The Choreographer's Trust: Negotiating Authority in Peggy Baker's Archival Project

Abstract

Peggy Baker's project, The Choreographer's Trust, raises questions about the creator's authority in the preservation process. Her dual goals—documenting her choreography while allowing for interpretive latitude—create an apparent contradiction in which the choreographer's traditionally privileged position is both restricted and reinforced. Baker's example provides an opportunity for reflection on such dance preservation issues as the significance of embedding uncertainty into the archiving process, choreography's resistance to authoritative readings, and the positioning of an artist in relation to his or her archival material.

Notes

For further information on preservation activities in the broader Canadian context, see Cheryl LaFrance's article, “Choreographers’ Archives: Three Case Studies in Legacy Preservation,” in this issue.

Interestingly, Baker does not consider facial expression—a kind of gesture—to be part of her set choreography, but other types of corporeal gestures, including those for the hands, legs, arms, and so on, are treated as set.

Holden was supposed to wear a black mock turtleneck top, but it was misplaced and a substitute—the black tank top—had to be located shortly before the public performance.

Menaka Thakkar & Co. has collaborated numerous times with artists schooled in other dance techniques, so working with non-bharata natyam colleagues was not new for Bhattacharya.

Similarly, Diana Taylor has asserted that performance is a form of accruing and conveying embodied knowledge. See Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003).

1. Peggy Baker, “The Choreographer's Trust,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Choreographer's Trust, Year One—In a Landscape (Toronto: Peggy Baker Dance Projects, 2002), 4. This essay is also included at the beginning of all of the DVD booklets developed for the trust. See also, http://www.peggybakerdance.com/trust/trust.html (accessed March 31, 2010).

2. Ibid., 4.

3. For examinations of the politics of archival practices, see H. Bradley, “The Seductions of the Archive: Voices Lost and Found,” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 12, no. 2 (1999): 107–22; Richard Harvey Brown and Beth Davis-Brown, “The Making of Memory: The Politics of Archives, Libraries and Museums in the Construction of National Consciousness,” History of the Human Sciences, vol. 11, no. 4 (1998): 17–32; Louise Craven, ed., What Are Archives? Cultural and Theoretical Perspectives: A Reader (Aldershot, U.K.: Ashgate, 2008); Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (1995; Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1996); Helen Freshwater, “The Allure of the Archive,” Poetics Today, vol. 24, no. 4 (December 2003): 729–75; and Reuben Ware, Marion Beyea, and Cheryl Avery, The Power and Passion of Archives (Ottawa: Association of Canadian Archivists, 2005). For a discussion about the distinctions between intentional and unintentional evidence, see Marc Bloch, The Historian's Craft, trans. Peter Putnam (New York: Vintage Books, 1953), 60–61.

4. Peggy Baker, “Interpretation and Identity: A Preoccupation I Share with John Cage,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Choreographer's Trust, Year One—In a Landscape, 9.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 10.

7. Ibid.; see also Carol Anderson, Unfold: A Portrait of Peggy Baker (Toronto: Dance Collection Danse Press/es, 2008), 136.

8. Baker, “Interpretation and Identity,” 10–11.

9. Ibid., 11.

10. Peggy Baker, “Brahms Waltzes,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Choreographer's Trust, Year One—Brahms Waltzes, 5.

11. Ibid., 5.

12. Peggy Baker, “In a Landscape,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Choreographer's Trust, Year One—In a Landscape, 5.

13. Peggy Baker, “Sanctum Introduction,” typescript, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Choreographer's Trust, Year Two—Sanctum, n.p.

14. Peggy Baker, “Yang Introduction,” typescript, Peggy Baker Dance Projects, The Choreographer's Trust, Year Two—Yang, n.p.

15. Peggy Baker, quoted in Anderson, Unfold, 87.

16. Anderson, Unfold, 88.

17. Baker, “Interpretation and Identity,” 11.

18. Ibid., 9–11.

19. For a detailed chronicle of this debate, see Helen Thomas, The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003); and Helen Thomas, “Reconstruction and Dance as Embodied Textual Practice,” Rethinking Dance History: A Reader, ed. Alexandra Carter (London: Routledge, 2004), 32–45.

20. Nelson Goodman as discussed in Roger Copeland, “Perspectives in Reconstruction: Keynote Panel,” Dance ReConstructed: Modern Dance Art, Past, Present, Future, Conference Proceedings (1992; New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University, 1993), 12.

21. Jack Anderson, “Idealists, Materialists, and the Thirty-Two Fouettés,” Ballet Review, vol. 5, no. 1 (1975–1976), 12–21. Anderson's concepts are also discussed in Copeland, “Perspectives in Reconstruction,” 13.

22. Selma Jeanne Cohen, Next Week, Swan Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1982), 7.

23. Thomas, “Reconstruction and Dance,” 42.

24. Amy Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects—In a Landscape (Toronto: Peggy Baker Dance Projects), 19.

25. Peggy Baker, “Video vs. Imagination,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects—Brahms Waltzes, 9.

26. Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” 11.

27. Ibid., 17.

28. Sasha Ivanochko, quoted in Glen Sumi, “Moving the Work Around,” NOW, vol. 24, no. 23 (February 3–10, 2005), http://www.nowtoronto.com/stage/story.cfm?content=145686&archive=24,23,2005 (accessed March 20, 2010).

29. Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” 12.

30. Ibid.

31. “Four at the Winch, 2007: Choreographers and Costume Designers,” http://www.tdt.org/4AW/choreo_costume_nbhattacharya.html (accessed March 20, 2010).

32. Rex Harrington, quoted in Sumi, “Moving the Work Around.”

33. Nicholas Mirzoeff, Bodyscape: Art, Modernity and the Ideal Figure (London: Routledge, 1995), 3.

34. This description of the way that choreography is often handed down from one dance generation to the next is borrowed from Thomas, “Reconstruction and Dance,” 33.

35. See Thomas J. Csordas, ed., Embodiment and Experience: The Existential Ground of Culture and Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

36. Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72.

37. Baker, “Video vs. Imagination,” 9.

38. Peggy Baker, “Individuality in the Dancer: Working with What is Unique,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects—Brahms Waltzes, 10.

39. Peggy Baker, “Listening to the Worlds Inside and Out,” typescript, Peggy Baker Dance Projects—Brahms Waltzes, n.p.

40. Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” 12.

41. Amy Bowring, “The Choreographer's Trust Year Two: Literary Manager's Journal,” typescript, Peggy Baker Dance Projects—Sanctum, n.p.

42. Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 4.

43. Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” 19.

44. For example, see Peggy Baker to Chris Grider, “Letter of Agreement,” Peggy Baker Dance Projects, June 29, 2002.

45. Peggy Baker, “Emergent Meaning: Stable Structures/Shifting Associations,” typescript, Peggy Baker Dance Projects—Sanctum, n.p.

46. Ibid.

47. Baker, “Emergent Meaning: Stable Structures/Shifting Associations,” n.p.

48. Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” 18.

49. Bowring, “The Choreographer's Trust Year Two: Literary Manager's Journal,” n.p.

50. Bowring, “Amy's Journal,” 15.

51. Ibid., 14.

52. Sumi, “Moving the Work Around.”

53. Baker, “Yang Introduction,” n.p.

54. Tom Nesmith, “Postmodernism and the Changing Intellectual Place of Archives,” The American Archivist, vol. 65, no. 1 (Spring–Summer 2002): 32, 27.

55. Derrida, Archive Fever, 17.

56. Bowring, “The Choreographer's Trust Year Two: Literary Manager's Journal,” n.p.

57. Ibid.

58. Connerton, How Societies Remember, 82, 83.

59. Baker, quoted in “Peggy on The Choreographer's Trust,” online DVD, http://www.peggybakerdance.com/trust/trust_features.html (accessed June 28, 2010).

60. Baker, “The Choreographer's Trust,” 4.