In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

14 Martha Bowers Martha Bowers is the executive director of Dance Theatre Etcetera, based in Brooklyn, New York. Since 1993, DTE has presented major site-specific works on the Red Hook, Brooklyn, waterfront as well as in other national and international locations. From the streets of Cork, Ireland, to a former electronics factory in Massachusetts, Bowers’s performance events have brought a multifaceted view to local places and communities. Bowers has worked as a consultant for the Third Millennium Foundation designing and implementing the Dance for Tolerance initiative. She is also the recipient of a 2002 BAXten award in arts education as well as numerous choreographic fellowships and commissions for site-specific projects. Bowers has worked as a consultant for the Third Millenium Foundation, designing and implementing the Dance for Tolerance initiative. Bowers and Kloetzel discussed her work at her home in Brooklyn on April 22, 2006. An Interview with Martha Bowers MK: What is your definition of site-specific dance? MB: I’ll give you my short answer. Site-specific dance is a conscious, performative response to questions concerning locational identity. However, the range of new technologies available and the addition of virtual space as a locus for art making render this a much more complex question. In fact, new technology has made the whole notion of location a much more complicated concept. There are virtual locations, discursive locations, and also actual material locations. Artists’ interactions with, responses to, or interventions in our experience of these many kinds of space are redefining the field at this point. If, in previous decades, at least one impetus for artists to leave galleries and theaters was the urge to engage with the world more directly, to go to the public and private spaces where issues were actually played out, then it makes perfect sense that artists see virtual space as a territory ripe for intervention. The performing arts are coming more slowly into the question of how you 269 An Interview/Choreography for Uncontrollable Contexts meld technology with site-specific work. There are notable exceptions, of course. Perhaps because we, as dancers, carry our traditions literally within our bodies, we are slower or more reluctant to adapt to new strategies of art making that incorporate technology. Or perhaps it’s just that it’s expensive! MK: What attracts you to making site-specific work? MB: When I was a dance student in the 1970s, there was a prevalent notion in the modern dance world that choreographers were solitary geniuses who toiled away in private in their studios, Martha Graham being the preeminent model. I always struggled with that formula, the artist as solitary genius. It was lonely, and what did I really know at that point in my life? A limited amount! I found myself attracted to those artists evolving different models of art making such as Meredith Monk, Allan Kaprow, and Vito Acconci. I think what really attracted me to site work was the idea that you were making work in the context of everyday life. It displaced the focus of the work from the individual and redirected it to a location, a community, and/ or issues related to that space. Also, site work necessitates collaboration, not just with other artists but with a whole range of individuals and organizations that are linked to the site. The whole process of making site work as a collective enterprise really redefined my thinking about the role I played as a choreographer/director. I was attracted to site work because it was a form of engaged art making. I had a whole different awareness of what I was doing as an artist when I began. I was much less aware of the history of the field. I knew what excited me: scale, perspective, placing art in non-art contexts, working with a combination of professional artists and community members, operating outside the power construct of the New York downtown dance scene. I was responding to the excitement of working in contexts other than theaters. It took some time to develop a reflective practice, to discover a rationale for creating site works. MK: Did political and social issues influence your early site works? MB: Yes, I think I’ve always been interested in human rights and politics. I was brought up discussing politics at the dinner table. I was just entering my teens at the end of the 1960s, but I was certainly aware of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, the student protests...

Share