Jack Gallagher

Jack Gallagher (Indianapolis, Indiana, USA) began dancing under Jean Pierre Bonnefoux at Indiana University and Chautauqua Institution. He moved to New York to continue his studies at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center. In New York Jack joined Nikolais and Louis Dance in 1990, ISO Dance in 1991 Tere O’Connor, Zvi Gotheiner and Neta Pulvermacher till 1993. Moving to Europe in 1994, Jack joined de Rotterdamse Dansgroep and in 1996 Dansgroep Krisztina de Châtel, Amanda Miller’s Ballett Freiburg / Pretty Ugly.

Since 1997 Jack has had an ongoing role as dancer, repetitor and teacher with Anouk van Dijk dance company. He began choreographing regularly in 2002 and formed his group- Bodies Anonymous (BA). In The Netherlands his work has toured 20 cities and has been invited to the Cadance Festival and The Oerol Festival. Abroad, Bodies Anonymous has been invited to 7 countries and is currently collaborating with Istanbul Dance Theater on a new full length work for 2010. Jack is a sought after teacher in contemporary dance and appears often in Dutch Dance academies and in HJS Studios in Amsterdam.

Jack is an autodidactic studier of philosophy and psychology and an independent dance researcher and fellow at the Danslab in Den Haag, The Netherlands. While at the Danslab, until 2011, Jack will be combining Performative Speech Act Theory with his technique and improvisation background. Jack is looking for new parameters for the language facility of the dancer to be activated in pure dance. He is also looking at how pure dance can be broadened by Lacanian Theory of Discourse.

What is the theme/goal of your project and how did it come about?
I am conducting a long term sustainable research into the insights and conjectures of the Performative Speech Act Theory (PSAT) and its inherent challenge to how we think of dance as a language. Language as a performance system radically differs from language as a cognitive technology. I started out with this research in 2009 as a Danslab research fellow. The research for and with ICKamsterdam now, which I titled Idioblast, is the second go 'round whereby I will apply my initial findings about the utility of both the PSAT mapping of how speech affects the body and how dance can be (re)sourced as a language. The question- How incorporated is language in the dancer as an artist and in the artist as a performer?

What do you want to achieve/learn/try with this project and through the collaboration with ICK?
In this phase, I am building methods for exploring the dancer's language facility in movement generation and performance. This hypothetical site as multiplicitous source, derived from a unified holistic mind-body paradigm where brain, sensory, soma and sub somatic sensory systems interact with the cognitive skills inherent in the familiar day to day speech roles of speaker/hearer. Speech is an act: to or from, within or without. Speech does things to us and does things for us.

Where do you want to be in 10 years from now?
In 2020, I would like to be celebrating (without killing myself doing it) the utility, fluidity and joy of having established a method for my art practice that lives up to the promise of today’s interdisciplinary art/science cross-fertilization in the areas in which I am invested: dance technique, performance, composition, philosophy, dramaturgy and science. My long term goals include various roles and multiple modalities as colleague, choreographer, performer, researcher, teacher, writer, lecturer, dramaturge and friend, so any of the rigorously disciplined and adventurously minded.