Ephemeral ecosystems. From improvisation in dance and the emergence of community

Abstract

Ephemeral Ecosystems explores the relationship between the community building and the Jam improvisation in dance, a field of experimentation and artistic creation where encounters with otherness and the emergency of human relationships in real time-space coexist with the personal interests to recognize and define one’s own movement.
The research relies on the systematization of experiences as a methodological approach centered on the collection, organization, and analysis of information regarding the uniqueness of the collective process and the experiences of each person involved from a participant observation perspective. Simultaneously, it engages in a dialogue with theoretical approaches to the concept of community from philosophy developed by authors such as Nancy, Esposito and Bauman. Both actions result in a cyclical operation where questions and reflections arising from the Jam space, practice and theoretical studies, contaminate and mutually enrich each other, revealing a series of implications that encompass and relate the social, political, ethical, and aesthetic spheres.
Ephemeral Ecosystems refers to the quality of the community that emerges and develops while improvising with the body and movement in the company of others, its precarious structures and connections, which dissolve and eventually re-emerge in a subsequent encounter; a human group that, although situated in the apparent stability and definition of art, dance, university, or an academic program, escapes the consistency of its frameworks and is therefore a bearer of a subversive and unexpected potential.

Improvisation

Dance

Jam

Art Based Research

Community