Books, online talks, courses

Books

This publication (2015) includes a series of conversations with UK and international dance artists who are both new and well known for their work within museums. Sara speaks with artists such as Florence Peake to Yvonne Rainer and curators, including Catherine Wood (Tate), who share their experiences of presenting or performing dance in museum and gallery spaces.

Its purpose is to offer a platform of individual voices that – as a collection – renders visible shared and differing perspectives, value systems and ideologies about movement-based practices within visual art-focused cultural spaces.

Prompting thinking about the notion of “care” for the human body, artworks, objects and architecture in a common space and who might serve those needs, the publication invites strategies for best practice for a sustainable future of this renewed meeting of dance practices and visual art institutions.

Sara Wookey’s insider perspective brings an informed intelligence, not only to the wider questions of why galleries want dance and why dance wants the gallery, but to more practical concerns; paying performers adequately, etc.”

“The ‘care’ under discussion being not only how to physically look after the safety and well-being of the dancers in that environment but to consider how the body interacts with the museum space. And, in terms of hierarchy, how to give the human gesture parity with the art object.”

Helen Supmter, Art Review (2015)