Zita Nyarady

Dancing Space Detectives: Exploring possibilities of dance improvisation in public spaces

My performative paper explores the intricacies of learning about a public space by engaging with the place through dance improvisation.

When I moved to Toronto I became involved in a series of outdoor performance projects involving dance improvisation in public space. These performances often called upon public space performance as a mode of marketing theatre-based shows; however, it was through dancing on street corners, parking spaces, parks and subways that I gained knowledge about social and geographical tensions found in my new city. These experiences spark questions on what possibilities can be generated from the intersection of dance improvisation and public space. How can dance improvisation be used as a way to understand and/or re-imagine space? What happens when moving bodies are placed in locations that are usually avoided or passed by? What can a space learn from dance and what can dance learn from a space? To investigate these questions I turn to Attack of the Ragamuffins, an international dance collective of which I am a member, and a project called Space Detectives. In Space Detectives the dancers consider the aforementioned questions of dance and space and are working towards developing a practice of performing dance improvisation in public space in Canada, United States and Jamaica. I argue that while learning about a public space through dance improvisation might come across as a utopian idea, there is merit for how dance can re-imagine and define space.