"TRACING GESTURE" DISSERTATION PhD PROJECT
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CHOREOGRAPHY & SOMATIC PRACTICE: TRACING GESTURE
Tracing Gesture is the practice that evolved out of my PhD dissertation and my choreographic methodology. It investigates the relationship between gesture and dance as a starting point for creative and interpersonal relating. It gives expression to my ongoing performance endeavors and it is my goal to create and perform new works and revisit old ones with my students as well as with my company. At the moment my research in this area focuses on gestures of love and the role that love plays in knowledge acquisition, in the experience of life, and in relationship. I am in the process of planning a “Festival of the Heart” in La Ventana, BCS in March 2025 that engages with the heart and the experience of love in movement practices, choreographic inquiry, and in relationship with self, other, and site. Choreography is seen as critical practice and the mechanisms by which embodied thinking takes place are examined. The goals are to explore concepts and theories around love, embodied liberation, decolonizing the body, and queering social structures and constructs, and forms of oppression through personal creative inquiry. Tracing Gesture is part choreography and part somatic practice and explores the therapeutic potential of movement and choreography. With "Tracing Gesture" I am entering a conversation around the semiotics of movement with a particular focus on how dance might be considered and extension of or simply as "full-body gesture" (gesturing). As part embodied performative, processual practice, and academic exploration, my research intersects and engages with theatre & dance theory, critical theory, phenomenology (situating the body at the center of experience and conceptualization), Choreography as influenced by German Tanztheater, gesture studies (why and how we gesture an how thinking and moving are connected to one another in the context of expression and communication), philosophies (of Judith Butler, Henri Bergson, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Alva Noe, and numerous others), psychology and trauma processing, queer and feminist theory, anarchism, philosophy of embodiment, somatic practices such as Authentic Movement, (Contact) Improvisation, performance studies, performativity, communication, linguistics, film theory, design theory, and more. Through a focus on contemporary embodied approaches to signification within both improvised and choreographed dance movements stemming from the traditions of German Dance Theatre and Expressionist Dance I am exploring the broader concept of dance as a form of communication of complex concepts and situationalities. I examine meaning as an essential (and often inevitable) component of performance for both performers and audiences, looking at the potential for specificity: how clear can the body communicate, and how and where do we converge (or not) in our authenticity of expression in movement? Context changes meaning, what stays consistent? How do narratives become extracted from or are revealed in movement and through movement? I examine several ways to find/create/define meaning in different movement approaches/choreographic processes including
Through this theoretical and embodied research I am defining a cross-disciplinary and cross-epistemological Theory of Articulation within which I explore here the notions that articulation is taking place at motion centers, places that facilitate movement, ie at joints; that articulation is built into the system, that move-ability and free-form articulation is intrinsic to the complexity and nature of the system and across systems pointing toward a full bodied/body-mind integrative model of move-thinking and the body's intrinsic intelligence; that articulation facilitates communication and translation both literally and metaphorically. Articulation is intrinsic and foundational to being. I wish to redefine meaning: to untie old notions around the stuffy determinisms of the concept and term "meaning", offering a complex model that arises from several theories of meaning that will be argued and established through an empirical study in movement and embodiment that centers around the usefulness of subjectivity and intuition in analysis and communication. What's to gain? I will analyze what we gain from working with meaning in movement, what the benefits or uses are of working with meaning in choreography. This happens within and against the french post-structuralists and current sentiment against the deterministic tendencies of meaning-making. *** My dissertation topic results from a breadth of interests and focuses on the converging points that underlie the nature-texture of the kinship between movement and meaning. How is it that we create or distill meaning from the expressiveness of our moving bodies? How do we make, transmit, and experience meaning in art and performance; in improvisation or in engagement with specific narratives or topics? What conclusions may we draw from the constellation of these elements and interactions, and how do they transfer onto other areas of life? Through the lens of choreography and a semiotics of dance I seek to make visible the specificity, and complexity of non-verbal communication in kinaesthetic expression. From every-day gestures to sign language and dance performance, our bodies experience, express, and communicate. I believe that something is always expressed, something is always extractable from how we hold our bodies,how we gesture, how our bodies are oriented in space. Meaninglessness does not exist. Within artistic, psychological, and socio-cultural frameworks, the processes and experiences of meaning-making are deeply embedded in being human. Choreographers work with this expressiveness in very specific ways. The choreographic process exists at the changeable intersection of improvisation, deliberation, intuition, cognition, and embodiment. Choreographers materialize feelings and affect, cultural and psychological mechanisms, the unknown, and the spontaneous. Through this detail-oriented engagement with the moving body they initiate social and personal change. There is a vast knowledge to be gained from looking at the unique and specific ways choreographers work with meaning-making, and I anticipate offering important conclusions that will resonate into education and sociology. |
ONGOING PRACTICE IN TRACING GESTURE
2024 
COMMUNITY PROJECT & RESEARCH:
Open Invitation to participate in TRACING GESTURE "Tracing Gesture" is an ongoing project with an open-door policy. If you are curious about the creative process of choreography or are interested in the topics around gesture and gesturing, please come join my "Tracing gesture - Open Door" events between July 2023 and September 2024. Engage, watch, listen, give feedback, ask questions, create something. It's up to you. The next opportunity will be on September 9th at Cameron Art Museum. Further opportunities are made public soon and are available upon request. The format is ongoing and new participants/audiences can join pretty much any time. The project tackles new aspects with each rendition, so it is ok to jump in any time. You won't feel lost. Location and times will be announced on the event calendar. Fee: donations accepted >>> TAKE THE GESTURES OF LOVE AUDIENCE SURVEY
PREMIERE OF "GESTURES OF LOVE"
SEPTEMBER 9th, 2023 Cameron Art Museum Wilmington, NC Performance, presentation, discussion 2-3:30pm Creative Community Workshop 3:30-4:30pm "Tracing Gesture: Gestures of Love" with Karola Luttringhaus Love Exhibition "Tracing Gesture" is a choreographic and academic project that investigates meaning in art, movement, and choreography. At 2pm, Karola performs a new dance piece entitled "Gestures of Love", a thought and movement experiment where gesture serves as the basis for dance, and dance is a form of language. Afterwards, gather in the Love exhibition to meet the artist and discuss her choreographic practice, how she creates movement, and her work with language, meaning, and storytelling. Karola states, " I examine how the body's movements speak to me and through me, and I am inviting an open discussion around how we assign and discover meaning in art in general, including the works of the current "Love" exhibit at CAM." Following the performance and discussion the artist will offer an opportunity to deepen the conversation around gesture, meaning, and dance by inviting guests to explore their own unique gestures of love by creating a collection of movement sentences that assemble into a "multi-facetted story of love". No experience or dance background necessary. All ages. All abilities. More information: I describe my choreographic work as psychological, philosophical, and socio-critical storytelling. I am motivated to create dance performances in order to incite conversation with and feedback from audiences around the topics explored in my pieces. I approach choreography and performance as kinaesthetic forms of communication and expression, manifested through movements that I see as a kind of 'amplified full-body gesturing' that is intrinsic to us and part of our physiology's complex intelligence. For Cameron Art Museum I am creating and performing a new dance piece entitled "Gestures of Love", with which I play through a thought and movement experiment where gesture serves as the basis for dance, and dance is a form of language. Within a 'meet-the-artist' format, I will be offering a view into my choreographic practice, how I create movement, how I work with language, meaning, and storytelling. I examine how the body's movements speak to me and through me, and I am inviting an open discussion around how we assign and discover meaning in art in general, including the works of the current "Love" exhibit at CAM. This presentation traverses the fields of art and film theory, philosophies of embodiment, and practice research considerations around notions of move-thinking within academic contexts. 90min. Following the performance and discussion I offer a more hands-on opportunity to deepen the conversation around gesture, meaning, and dance by inviting you to engage physically in order to discover each of our own unique gestures of love and take a stab at creating a collection of movement sentences that assemble into a multi-facetted story of love. No experience or dance background necessary. All ages. All abilities. 60-90min. SCROLL DOWN TO TAKE THE AUDIENCE SURVEYS FOR THE TRACING GESTURE FILMS
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Image from Tracing gesture at Cameron Art Museum: "The River Home" a collaboration with Carl Kruger and the Slow Ear Ensemble
2023
April 20th, 2023
INTERVIEWS
Julie Becton-Gillum
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TRACING GESTURE FILMS
TRACING GESTURE 2022
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Photocredits top left to bottom right. All choreography by Karola Luettringhaus;
- row 1 left: "The Weight of a Grain of Sand" dance Karola Luettringhaus, Shawn Worthington, Photo by Jeff Cravotta
- row 1 middle: "Adam-mah" dance Rachael Crawford, Bonny Dixon, Photo by Deborah Tripplett
- row 1 right: "Solstice Cycles" dance Karola Luettringhaus, Breanne Horne, Lena Rose Magee, musician Carl Kruger, Photo by Gray Pascal
- row 2 left: "Adam-mah" dance Rachael Crawford, Bonny , Photo by Deborah Tripplett
'TRACING GESTURE'
Concept/performance/scene design/Costume Design/movement creation by Karola Lüttringhaus
More info coming soon.
Part of this project is your feedback. Thank you for participating.
Concept/performance/scene design/Costume Design/movement creation by Karola Lüttringhaus
More info coming soon.
Part of this project is your feedback. Thank you for participating.
