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The appearance of certain experimental choreographies has incorporated the use of the voice into contemporary dance, either through articulated words or through the mere emission of sounds. Dance ceases to be silent and destabilises, and not only because it breaks with the conventional dramatic text. In fact, the use of the voice itself involves breaking the harmony between body and subjectivity. The playwright, researcher and writer, Ixiar Rozas studied the consequences of this incursion and, moreover, how, as a result, dance comes into contact with other disciplines, taking on a dimension that the authoress herself describes as "extradisciplinary". Her PhD thesis, defended at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), is entitled Voic(e)scapes. Experiences and powers of the voice, language and tactility in the current dance scene.
The term voic(e)scapes is a play on words – voice landscapes that escape. In her thesis the author refers to the importance that the voice acquires in this new scenario of dance but also to its evasive, fleeting or elusive character. Paraphrasing the Slovene philosopher, Mladen Dolar, she says that the voice is the nexus between the body and the language, but that does not belong to either; it escapes from belonging to either. Thus, Ms Rozas analysed the interweaving between or overlapping of body, voice and language, produced in twelve experimental choreographies chosen by her. To this end, the investigation was based on the direct observation of the works, as well as on conversations with their creators. Her thesis concluded with the reflection that, amongst other things, this dialogue opens up to disciplines that go beyond dance.
The words break up
The choreographies studied go from more narrative pieces (Atrás los ojos and He visto caballos, from Mal Pelo company; Dueto and Bicho, eres un bicho, by Idoia Zabaleta and Filipa Francisco) to those without any linguistic code and based on pure experimentation with the voice (Caprice (Re)lapse and As a raindrop falling into the mouth of silence by Irena Tomazin; R'Z'R by Leja Jurisic). Ms Rozas explains that, in the evolution from the first pieces to last ones, language and its words start to break up, to the point of becoming an almost gaseous state: pure voice. What is important is not what is being recounted (except in Mal Pelo's works), but the fact of opting to include the resource of the voice in these works: just wanting to utter something.
Thus, it is not about trying to express something concrete, but the mere need to introduce these stories, without the search for sense and expressivity being primordial. According to the author, the voice is "freed from its transcendental function". All this conditions the correlation between bodies, voices and words in experimental dance. Ms Rozas refers to tactility: on moving what is expressed on to a second plane, seeing and hearing take another form, and become something like touch.
In short, the researcher explains, in experimental choreographies, the voice, as with the body in dance, goes beyond and escapes from literal meanings. Also, the ambivalent and elusive feature of the voice is notable in the pieces studied, which is why she proposes cartographies "of sense and senses" in her thesis. "Sense" because of the multiplicity of meanings opened up, and "senses" because of the way in which these can affect us.
About the author
Ms Ixiar Rozas Elizalde (San Sebastián, 1971) is a PhD in Fine Arts and a graduate in Journalism, holding Masters in Contemporary Art Practice and Dissemination and in Scriptwriting for TV and the Cinema. She defended her thesis at the Department of Painting of the Fine Arts Faculty of the UPV/EHU, and drew it up under the direction of José Antonio Sánchez Martínez, professor of History of Art at the University of Castilla-La Mancha (Cuenca). She carried out the thesis at the Dartington College of Arts at the University College of Falmouth in the United Kingdom and at the L'animal a l'esquena centre in Girona (centres for Masters in Contemporary Art Practice and Dissemination). She also did her research with the collaboration of Performance Research journal (United Kingdom) and Maska Performing Arts Journal (Slovenia), as well as of Azala Espacio de Creación and the Artea research team. Currently she is working as a writer, dramatist, video producer and researcher.