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Edith Boxberger
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Intro Biography Bibliography Poetics Texts |
Intro
Edith Boxberger began writing about dance for German regional newspapers in the early eighties: from 1981 to 1983, for the Munich daily Münchner Abendzeitung and from 1985 to 1988, for the Frankfurt daily Frankfurter Neue Presse. In 1989 she began contributing to the national daily Frankfurter Allgemeine where she established a regular feature on dance, covering reviews, previews and profiles, to the newspaper's regional supplement, the Rhein-Main-Zeitung , and from 1993, also to the Frankfurter Allgemeine 's Sunday edition. She started writing for the national arts section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine in 1992 and has continued to contribute since her move to Hamburg in 1995. From 1992 to 1998 Edith Boxberger also wrote regular contributions for the Berlin dance journal Tanz Aktuell which merged in 1994 with the Cologne journal Ballet International and today appears under the name ballettanz . Her work focuses mainly on current reviews. In them, she goes into aesthetic considerations and establishes connections with the historical past and current social developments. Her critiques have served as a basis for her written profiles of individuals and works, in which she describes the aesthetics and work methods of choreographers and groups and highlights aspects of the development of dance such as new forms of institutionalisation and the changing status of dancers. In addition to this, she has written articles for programme booklets and yearbooks.
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Biography
Edith Boxberger (born 1946) studied Social Sciences and completed a two-year newspaper trainee-ship before working as a lecturer in Sociology and Social Psychology at various educational institutions in Munich. Following a year-long stay in New York, where she attended courses at the Drama Department of New York University, she began her journalistic activity for the Münchner Abendblatt (1981-1983), the Frankfurter Neue Presse (1985-1988), the "Frankfurter Allgemeine" (1989-2002) and for the dance magazine tanz aktuell (the later ballet international/tanz aktuell or ballettanz ). Two things were of outstanding importance for the development of her writing: the diverse viewing and learning experiences she gained in New York - particularly for the abstraction in dance - and the wide range of exemplary dance on offer in Frankfurt in the eighties and nineties, which brought together the aesthetic trends and was indicative of the growth in complexity and institutionalisation of contemporary dance. Since 1995, Edith Boxberger has lived in Hamburg where she also works as a translator..
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Bibliography
'Tanz', in Frauenhandlexikon, Stichworte zur Selbstbestimmung, München, 1983
'Baladi oder die Kunst des Begehrens', Tanz Aktuell, 5/6, 1992, S. 15-18
'Verborgener Vulkan. Jan Fabre, der Wanderer zwischen bildender und darstellender Kunst', Tanz Aktuell, 5/6, 1993, S. 28-30
'Bewegungen aus dem Nichts. Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker über die Rolle der Musik und die Arbeit mit den Tänzern', Tanz Aktuell, 11/12, 1993, S. 14-18
'Luftschloß der Grenzenlosigkeit. Der japanische Performancekünstler Saburo Teshigawara', Tanz Aktuell, 1, 1993, S. 44-46
'Expeditionen in die Essenz der Zeit: Geist, Zeit und Bewegung im Denken von Saburo Teshigawara', Ballett-tanz, 8/9, 1994, S. 64-70
'Confusion and Clarification. An interview with Saburo Teshigawara.', Programmbuch zu Dah-Dah-Sko-Dah-Dah und Noiject, Tokio, 1994
'A Change of Paradigms in Dance: William Forsythe, Jan Fabre and Saburo Teshigawara.', InterCommunications, vol. 11, 1995, Tokio, pp. 84-88
'Vielfalt und Entgrenzung. Zur Situation des zeitgenössischen Tanzes in Deutschland.', Programmbuch zur Tanzplattform, Berlin, 1994
' "I am not where you think I am". Ein Interview mit William Forsythe', Takt 5, Magazin des Bayer. Nationaltheaters, vol.1, 1996, S. 20-28
'Ausgeträumt. Mats Eks Bearbeitung von "Dornröschen", Jahrbuch der Oper Hamburg , 1996, S. 78-88
'Nur noch Nerven. Tanz und Choreographie in den neunziger Jahren.', Programmbuch Tanzplattform Deutschland, München, 1996, S. 2-8
'Die Kunst als Grenzgängerin. Wie das Tanztheater die Bühne und das Sehen veränderte.', Ausdruck 1. Der moderne Bühnentanz. Publikation des Mousonturm Frankfurt, Frankfurt,1997, S.25-35
'Über Gräben springen. Zwischen Klassik und Postmoderne: Ballett Freiburg: Pretty Ugly Dancecompany.', Freiburger Theater Journal, vol. 7, 1997
'Was ist übrig vom Subjekt?' Programmheft tanzraum 98, Nürnberg, 1998
'Wie universal ist der Tanz?', Programmbuch des Tanzfestival Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2000
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Poetics
The art of gaining sense
I see and write from two perspectives: on the one hand, I try to get as close as possible to things; on the other hand, I also try to organise them and place them in contexts. Both aspects are important to me but I gain a great deal, perhaps the most, from proximity. I derive a specific perception, associations, combinations and, above all, also the language from getting up close. This situation arises from a kind of participatory observation that makes me feel as if I am part of the action. I absorb what goes on around me and, going deeper, temporarily surrender myself, perceiving not only with my eyes, my sense of the distant and waking consciousness but also with various different senses and on various levels of awareness. I see and "am seen". I involve myself, in as empty a state as possible, and let in whatever interest and knowledge feeds me. In this way, I try to record the specificity of a movement or a work in all its facets, to find out its original premise and its implications; a process which is repeated and amplified in writing, while aiming more specifically to embed the whole in an objective context. Seeing as experiencing; remembering as processing. I was inspired in this by American criticism, in which the critic appears as a knowledgeable entity, but not as a higher authority. He describes more than he judges and remains recognisably subjective, designing a complex and open image of a piece, which leaves space for the readers' own viewpoints.
My primary stimulation was, however, the art itself; an art in which identifying a particular meaning per se is less important than, as Zygmunt Bauman put it, "opening wide the gateway to an art of gaining sense." As the artist is no longer bound by norms and the viewer no longer restricted by guidelines on the right way to see or by uniform criteria for taste, everyone can participate, the artists foremost, but also critics and audience, in the process of understanding and interpreting. By taking this course, the art-form bids farewell to the dictates of consensus as formerly applied to modernity and explores the different possibilities of life.
Similarly, I regard my work as one voice in this varied design of reality. The method described above serves to clarify its subjective basis and is then combined with objective aspects of this reality.
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