The desire to revisit my own artistic past in order to transform, extend or re-appropriate already existing works or some of their aspects follows a critical approach to thinking about choreography as a practice of disseminating knowledge.

In this context, I initiate various collaborations, one of which relates to Dance for Nothing (2010), a solo work that used John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing (1949). Dance for Nothing was based on the simultaneous performance of two (choreographic and textual-musical) scores presented in a form of a dance-lecture. My goal in it was to challenge dancing and speaking at the same time instead of playing the music for the dance. Using music composed of words and performing a choreography as an autonomous temporality aimed to create interaction with non-interference.

Lisbon based choreographic artist Vânia Doutel Vaz accepted my invitation to collaborate on creating the very first work of the coming series Still Dance for Nothing, within which I invite performers to create a new choreographic score based on the open score composition of the original solo, and develop, through interview practices, a text that will replace Cage’s lecture. The current Covid-19 situation has rendered timely a methodology that I had already used in the past, namely developing a performance from a distance by Skype. In the case of this collaboration with Vânia, working together physically will take place only in the final week to complete the creative process.

Eszter Salamon, August 2020