Retaining and reframing: notes on processes of remembering in Rosemary Butcher's choreography-making

In the final years of her choreographic practice, British choreographer Rosemary Butcher (1947–2016) worked closely with her archive of choreographic works spanning over four decades. This essay discusses Butcher’s ways of engaging with the past at a time when she was concerned with generating a history of her work through a focus on memory in the present. In the context of creating retrospective events as well as in the making of new choreographic work during the years 2014–15, Butcher’s creative processes involved a focus on specific recursive actions, such as remembering, retaining and reframing. Her simultaneous looking at what remains as part of her concern to create a future history in her new work demonstrates Butcher’s disciplinary choreographic interest in complex entanglements of time. The implications of ‘re(-)’ are played with.