Breaths and beats: Vibrating at the borders of memory

Abstract

Writing out of dancing how do I address the dynamic, troubled, testing, transforming, vibrant and inventive work of dance through a dialogue with the past?  How might the inter-corporeal transmission of learning to dance from a renowned teacher of a European style of modern expressive dance in Ōtepoti, Dunedin, Aotearoa instil lifelong values and principles of practice that can be returned to and reworked across times and places to reinvigorate dancing in the present? Informed by Luce Irigaray’s ontology of breath, in this writing I attend to the foundational practices of respiration and expressivity in the teachings and choreography of modern dance pioneer Shona Dunlop-MacTavish