – a translation of the
dancer’s body in space. This can in fact be a useful metaphor for language in translation; quite apart
from the conceptual shifts involved in the translation of one language to another, texts display physical
shifts as the space in print changes, and a translation from one oral language to another involves a
physical shift in the shapes produced by mouth, throat and vocal chords. Just as a dancer’s body
translates itself through space during movement, so do speech and text translate physically as well as
conceptually as they move from one language to another.

When dancers and choreographers do something radical like translate a literary work, or another art
form, into a dance, the changes in the medium are obvious. Dance moves, dance occupies both time
and space, dance is multi-dimensional, dance has performers who can themselves "translate" the
choreography from the creative vision of the choreographer, and the new work is markedly different
from the original piece, whether that be a narrative, a picture or a sculpture. A question for the
audience is what happens to ideas of 'meaning' in the translation from text to movement. Is there often
a greater distance between signifier and signified in dance, leading to increased possibilities for
interpretation? Does dance signify differently than text? This contrast might have interesting
implications for thinking about textual translations.

Dance as creative translation
It has been said that all creative work is in fact a translation – from creative vision or, to use the
Romantic term, inspiration, into words, text, spatial arrangement on the page; an ‘original’ source is
always a copy or a re-presentation of another creative impulse. In creating dance we see a similar work
of translation taking place from creative impulse to final work, but there are additional layers of
translation inherent in producing dance as we shall see.

The first process of translation is similar to that experienced in the creation of any other artistic work;
just as the writer transforms his inspiration into text or the fine artist translates his into painting or
sculpture, so the choreographer transforms his idea or vision into a work of choreography. The
methods for creating choreography as are many as there are choreographers; pieces are created in
response to music or to an idea of movement, based on an abstract or a concrete theme, working alone
or with the dancers. At the end of this process, one way or another, a piece of dance is created.
A second process of translation then occurs when the work is given to the dancers to perform. The
creative impulse that has been translated once into a choreographic vision by the choreographer is then
further translated into movement that is particular to a dancer’s own body. The full impact of the
“translation” from choreographer to dancer can be seen when well-known works by one choreographer
are created using one dancer or group of dancers are revived and restaged using another.
One well-known example of this is Richard Alston’s Soda Lake, created as a solo for dancer Michael
Clark whose body well suited the very sculptural postures of the dance. Soda Lake has since been
revived twice, most recently with a female dancer in the solo role, and the dance naturally appears very
different when danced by a woman. Women’s bodies move differently and are held differently to
men’s, and the same sculptural postures are visibly transformed by the transfer of movement to another
dancer. This history of a piece translated in revival serves to highlight the way in which the handing
over of the movement from choreographer to dancer “translates” dance in a manner not present in the
creative translation involved in the making of textual or visual art. A writer is responsible for the
“translation” of himself into text, where the choreographer places his creation into the agency of
another.
The third stage of translation is again common to textual, visual and performance creation; the
audience views the creative vision, transformed once into choreography and again by the dancer into
movement, and translates that performance into meaning or response, into the audience’s own personal
interpretation of the work. It is perhaps striking that in the case of dance (and, most especially,
contemporary dance) an audience will feel a particular obligation to consciously and determinedly
enact this last stage – to “understand” the dance. In some cases, audiences will feel excluded from
dance as an art form because they feel they don’t understand or “get” the dance. This seems to be a
particular problem connected with dance as opposed to, say, cinema or theatre or the visual arts, and
the speaker would appreciate any suggestions from the group as to why this might be!1 A positive
effect this feeling has generated in my case is that my own dear housemate came out of one
performance ecstatic because he felt he had “understood” the dance.
As with any interpretation or translation by an audience, there is the possibility of more than one
interpretation. In dance, a multiplicity of interpretations can be the particular result of a multifocal
gaze; the translation of the piece you are looking at can quite simply be influenced by where you
happen to be looking and which movements you see. A choreographer will carefully consider use of
the performance space, the arrangement of the dancers, and which dancer is performing which
movement, but ultimately the choreographer cannot control the gaze of his audience who may develop
a particular interpretation of the piece based on the focus of their gaze at a particular moment. Dance
audiences also seem particularly susceptible to inventing their own meanings far beyond the control of

1
  Pierre Bourdieu has suggested that audiences for elite art forms need to understand the “symbols”
involved in the art in order to enjoy that art, and this is possibly the case with dance performed on
stage. Folk dance forms, however, require no such symbolic understanding to be enjoyed by an
audience or participated in. Contemporary dance has also appeared recently in the mass media form of
music videos, for The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Kylie Minogue. This has helped popularise
the form and bring it to an audience who feel they understand MTV even if the same audience would
not ordinarily venture out to a theatre to see a live dance performance.
the choreographer; the same housemate who was so joyous because he had “understood” a particular
dance had in fact somewhat misread the Bharatnatyam gesture for “over there” as meaning the dancer
had given her heart away. As the interpretation he had come up with was so sweet, and not altogether
misplaced, and because he was so happy about it, I let that one go!


Dance in translation
The reallocation of space and possible meaning according to the direction of the audience’s gaze brings
us to our final issue concerning dance and translation – that of the translation of dance itself into other
forms, notably into the medium of film. Recent examples of dance translated for the big screen include
the popular Chicago and the art films Tango and Flamenco. A reverse process has in fact taken place
with the film Moulin Rouge, which is now to be transformed into a live theatre production.
In filming dance, the focus of the camera is equivalent to the direction of the audiences’s gaze in that it
chooses a particular view and hence a possible meaning. It is naturally different to the gaze of a live
audience in that it is the result of somebody else’s selection – the director or cameraman – and the
audience cannot at their discretion look at something else on the stage. It is a “forcing” gaze over which
neither audience nor, often, choreographer has control.

The filming of dance for television is the location of a lot of what could be called “mistakes in
translation”. Following the distinction made by Harry Aveling at the last seminar between “dumb
mistakes” and creative transformations chosen deliberately by the translator, I would have to identify a
great many “dumb mistakes” in the translation of dance to screen. Television directors have a series of
bad habits including showing close-ups of dancers during group scenes where the use of the
performance space, of obvious importance to the choreographer and delight to the audience, is lost as
we get a view of somebody’s torso instead. Interactions between dancers during duets are often
similarly lost as the camera focuses on one dancer.
A Channel 4 cameraman filming a short Kathak piece chose to film the rose petals floating towards the
ground dropped by the dancer rather than her intricate hand movements or footwork, A BBC
cameraman filming Christopher Bruce’s Rooster performed by Rambert Dance Company cut away
precisely as the main female dancer began a particularly striking sequence of spins, and filmed from a
really quite dull angle instead. MTV video directors are also responsible for a number of dumb
mistakes in shooting music videos, probably as a result of a slightly different agenda with regard to
dance.
To me, as a viewer, I do see these mistakes as a problem. If the television director is bound to make
choices that force the gaze of the audience, these should at least be sympathetic to the experience of the
dance. Note: I did not say “intention of the choreographer” – the camera should rather try to show what
the dance in live performance shows, and let the audience see the use of space or the movements of
dancers so that they can develop their own interpretation and experience the pleasure of dance,
unrestricted by a camera in the wrong place.
It is perhaps bearing these dumb mistakes in mind and in seeking to avoid them that some
choreographers are particularly interested in creating their own filmed works. Lea Anderson has
recreated several of the Cholmondeleys and Featherstonehaughs works for films, which place the
camera not where the audience would usually be, but moving among the dancers to create a completely
new experience of the dance, and indeed, a completely new artistic work – a film with dance at its
centre rather than a dance work, filmed. One of Anderson’s aims is indeed “to create new work
specifically for camera which explores the vast possibilities of this expanding medium.”
Another place dance is expanding into is cyberspace, where movement is translated into different kind
of artistic medium altogether. Shiftwork, an artist-led organisation based in Cambridge, have been
developing virtual dance - a series of projects combining dance, photography and video for online
presentation. Shiftwork create original work combining dance and digital technology, which can be
accessed online. These virtual danceworks combine digitally-captured live performance with online
interactive presentation – drag your mouse over the screen to make the digital dancer move, and create
a completely new performance each time. These works expand the possibilities of dance experience for
the viewer, transforming the audience themselves into creators in a tangible sense. This brings the cycle
of translation full circle – the translating audience becomes the virtual creator, from which the creation
is born and translated again into movement and back to the interpreting audience.

Conclusion
When we translate a text from one language to another, we often look at the detail of what's been done
in the new language compared to the old – we perform a source to target comparison, and evaluate it
according to how successful the new version is. We might look for mistakes or for "transformations"
evaluating translations as a new and separate piece of art. When we make a more radical translation
from one form to another – a text or picture or idea into a dance, the changes in the medium are
obvious; as we have stated. Dance occupies both time and space and is multi-dimensional, and involves
performers who can themselves "translate" the choreography from the creative vision of the
choreographer creating a new work markedly different from the original. What is “lost” in translation,
in terms of the detail of the narrative or the stylistic effect of certain words or forms, is compensated
for by a gain in another kind of experience, which can impact on the audience emotionally in a
different way from texts by providing a dynamic and physical live performance, and enacting a
different kind of connection with the audience.
I have here examined the importance of the effect upon the audience, rather than the structure of the
work itself, and shown that translation of another work into dance changes the nature of the experience
of the audience. I would like to suggest that what we have been examining in this paper is the idea of a
transformation of experience; the transformation of narrative into an aesthetic experience, the
transformation of bhava to rasa and the dancer’s performance into the audience’s experience; the
transformation of choreography to performance to interpretation. It is not just the structure or content
of the work that is different, but the effect on the audience - there is a change in experience.

We can bring this idea back to texts and say that texts also involve a change in the experience of the
audience that is often forgotten. I briefly suggested in my introduction that a change in language
involves physical shifts, and these physical changes in the sound of language or the shape of the print,
as well as the conceptual shifts when moving from one language and culture to another, can also
transform the experience of an audience, just as a translation from one form into movement changes the
nature of what the audience experiences. The idea we have been exploring here, of the transformation
of experience, could also provide us with a useful metaphor for out examination of textual translations.
We could add to our interrogation of texts the question, how does the translation of a literary work
from one language to another change the experience of the audience? These, I believe, are useful ideas
to bear in mind for all of us when we consider our work.