Double Take: Looking Back at Yourself...

More than 30 years ago, dancers Gregory Sporton and Sandra Norman performed a stylish duet 'Double Take' along the length of New Zealand as part of a small dance company. Inevitably, the work was thought long lost: a time when good video cameras for small dance companies were rare, and the historical value of the work not considered. A chance discovery of videos of this dance led to Sporton and Norman reconnecting, and proposing a further performance: same dancers, more than 30 years later, when time and dance careers have taken their toll. To make the performance work required significant revisions, but neither dancer thought they were compensating for their age. Rather, this new performance, which includes video engagement with their younger selves, is neither better nor worse, simply contrasting the young dancers they were with bodies and experiences accumulated during the passing decades. This session is a solo performance of the work in its current state, plus a paper that covers the reworking of the dance in a filmed 360 degree version. The project challenges the notion that dances are fixed commodities, and asserts that teasing out using post-production techniques of ancient VHS videos becomes a creative end in its own right. The discussion covers issues over interpretation and adaptation, as well as identifying the means of keeping a dance alive as a creative space for the performers and audience.