A Sun Dance: choreography, conservation and friendship

In the Autumn of 2019, I had the pleasure of meeting artist Rochelle Haley at a session in Melbourne attended by a group of professionals who were creating, producing, researching, and conserving performance and choreographic artworks. I was excited to meet and talk with others about our experiences within the context of interfaces between these artworks and the museum. It was the first time I had heard Haley talk about her practice and turned out to be an influential moment in my thinking about the conservation of choreographic artworks.

During the session, questions emerged around how works are bound to the human body as the medium. I was keen to understand how the memory of action is held within the body; how systems of understanding are transmitted; how the potential for loss, modification, and change can be supported, and how networks and communities can exist outside of the museum. The answers to these questions and more helped me to consider what model of conservation practice would be most appropriate for such artworks.

The research project Precarious movements: choreography and the museum followed in 2021 to 2024, funded by the Australian Research Council.¹ This project brought together artists, researchers and museums to discuss the best way to support the choreographer and the museum. The project was partly focused on working with project partners to develop best practice principles in the conservation of choreographic artworks.

The project gave us time and space to develop our conservation practice, both for the project and for Tate, as we began to address the questions arising around the conservation of choreographic artworks. The project also supported six commissioned case studies, one of which is Haley’s A Sun Dance. Developed and created in collaboration with the National Gallery of Australia, this choreographic work gave us an opportunity to reflect on conservation and the future lives of such artworks.

Creating continuous networks of people

What has consistently emerged throughout the project is how critical it is for museums collecting new forms of artistic practices and processes to consider whether they can offer and sustain the conditions needed for choreographic artworks.² Drawing on my initial questions from that session in 2019, it became imperative to explore the idea of networks and conservation’s potential role in supporting such networks.

The idea of networks is relatively new for the conservation field. Initially, the concept was focused on understanding that part of the artwork existed outside of the boundary of the museum—in the networks of people, practices and institutions that created, cultivated, and supported their development—and what this might mean for the role of conservation. However, it became apparent that the networks relating to choreographic artworks are generally continuous. That is, the people involved include the artist, choreographer, dancers, as well as those in the museum such as the curator or security and visitor experience teams.

Supporting these networks requires the creation of conditions that allow such works to materialise and thrive in the museum. We were learning how to ‘hold these works without constraining them,’ as well as develop an understanding of how to bridge the differing ‘worlds’ of choreography and the museum.³ But what holds these networks together—and lies at their core—is a network of relationships. So, is a model predicated on developing and building relationships also a model for conservation best practice for choreographic works?

Developing relationships

There are two helpful ways to consider how the development of relationships could be a model for conserving choreographic works in a museum context. Firstly, forming relationships can support artworks themselves and secondly the development of professional relationships informs and furthers conservation practice. For artworks that are intrinsically linked to people in a special way—such as choreographic works which are bound to the human body as the medium—it is critical to develop collaborative and inclusive ways of working where everyone can comfortably engage, and which accounts for all those involved with the artwork in an ethical and equitable way.

In establishing any relationship, it is crucial to provide adequate time and space for these relationships to develop and flourish as trust slowly builds. This allows us to reach beyond the cultural differences between fields of practice (choreography and conservation), critically dismantle barriers, and reframe museum practice to transform ways of working.

Professional relationships can foster discourse on key topics in each related professional field to expand and develop one’s own thinking and practice through exchange of ideas and experiences. My own discourse on choreographic artworks has been situated most recently within the Precarious Movements project where key relationships have been developed alongside the opportunity to have multiple, layered conversations that inform thinking and collective practice.⁴

Haley and I have spoken on many occasions about our colliding worlds of choreography and conservation. We have explored not just how materialisation of artworks can be supported but also how we can start to think about their future lives. The Precarious Movements project has also enabled a small team at Tate to come together to focus on developing our practice and processes in relation to the conservation of choreography, with moments of collaboration with other project partners focused on conservation.⁵ This extended to include input and feedback from artists, including Haley, as well as practitioners⁶ from the project team who were able to then inform institutional practices and processes.

Critical to our experience has been the development of relationships which are motivated by our shared interest and the aims of the project. As a collective, we represent different experiences, expertise, and familiarity with the artworks themselves. We value our different perspectives, and, in turn, how our interpersonal relationships shape our individual and collective practice.

Tenets of friendship

Reflecting on the development and building of relationships has led me to consider historian, Toufoul Abou-Hodeib’s description of how the bonds of friendship and familiarity can ‘mobilise networks of art,’ and how art can be animated by both the professional and personal relationships that exist.⁷ These notions of friendship, familiarity, and relationships, resonate with the requirements of choreographic artworks and how they are ‘mobilised.’ If we consider friendship a little further, as described by the academic Uri D Leibowitz, this is ‘a relationship between two people where each person values the other’.⁸ If networks of people and relationships are at the heart of choreographic artworks, then the tenets of friendship could provide a possible model for developing and building the professional relationships that support and enable the conservation of those same practices.

In this context, the key tenets of friendship would include: 1) a shared interest, where people are working together towards a collective goal or outcome; 2) communication, where each person is able to successfully communicate their views and needs; and 3) valuing each other, where the contribution each person is making is valued, and their value is effectively communicated.⁹ In addition to value, to extend this notion, to include the role of our professional conservation ethics, as part of the contributions we make as part of our practice.

If we take these tenets to start relationships with colleagues, artists, choreographers, dancers—this continuous network of people that begins outside and flows through the museum—then perhaps we can create the conditions that best mobilise choreographic artworks. It is important to recognise, however, that challenges do exist with such a model. This is particularly so when authority or hierarchy is dominant, as this creates an imbalance of power that must be navigated to ensure there is agency and recognition of value across all parts of the network.¹⁰

Friendship is a central theme within Haley’s working practice and she has written about cultivating ‘a working process that is equally a culture of friendship’ with choreographers and dancers Angela Goh and Ivey Wawn.¹¹ This is also reflected in A Sun Dance, where relationships between the dancers extend beyond the human element to create connections and relationships with the non-human elements of sunlight and the architecture of the National Gallery of Australia.

This ‘culture of friendship’ is also reflected in how Haley and I have worked together: our starting position was one of a shared interest which developed into learning about and valuing how we viewed and engaged in our respective areas of work. Reflecting on this culture also resonates with the development of my own conservation practice which has been shaped by the relationships I have formed with colleagues, teams and artworks, and how this has been modelled across the different projects I have been engaged with.

Reflecting on those initial conservation questions at the initial 2019 session, one thing is paramount: people have always been at the centre. Indeed, within the networks and relationships that have formed around these works that are held within the human body, it is the instances of friendship that have enabled both the artworks and practice to materialise, thrive and have a future life.