Dancing the book

Image (c) Cornelius Cardew and Gallery Upstairs Press.


‘Dancers are at one and the same time paper, pen, and graphic, the space that their bodies use being the place where, eventually, the sign is inscribed, which is none other than a figure of the body yet again.’

- Jose Gil Metamorphoses of the Body

Open Dialogues took part in the ‘Dancing the Book’ practice as research workshop with Jude Walton on the 6th and 7th July. A group of 10 visual art, performance and writing artists danced, read and wrote scores. We looked at bodies with books, inventing a grammar for actions, writing motion, moving text and spacing thought on and off the page.

The workshop was organized by ICFAR and coincided with Jude’s placement Summer Fellowship there. The workshop was also part of the From Scratch festival at The Drawing Room, a symposium considering the legacies and practices that emerged from art collectives and collaborations of the 70s and 80s, most notably Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch orchestra.

Melbourne based dance and performance artist Jude Walton works across film, visual art and performance, making public art works, books and time-based works.


Video documentation and scores from ‘Dancing The Book’ at the Drawing Room will be made available via ICFAR (International centre for Fine Art Research).

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