A couple of weeks ago DAJ created ‘Share a Score’, an idea which is designed to turn attention to the creative processes and practices behind dance-making. We welcomed Kashish Gaba for our first entry and are pleased to give rise to US dance creative, Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes for sharing her score, strikethrough.
In an interview with inbtwn mag, Maxine explains: ‘The score is arranged like a poem and occurs in five segments, each succession undergoing a process of erasure called strikethrough. As the phrases within the poem gradually diminish, instructions appear on the right-hand side, as if highlighting what’s being taken away. The instructions serve as moments for dancers to exercise their own choices, so in theory they could live within a structure of infinite mutability, where – like the act of strikethrough upon the poem – all possibilities are in place.’
Want to learn more? Here’s how to follow Maxine’s score: strikethrough
As cases surge throughout the United States, dance artists increasingly witness once guaranteed resources disappear, perhaps even themselves as theatre spaces become inevitably empty. The following movement score is an experimentation with this erased space and memories of togetherness while alone, how to navigate the landscape of self with only that. Its elements of insertion and omission function as reminders of what remains despite being invisible, what is gone despite seemingly still being there.
I invite you to perform the movement score below with your body, your voice, or any materials available in your space. You may also compose your own movement score using the following website on a computer device: https://strikethrough-score.org/. With consent, your score will be displayed in a digital gallery and used in the creation of future choreographic material.
Post a video of your performance interpretation on Instagram with the hashtag: #strikethrough_score.
About the artist: Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes is a recent BFA Dance graduate of NYU Tisch School of the Arts. She is currently researching the intersections of poetic techniques and movement through interdisciplinary collaborations with designers, animators, coders, poets, and dancers. Her score strikethrough #8 was recently published in the inaugural issue of samfiftyfour_literary, and an essay on this creative process first appeared in inbtwn. magazine. She uses choreographic scores to access textual sensibilities within movers, to find poems breathing in the origins of any dance.
Header photo credits: Ida Mara Obediente. Dancers: Israel Harris, Hiroka Nagai. Animation: Jade Lien. Costume: Eszter Retfalvi. Lighting: Hamilton Guillan.