In my PhD, I am exploring and developing choreographic methods and processes with focus on the use of archives in dance. The concept ‘singularity’ stands for two axes of my research. In the first place, it tackles intersubjectivity at work in a choreographic process, i.e. a productive learning situation, exchange and shared authorship between the choreographer and the performer. The second axis addresses intertextuality as the site of references, influences, and archives of any artwork, which I specifically delve into through centralizing the already existing material and dance-historical archives as collective cultural memory and a shared common. Instead of genesis of new material ‘from scratch’, I devise choreography as a tool for developing, composing, and organizing the already existing materials through embodiment and storytelling, and in dialogue with the collaborating performers, which takes me to an exploration of the digital, fragmentary, and personal movement archives.
Solveig Styve Holte is a dancer, choreographer, and research fellow at department of Dance at Oslo National Academy of the Arts from 2019-2025. In her research she delves into usages of already existing materials and historical archives in a contemporary choreographic practice, emphasizing questions of agency and shared authorship. The research aims to broaden and challenge the understanding of authorship, history writing and intertextuality in dance and choreography. She works extensively in collaborations and creates performances for museum, gallery, theater, outdoor spaces, as well as writings.
In November 2023 she premiered Frå Form til Famling at Henie Onstad Art Center, a new choreographic work departing from the material traces from the company Høvik Ballett and through a choreographic exploration question how this history has been and could possibly be imagined and remembered. The work took place as an interdisciplinary performance happening over several hours throughout the art center, and outside to the park and the fjords.
Another central work in her research is HORDE created together with choreographer Ingri Fiksdal and 10 teenagers. HORDE address and questions who participates in artistic work today and premiered at the CODA dance festival at the opening of the new Munch Museum in Bjørvika in October 2021 and were further developed with Kilden teater and Ravnedans in Kristiansand in 2022 and for Moving in November and KIASMA in Helsinki in 2023. Other recent works is KVILANDE LEVANDE (2023), Høstscena, Ålesund, Sixteen Dances (2023), Rosendal Teater, Trondheim, Undying- a handwork (2022) at Nationalmuseum Oslo, ViSir (2020) Parken Kulturhus, Ålesund, Flakkande Røynd (2019) Gallery Golsa/ Black box teater, Oslo, Lightness: Fleire (2017) at Dansens Hus,Oslo.
Together with Venke Sortland and Ann-Christin Kongsness she initiated and is the in editorial team for the anthology KOREOGRAFI/CHOREOGRAPHY with three editions (2016, 2018 and 2021). Holte shares her time between Oslo and Folkestad, where she is working towards developing YKS, a choreographic center at her farm.
In my presentation I want to share the questions and topics that feels urgent at this moment when I am done with most of the artistic creation in my fellowship and is in the middle of understanding how it is relevant to reflect on the works that has been created. I want to share film, photo, and written material from the works I have created, and have space to move, to be able of performing short excerpts from artistic work and memory. The urgent question in my research now is how I can memorize a reality of something that has happened. So far, my fellowship has been about developing methods and processes for working with archive material in dance and choreography. The pending question now is how I work with the archive and its traces from the works I have created and produced throughout the years of my fellowship. And how I do this in a manner I find of interest, choreographically and at the same time relevant for a broader field. Which again question the relation between the artistic manifestation, documentation, and reflection.