LOSING DANCE

“The issue of preservation is uniquely difficult for dance. A performance vanishes with the closing curtain. Afterwards it cannot comprehensively be recaptured either from notation or video. The camera often misses key detail, concentrating perhaps on the central action to the detriment of what may be happening elsewhere on stage. This is true even of companies’ specially commissioned video-records, some of which fail woefully to document work properly. As a result, much still depends on dancers’ memories; without them it is harder to make a piece come alive.” Ballet.magazine 12/01