Mark Tompkins SEC Song and Dance

Tompkins' Abstract Performances

Mark Tompkins is an American choreographer and teacher of ballet and contemporary. In his book, has describes his numerous multimedia collaborations with professional and emerging artists.  Passionate, energetic and very talented, this dance performer has built an international career. He understands choreography as an experience more than as a sequence of movements, which is why he doesn’t create separated parts but a net from which things arise.

Dance is a powerful tool. It can persuade, encourage, inspire, provoke and evoke. That’s something worth exposing to more people. The self-understanding of contemporary dance/choreography is determined by (none) identification with the current models of virtuosity/incarceration/immateriality that are present in the labor market. Artistic work is perceived as a part of the uniformed appearance of work and a great differentiation of content, and in fact indifference to content precisely because of the abstraction of labor imposed by capital. On the one hand, the work has become much more uniform from a physical point of view, but also more differentiated and more specialized in terms of the content it develops.



In more precise definitions of abstract work, there is indifference to the content of the work, as well as to the object of work. This indifference means that capital assumes easy moving from one job to another, because of its sole interest in creating abstract values. Such a basis of attitude towards work has enabled an undisturbed transformation of capitalism into a cognitive, immaterial work. The transformation of human activities into "empty abstract time performances, is progressively expanding to all possible forms of social activity.

Mark Tompkins believes that dancers should be versatile and at the service of the project, and expects dancers to be mentally flexible and ready to improvise on stage. They should be spontaneous, observant, attentive to the group and ready to make creative proposals. I try to take them out of their comfort so that they find things that they don’t know about themselves. Mark Tompkins prefers to have dancers that want to participate in my project and that are ready to invest on it. For me, dancers are human beings and I like to establish a close relationship with them.

His dance includes sensitive, thoughtful or emotional content. Tompkins works as a freelancer developing her individual projects and collaborating with various artists. In addition to working as a choreographer, this artist has performed both in dance pieces and plays. His performances have been presented internationally and in the United States. Mark Tompkins’ work is based on a symbiosis of choreography, performance and visual art
 

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  1. TAG: Abstract Performance Mark Tompkins

Contents of this tag:

  1. The Origins of Modern Ballet

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