Relational Scenic Device: New Formats of Activation, Translation, Decoding and Interference for Contemporary Performing Arts

Abstract

This article proposes rethinking the artistic and aesthetic practices of contemporary dance languages as experimental formats that provide spaces for activation, translation, decoding and interference of the artist, the spectator and the context, towards the production of relational scenic devices. Encouraging the creation and innovation of new artistic-scenic artifacts, which can produce thought-action, knowledge and active methodologies of creation and participation, in order to move dance towards new functionalities and fields of application, on the basis of contemporary, integral and human approaches. In this sense, the configuration, definition, nature and functionality of the relational scenic device is analyzed and proposed as a processual, live and polysemic format, considering the transformation of the traditional conventions of space, language, subject, object and the mechanisms that inhabit it. The Relational Scenic Device is produced as a space for research through art, on the grounds of documentation, experience and scenic praxis, generating procedures and materialities that admit the transformation of contemporary performing practices. Finally, some examples of the relational artistic practices of the Theatrum Danza Group, from the city of Cuenca, Ecuador, are presented as active and reflective references on current events in the field of contemporary relational dance languages.