As part of my Grundtvig Assistantship in Ponderosa, I am involved in the creation of the Living Library, a library and study space for performance and dance writing, documentation, and film at Ponderosa. The project is in it's development phase. Please visit our website to find more about it!
THE LIVING LIBRARY:
A cross disciplinary library presenting influential and compelling texts, documents, film and magazines in the field of contemporary performance practices and discussions.
A growing collection of documents created by the artist communities connected to Ponderosa.
A compilation of Ponderosa‘s historical material including videos and pictures of performances, workshops, building sites, interviews, documentaries as well as dance films, personal writing and articles from the past 13 years.
A space to curate events around books, archives, documentation: lectures, reading performances, writing laboratories, video projections, book jams, …
An academic summer school for university, masters and Ph.D students.
A countryside retreat for dancers who write and writers who move.
A hub for artists, academics and the village community to share knowledge, practice, and intellectual processes.
STARTING POINT FOR THE LIVING LIBRARY
How does the history of dance and performance infuse our artistic expression? Who, what and where are we drawing from in this history? What is the physical and historical impact we have on the landscape of contemporary performance? And, where are we going?
What is practical knowledge? What is theoretical knowledge? What is embodied knowledge? Do we have a specialist in the room?
GOALS
1 - Bring attention to the vast amount of theoretical and historical documents that exist in the fields of dance, performance and art.
2 - Encourage the younger generations of dancers and performers to engage with the library, documentation, and making history.
3 - Inhabit / incarnate a physical space to unfold the archives left by the wide community of artists who have gathered here, and to open up a physical, tangible and continuous web of information, papers and visuals.
4 - Establish ongoing exchanges and residencies with academic institutions.
Happening in parallel with the dancing, training…
5 - Curate events that revolve around and that experiment with books, documentation, and archives.
6 - Provoke artists to go further with their writing and documentation processes.
The Living Library project is keen to see how academic, performance and dance theory, as well as our writing practices, can take deeper roots within the Ponderosa programs, workshops and educational endeavors.
As a living and moving archive, we intend to rethink, rewrite, demystify, translate and recycle the texts and documents that have been created—without allowing them to idle on the shelves.
Having said that, the Living Library will also function as a platform to support artists in their personal writings and publications. Most publications are written by writers and dance critics. The American dance magazine Contact Quarterly is still on of the only publication written by artists for everyone.
LOCATION
In October 2013, Saliq Savage (USA) - dancer, Body-Mind Centering® teacher, and longtime supporter of Ponderosa, offered a space located in the village to host the Living Library.
The space is equipped with a fireplace, wooden floors and a gallery boasting antique bookshelves.
ABOUT THE BOOKS
We are focusing on collecting books from the following domains: dance history, dance education and ethnography, performance art and practices, choreography, community dance, improvisation, contact improvisation, body work, visual arts, sound-art, philosophy and ecology.
Our friend Agnès Benoît has been our main supporter in providing us with a detailed list of documents covering these subjects. Please visit Agnès Benoît's online bookshop Books On The Move to appreciate the breadth of documents on hand. The website provides descriptions and prices for each document. The majority of the documents are in English, with a selection of documents in German and French.