J'aime penser sur mes pieds. Danse et dessin depuis 1962 I love thinking on my feet . Dance and Drawing since 1962

"The body solves problems before the mind knows you had one. I love thinking on my feet, wind in my face, the edge, uncanny timing, and the ineffable."

Trisha BROWN, « How to Make a Modern Dance When the Sky's the Limit », in Hendel TEICHER (ed.), exhib. cat. T risha Brown : Dance and Art in Dialogue, 1961- 2001, MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002, p. 290.

Dance and drawing are intimately linked to the gesture that performs them. The dancing body creates a figure in space and leaves an impact on a site, while the action of the artist sets a point into motion and captures an ephemeral event, later reproduced in graphic or visual form. The body of the artist, whether a dancer or a visual artist, is thus shared by these practices and has become the instrument of their simultaneous realization. Drawing has indeed collided with dance in opening up to three-dimensional space, integrating sur- faces (floor, ceiling, walls) as well as volumes into its process. It is this encounter that is the focus of this colloquium: it aims to evaluate and discuss the specific interaction of the two media and the ways in which their practices have become diversified since 1962, namely since events coinciding with the first public performance of the Judson Dance Group in New York.

Drawing has traditionally been considered as what survives on a surface, while the movement giving rise to it has been ignored – as if dance, within the framework of process art, was but a means among others, and not a purpose. Yet what happens if we reverse this thought? If we value what precedes the drawing? If dancing is not subordinated to draw- ing, but that the latter, as a trace, contains the memory of the former? Beyond the meta- phor, how have dancers and visual artists applied physical movement and drawing in alter- native ways, inverting these as improvisational tools or notational supports? What happens when drawing uses everything but paper? In turn, what remains when the tangible body has disappeared? What distinguishes dancers who draw and visual artists who dance? May the notion of "choreography" ultimately serve as a model, useful if partial, to theorize the correlation between dance and drawing? The transversality of dance and drawing releases new correspondences, as many studies and exhibitions are currently demonstrating. Such questions are crucial towards an integrated understanding of the arts of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The colloquium is organized by the Department of Art

History and Musicology of the Université de Genève (Switzerland)