Löfgren presented at NORDISCO23 in Tampere, “Are you serious? Depictions at opera rehearsals”
Abstract:
During scenic opera rehearsals, the participants work together to create portrayals of characters to music. They use depictions–momentary scenes staged for the other participants–to propose and negotiate character behaviors that suit the developing aesthetics of the performance. This paper focuses on ‘non-serious’ proposal depictions: depictions that are designed to be recognized as not suitable for the performance. Whereas previous literature on non-serious depictions of art in pedagogical settings has shown how they are used as contrast pairs to a wished performance (Keevallik, 2010), non-serious depictions are here examined in a setting where the ‘wished performance’ is not yet decided. Building on findings of how depictions accomplish joint fictionalizations, absurdity, and teasing (Cantarutti, 2022), the paper looks at instances where the boundaries between serious and non-serious depictions become fluid. The material consists of 20 hours of video-recorded opera rehearsals in Swedish and English and the multimodal interaction analysis shows how aspects of depictions that are designed as non-serious become treated as serious, and vice versa, as they are explored jointly over time. The non-seriousness of proposals is thus negotiated in interaction through recipient responses. The ambiguity between serious and non-serious proposals is exploited as a resource when navigating the unknown territories of an aesthetic under development.
Non-lexical vocalizations 