A Decade of MA Solo Dance Authorship

were invited on the strength of ‘their involvement with solo performance,
authorship questions or experience in postgraduate
study programmes.’ 3
The Symposium also exposed some of the fundamental ideas,
issues and areas of contention implicit in an educational programme
exploring ‘solo, dance, authorship’, ideas which would
directly and indirectly inform the direction of the programme and
form a substrate and a catalyst for its development, establishing
at least a problematic ground from which SODA could operate. The
idea of a ‘problematic’ as a basis for a postgraduate programme
drew on an educational idea of a common research project (equally
involving both staff and students) that addresses the terms of
its title – in this case solo, dance and authorship.
In September 2006 Franz-Anton Cramer drew up a summary report
of the Symposium based on notes and transcripts which amongst
other observations and remarks, noted a ‘growing discomfort with
the idea of working on solo dance authorship.’ (Cramer, 2006:25)
Regardless of the difficulties in defining what solo as a performance
format would be, whether it is relevant to contemporary
practice or transports too much of pre-contemporary concerns
and working methods; regardless also of the question whether
education should focus on solo or rather on artistic development
in a more general, and less determining sense, the following categories
of solo work were formulated:
• Being a soloist in a group
• Solo as part of a process
• Solo as a way of studying
• Solo making for others
• Solo for the self
• Solo as self-exploration. (Cramer, 2006:24–25)
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