L.I.F.E: a history of distance

L.I.F.E a history of distance is the culmination of Wits PHD scholar and award winning choreographer Bailey Snyman’ s research in choreography and philosophy.

The dance work explores how various choreographic strategies can be used as approaches to create an embodied narrative.  It is a work in four parts of 20 minutes each that considers the distance between being born and dying and are titled [L] Lamentation.  [I} Interruption; [F] Fate and [E] Eulogy …LIFE. 

In L.I.F.E: a history of distance, Bailey Snyman experiments with interpretations of tacit knowledge systems in the creative process. The work interrogates the nature of knowledge (s) embodied in people and processes including “tacit” knowledge. Snyman  engages and interrogates Michael Polanyi’s beliefs that creative acts are imbued with personal feelings or passions. 

Professor Marie-Heleen Coetzee [2017] writes, "Combining his [Snyman] love of movement with his interest in philosophy towards his doctoral studies, Snyman set up a creative research process that overtly engages Michael Polanyi’s beliefs that creative acts are imbued with personal feelings (or passions as per Polanyi).  These passions inform the hunches and imaginings in creative processes – they are pre-cognitive processes that comprise of conceptual, perceptual and sensory information that impacts on meaning-making." Polanyi calls this is tacit knowledge and his theory offers a nuanced and layered understanding of the relationship between science, knowledge, and tacitness. In doing so, he argues that all knowledge is rooted in tacit knowledge and that tacit knowledge is thus part of scientific knowledge. The sections in Snyman’ s work named above  are created using Harald Grimen’s (1991) interpretations of Polanyi’s ideas on tacit knowledge and explores whether these interpretations can be ‘translated’ into choreographic strategies. 

There will be one performance on 10 November at Wits Theatre at 8pm. Tickets are R20 at the door.

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