The thesis advances the notion of non-representational poetics positioning this as a genealogical extension in the field of conceptual dance. Concerned with “the genesis of the act of thinking in thought itself” (Deleuze, 2004: 176) the thesis focuses on modes of thinking by choreographers and performers in developing and performing the works addressed. Acknowledging Dance4’s as yet under articulated support of challenging and experimental choreographic practices in the UK, a non-representational poetics is elaborated through an analysis of works programmed in Dance4’s Nottdance Festival 1999-2003, and through practical and written articulation of works by the author developed while Research Artist at Dance4. Chapter one introduces the multi-modal methods and positions the three text-based elements of works examined - the score for Schreibstück by Thomas Lehmen, The General Rules Score for Project by Xavier Le Roy and Fiona Templeton’s text for Invisible Dances by Bock & Vincenzi - as more-than archival remains. Chapter two presents the contextual and theoretical premise taking Jerome Bel’s critique of representation (Lepecki, 2007: 45) in the work Jérôme Bel as departure point. Chapter three argues that Thomas Lehmen’s Schreibstück expands Bel’s critique by exposing the structural and agential processes of a system that is not representational. The following four chapters are dedicated to four works that operate through the activation of agential relational processes: Xavier Le Roy’s Project, Bock & Vincenzi’s Invisible Dances and the author’s two works what remains and is to come (in collaboration with Katrina Brown) and Perception Frames. Chapters four to seven respectively argue that: what remains and is to come operates through intra-relational material processes, Project through social processes that generate collective decision-making, Invisible Dances through an ongoing embedding of perceptual sensing processes and Perception Frames, through processual instructions for giving attention in perceptual sensing. The research contributes new knowledge through its articulation of a non-representational poetics that operates in the conjoined and processual operations of agency and relations to produce the choreographic work.

This thesis presents the findings of a practice-led investigation which explored relationships between the site and the author's choreographic process through the creation, performance and analysis of three site-specific dance works performed in different locations. Site-specific dance performance is defined here as dance performance created and performed in response to a specific site and location. The research contributes new knowledge to the field through the articulation of methods for site-specific choreography developed through practical experimentation. The thesis references key debates from the field of site-specific performance and explores how phenomenological theory was employed as a key framework throughout the research process. The research investigation is further informed by theory and practice drawn from the fields of choreography and performance, site-specific practice and theory, human geography and spatial theory. The investigation examines how a pathway through the site-specific creative process was navigated, and explores methods through which the choreographer created site-specific performance aimed at actively engaging the audience member with the work and its location. Through this process, this research proposes that choreographed site-performance can invoke an increased sense of awareness, engagement and a heightened sense of 'being-in-the-world' for the choreographer, performer and audience member. The thesis contains both a written component and DVD documentation of the practical work. Through discussion and analysis of the performance works and their creative processes the investigation provides an insight into how creative choreographic processes operated within each site-specific dance context. The investigation identifies and articulates creative, processes employed within the practice and aims to contribute new knowledge to the fields of site~specific dance discourse, choreographic studies and site-specific performance practice and theory.

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This thesis locates at the intersection between the practice of dance and the notion of 'cultural difference' in the discourses of contemporary globalization. Electing to focus on dancers and dance practices from South East Europe, and critically drawing on post-colonial, Balkan, and globalization studies, the thesis interrogates the multiplying and shifting meanings of the terms East and Eastern Europe in an age of globalization and transnationality. By investigating masculinities and labour in professional dance in the context of the contemporary dance scene in South East Europe, the thesis looks at the cultural, historical, and material conditions that shape both the dancer's experience of his/her dance practice and his/her experience of 'the everyday'. The emphasis on the dancer's experience of 'the everyday' is designed to critically explore and to challenge the established methodological boundaries of dance studies: the critical focus shifts away from the scholarly attentions that are more regularly paid to the phenomenology and perception of performance towards the conditions of dance production. As the thesis approaches dance as a practice similar to any other art practice in the globalized art markets of 'the contemporary modernity', it understands the production of dance as now bound to the function of performance in relation to the historical and cultural discourses of dance, and as conditioned by geopolitical tensions and contradictions in the world of twenty-first century globalization. Finally, in respect to dance practices in South East Europe, the thesis traces the aesthetic and political choices that dancers make in their attempts to articulate their 'difference' through practice/s resistant to commodification as a 'spectacle of difference' in an increasingly globalized contemporary dance market.

This dissertation looks at 'deep dance' experience in high-tempo, repetetive, rhythmic, continuous music, that lasts over a long time. I argue that dance is fundamentally elastic and therefore it can neither be located nor limited or identified through writing. I suggest a study of dance that is ultimately liminoid, middleness is all about the liminoid. This work aims to remain within and enact this liminoid state and through this I argue for a social science methodology that is liminoid. Following John Law I challenge objective realist claims of social scientific methods. By engaging in dancing and using a video camera, I generate middling by enacting the middle and offer this as a dancing of methods. Dancing in the middle and being a part of its affectivity and feelings is a mode of making the research, therefore in a way 1 work with my body and my data is mostly derived from perceptions of dance.

This thesis examines an approach to creating contemporary dance inspired by the three forms of dance - classical ballet, classical Thai dance and I-San dance - on which my own experience is based, I situate myself for this thesis , within both the academic and practical elements of this project, as researcher, practitioner and choreographer. This research through practice is structured through three dance performances. Each project has a specific set of research enquiries that respond to the key thesis questions - 'how to create the I-San body' and 'how to bring I-San body back to Thailand' - which form the overall focus of this PhD project. In each practice project, I employ the notion of contemporary dance from both the Western and Thai contexts to work with my existing dance experience. The outcome from each project is analysed through the theoretical frame work in terms of establishing the notion of I-San Body. The reader will be directed towards illustrative DVD footage of training and performance elements of the project at specific points throughout the thesis.

This project investigates the international film careers and writings of African American dancers Josephine Baker (1906-1975) and Katherine Dunham (1909- 2006) as dynamic sites of identity construction to illuminate the conflicting ways in which individual performances complicate categorisations of "race" and "gender." By exploring the ways in which these two artists mediate popular constructions of black women's identities, my investigation interrogates widely held conceptions of authorship and artistic hierarchies. It provides insights into intercultural identity formations by positioning black women's physical performances as sites on which historical struggles over cultural meanings have been played out and contested. Consequently, this study examines transatlantic struggles for control over pre-Civil Rights era cultural embodiments of black womanhood and seeks to establish these representations as not only diverse, but also deeply complex and polysemous. The thesis turns first to Baker and Dunham's writings. Chapter One analyses three of Baker's co-authored autobiographies, Voyages et aventures de Josephine Baker (1931), Une vie de toutes les couleurs (1935), and Josephine (1978); Chapter Two examines Dunham's anthropological memoirs, Journey to Accompong (1946) and Island Possessed (1969). I argue that these texts complicate contemporaneous racial ideologies and shed light on the autobiographical and intellectual underpinnings of dance performances that were, and continue to be, dismissed as exotic entertainment. Indeed, as with their dance performances, this thesis argues that Baker and Dunham's writings were acts of self-invention and re-invention, as they challenged rigid racial frameworks. I then turn to Baker and Dunham' s films to evidence the contrasting ways in which their performances were translated and received on both sides of the Atlantic. Chapters Three and Four scrutinise Baker's diverse performance strat~gies in French cinema, first as a silent performer and then as a glamorous "star"; Chapter Five considers Dunham's intervention in Second World War-era Hollywood racial codes and Chapter Six compares her representations with her reception in European post-war cinema. Together, Baker and Dunham' s films demonstrate that they sought to intervene in frequently demeaning cultural frameworks by adopting black diasporic dance formations as vehicles for artistic experimentation. Although their creative intentions were complicated by audience interpretations, I show how Baker and Dunham used dance performance to both engage with and contest contemporary racial and gender representations.

Through the exploration of practice and theory, this thesis aims to elucidate the characteristics of movement-based interactive art and the kinesfield, a term developed during the course of the research to describe the publics' body-medium. Movement-based interactive art is based on choreographed movements of the body, media and specialized technologies which facilitate new forms of participatory movement experience. This emergent art form has initiated new methods of experiencing and presenting dance in the public domain. lt is argued that this leads to new artistic developments which may constitute a paradigm shift of the concept of the body-medium in the field of dance. To understand whether the shift is indeed paradigmatic, and to contribute to the development of dance and technology, this study introduces and applies the concept of the kinesfield to extend the theory of the body-medium as kinesphere, first proposed by Laban, and to challenge its characteristics in the context of movement-based interactive art. The concept of the kinesfield is employed to describe the relational dynamic of movement interactions which traverse the body and material forms in unbounded space. By this account, the body-medium is not defined geometrically, as in Laban's theory, but as a temporal and spatial field. The kinesfield accounts for a complexity of movement characteristics which pertain to the dynamic and relational experiences which occur between the biological body and its natural and atmospheric surroundings, natural forces, and its socio-cultural milieu. The argument unfolds as a triangulation of three movement-based interactive artworks (Shifting Ground, trajets, and Raumspielpuzzle) presented during the course of the thesis, my physical and experiential knowledge in the field of dance and an interdisciplinary literature investigation in the fields of dance, physiology/psychology/cognitive science, philosophy and sociology, plastic arts and cinema. This written document is accompanied by a CD-ROM which serves as an electronic appendix including images, videos and diagrams of the works referenced in the written thesis.

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