The 'Church Hall' is a metonym for the Private Dancing School, ubiquitous in the UK, whose principal clients are young girls. The thesis interrogates the notion that taking part in ballet is a capitulation to the 'stereotypically feminine', by analysing the testimony of girls aged between 8 and 11 who attend local dancing schools. It presents their comparative assessment of the pedagogies in their primary schools and dancing classes. The thesis interrogates the stability of the idea of 'feminine' and its relationship with the political position of women, employing the theoretical, conceptual foundation for the obverse of a phallogocentric value system developed by psychiatrist Ian D.Suttie (1935), and the possibilities of loosening binary oppositions offered by the semiotic (Greimas') square. The thesis also proposes that the 'symbolic spread' (Frye, 1976: 59) of ballet, and hostility to it, are cognate with the concerns, dynamics, and reception of literary romance, and that both are perceived by the 'guardians oftaste and learning' (Northrop Frye's phrase, 1976:23) in terms which demonstrate Suttie's 'taboo on tenderness'. The thesis brings into representation the history and relationship to the state of British dance culture's 'Private Sector', in dialectical relationship to the largely negative terms in which it is cast by the academic dance community and the maintained education sector. The thesis challenges most private dance schools' exclusion from access to an authentic ballet 'text' by arguing it to be, like ballet's history in the working theatre, marginalised on ideological as much as artistic grounds. It recognises the place of the dancing class in social history, and presently, as a locus of social capital (Putnam, 2000) and, with reference to information from parents and popular culture, as a 'Women's Room' (French, 1977). The study is in part ethnographic, in part literary criticism, and in part historical; it considers representations in fiction, criticism, historiography, and other sources; it also draws on research in cultural and critical theory, education, anthropology, the history of art, sociology, hermeneutics, and other philosophy. It is post-positivist and qualitative. Neither its historical and social findings, nor its theoretical approach, have appeared before in the critical record.

This thesis is a practitioner’s perspective on the field of movement studies initiated by the European artist-researcher Rudolf Laban (1879-1958) and its particular context in Brazil. Not only does it examine the field of knowledge that Laban proposed alongside his collaborators, but it considers the voices of Laban practitioners in Brazil as evidence of the contemporary practices developed in the field. As a modernist artist and researcher Rudolf Laban initiated a heritage of movement studies focussed on investigating the artistic expression of human beings, which still reverberates in the work of artists and scholars around the world. Thus my research is shaped by an investigation into the experience of the field’s practitioners, and how their activities shape the materialisation of Laban’s discourse nowadays. In this sense, not only their experience but also my own (as a Laban-practitioner myself) were the main materials and sources for my investigation. From this material I asked questions regarding the landscape of Laban practices in Brazil and the contemporaneity of Laban’s discourse. To develop this study I initiated an oral history project (collecting narratives from Brazilian practitioners), which evolved into an ethnography of the international and Brazilian field of Laban studies. In fact my intense participation and individual exploration of Laban praxis shaped my methods to articulate an embodied debate of the field. As a ‘history of the present’ based on individual and collective experiences, this study draws on Foucault to drive a critical perspective on the material and to finally debate the authorship of Laban’s discourse. This thesis thus starts with an overview of Laban studies. It then narrows down to consider the scape of Laban practices in Brazil, detailing the work of three local artists. While submerging myself in the field’s practices and theories and the lives of the Brazilian Laban-practitioners, I found that the work that is developed outside the United-States and European circle of practice and research may provide clues for a valuable understanding of the materiality of Laban’s discourse in the twenty-first century. Thus, this study proposes that practitioners who are engaged with the (constant) development of Laban studies can potentially be considered as (co-)authors of Laban praxis as it emerges in Brazil and worldwide.

To assume that dance as an art form is about creating and displaying sequences of movement in space is to undermine choreography’s potential as a way of thinking through movement. The interdisciplinary relations between philosophy and dance explored in this research introduce a framework for exploring new possibilities of thinking through choreographic practice. How can dance be perceived as thought, considered as an experimental process, where the articulation between practice and theory becomes fundamental? The cinematic reversal of the subordination of time to movement proposed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze in his time-image concept offers a paradigmatic shift which has the potential to find profound resonance in the perception of movement in dance. This research explores how this shift informs a new perspective on choreography by discussing the implications of approaching choreographic composition through the lenses of Deleuze’s Pure Optical and Sound Image. As part of the practical choreographic investigation undertaken in this research, I have sought to challenge the conditions of the act of ‘seeing’ dance and to create an ‘opening condition’ for the use of choreography. To maintain an ‘open condition’ within the the practice of choreography, it is necessary to acknowledge the constant becoming of its materials that depend on non-hierarchical relations and on duration itself. My approach is improvisational and my compositional strategies, which are manifestly dependent on interdisciplinary collaborative processes, emphasise ways of thinking through both movement and the image.

The first part of this thesis provides an autobiographical reflection and three contextualising histories to illustrate the increasing codification of late twentieth century UK contemporary dance into discrete cultures. These are professional contemporary dance and professional performance, dance participation and communitarian intervention, and dance as subject for study and training. The central section of the thesis examines post-millennial reports and papers by which government, executives and public sector arts organisations in both England and Scotland have sought to construct and steer dance policy toward greater collaborative connections on financial and ideological grounds. This is contrasted with a theoretical consideration of collaboration drawing on a range of academic approaches to consider the realities and ideals of creative and artistic collaboration and organisational collaboration. Finally, the thesis draws together these historical, theoretical and policy driven considerations in a series of six case studies to establish the network of connections. Two professional contemporary artists and companies, two community dance organisations and two education departments (one of each from Edinburgh, Scotland and one of each from the North West of England) are scrutinised to assess the challenges, tensions and opportunities in reconciling policy driven collaboration with artistic integrity.

This PhD thesis examines the way in which spectatorial relationship with certain dance works is reconfigured through emerging practices for documenting, analysing and ‘scoring’ dance, paying particular attention to the role of digital technology. I examine three central case studies, developed between 2009 and 2013, which are outcomes of major research projects, these are; Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced (Forsythe and OSU 2009), Using the Sky (Hay and Motion Bank 2013) and A Choreographer’s Score: Fase, Rosas danst Rosas, Elena’s Aria, Bartók (De Keersmaeker and Cvejić 2012). These ‘scores’ fall under the title of ‘choreographic objects’, a term which, following Leach, deLahunta and Whatley (2008) I use to refer to collaboratively produced, artist-­‐led objects that utilise technology in various ways, to explore and disseminate choreographic processes. Focussing on western contemporary theatre dance practices and drawing on discourses from Dance Studies, Performance Studies, Philosophical Aesthetics and Digital Theory, I consider how ‘choreographic objects’ pose philosophical questions regarding the ways in which audiences access, interpret, appreciate and value works, examining the evolving role of the score in issues of identity and ontology. I also consider the score-­‐like nature of these objects, drawing comparisons with codified movement notations, such as Labanotation, developed by Hungarian dance theorist Rudolf von Laban (1879 – 1958). The case studies pose many queries, however the central focus of this research is on three key questions; what are ‘choreographic objects’? How do they reconfigure spectatorial engagement with specific dance works? And, how does this reconfiguration encourage a rethinking of their ontological statuses? The case studies demonstrate an increased interest in the articulation, examination and dissemination of choreographic process. In recent years many artists, based primarily in Europe and the USA, such as Siobhan Davies (1950 -­‐ ), Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (1960 -­‐ ), William Forsythe (1949 -­‐ ), Emio Greco (1965 -­‐ ), Steve Paxton (1939 -­‐ ); have teamed up with researchers and technologists to develop digital, or partially digital objects which examine and articulate their choreographic processes. deLahunta (2013b) suggests that together these artists give rise to a ‘community of practice’. This is a notion formulated by Etienne Wenger (1998) to describe groups of people who are engaged in collective learning, including, for example, “a band of artists seeking new forms of expression” (Wenger 2006: 1). The shared interest in cultivating new ways to express choreographic process generates a form of community between these artists. The objects generated through these investigations are labelled ‘scores’, ‘archives’ and ‘installations’, however, each one problematises their categorical label, thus generating the rubric of ‘choreographic objects’; an emerging class of object which both crosses and defies existing modes of description. The circulation of ‘choreographic objects’ is relatively new therefore a detailed examination of their ontology, function and impact provides a significant theoretical and practical contribution to current dance discourses and practice. This research contextualises these objects, situating them socio-­‐culturally and examining the motivations and repercussions. The ontological probing considers the nature of the objects and their impact on the way we perceive and conceptualise the notion of the dance ‘work’.

The subject of this thesis is the cancan – a dance form that emerged in Paris in the 1820s, and that has undergone a number of transformations in its continued performance, both live and onscreen, over the last two hundred years. The thesis focuses on particular historical moments during which the cancan’s embodiment of social tensions caused it to gain visibility as a site of both desire and moral panic, often centring on the supposedly uncontrollable bodies that it creates and performs. These moments are characterised by the employment of various legal, mechanical, digital and critical technologies to capture the cancan’s disorderly performance. The complex relationship between the cancan, these technologies and the shifting historical, cultural and political contexts which animate them, form the crux of the discussion. The cancan’s emergence and development as a live dance form in the nineteenth century, its relation to the invention of cinema in the 1890s, its popularity in narrative cinema of the 1920s and 1950s, and its revival in Baz Luhrmann’s film Moulin Rouge! (2001), are analysed from a postmodern perspective, in which modernist hierarchies of high and low, elite and popular, mind and body, are reinterpreted as structures of power. It is argued that at these moments the cancan becomes a particularly salient mediator of the conflict between rational and irrational body politics that had its origins in the Enlightenment. By embodying irrationality, and later, various intersections of rationality and irrationality, cancan performers and spectators make manifest alternative constructions of the body and society that may be utopian, dystopian, or both. In doing so, they participate corporeally in the ongoing negotiation of post-Enlightenment body politics. The thesis thus seeks to demonstrate the importance of popular cultural forms such as the cancan for reconstructing cultural histories in postmodernity.

Currently, across dance studies, choreographies are usually discussed as representational of the choreographer, with little attention focused on the dancers who also bring the work into being. As well as devaluing the contribution that the dancer makes to the choreographic process, the dancer’s elision from mainstream discourse deprives the art form of a rich source of insight into the incorporating practices of dance. This practice-based research offers a new perspective on choreographic process through the experiential viewpoint of the participating dancer. It involves encounters with contemporary choreographers Rosemary Butcher (UK), John Jasperse (US), Jodi Melnick (US) and Liz Roche (Ire). Utilizing a mixed-mode research structure, it covers the creative process and performance of three solo dance pieces in Dublin in 2008, as well as an especially composed movement treatise, all of which are documented on the attached DVD. The main hypothesis presented is that the dancer possesses a moving identity which is a composite of past dance experience, anatomical structures and conditioned human movement. This is supported by explorations into critical theory on embodiment, including Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of ‘the habitus’. The moving identity is identified as accumulative, altering through encounters with new choreographic movement patterns in independent contemporary dance practice. The interior space of the dancer’s embodied experience is made explicit in chapter 3, through four discussions that outline the dancer’s creative labour in producing each choreographic work. Through adopting a postmodern critical perspective on human subjectivity, supported by Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Alain Badiou, among others, the thesis addresses the inherent challenges which face independent contemporary dancers within their multiple embodiments as they move between different choreographic processes. In identifying an emergent paradigmatic shift in the role of dancer within dance- making practices, this research forges a new direction that invites further dancer-led initiatives in practice-based research.

The thesis is concerned with the exploration of the notion of ‘flow’ from both a psychological and dance analysis perspective in order to extend the meaning of flow and move beyond a partiality of understanding. The main aim of the thesis recognises the need to understand, identify and interpret an analysis of the moments of flow perceivable in a dancer’s body during improvisatory practice, through technologically innovative means. The research is undertaken via both philosophical and practical enquiry. It addresses phenomenology in order to resolve the mind/body debate and is applied to research in flow in psychology by Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, and flow in movement analysis by Rudolf Laban and Warren Lamb. The significance of this endeavour can be seen in the reconsideration of the relation between mind and body, and art and science which informs the methodology for the research (Part One). The three main outcomes of the research are related to each of the three subsequent parts. The first research outcome is the articulation of a transdisciplinary approach to understanding flow and was developed by expanding on the current definitions of flow through an innovative transdisciplinary methodology (Part Two). Research outcome two addresses the intersubjective nature of flow, which was identified within improvisation. From this two methods were constructed for the collection and interpretation of the experience of the dancer. Firstly, through reflective practice as defined by Donald Schön. And secondly, an argument was provided for the use of motion capture as an embodied tool which extends the dancers embodied cognitive capabilities in the moment of improvisation (Part Three). The final research outcome was thus theorised that such embodied empathic intersubjectivity does not require a direct identification of the other’s body but could be achieved through technologically mediated objects in the world (Part Four). Subsequently, the findings from the research could support further research within a number of fields including dance education, dance practice and dance therapy, psychology, neuroscience, gaming and interactive arts.

This thesis undertakes the Deleuzian experiment of a conceptual site development of contemporary choreography through analysis of the works of Antonia Baehr, Juan Dominguez, Xavier Le Roy and Eszter Salamon. It examines the way these works transform choreography qualitatively by elaborating singular methods which couple the issue of movement with the creation of aesthetic regimes. As opposed to a representational outline of choreography’s ontology, my thesis investigates the participatory potential of choreography by focussing on the singular relational assemblages that each choreography creates with the audience. These singular relational assemblages defy practical philosophy insofar as they require a methodology which can account for their dynamic complexity without reducing them either to pre-established categories or to a static analysis. On the basis of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s transcendental empiricism, my thesis responds to this challenge by establishing contamination and articulation as methodological concepts for an open ended inventory of what choreography can do. Contamination, on the other hand, accounts for the qualitative transformations that concern bodies in their power to assemble and to be assembled. Articulation, on the other hand, names the qualitative transformations of sense that a choreography conveys through its differential composition. Both concepts are inseparably interwoven and specified in the aesthetic regimes of the Retenu and the Dé-lire. While the Retenu scrutinizes the way movements generate a continuous transformation of body images (cinematic retenu) and sensations (cine-emotional retenu), the Dé-lire explores the choreography of temporal relations. Showing how these singular assemblages and their implicit methods critically redistribute the sensible of choreography at the turn of the twenty-first century, the four concepts of my thesis form the argument in itself. This argument highlights the ethical impact of qualitative experimental research, specifies the prolific capacities of choreography and forces practical philosophy to rethink their relation.

This thesis offers critical exploration of the intersection of four elements within the historical space, or field, of UK theatre dance between 2007 and 2012: disability, impairment, dance and artistry. It addresses four questions: What is disability? What is disability in relation to dance? What supports the entry of a disabled dance artist into the field of professional dance in the twenty-first century? How can we approach a critical analysis of the works they create? At the centre of the thesis are case studies of three self-described disabled dance artists, performers and choreographers: Caroline Bowditch, Marc Brew, and Claire Cunningham. The studies attend to the form and content of their creative work, the structures of the dance field in which they practice as artists, and their personal and career trajectories. The studies are both situated by and situate earlier chapters addressing constructions of disability, cultural representations of disability and the emerging field of Disability Arts. They demonstrate that disability, in dance as in other fields, concerns attitudes, arrangements and structures that disable participation. These are attitudes fed by imaginings around the ideal dancing body, and the illusion that variations in bodily form and capabilities are neither normal nor to be expected. I draw on Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field to consider the interconnections between structures, external and internalised, that support or limit the disabled artist’s perception of what is possible for them within the professional dance field. Using Cameron’s affirmative model of disability, I argue that when disabled dance artists are freed to use their experiences of living in a disabling world, and to make use of the unique capabilities of their bodies as valid sources for their art, they can and do contribute to the capacity of dance as an art form to explore the full depth and range of human experience.