Relative Proximity: Reaching Towards an Ethics of Touch in Cross-Generational Dance Practice

This paper addresses the potential for an embodied ethics of touch in the context of cross-generational dance work, in particular through the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. Focusing on choreographic processes and performances involving parents and children I examine the relationships that are re-orientated through the shifting mode of being that is dancing together. This is in part an auto-ethnographic enquiry as I reflect on my own experiences as a new mother dancing with my daughter in Baby Jam and relating to her in life. Proximity is used as a way to frame the auto-ethnographic lens and to discuss ethics as a way of relating. This paper suggests an ambiguous definition of ‘contact’; conceiving of it as a mode of communicating as well as a dance practice - what Erin Manning refers to as a ‘reaching towards’ (2009,14). The paper questions how contact might be defined without the use of touch through including the potential of touch as well as its actualisation. Using Manning’s notion of relational movement, this paper refers to the ‘about-to-be’ moment in contact – and the ethical relationships that this engenders. Using three case studies as examples, this paper cross-references my own practice of a cross-generational duet project, my experiences as a new mother and the work of Giulio D’Anna and his recent piece choreographed with his father ‘Parkin’Son’. It discusses the ontological implications of contact across generations as a way of being-together, reaching towards an ethics of touch rather than fixing its meaning

From Direct Action to Being There: The Ambiguous Politics of Community Dance and the Occupy Movement (A History of Resemblance)

This chapter re-orientates the politics of Community Dance in the UK through ‘a history of resemblance’ using Michel Foucault’s (1972) notion of the ‘episteme’. This alternative historiography creates relationships between Community Dance in the UK and the experimental choreographic approaches arising in the 1960s and 1970s and to political movements and imperatives; in particular suggesting synchronic connections between the physical tactics of the global Occupy movement and site-specific Community Dance. Rather than specific physical actions that constitute ‘dance’ or ‘direct action’, this chapter argues for occupation as a method for both practices, locating politics in an embodied ontology of being-with-others (Jean-Luc Nancy, 2000)

Unresolved Differences: Choreographing Community in Cross-Generational Dance Practice

This practice-led research enquires into how ideologies of community as commonality have informed the dominant rhetoric in the Community Dance sector since the 1970s, and formed the conditions of possibility for Cross-generational Dance, a reciprocal relationship between discourse and practice that has arguably been overlooked in the historiography of Community Dance. Framed by Michel Foucault’s (1972) concept of the episteme – an umbrella mode of knowing that permeates historical taxonomies – Community Dance history is linked here with experimental choreographic processes during the 1960s and 1970s, and Relational Art of the 1990s. Such relationships suggest a more critical, politically-orientated genealogy. Cross-generational Dance is discussed through a reflexive approach to the writing which reveals how philosophies of community are divided into those associated with the idea of commonality – either through shared characteristics or common goals – and those that advocate a break with these imperatives, here examined through the philosophies of Adriana Cavarero, and Jean-Luc Nancy. Given its perceived agenda to bring people of distinct ages together into a harmonious totality, Cross-generational Dance provides a particular opportunity to discuss community, examined here through case-studies of key choreographers at the time of writing – Rosemary Lee, and Cecilia Macfarlane. The discussion of age is made explicit through an analysis of models of difference, and introduces how an ethical encounter with others can avoid the totalising impulse of community in subsuming these differences. The methodology of ‘relational choreography’ underpins the phenomenological emphasis on process and relationships in choreography over more conventional conceptions of product and form in dance and supports the hypothesis that community can be experienced as ‘being in relation through a phenomenology of uniqueness’. This conception does not rely on polarising the positions of the individual and the community, or self and other, young and old, but rather generates an experience of uniqueness, wherein differences remain unresolved, shared amongst ‘others plural’ (Nancy, 2000). This thesis therefore reconsiders what community means in the context of dance practice

Moving Dramaturgy

This is a submission related to a performance and workshop. Passage for Par was a site based choreography at the intersection of performance and visual art by Rosemary Lee performed in Cornwall in June 2017. Working as 'assistant choreorgapher' I developed research questions about my role leading to a residency and workshop investigating questions about the positioning of dramaturg and choreographer. Moving Dramaturgy is a practical workshop event that evolved from this process and the necessity to articulate and locate the dramaturgs body and physical practice within the choreographic process

"Dancing Through the Hard Stuff": Repetition, resilience and female solidarity in the landscape - Rosemary Lee's Passage for Par

This is a chapter of conversations, thoughts, and images that have arisen from within the choreographic process that became Passage for Par— a site-specific performance by Rosemary Lee with assitant choreographer Ruth Pethybridge performed in the summer of 2018. Passage for Par was commissioned by the Cornubian Arts and Science Trust (CAST) for the Groundwork program that bought international art to Cornwall in the South West of the UK. The chapter takes as premise the dancers voice as central to interpretations of the work, using the experience of performers as a basis for understanding concepts of landscape, resiliance and female solidarity. The writing culminates in a conversational format between the two choreographers, a dialogue which was part of the creative process itself

Shapeshifters: Self-organising systems, migration and repetition at the intersection of folk and popular dance

This lecture demonstration works across practice and theory to explore how the migration of movement from popular and folk dance, into improvisation and choreography, are self-organising systems that generate new understandings and iterations of what can be considered folk dance

Practitioner Review: effectiveness and mechanisms of change in participatory arts-based programmes for promoting youth mental health and well-being – a systematic review

Background: Participatory arts-based (PAB) programmes refer to a diverse range of community programmes involving active engagement in the creation process that appear helpful to several aspects of children's and young people's (CYP) mental health and well-being. This mixed-methods systematic review synthesises evidence relating to the effectiveness and mechanisms of change in PAB programmes for youth. Method: Studies were identified following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses approach. Eleven electronic databases were searched for studies of PAB programmes conducted with CYP (aged 4–25 years), which reported mental health and well-being effectiveness outcomes and/or mechanisms of change. A mixed-methods appraisal tool assessed study quality. A narrative synthesis was conducted of effectiveness and challenges in capturing this. Findings relating to reported mechanisms of change were integrated via a metasummary. Results: Twenty-two studies were included. Evidence of effectiveness from quantitative studies was limited by methodological issues. The metasummary identified mechanisms of change resonant with those proposed in talking therapies. Additionally, PAB programmes appear beneficial to CYP by fostering a therapeutic space characterised by subverting restrictive social rules, communitas that is not perceived as coercive, and inviting play and embodied understanding. Conclusions: There is good evidence that there are therapeutic processes in PAB programmes. There is a need for more transdisciplinary work to increase understanding of context–mechanism–outcome pathways, including the role played by different art stimuli and practices. Going forward, transdisciplinary teams are needed to quantify short- and long-term mental health and well-being outcomes and to investigate optimal programme durations in relation to population and need. Such teams would also be best placed to work on resolving inter-disciplinary methodological tensions

Five Songs: more than a metaphor

This article looks at Five Songs on the Rooftops, which took place on 12th June 2010, through my eyes as a performer, the artist who conceived of it: Angela Praed, and responses to it. I will also suggest that Five Songs raises important questions about how we view and experience art through the notion of ‘relational aesthetics’ as defined by art critic Nicolas Bourriaud

Un Abrazo Sin Tiempo

Between November 2007 to April 2008 I travelled to Argentina where I gained more than I had bargained for. I came back with a new love, dancing Tango; and a new sense of the body I inhabit. Thanks to the Lisa Ullman Scholarship Fund I was able to return to Buenos Aires this year to develop my skills in this dance and furthermore to investigate the use of Tango in the palliative care unit at the Enrique Tornu Hospital, Buenos Aires

Sure Lines? Reflections on Dramaturgy in participatory dance and performance

After a galvanising conversation with emerging dance dramaturge Miranda Laurence, Dance Artist and Lecturer Ruth Pethybridge reflects on her own new role as dramaturge with Simon Birch Dance, what this means for her evolving practice and how the role raises particular questions and opportunities for the participatory dance secto