An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography Elizabeth Waterhouse (Frankfurt am Main) This article reviews examples of how dance scholars have adapted ethnographic approaches to study choreographer William Forsythe ’ s artistic works and aesthetic processes. I consider three cases: Ballet across Borders (1998) by anthropologist Helena Wulff, the collaborative web-based publication Synchronous Objects (2009), and my own praxeological study Processing Choreography (2022). My comparative analysis of these publications examines how these scholars defined, encountered, and inscribed knowledge about their ‘ objects ’ of study. I consider the various manners that participant observation, interviews, and learning together with one ’ s artistic interlocuters may be practiced and reflexively interrogated, contributing to theoretical discourse in dance and theatre studies. In sum, I advocate for an ethnographic spectrum of epistemic transfer for dance and theatre studies, sharpening and diversifying our methodological approaches and theoretical writing. Wide-ranging, ethnography has been borrowed and adapted across disciplines, yet this methodology remains more prevalent in English-speaking dance and performance studies, than in German-speaking Tanzand Tanztheaterwissenschaft. 1 The purpose of this text is to contribute further critical reflection on the potential of ethnographic inquiry for dance and theatre studies by reviewing how research advancing ethnographic methodology has produced and shared knowledge about William Forsythe ’ s choreographic work. In this essay I inspect three examples from the Forsythe scholarship, each with distinct methodological approaches and formats of publication. By bringing these case studies together, I underscore the theoretical prospects as well as the challenges of ethnographic methodology. I advocate for the epistemic potential of reflexive ethnographic approaches for research questions in dance and theatre studies that cannot be answered through distant academic writing based on performance analysis and the interpretation of textual artefacts. The chosen case studies highlight an ‘ ethnographic spectrum ’ of possibilities. My writing begins with orientation about the artistic context and its dance scholarship, followed by analysis of: Ballet across Borders (1998) by anthropologist Helena Wulff, the collaborative web-based publication Synchronous Objects (2009), and my own praxeological study Processing Choreography (2022). William Forsythe ’ s Radical Ballets When I first began in Frankfurt, at the end of the performance at the Opera House, there were only 60 people left in the audience: 30 of them were booing and 30 of them were cheering! The show was called Gänge and it started out full because it was by subscription. And then all hell broke loose! 2 As director of Ballett Frankfurt (1984 - 2004) and The Forsythe Company in Frankfurt/ Dresden (2005 - 2015), American choreographer William Forsythe employed diverse tactics to dismantle and reinvent the aesthetic, social, and ideological conventions of Forum Modernes Theater, 36/ 1-2, 110 - 126. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ FMTh-36-0009 ballet. 3 In resistance to the high-brow and traditional values of conservative balletomanes and other cultural gatekeepers, Forsythe implemented an open studio policy in which curious students, dancers, and guest scholars were permitted to observe rehearsals and participate in discussions - countering customs of hiding rehearsals from the public gaze and closing the social microcosm of rehearsal to ‘ outsiders ’ . 4 Forsythe created alliances with scholars from various disciplines, with whom the choreographer shared resources (time, studio access, video documentation) to enable their writing and research. Thereby Forsythe gained impulses influencing his artistic process. At the same time, these powerful intellectual voices, articulating knowledge shaped by ‘ insider ’ perspectives, were brought into the public dialogue about Forsythe ’ s work. The choreographer ’ s status and authority were elevated in the art market through these relations and their discourse production - important given the conflict of Forsythe ’ s reception both locally and internationally, as this opening citation sheds light on. 5 The result is an exceptionally rich dance discourse exhibiting diverse medial approaches to knowledge inscription - taking the form of interviews, articles, monographs, dissertations, museum catalogues, DVD-ROMs, digital media, and web-based publications. 6 This research interrelates analysis of various aesthetic phenomena (performance, installation, rehearsal, video-documentation) with reported first-person testimony and eye-witness accounts. In contrast to writing prioritizing scholarly detachment and distance, many contributors to the Forsythe scholarship were ‘ entangled ’ with Forsythe ’ s creative work and conscientiously allied with the project of defending it. By this I mean ‘ entangled ’ as in quantum physics. The scholars were not distant observers; instead, their observations were embedded in and contingent on the process and politics of artistic production. Typically, they observed rehearsals backstage as well as the performances onstage. The extent and manner in which they position and reference these observations in their scholarship varies. 7 With anthropological transparency, anthropologist Helena Wulff reflexively writes about her work to gain access to backstage phenomena within ballet companies, including Ballett Frankfurt. Others wrote about Forsythe ’ s work while employed by and contributing to the ensemble artistically, or thereafter: this includes dancer-writers (Dana Caspersen, Nik Haffner, myself), “ embedded dramaturgs ” 8 (Heidi Gilpin, Sabine Huschka, Rebecca Groves, Steve Valk, Freya Vass), philosophers in residence (Alva Nöe, Erin Manning, Brian Massumi), and artistic collaborators in the medium of sound/ technology (Chris Salter), among others. Scholars were also recruited for Forsythe ’ s artistic research projects, including Scott deLahunta and Nora Zuniga Shaw, who both drew upon their training in ethnography - as my writing will explore further. 9 There are also exceptions to this ‘ insider ’ scholarship. For example, Gerald Siegmund ’ s ample scholarship on Forsythe ’ s artistic work does not draw on ethnographic methodology. But Siegmund ’ s research still has aspects in common with long-term fieldwork: namely, the sustained nature of his reflexive analysis. Siegmund ’ s theoretical analysis interprets performances and installations observed over decades while living in Frankfurt; moreover, he contextualizes performance analysis with theoretical inquiry, testimony from interviews he conducted personally with Forsythe and the dancers, and examination of the socio-economic conditions of cultural production and politics in Frankfurt. 10 Even with such exceptions, scholarly review of the critical reception and scholarship on Forsythe ’ s work, I argue, benefits from reflecting on these 111 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography scholarly entanglements, as I shall illustrate in the following three case studies. These different writings reveal the scholars ’ process of participation, denoting the moment they write, as well as their aesthetic and theoretical frameworks. Each writer must construct their authority and negotiate Forsythe ’ s, entangled with the art field and its debates and hierarchies. The plurality of these perspectives makes the Forsythe discourse dynamic. The remainder of this article examines three key examples, focusing on their methodological approaches and the power dynamics involved in writing: Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers (1998) by Helena Wulff, the webbased team project Synchronous Objects, for One Flat Thing, reproduced (2009), and my own work Processing Choreography: Thinking with William Forsythe ’ s Duo (2022). My discussion closely reviews how these scholars enacted ethnographic methodology differently and productively. I also consider the challenges these scholars have faced - difficulties in a context where the specific physical virtuosity and choreographic complexity are not easy to understand from an ‘ outsider ’ perspective, and where the choreographer holds extensive authority, influencing what materials may be studied and how these are reported upon publicly. These three examples illustrate distinct ways that dance scholarship has expanded to include methodological tools and theoretical frameworks impacted by anthropology. My review aims to assist future scholars in doing reflexive ethnography, as well as critically interpreting these writings in the Forsythe scholarship. Ballet across Borders My first example, Helena Wulff ’ s Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers (1998), is written from her perspective as an anthropologist studying ballet cross-culturally. 11 The Ballett Frankfurt is one context within her research of four ensembles: involving one year of fieldwork at the Royal Swedish Ballet, followed by further research at the Royal Ballet of London, American Ballet Theatre of New York, and the Ballett Frankfurt (in total fieldwork between 1993 and 1996). Wulff ’ s study shifts the scholarly focus from the interpretation of ballets on stage to the labour process backstage. Here I consider how Wulff ’ s scholarly interaction with Ballett Frankfurt impacts her research and writing. In the Forsythe scholarship, Wulff ’ s study exhibits the most ‘ classical ’ application of social anthropology: she interprets ballet as a historically and culturally situated aesthetic practice, develops her theoretical remarks in relation to discourses of social anthropology, and narrates her research self-reflexively. She follows the ‘ gold standard ’ of multi-year fieldwork innovatively across locations as “ multi-sited ethnography ” 12 . Her fieldwork however is not all abroad, as Wulff lived in Stockholm (her primary site of study). Nor is her fieldwork within an occupational culture that is foreign to her. Quite the opposite: Wulff characterizes her research as “ anthropology at home ” after Kirsten Hastrup, because not only is she Swedish but, even more significantly, she is also a ballet ‘ native ’ .Wulff studied ballet for fifteen years (until an unexpected injury), attending the same dance school as some of the professional dancers whom she observed in the Royal Swedish Ballet. 13 Therefore central to her interpretive authority is this doubled background - as both ballet-native and anthropologist - and what this hybridity affords her theoretically. Instead of foregrounding analysis of ballet performance, Wulff ’ s research explores how aesthetic artefacts and practices emerge through studying working practice backstage. Decentring performance, she writes: 112 Elizabeth Waterhouse By contrast with the general approach of dance studies and the anthropology of dance, this study is not focused on what is presented on stage: on movement, or dance analysis. What is happening on stage is anchored backstage socially, and can therefore be explored anthropologically. 14 Wulff ’ s study engages with an “ art world ” model after sociologist Howard Becker, following an interactive framework: exploring how art is produced through social interaction, and thereby criticizing “ the imagery of the individual artist, with a special talent, producing art entirely on his own. ” 15 She questions how the occupational cultures of national ballet ensembles are socially constructed through their day-to-day cooperations - the interactions, conventions, values, legal structures, materials and technologies - that enable ballets to appear and circulate as repertoire. She asks critically: To what extent is ballet, as many artists claim, a universal, transnational movement language? How do conflict, consensus, and crossover emerge? And how does her participant observation, gaining access to the backstage world, entail research of this? 16 Wulff ’ s fieldwork at Ballett Frankfurt is motivated by the company ’ s international renown (Wulff visits in 1996) and its distinct contemporary repertoire, which differs from her other examples of classical ballet companies. Ballett Frankfurt performed, with few exceptions, only Forsythe ’ s own repertoire (or that of his dancers), and he created new premieres every season. Also, Forsythe ’ s ensemble was a pinnacle for technology usage. Forsythe experimented with video, light, and sound onstage, and had accumulated a massive collection of rehearsal and performance videos. He had also initiated collaboration on the now well-known project Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye. 17 Wulff was interested to study how video recordings and technologies of communication were shaping “ transnational connectivity ” between ballet personnel, as well as the extent to which innovation in choreographically driven companies, such as Forsythe ’ s, could produce local (as opposed to transnational) values, knowledge, and aesthetic practices. 18 The Ballett Frankfurt was a perfect context for exploring these questions. Wulff ’ s writing highlights her dynamic and changing position in the field. She gains “ access to a closed world ” by acquiring permission to pass through the locked doors to get backstage, and convincing gatekeepers to allow her to make observations; she also describes closures and obstacles, such as a choreographer who does not permit her to watch rehearsals, and interviews that go poorly, because of false expectations about her role. 19 Participant observation begins with watching training and rehearsals, where she is initially asked to be invisible, like “ a fly on the wall ” 20 . Additionally, she attends multiple performances, backstage and out front in the audience. Strategically, Wulff modulates her repeated watching of live performances to observe different aspects, including the music, scenery, and costumes. Lastly, Wulff goes on tour to study how ballets are enacted abroad. She learns as she goes. Characteristic of ethnographic inquiry, her participant observation progresses from respectful watching to observation embedded more deeply within the sociality of the workplace: ‘ hanging out ’ in the dressing rooms with the dancers, as well as coffee chats and shared meals. Wulff describes building friendship in some of these interactions, highlighting that at moments she almost forgot that she was doing fieldwork. Her participant observation is further supplemented with formal interviews: 120 in total, across personnel. 21 While Wulff is openly nostalgic in her writing about her “ return ” to the ballet world and clearly adoring ballet dancers, she also 113 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography maintains her reflexive duty as an anthropologist in her writing, exposing the legitimate emotional tensions within her research. 22 Contributing to debates about the extent of participation and objectivity, Wulff makes clear that her former ballet training and personal relationships with some of the dancers are seminal to her positionality and analysis. She is highly aware of how others perceive her: according to her age (around 40), her gender (female), her position as an anthropologist in Stockholm, even her relatability as a wife (i. e. heterosexual). 23 Theoretically, not only can she use the technical French vocabulary of ballet technique and discern the movements before commencing her study, but she empathizes with the intensities and even the pain of this profession, because she has enacted it as a young person. 24 As one example, she describes building rapport with the dancers by communicating with them through her gaze in the mirror, bestowing attention and affirmation with her face and eyes. 25 Aware of reciprocity, she also uses her words: speaking as an anthropologist who has danced to describe to the dancers what she is learning. She offers her perspective from outside of the ballet world, while also eliciting more about their experience from the inside. While Wulff dramatizes her positionality for her readers - gaining access to the fascinating and closed world of ballet - she equally lays bare the challenges and personal rewards within her scholarship. Because she is also at home in Stockholm and working simultaneously at the University, she describes a “ split ” feeling: “ zigzagging ” between the opera and the University of Stockholm and between the multiple roles she has in life - as ex-dancer, anthropologist, woman, and wife. 26 As a closing point, I would like to briefly consider an excerpt of Wulff ’ s writing on Forsythe ’ s creation of Sleepers Guts (1996). Wulff ’ s writing here, I imagine, draws closely upon her field notes. Focusing on her research questions about technologizing dance and occupational innovation, Wulff chronicles the events that took place making this new ballet, highlighting Forsythe ’ s role within the collaboration. She describes: At a company meeting, Forsythe explained that he wanted modules, nine times nine minutes. He suggested themes around nature, movement flow, hierarchy, organization; then he added death. He was eager to ‘ unimagine ’ , as he said, rising from the chair he was sitting on and walking a few steps as if he was leaving something behind [. . .]. The first days and weeks were defined by what Forsythe had termed ‘ open door ’ . This meant that the dancers were supposed to get together in groups and make steps on the themes that he would ‘ edit ’ , as he said. Books and articles on avant-garde art and postmodern architecture were circulated for inspiration. The dancers spent a lot of time sitting on the floor in the studios discussing steps, making drawings and taking notes. Forsythe went between the groups, but mainly he stayed in one studio working with those who happened to be there. He wanted to give the dancers freedom to develop their own ideas on choreographing, inserting agency in a shared authorship. At the same time he hoped to be inspired by the dancers ’ work. There was a notion that ‘ a second generation of Forsythe choreographers ’ was coming up. 27 In the writing up, every scholar is challenged by selecting and distancing, and to find a form that narrates research encounters while bringing them into dialogue with theoretical questions. Here Wulff chronicles the teamwork beginning the creation process, documenting Forsythe ’ s embodied and vocal acts of leadership, as well as his expectations. While the absence of the dancers ’ voices, movements and reflection is notable to me, these omissions also serve Wulff ’ s analysis. 114 Elizabeth Waterhouse All researchers must highlight certain dimensions of their fieldwork encounters while producing gaps that other researchers can then adress and challenge. Overall Wulff ’ s fieldwork brings her depth of embodied insight into a multi-site ethnography of ballet labour and exchange practices, oriented and framed with anthropological literature and questions regarding how aesthetic frameworks are socially rooted and constituted. In the next example, I will consider a very different approach to ethnography, writing, and knowledge production that works with a fluid and interdisciplinary theoretical framework at the margins of scholarly writing. Synchronous Objects The archival website for Synchronous Objects, for One Flat Thing, reproduced (see Fig. 1) begins with a glossy three-dimensional graphic of curving, coloured pipelines, above a grid of dark rectangular table frames. The visualisation corresponds to the arcs of the dancers ’ arm and leg movements as they deftly swarm around the tables, dancing William Forsythe ’ s stage piece One Flat Thing, reproduced (2000). 28 The website ’ s banner line - “ from dance, to data, to objects ” - is a slogan for the production flow and methodology: from the aesthetic context of the field of dance performance, through the reification phase of producing empirical data, into the knowledge domain of presenting graphical visualization on a public website. 29 Reflecting on Synchronous Objects from my perspective today as a current dance scholar, a former dancer in the piece, and a member of the Synchronous Objects production team, in Fig. 1: Archival website of the project Synchronous Objects, for One Flat Thing, reproduced. 115 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography this section I revisit our work - exploring it as an example of “ visual ethnography ” and “ future-making ” 30 ethnography. This case study adds to this paper by presenting a new position on the ethnographic spectrum: characterized by interdisciplinary collaboration, digital visualization, and co-research with the artist. This form of ethnography is epistemologically open and creative, like Forsythe ’ s artistic process. It yields visualization, in which images and words come together creating an innovative form of theoretical writing. Initiated by William Forsythe, the project Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced (hereafter referred to as Synchronous Objects) was produced at The Ohio State University Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) and published online in 2009. 31 The project team at ACCAD had over thirty members, spanning animators and scholars in different fields, such as geography and architecture. This explorative research became a stepping stone for the subsequent Motion Bank project of The Forsythe Company (2010 - 2013). 32 Motion Bank has similarly cooperated with multiple choreographers to produce web-based research platforms. As initiators Scott deLahunta and Zuniga Shaw have highlighted, beyond the goal of circulating dance documentation, these projects aim to “ articulate ” choreographic knowledge and make this visible to a broad public on the internet. 33 Through interdisciplinary collaboration, the projects conscientiously transform artistic knowledge through digital and medial registers of visual inscription, negotiating emic and etic perspectives. 34 This parallels, as I shall illustrate in my close reading, Sarah Pink ’ s approach to future-driven visual ethnography where: “ Video does not take us, or anyone else ‘ back ’ , either in time or to a place or locality. Rather, video invites us to move forward with it, and as such to make new knowledge as we engage with it. ” 35 I emphasise that, epistemologically, the project approach aligns with certain anthropological sensibilities - particularly sustained, sensuous learning from the ‘ insider ’ perspectives - constituting a creative rather than positivistic mode of inquiry. 36 As anthropologist Tim Ingold describes about anthropology: the researcher goes “ to study with people. And we hope to learn from them. ” Moreover, “ What we might call ‘ research ’ or even ‘ fieldwork ’ is in truth a protracted masterclass in which the novice gradually learns to see things, and to hear and feel them too, in the ways his or her mentors do. ” 37 Similarly, project leader Zuniga Shaw describes: From the beginning, Palazzi and I approached this work in an emergent discovery-based process that prioritizes working closely with the choreographers at the centre of the research. It is the choreographers ’ questions and knowledge and working methods that establish the research world within which we create. 38 The research team focused on learning to ‘ see ’ the dance from Forsythe ’ s and the dancers ’ viewpoints. Since long-term fieldwork on site with The Forsythe Company was not feasible, the project team invited dancers Jill Johnson and Chris Roman, Forsythe, and me to travel multiple times to their host institution to share our expertise and give critical feedback. A rudimentary wiki enabled sharing materials like protocols, drawings, and notes. Scott deLahunta encouraged that I contribute fieldwork notes about rehearsing and performing the piece. I also shared with the team my exploratory interviews with other dancers about their experience making and performing the artwork, and notes from relevant conversations I had with “ Bill ” [Forsythe] about the project. In 2006, Forsythe produced HD video material of The Forsythe Company per- 116 Elizabeth Waterhouse forming One Flat Thing, reproduced at the Bockenheimer Depot in Frankfurt. 39 Part of a film project directed by Thierry De Mey, De Mey agreed to share the footage with the researchers at The Ohio State University, providing a mastershot (filmed from the front and above), as well as closeups of the movement. Thus, very differently than Wulff ’ s on-site fieldwork observing Ballett Frankfurt ’ s technologically rich creation and communication on stage and off, the Synchronous Objects project involved collaborative visual ethnography examining documentary footage: using digital traces to learn emic ways of seeing and creating new works of art via interdisciplinary extension of these principles. Going beyond a documentation project using video to preserve and record, Zuniga Shaw highlights the “ emergent ” aspects of creativity. 40 Zuniga Shaw ’ s academic writing reporting about this collaboration usually begins with evocative description of the case study of choreography at its centre. As one example, she writes: Seventeen dancers fly, slide, reach and twist their bodies within a grid of twenty steel tables. Seemingly on the edge of chaos their actions are controlled by a complex array of interdependencies that challenge and excite your sense of order as you watch. Time slips and slides between constant acceleration and sudden moments of active stillness, elements align and dissolve, dancers come and go, your eyes flicker in search of pattern, seeing and not-seeing the changes that occur. 41 As portrayed here by Zuniga Shaw, the complexity of One Flat Thing, reproduced challenges even skilled dance perceivers. This plotless piece, lasting approximately 20 minutes, is performed by a group of 14 to 17 performers (all fit, of various sizes and genders) wearing individually styled and coloured T-shirts and pants. Duets, trios, and other figurations accumulate in a fugue-like fashion around the grid of tables. The piece is musical from the inside: kept in-sync by the dancers ’ vocal and visual signals - the cues and alignments - that enable the clockwork. 42 The electric atmosphere is further pumped by Thom Willems ’ electric, roaring score. Used frequently by Forsythe as a finale, One Flat Thing, reproduced often took down the house, leaving its audience awed by the dancers ’ virtuosity and the choreographic complexity. 43 Forsythe approached ACCAD as an institutional partner because of their experience in projects of dance and technology, what Forsythe had already tested and found fruitful with his research for the DVD-ROM Improvisation Technologies: A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye (1999). 44 Pioneering in the late 1990s, the experimental process of learning through video-commentary has (with the boom of tablet and smartphone technologies) become prevalent in sensual and visual ethnography: eliciting “ embodied understandings from participants ” through the video playback of “ fleeting and ephemeral moments ” . 45 In Frankfurt, I used the video mastershot to elicit responses in a series of filmed interviews with the dancers. Forsythe wished for the interviews to focus specifically on the dancers ’ choreographic instructions - Who do you cue here? What theme is this? How do you time this alignment? - not more generally on their feelings, physical experience, and history with the piece, nor on how they see the work or evaluate their performance. Based on my prior background in ethnographic interviewing, I chose to be more open than Forsythe presumed necessary: to let the dancers teach me their role in their own language. I prioritized listening, without over-directing their testimony towards specific concepts. Intuitively, I did pose follow-up questions: to clarify interactions and their terminology, sometimes just repeating what I heard in fewer words, to verify. It was The Ohio State 117 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography University ’ s challenge to then convert these interviews into a systematic data set - a conceptual as well as a coding challenge. Zuniga Shaw has since elaborated on that fascinating and messy process of defining and protocolling analysis-parameters systematically. 46 The Synchronous Objects website is an innovative and epistemologically distinct form of knowledge production and inscription. Without a place for footnotes and a biography, the website instead contextualizes graphic visualizations with quotes from the makers and reflection on their process producing this knowledge. Through hyperlinks, the documentary research narrative interlinks co-authored knowledge, rather than hierarchically organizing knowledge or individually attributing observations to specific sources. The embodied, social, and architectural field of the dance was abstracted, and through this transformation, certain organization principles became visible. The current website for Synchronous Objects is a proxy documenting the original online publication from 2009. Unfortunately, the different elements of this prior digital website were enmeshed together and displayed using Adobe Flash Player, so when the software stopped working at the end of 2021, it left the project in the lurch; stability and longevity of archival platforms are, as this demonstrates, an issue in open access digital publication. The original website featured a horizontally scrolling, non-hierarchical interface, allowing the user to design their interactive experience. In addition to the video documentation of the “ dance ” and the “ objects ” made through animation, the underlying “ data ” could be viewed via a scrolling timeline: aspects were then animated while playing the mastershot of One Flat Thing, reproduced, with adjustable audioand visual-data interfaces to highlight specific features. Today the refurbished website for Synchronous Objects lets you scroll through introductory narratives about the project intent and extensive collaborators. There is a portfolio of pictures, with titles such as “ The Dance Interface ” , “ Alignment Annotations ” , “ Counterpoint Tool ” , and “ Difference Forms ” . These open pages with embedded videos: documentation of the choreography as well as graphical abstractions of the dance, in the forms of animation and digital art. These visuals are contextualized with quotes from the researchers about the processes making these animations. The current site still foregrounds William Forsythe ’ s original research question: “ What else might physical thinking look like? ” 47 Overall, this project presents a reflexive example of socially constructed and digitally hyperlinked visual artefacts, as well as a subjective and creative approach to data. The data was not intended to supersede the dance, but rather as a tool for learning through distancing, abstraction, and transformation. Zuniga Shaw ’ s ‘ masterclasses ’ with Forsythe and the dancers gave her insight about the inexorable messiness, imperfection, and soft logics of embodied practice: the underlying systems did not achieve algorithmic perfection. Zuniga Shaw calls her work “ giving voice (perhaps another aspect of articulation) to Forsythe ’ s ideas and choreographic thinking in expanded territories. ” Moreover, as is crucial to interpretive ethnography, she uses the process documentation and her subsequent scholarship “ to address the power imbalance produced by any score (textual or visual inscription of a moving idea). ” 48 Zuniga Shaw highlights the partial truths within Synchronous Objects: To emphasize that we believe all such articulations to be partial (the absence of the live) and subjectively informed in the making and the reception of them, we made multiples and 118 Elizabeth Waterhouse we shared the process of creating them within the product. This was also in line with Forsythe ’ s values and interest in creating scores that were not final documents for preservation but instead instigating questions generative of what ’ s next. 49 Re-reading Zuniga Shaw, I hear echoes of James Clifford ’ s introduction to Writing Culture: in her focus on “ partial truths ” , critical reflection on power, and striving for polyvocality that brings the authority of the researched and the researcher into reflexive dialogue. 50 With so many voices and persons involved, publications like Synchronous Objects present knowledge developed through exchange and interaction, not solitary study. My foremost critique of this project was that the dancers ’ voices and sensual knowledge were omitted in the final representation. The interviews that went into making the data had not found a public place in this polyvocal articulation. Or was this my bias, for having made them? While the abstraction evocatively explained the interacting systems of movement themes, cues and alignments, and there was carefully transcribed testimony harvested from Forsythe, the historical and praxeological aspects of rehearsal, performance, and creation were backgrounded. Another notable omission for dance and theatre scholars was the absence of a critical source review of the primary media - a filming of One Flat Thing, reproduced in 2006 (without a live audience), in which Forsythe added dancers and changed the lighting and costumes. This also was not discussed in the project documentation. Moreover, Huschka observes, other artists ’ or scholars ’ definitions and discourses of dance and choreography were not referenced, as one would commonly do in an academic publication. Despite these notable gaps, Huschka still affirms that this innovative medial project provides a valuable contribution to cultural archives. The abundance of ‘ data ’ produced during fieldwork, as is the case in Synchronous Objects, always necessitates strong authorial choices in representing the understanding developed - including some perspectives while excluding others - and finding an aesthetic form for these inscriptions. Clarifying these authorial choices reflexively makes this a compelling case of visual ethnography. Being reflexive about the motives behind one ’ s scholarship and the gaps in these partial truths is no simple task. From my position today as a dance scholar rethinking these examples, one omission in the project narrative is notable: Synchronous Objects was without question a political response to the closure of Ballett Frankfurt (2002 - 2004). When the precarity of experimental municipal arts organisations in relation to regional and national politics hit Forsythe and his institution, the closure of his company forced a sudden shift in both its institutional structures and its aesthetic labour. 51 While Forsythe succeeded in negotiating the subsequent ‘ private-public ’ structure for the smaller Forsythe Company, the conflict motivated him to quickly harness the internet as a broad platform for visibility and public demonstration of relevance. While not mentioning the closure of Ballett Frankfurt explicitly, Forsythe articulated his motivation for Synchronous Objects was threefold: to demonstrate the knowledge inherent in choreographic process, its importance to contemporary scholars and society, and also to make dance education choreographically driven and interdisciplinary. 52 He desired to invent a new format of “ dance literature ” and to make this literature open source. 53 The accessibility of Synchronous Objects therefore is deliberate: not knowledge production predominantly for dance scholars nor solely for dance artists, but a form of inscription that generates understanding for a broader public of out- 119 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography siders. The absence of this context within the project narrative illustrates the difficulty of achieving reflexivity when issues are deeply personal and/ or political - when time is needed to gain sufficient distance to rethink the past. All told, the project Synchronous Objects created a novel manifestation of knowledge at the intersection of dance Vermittlung, future-ethnography, digital humanities, and dance studies; this remains an innovative benchmark for best practices. Ethnographic inquiry supports researchers in critically developing the skill to communicate dialogically across scholarly and aesthetic conventions, as the next section will explore in greater detail. While Synchronous Objects responded to the closure of Ballett Frankfurt, my research responded to the end of The Forsythe Company and my interest to give greater scholarly attention to Forsythe dancers ’ praxis, as I shall illustrate in the subsequent section. Processing Choreography As my final example, in this section I turn to my own inquiry: Processing Choreography: Thinking with William Forsythe ’ s Duo (2022), a reconstructive ethnography of the Duo “ project ” . 54 This research, conducted as a doctoral student at the University of Bern, contributes to the Forsythe scholarship a longitudinal case study of the duet Duo (from 1996 to 2018). My aim was to document and critically analyse the dancers ’ praxis - exploring dimensions of aesthetic interaction and subjectivity that Ballet across Borders and Synchronous Objects had backgrounded and that other dancers had written about from their singular posi- Fig. 2: Duo dancers Riley Watts and Brigel Gjoka (centre) teaching students at Art Factory International in 2017, as I (seated left) observe. Photograph by Francesco Pierantoni. 120 Elizabeth Waterhouse tions (i. e., not systematically reflecting upon other dancers ’ testimonies). While the historiographical problem of a longitudinal study rethinking the recent past could have been explored using oral history methods, I adapted an ethnographic framework for reasons that I shall justify and review in this section. I invented the term ‘ reconstructive ethnography ’ to name my novel approach blending dance studies analysis, dance historiography, participant observation, and sensual interviewing for the purpose of writing a longitudinal study of an artwork that analyses the conditions of choreographic production praxeologically. The choreographic work Duo limited and focused my analysis onto a small network of participants whose labour offered insight into the social contexts and aesthetic processes of Forsythe ’ s oeuvre. I adopted an “ art world ” model from Becker, balancing discussion of the different activities and participants involved in making the artwork, and backgrounding discussion of reception in order to better focus on these elements. 55 I foregrounded consideration of the Duo dancers ’ enactment and their reflection on Duo ’ s ‘ choreography ’ - a term that I put into question and theoretical dialogue between ‘ emic ’ understanding and ‘ etic ’ positions from dance studies. Duo, created in 1996 for the Ballett Frankfurt, had by the end of my fieldwork in 2018 been performed approximately 148 times in 19 countries by 11 dancers. The short duet, performed by either two women or two men, was plotless, and rhythmically independent of the music by Thom Williams. The dance exhibited many general features of Ballett Frankfurt ’ s movement language. What was exceptional was the highly sensitive and attuned co-movement of the two performers, moving rhythmically in and out of unison. Because of this inherently interactive phenomenon, ethnography offered a more reflexive methodological framework than oral history for examining this relationality. Embodied aspects of choreographic production - enactment and perception of comoving bodies, performative affects, aesthetic materialities, compositional potentiality, and their associated concepts - I posited were constituted within Forsythe ’ s ensembles and had changed longitudinally. I sought to systematically describe and understand how these aesthetic practices and logics were produced. This was quite challenging, despite being a dancer myself. Insiders may lack experience describing their complex tacit knowledge to others without the bodily and aesthetic experience to understand them. Duo dancers, thankfully, were quite skilled and patient teachers; my background as a former dancer enabled me to learn like a new performer entering the role. The dancers stipulated that their individual knowledge was specific to the precise moments and contexts in which they performed, hinging on their artistic relationships with one or multiple partners, as well as with William Forsythe. My research studying Duo ’ s present and reconstructing the duet ’ s past constructed my ‘ field ’ around these relations with the participants, contexts, and sources documenting these practices and temporalities. By 2015, there was in fact no location in which to embed myself to conduct extended fieldwork, like Wulff had done in Ballett Frankfurt. That year Forsythe stepped down from directing The Forsythe Company and returned, after thirty years, to work as a freelance choreographer. Two Forsythe dancers continued to perform Duo internationally for the next two years, which allowed me to view live performances and interview the dancers as they enacted the work. 56 Therefore, rather than one cultural location, my ‘ field ’ was relational: wherever I could make ‘ participant observation ’ around live enact- 121 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography ment and reflection on documentary sources of the piece. Forsythe granted me access to his digital archive, and I copied (with permission) everything onto a hard drive: videos of Duo performances since 1996 (grainy, without HD until 2013), and some rehearsals. One miracle was finding videos of the rehearsals creating the piece in 1996, which I used along with interviews with the original dancers to study the creation process. The current performers at that time knew the piece so well they did not need to rehearse anymore, but they agreed to let me observe them teaching Duo to dance students in 2017, a very helpful phase of analysis (see Fig. 2). I also invited the Duo dancers to visit me at the University of Bern, or I visited them. In these short stays, I made semi-structured interviews, elicitations reviewing the video documentation, and recorded dancing sessions, where I learned principles and movements from the piece with my own body and a live partner. Over time, I created informative protocols annotating key performances using many analytic terms from Synchronous Objects, visualizing these to compare longitudinal change (of choreographic construction and dancer interpretation) over two decades. 57 In sum, my methodological approach merged many techniques: participant observation, sensual interviews, performance-video elicitation, movement analysis, digital humanities, and rehearsal ethnography through study of documentary videos. 58 I was never a Duo dancer, which helped me to achieve a certain distance for interpretation but also made me struggle to understand vital aspects of this praxis - especially the performance process on stage that I could only observe, never enact as performer. Another challenge to my research was that the art market valued a leader-driven narrative of Forsythe ’ s genius, influence, and acts. In contrast to this, my education in dance studies promoted critically interrogating how this authority was manufactured, not given. As Howard Becker has observed, in the West the artist ’ s authority is frequently achieved by the members of an art world ascribing the artist “ special rights and privileges ” . 59 On the other hand, as a former dancer in the Forsythe Company I had experienced through my own body Forsythe ’ s exceptional powers as dancer, choreographer, and leader. Rather than uncritically re-affirming a genius-model and collecting nostalgic stories predominantly about Forsythe and the personalities of his wonderful dancers, I was intent on studying how Forsythe and the dancers ’ expertise and their understanding of dance/ choreography were constituted, bringing these into theoretical dialogue with the relevant scholarship from dance studies, praxeology, and process philosophy. I was patient and inventive in my research on Duo to elicit and listen to the dancers ’ stories - to open a space for them to speak genuinely and reflexively - , for example on mistakes, doubts, conflicts, and difficulties. I used anonymization when necessary to publish ‘ difficult ’ testimony regarding dance partners who had trouble performing together. No dancer had criticized Forsythe unconstructively within my interviews: neither on the record nor off. Difficulties that they remembered were narrated to me as productively part of the choreographic work ’ s development, hence my title emphasizing the word ‘ process ’ . These memories further reveal how authority operates as a structuring force, informing both artistic practice and the contours of Forsythe scholarship. They also suggest how conflict may serve as a generative source within artistic creation, as has since been elaborated upon by dancer Dana Caspersen. 60 All told, while different from longstanding anthropological fieldwork, this reconstructive ethnography was still emplaced and entangled with Duo, articulating a novel 122 Elizabeth Waterhouse theoretical and methodological framework for dance studies analysis. My writing, as in oral history, interwove theoretical analysis with making visible the dancers ’ voices and perspectives on their knowledge. Further details about my theoretical understanding of choreography I leave to interested readers. 61 I now bring these three examples together as a basis for my closing remarks. Conclusion In this article, I have examined three examples of how dance scholars have adopted ethnographic approaches to study choreographer William Forsythe ’ s choreographic works and working processes. Together, these examples illuminate different epistemological objects, processes of study, and formats of writing. I have highlighted an ethnographic spectrum of inquiry: from Helena Wulff ’ s Ballet across Borders, a transnational study of ballet culture involving multi-sited fieldwork including the Ballett Frankfurt; to the artistic research project Synchronous Objects in which visual ethnography and co-creation enable a new form of dance literature; and my own research Processing Choreography, a reconstructive ethnographic project that critically examines the dancers ’ praxeological participation in the choreography of Duo longitudinally (1996 - 2018). As contextualized in my introduction, these case studies are contingent on Forsythe ’ s artistic works and art world. The distinct theoretical perspectives of these researchers, as well as their positions writing at different moments in time, give us a complex record of dance history. Self-reflexion on the account of the researcher and close contact to a variety of live phenomena in context enables - in all these cases - rigorous analysis. By reflexivity, I mean positioning the scholar ’ s critical review of their methodology, beside contextualization of their theoretical standpoint and cultural positionality in their analysis. 62 Reflexivity critically informs a subjective, particular, and always incomplete theoretical understanding; it creates nuanced authority concerned with articulating power structures at stake within one ’ s research. Ethnographical entanglements should therefore always be partnered with reflexivity; they do not promote ‘ becoming ’ a Forsythe dancer, nor losing critical scholarly capacities. Rather reflexive entanglements advance ‘ theorizing from ’ making participant observation - activities entangled with the artistic persons, traces, places, and theoretical inquiry. In sum, further writing on reflexive entanglements with our research could benefit the field: I advocate for an ethnographic spectrum of plurality. Notes 1 Elizabeth Waterhouse, “ Ethnografische Ansätze ” , in: Beate Hochholdinger-Reiterer, Christina Thurner and Julia Wehren (eds.), Theater und Tanz. Handbuch für Wissenschaft und Studium, Baden-Baden 2023, pp. 243 - 50. Cf. Jonas Tinius, “ Die Ethnografie als Methode der Theaterwissenchaft? ” in: Christopher Balme and Berenika Syzmanski-Düll (eds.), Methoden der Theaterwissenschaft, Tübingen 2020, pp. 315 - 37. 2 Ann Bogdan. “ William Forsythe: No One Has Any Idea What Really Works ” , The Talks (2024), https: / / the-talks.com/ interview/ wil liam-forsythe/ [Accessed on 11.07.2024]. 3 Susan Leigh Foster, “ William Forsythe: Creating Ballet Anew ” , in: Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel and Jill Nunes Jensen (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, Oxford 2021, pp. 390 - 403, https: / / doi.org/ 1 0.1093/ oxfordhb/ 9780190871499.013.33 [Accessed on 05.07.2024]; Gerald Siegmund, William Forsythe. Denken in Bewegung, Berlin 2004; Steven Spier (ed.), William For- 123 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography sythe and the Practice of Choreography. It Starts from Any Point, London 2011. 4 As one account, see: Freya Vass, William Forsythe ’ s Postdramatic Dance Theater. Unsettling Perception, Cham 2023, p. vii. 5 Full review is beyond my scope here. As one example, see: Mark Franko. “ Splintered encounters: The critical reception to William Forsythe in the United States, 1979 - 1989 ” , in: Spier, William Forsythe, pp. 38 - 53. 6 Wider review and references are substantiated in the bibliography here: Elizabeth Waterhouse, Processing Choreography. Thinking with William Forsythe ’ s Duo, Bielefeld 2022, https: / / www.transcript-verlag. de/ 978 - 3-8376 - 5588 - 9/ processing-choreogr aphy/ [Accessed on 11.07.2024]. 7 An analysis of which writing tropes the researcher uses to place themselves into their research texts is unfortunately beyond my scope here. 8 Freya Vass, “ The Disappearance of Poetry and the Very, Very Good Idea ” , in: Farrugia- Kriel and Nunes Jensen, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, pp. 754 - 771, https: / / doi.org/ 10.1093/ oxfordhb/ 978019087 1499.013.37 [Accessed on 05.07.2024], here p. 755. 9 See the bibliography here: Elizabeth Waterhouse, Processing Choreography. Thinking with William Forsythe ’ s Duo, Bielefeld 2022, https: / / www.transcript-verlag.de/ 978 - 3-8376 - 5588 - 9/ processing-choreography/ [Accessed on 11.07.2024]. 10 As two examples, see: Gerald Siegmund, William Forsythe; Gerald Siegmund, “ Of Monsters and Puppets. William Forsythe ’ s Work After the ‘ Robert Scott Complex ’” , in: Spier, William Forsythe, pp. 20 - 37, 11 Helena Wulff, Ballet across Borders. Career and Culture in the World of Dancers, London 1998. 12 Wulff draws this term from George E. Marcus. See ibid., p. 18. 13 Ibid., p. 22; Helena Wulff, “ Instances of Inspiration: Interviewing Dancers and Writers ” , in: Jonathan Skinner (ed.), The Interview. An Ethnographic Approach, London 2012, pp. 163 - 177, here p. 167. 14 Wulff, Ballet across Borders, pp. 16 - 17. 15 Ibid., pp. 33 - 36, here p. 33; Howard Becker, Art Worlds. 25th Anniversary Edition. Berkeley 1982. 16 See in particular Wulff, Ballet across Borders, pp. 33 - 58. 17 Chris Ziegler, “ William Forsythe ’ s ‘ Improvisation Technologies ’ and Beyond. A Short Design History of Digital Dance Transmission Projects on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM, 1994 - 2011 ” , in: Maaike Bleeker (ed.), Transmission in Motion. The Technologizing of Dance, London 2017, pp. 41 - 51; William Forsythe et al., Improvisation Technologies. A Tool for the Analytical Dance Eye, 4th ed., DVD-Rom and Booklet, Ostfildern 2012. This media is partially online at the following channel: https: / / www.youtube.com/ @Gr andpaSafari/ featured [Accessed on 05.07. 2024]. 18 Wulff, Ballet across Borders, p. 145. 19 Ibid., p. 11. 20 Ibid., p. 12. 21 Wulff, “ Instances of Inspiration ” , pp. 166 - 67. 22 I refer here to the title of the opening chapter “ Prologue: A Return to the Ballet World ” , Wulff, Ballet across Borders, p. 1. 23 Ibid., p. 16. 24 Ibid., pp. 8 - 9. 25 Ibid., p. 7. 26 Ibid., p. 23. 27 Ibid., pp. 157 - 58. 28 William Forsythe, One Flat Thing, reproduced (premiere: 02.02.2000, Ballett Frankfurt, music by Thom Willems). What is studied in the project is not a live performance but video footage: William Forsythe, One Flat Thing, reproduced (2006, The Forsythe Company, director: Thierry De Mey, music by Thom Willems). This footage is still available on the archival website (see endnote 29 below). 29 William Forsythe, Norah Zuniga Shaw and Maria Palazzi, “ Synchronous Objects, for One Flat Thing, reproduced ” , The Ohio State University, Archive Site for Synchronous Objects, https: / / synchronousobjects.os u.edu. [Accessed on 05.07.2024]. 30 Sarah Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, 3rd ed. Los Angeles 2013; Sarah Pink, Doing 124 Elizabeth Waterhouse Sensory Ethnography, 2nd ed. London 2015, see pp. 189 - 94, here p. 192. 31 For credits, see the current website. See also: Maria Palazzi et al., “ Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, Reproduced ” , in: SIG- GRAPH (2009), https: / / doi.org/ 10.1145/ 166 7265.1667306 [Accessed on 05.07.2024]. 32 See deLahunta, “ Motion Bank ” , in Maike Bleeker, Transmission in Motion, pp. 128 - 137; see https: / / www-archive.motion bank.org [Accessed on 05.07.2024]. 33 Norah Zuniga Shaw, “ Animate Inscriptions, Articulate Data and Algorithmic Expressions of Choreographic Thinking ” , in: Choreographic Practices 5 (2014), pp. 95 - 119, https: / / doi.org/ 10.1386/ chor.5.1.95_1 [Accessed on 05.07.2024], here p. 96. See also Scott deLahunta and Norah Zuniga Shaw, “ Constructing Memories: Creation of the Choreographic Resource ” , in: Performance Research 11 (2006), pp. 53 - 62, https: / / doi.o rg/ 10.1080/ 13528160701363408 [Accessed on 11.07.2024]; Scott deLahunta and Norah Zuniga Shaw, “ Choreographic Resources Agents, Archives, Scores and Installations ” , in: Performance Research 13 (2008), pp. 131 - 33, https: / / doi.org/ 10.1080/ 1352816 0802465664 [Accessed on 11.07.2024]. 34 Sabine Huschka, “ Mediale Transformationen Choreographischen Wissens. Das Internetprojekt Synchrones Objects von William Forsythe ” , in: Birgit Wiens and Gabriele Brandstetter (eds.), Theater Ohne Fluchtpunkt. Das Erbe Adolphe Appias. Szenographie und Choreographie Im Zeitgenössischen Theater, Berlin 2010, pp. 182 - 204. 35 Pink, Doing Visual Ethnography, p. 126. 36 A similar argument is also made by David Rittershaus considering Motion Bank projects alongside other research and digital documentation projects that follow a collaborative and reflexive methodology. David Rittershaus, “ Tanz wird digitales Dokument. Kommentieren als kollaborative Praxis zwischen Archivierung, Ethnographie und Notation ” , in: Marion Biet, Jana Hecktor, Vanessa Klomfaß, Tilman Richter, Julia Schade, und Erik Hoops (eds.), Dokumentwerden. Arbeit, Zeitlichkeit, Materialisierung, Bielefeld 2024, pp. 169 - 188. 37 Ingold, Making, here p. 2, emphasis original. 38 Zuniga Shaw, “ Animate Inscriptions ” , p. 97. 39 In my personal archive, my Spielplan from The Forsythe Company in 2006 lists the filming dates as 7 - 12 April 2006. The filming was done without an audience. Cf. Huschka, Mediale Transformationen, p. 187. 40 Zuniga Shaw, “ Animate Inscriptions, ” p. 97. 41 Rebecca Groves, Norah Zuniga Shaw and Scott deLahunta, “ Talking about Scores. William Forsythe ’ s Vision for a New Form of ‘ Dance Literature ’” , in: Sabine Gehm, Pirkko Husemann and Katharina von Wilcke (eds.), Knowledge in Motion. Perspectives of Artistic and Scientific Research in Dance, Bielefeld 2015, pp. 91 - 100, https: / / doi.org/ 10.1515/ 9 783839408094 - 007 [Accessed on 05.07. 2024], here p. 94. 42 On cues and alignments, see Norah Zuniga Shaw, “ Living in Counterpoint ” , in: Farrugia- Kriel and Nunes Jensen, The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, pp. 479 - 88, https: / / doi.org/ 10.1093/ oxfordhb/ 978019087 1499.013.41 [Accessed on 05.07.2024], see pp. 480 - 482. 43 See also: Anna Kisselgoff, “ Loud Tables, but Not a Restaurant ” , The New York Times, 2 October 2003, sec. Arts, https: / / www.ny times.com/ 2003/ 10/ 02/ arts/ dance-review-lo ud-tables-but-not-a-restaurant.html [Accessed on 06.07.2024]. 44 On ‘ Improvisation ’ Technologies see endnote 17. 45 Justin Spinney, “ Cycling the City: Meaning, Movement, and Practice ” , PhD thesis, Royal Holloway College, University of London, 2008, p. 98. Cited in: Pink, Doing Sensory Ethnography, p. 89. 46 Zuniga Shaw, “ Living in Counterpoint ” , pp. 479 - 488. 47 See the Synchronous Objects website, endnote 29. 48 Both prior citations in this paragraph: Zuniga Shaw, “ Animate Inscriptions ” , p. 101. 49 Ibid., p. 104. 50 James Clifford, “ Introduction: Partial Truths ” , in: James Clifford and George E. Marcus (eds.), Writing Culture. The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, 25th anniversary ed., Berkeley 2010, pp. 1 - 26. 125 An Ethnographic Spectrum: Writing on William Forsythe ’ s Choreography 51 On this history, see: Gerald Siegmund. “ Of Monsters and Puppets. William Forsythe ’ s Work After the ‘ Robert Scott Complex ’” , in: Spier, William Forsythe, pp. 20 - 37, see in particular pp. 20 - 21. 52 For further discussion contextualizing dance research within creative industries and knowledge economies, see: James Leach, “ Making Knowledge from Movement. Some Notes on the Contextual Impetus to Transmit Knowledge from Dance ” , in: Bleeker, Transmission in Motion, pp. 141 - 54. 53 William Forsythe cited in: Groves, Shaw, and deLahunta, “ Talking about Scores ” , p. 91. 54 Waterhouse, Processing Choreography, p. 11; William Forsythe Duo (premiere: 20.01.1996, Ballett Frankfurt, music by Thom Willems). 55 See Waterhouse, Processing Choreography, see pp. 45 - 46. 56 In the 2015 international tour “ Sylvie Guillem - Life in Progress, ” and in 2016 performances in Paris during the summer festival Quartier d ’ Été. See Waterhouse, Processing Choreography, pp. 128. 57 Elizabeth Waterhouse et al., “‘ I Gave That Cue. ’ Integrating Dance Studies, Praxeology, and Computational Perspectives to Model Change in the Case Study of William Forsythe ’ s Duo ” , in: International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media 17 (2021), pp. 160 - 81, https: / / doi.org/ 10.1080/ 14794713.2021.1884803 [Accessed on 05.07.2024]. 58 Waterhouse, Processing Choreography, p. 33. 59 Becker, Art Worlds, pp. 14. 60 See Dana Casperson: Conflict Is an Opportunity. Twenty Fundamental Decisions for Navigating Difficult Times, New York 2025. 61 See Waterhouse, Processing Choreography. 62 See also Elena Backhausen ’ s, Mirjam Kreuser ’ s and Benjamin Wihstutz ’ article in this special issue. 126 Elizabeth Waterhouse