Page 59 - Studio International - September October 1975

many of Bruce Nauman's pieces relied on such as Simone Forti, Trisha Brown or demonstrations but also from subtler
a more formal definition of space. Deborah Hay. All three performers bring works by musicians such as La Monte
Specifically constructed environments to the gallery the specific training of Young or John Cage, which attempted to
were built so that a particular feeling of dancers (each having passed through- experience sound, space and movement
space was designed into each work. In with varying degrees of critical appraisal- simultaneously, with no distinctions
May 1970, five years after his first body the working methods of dancers such as between the work (music) and the people
work at the University of California at Merce Cunningham, Ann Halprin, Martha who filled the space.
Davis, Nauman made a V-shaped Graham or the Judson Group) so that
corridor at San Jose State College. The their body language is concerned with the Body as object
two corridors were made of specially dancer's ability to articulate and
sound-proofed material, causing pressure experience both the body itself and the The outcome of these performances was
changes in the corridors. 'When you were space in which it moves. They rejected also a means of rejecting the stylized
at the open end of the V there was not the formal articulation of conventional conventions of formalist art, in this case
much effect. But as you walked into the V dance which isolated body parts into of Minimalism. Encouraged by the
the pressure increased quite a bit. It was appendages of arms, legs, head, and then interaction in New York between dancers
very claustrophobic. The corridors were facial expression and symbolic gestures. and artists throughout the sixties, many
two feet wide at the beginning and Rather were they concerned with of the discussions which revolved around
narrowed down to about sixteen inches. `individually selecting something in the minimal sculpture were applied to the
The walls became closer and slowly environment and observing its movement, various works presented by the dancers.
forced you to be aware of your body. It then abstracting an element from the While minimal sculpture introduced a
could be a very self-conscious kind of observed movement that they could take `new kind of physicality that came from
experience'. 11 on with their own bodies.'' the material, and not from internal
Nauman insisted that many of the Kinaesthetic movement (sensing psychological mechanisms,' in dance the
pieces were to do with creating a strict internal body movement and the changing `objecthood' of Minimalism was
environment so that 'even if the performer dynamic configurations of the body) was paralleled by a notion of the body as
didn't know anything about me or the an important aspect of the work. It could neutral object, outlining positions in
work that went into the piece, he would be explained by using the example of a space only. The dancers' work became
still be able to do something similar to juggler throwing balls in the air. The more exploratory, developing the
what I would have done.' In the piece skills of the juggler depends on a balance internal (even existential) consciousness
described above, a mirror threw the between the body and its minute of the body in space. The 'non-
spectator back on himself, dislocating his tensions, and a careful knowledge of the expressionistic' aspect of minimal
own image through unexpected movement, thrust and fall of the balls. sculpture took the form in dancing of
confrontation in unfamiliar places. The dancers perform with this same 'non-theatricality' : 'A refusal to project
Nauman's comments were important in double-edged consciousness: first the a persona, but thinking of oneself in
that they outlined that the specific internal movement of the body and then dancing as simply a neutral purveyor of
intentions of each piece was to change the the ways in which the body dislocates information.'15 According to Yvonne
viewers' perception of space. As in Coloured space. 11 Reiner, this tended to free dancers from
Light Corridor, presented at the Hayward Inevitably each dancer introduced a the earlier dramatic and narcissistic
Gallery in 1971, or in pieces which particular personal perception of body- content of traditional dancing. She wrote
combined the distancing use of video space. Simone Forti often worked from that her overall concern was `to weight
television, Nauman manipulated space in certain experimental psychology premises, the quality of the human body toward
order to provide a means for us to allowing each movement to have its own that of objects, away from the super-
recognize how we perceive space, rather presence and meaning. The Huddle, a stylization of the dancer." 6 Her later
than what we perceive, while manipulating dance construction requiring 6 or 7 work, however, returned to projecting
`persona' (a more private persona), or a
what he called the 'functional mechanism people, attempted to define mass using
of a person.' 11 bodies in space. It started out looking like kind of 'interior space' which led away
a rugby scrum, then the mass began to from the investigation of space itself to
more psychologically and folklore -
move as one person detached himself and oriented work.
climbed over the human lump, one foot
Body space on someone's thigh, a hand in the crook
Such active and passive experience of of someone's neck, to the other side. Gravity
one's body and space itself occurs when Her reflection on space awareness not Trisha Brown on the other hand rarely
one attends the performance of artists only stemmed from behavioural played on exteriorizing fantasy or making

Simone Ford Huddle 1969 Trisha Brown Rituals on concrete
Photograph Peter Moore and air 1973

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