DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus

2021

"Ich denke jedes Ding ist sehr wichtig....

... jedes Ding...
alles (ist ja) ne Sprache. ..
man kann eigentlich alles lesen,...
... wenn man in der Lage ist das zu lesen."

Pina Bausch (1)

"I think that every thing is significant...

... every thing...
... everything is a language...
.. actually, it's possible to read it all...
if one is capable of reading these things."
(1)

(quote translated by Karola Lüttringhaus)

"FULL BODY GESTURE: EMERGENCE AND SIGNIFICATION IN THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS"

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DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus
2021

Blue text was added between October 12th 2021 - November 11, 2021

***

TENTATIVE TITLE:

"CONDITIONS FOR THE CREATION

OF A NEW CHOREOGRAPHY"
TENTATIVE SUBTITLE:

"FULL BODY GESTURE:

EMERGENCE AND SIGNIFICATION IN THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS"
***

ABSTRACT:
How do we read, use, and learn this language that Pina Bausch describes in the quote above?
I am interested in the phenomenology of choreography.
I am fascinated by the mind. And by that I mean the things we think, the rules and beliefs we, people
of the western world, impose upon ourselves. Generally speaking, I think of my artistic work as an
interrogation into the why's and how's of life. The first hurdle to take before getting to understanding
life is understanding (and overcoming) the violence of our society. Social critical work is what has
been lying at the heart of my work for the past 30 years.

"FULL BODY GESTURE: EMERGENCE AND SIGNIFICATION IN THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS"

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DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus
2021
Choreography and performance are my ways of doing thought experiments, actual mind embodied
experiments into our psychologies. Through art I engage with trauma, with violence, and emotions.
Choreography for me is both psychology and philosophy. There is a connection between our bodies
and the way our world is. We abuse one another, we hurt one another. I use dance to make sense of
these things.
Theatre is the place for us to collectively face our woes and wounds and discuss them together.
Healing takes place in the individual, change takes place in a community healing. It is only now that I
use the words healing. Art is the primary focus of my work. But complex, meaningful art is cathartic
and creative; for all involved.

The theatre, the stage, the performance is a hypothetical playground. Audiences and performers are
play acting, testing imagining situations, conflicts, and solutions. In performing and witnessing we
are daring to live and say things we instinctively know we need. I think we go see performances to
witness process. And in some cases: in order to deal with and process pain.

I create interdisciplinary expressions in choreography, theatre, scenic design, visual art, lighting,
sound design and film. I think about life, society, and politics through performance and embodied
practice. I think of my choreography as embodied psychology. It is intuitive. It is analytical. And it
practices empathy.
ESSENCE
In order to understand what I have been doing as an artist, I am very briefly summarizing the topics
of my pieces: "Letter to water" engages with how we become neglectful of our environment, and
neglectful of ourselves. "Always water everywhere" researches the importance of water to our lives,
to our togetherness, and to our individual psychological wellbeing. "Hippolyta's Disappearance" looks
at internalized sexism and misogyny. "Midsummer Dissected" deals with sexism, authority, and
autonomy. "Adam-mah" looks at our relationship to earth and nature, our inability to listen to what
our bodies tell us, and at the complicity that we carry in the violence through our everyday actions.
"Seelenschmiede" examines the life of controversial late author Karl May and examines his attempt

"FULL BODY GESTURE: EMERGENCE AND SIGNIFICATION IN THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS"

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DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus
2021
to find meaning, purity, innocence, and spirituality in a world that focuses on deceit, shame, and
greed. "Keel" takes a step back and views our collective approach to life as a struggle against forces
we can not battle. "Stillicidium" looks at the audience-performer relationship and our expectation of
one another and of ourselves as constantly giving and producing. "Inertia" examines several
individuals' experiences during the Nazi Holocaust and embodies generational trauma. "Rooms" tells
the story of mental illness and magic. "Light of the Water" looks at plastic pollution. "Terra Nullius"
looks at the experience of place, placemaking, and home. "Hydra" looks at love and self denial.
"Spaniel" deals with strength through vulnerability. "Swim baby!" and "Hey!" are self portraits and
love letters to myself.

I am fascinated with why we make our lives unnecessarily more difficult.

Art is a process tool for identifying our feelings and needs, then for expressing them, and engaging
one another in discussions around them.

Choreography is embodied thinking.

All space is psychological space. All movement is expression. Expression is expansion. Expansion is
breath. All of it is transformation.

ePSYCHOLOGICAL SPACE. EXPANSION. TRANSFORMATION. BREATH.

Interdisciplinary expressions in choreography, theatre, scene design, visual art, lighting, sound design, and film.
Thinking about life, society, and politics through performance and embodied practice.

My work is based on the connection between movement, image, sound, and meaning. Hereby I
mean the interplay of theatrical elements such as scenery, costuming, lighting, sound design,
movements/bodies and the act of witnessing and performing.
Everything is about what something means and how it affects my thinking and being.

"FULL BODY GESTURE: EMERGENCE AND SIGNIFICATION IN THE CHOREOGRAPHIC PROCESS"

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DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus
2021
I want to understand and I want to find solutions and make a difference. I believe that the way to
healing is through recognizing the issues, to making people aware of their complicity in their own
hurt and in the hurt of others.
I make dances to talk to you. I expect you to talk back to me. You don;t get to come to the theatre to
just sit there. "Learning how to tell the truth is critical." Bessel van der kolk ( interview on"The Body
keeps the score")

Primarily, this dissertation examines the creative process as I experience it in my own choreographic
methodology, which I am comparing to other choreographers' methodologies and practices. What I
am particularly interested in is the moment in which new choreography/movement emerges from
the body; movement that is considered to be linked to a narrative, movement that is imbued with
meaning and serves the purpose of carrying meaning to an audience. This meaning is discovered in
rehearsal through an improvisational, intuitive practice. The meaning is held-on to, and developed
throughout the rehearsal process and further refined and/or maintained throughout the
performances. I am interested in discussing how meaning emerges: for myself, and for other
choreographers and dancers and how meaning shapes movement and vice versa. Is there a body
language? How unique or universal is a body language? How do we decipher meaning from
movement? How do we translate meaning into movement?
The dissertation is divided into chapters:
ATTENTION
Attention is what I refine. Attention is what I pay when I seek to channel movements.
Attention is where and how things take place in creativity.

I am investigating the process of paying attention; how it takes place, what it is. What am I
paying attention to: the unknown. Something exists, but has not been found yet by my
attention. Sometimes it takes an audience's attention to help me find out what I found.

IMPROVISATION

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DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus
2021
The process of attentionpaying is defined by an activity called improvisation. What is
improvisation? How is it possible? What takes place in improvisation?

DECISIONMAKING
Related to improvisation and attention. How do I make decisions? Why do I choose this
movement over that movement? What changes if movements change? What causes me to
change my mind and go another route? Will the same meaning still come to me in the end?
Examining desicion-making is related to attention. Would becoming more attentive to the
decision-making mechanisms affect my ability to intuit, to channel 'honest' movement?

INTUITION
I agree with Bergson when he writes "...an absolute could only be given in an intuition whilst
everything else falls within the province of analysis. By intuition is meant the kind of
intellectual sympathy by which one places oneself within an object in order to coincide with
what is unique in it and consequently inexpressible." To me, this means that there is greater
precision in intuition than in analysis. However, I am working with analysis when I am trying
to develop the intuited information into a dance piece.

EFORTLESSNESS
A feeling of effortlessness accompanies the finding of meaning. Some artists say that they
know when a movement belongs into the piece they are making. That sense of assuredness
happens in effortlessness. I want attention to be effortless, not a struggle. Sometimes the
struggle can not be avoided, but when we find the meaning and the step and the context in
which a dance lives, fully blossoms, expands into meaning, that is a moment of
effortlessness.

(ALLEGORY) ?

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DISSERTATION COVER & ABSTRACT Karola Lüttringhaus
2021

GESTURE & FULL-BODY GESTURE

Gesture is examined as being what communicates meaning in movement/dance. A gesture
can be dynamic or static. I will not go into detail of stillness being impossible. Even the most
static of gestures is still imbued with movement. What I mean though is the sequencing of
gestures into phrases that expand through time as opposed to gestures thats eek to
maintain the same position/pose through duration. A gesture is usually tied to a vector of
movement. the stop motion extends the arm from the body toward another, creating a
barrier between the two people. Make a gesture: Gesture is the dynamic expression of
moments. I think of dance as a full-body gesture.

CONTEXT
I am primarily looking at movement, but the context within which the movement is placed
greatly affects its meaning. How do I negotiate what to say with the body and what to say
with the context, the clothes, the environment, stage design, location, lighting and the
sounds within which everything takes place?

EXERCISES
Because I believe that some meaning can only be received via embodied practice, I am
adding sections that contain exercises and scores for the reader to do.

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