Learn how generative dance improvisation systems are created and support dancers’ learning, agency, and ability to affect change. Free preprints of Pil Hansen’s Performance Generating Systems in Dance: Dramaturgy, Psychology, and Performativity (Intellect 2022) are now available on researchgate (see links at the end) and an affordable paperback has been released by Intellect HERE.
Thank you to Thea Patterson and Heather Trommer-Beardslee, whose book reviews offer valuable lenses on how the book applies to research, teaching, and practice:
‘Hansen is defining and creating terminology that is useful for practitioners and researchers to understand more deeply what a [Performance Generating System] is and what it has the potential to do. […] [In the part on performativity] she articulates the relationship of PGSs within the iterative nature of performance and the way this makes space for the possibility of something new to appear. What her research reveals is that when trauma, or trauma memory, is approached performatively, and specifically within a PGS process, the rule-bound yet agentic frames that this offers allow for the increased possibility for actual change. […] This ability for change within the art practice, Hansen then extends, can move outward into the world to “gently address interpersonal, intergenerational, and environmental dissociation performatively” (3). It is a profound call to recognize the power and potential of embodied performance practices and the arts.’
– Thea Patterson, TRIC: Theatre Research in Canada
‘Going beyond the typical theoretical constructs of choreography and improvisation, Pil Hansen’s book indulges in the inventive components of creating dance productions utilizing performance generating systems. What could be overly abstract is grounded in concrete definitions that guide the reader toward an understanding of the included theories and possible applications.[…] This text is well suited for a graduate-level dance studies seminar involving practical application of creation methods […] In addition to graduate study, Hansen’s book is a wonderful source of thoughtful queries, ideas, and experiential knowledge that would benefit any dance educator guiding students in maintaining and deepening curiosity and explorative actions.’
– Heather Trommer-Beardslee, Journal of Dance Education
LINKS TO FREE PREPRINTS ON RESEARCHGATE:
Chapter 1) Introduction: Performance Generating Systems in Dance
DRAMATURGY
Chapter 2) The Dramaturgical Agency of Performance Generating Systems
Chapter 3) Analyzing and Notating Performance Generating Dramaturgies as Dynamical Systems
Chapter 4) Recycled Choreographic Memory in relay: Henderson
PSYCHOLOGY
Chapter 5) The Cognitive Demands and Learning Effects of Performance Generating Systems
Chapter 6) Learning in Whole in the Head: Forsythe
Chapter 7) Unlearning in I’ll Crane for You: Hay through House
PERFORMATIVITY
Chapter 8) Affecting the (Im)possibility of Change: Performativity and Trauma
Chapter 9) Transition from Dissociation to Intimacy in Crave: Kaeja
Chapter 10) Environmental Entanglement in the Dance Machine: Lee
Chapter 11: Conclusion: Affecting Agency, Learning, and Change through Performance Generating Systems
With warm regards,
Pil Hansen, PhD
Professor, School of Creative and Performing Arts, University of Calgary, Canada
Editor: Routledge book series on Expanded Dramaturgy
Pil