Proper Dancing in the Background is an art work in three parts. The first part consists of a live performance, the second of a video installation and the third is a manual. By using the manual one can see the construction of elements that were also used in the other two parts. By following these simple instructions you are invited to make your own performance and video installation of "Proper Dancing in the Background"
Proper Dancing in the Background was initiated during a Liminal Institute residency in Gasthuis theatre, Amsterdam in 2000. This residency consisted of a two week laboratory where works where developed by five individual 'liminal' choreographers. The other four choreographers where: Nicole Beutler, Martin Butler, Erik Pold and Litò Walkey. We rehearsed during the days and met in the evenings to show each other the results of the day and give each other feedback


"I wonder how we might think about Eva Meyer-Keller's solo art work 'proper dancing in the background'? As a performance event, a life-manual, a ritual of the everyday, or an exposure? While it moves beyond simple reception and classification it seems to be all these things. A set of actions take place, the body moves and interacts with objects, Meyer-Keller enacts transformation, she demonstrates the actions and later exposes herself. When she is covered in slimy vaseline she tries to imprint herself onto nature. It all seems awkward. Yet all this happens with a grim detachment, an obsessive attention to detail, even a certain urgency. The performance is made by its attention to detail and deferred by its everydayness.
"Proper dancing in the background" calls up things I can't express, a sense of the uncanny-something strangely familiar yet unreachable, a feeling of disturbance. Victor Turner spoke of performance art as a "life crisis ritual"; through the mechanism of performance everyday practice and experience become symbolic and ritualised. Their planning and repetition as performance might interrogate political, social and personal space or experience. The act might embody feelings of disturbance about being in the world (try balancing four parts of the body on four tins as Meyer-Keller does). The abstract notion that Turner called liminality wherein life and performance might be forever blurred underscores the enactment of a life crisis ritual such as this. 'Proper dancing in the background seems to exist in between, it is theatrical and real, and uncanny.
This is how I see this moving piece, it is recalled in my mind and I question its intent. It sits between performance and the memory of her".  Peter Eckersall

Performance:
Liminal Institute, Gasthuis, Amsterdam, Holland, Januar 2000
Improvisation Festival, St. Marks Church, NYC, USA, December 2000
Manufacturing Dance, Tanzinitiative, Hamburg, Deutschland, Januar 2001
Das Feld, Dock 11, Berlin, Deutschland, March 2003
Glamour, Spielbudenplatz, Hamburg, September 2004. www.tanzinitiative.de

Video version:
Galerie Olaf Stüber, Berlin, Berlin, Deutschland, May-Jun 2000
Liminal Institute, Dock 11, Berlin, Deutschland, September 2000