This thesis enquires how a rethinking of sight as the primary sense for experiencing dance performance can instigate new choreographies that embody the interplay between seen and unseen, described and not described, inside and outside, subject and object. By ‘unseen’ I mean invisible to the eye but potentially available to other senses or imaginative capacities. Choreography is a methodological and critical lens through which to explore relationships between description, translation and sensory perception in a range of performance engagements that invite multi-sensory attention. The research is launched with implications arising from a consideration of audiodescription: the supposed neutrality of the speaker, the potential for cultural mismatches or power tensions in translation and the challenge of making spoken language more fully represent the body in performance. The thesis argues that rethinking ideas of description, from the beginning of a devising process, can lead to the production of choreographic work that does not privilege vision. The research for this thesis has involved choreographic practice combined with writing. In this writing, the on-going narrative of my choreographic studio work has been deliberately interwoven with analysis and contextualisation of this practice. The different elements enacted in the studio and at the writing desk have continually interacted, back and forth, identifying in the process, appropriate objectives for successive phases. For example, the reflections stimulated at each phase of concurrent theoretical research and studio work have deepened my choreographic enquiries, while also identifying other points requiring further exploration. This exploration has been carried out during further practical choreographic experiments in the studio, triggering still further theoretical analysis, and so on. In this way, the dancer writing becomes, and interacts with, the writer dancing. Sensory and kinaesthetic knowledge can build a more integrated and immersive sensual experience of dance as something to be not just observed but also engaged in. The intention is that insights from the research will inform strategies for original choreography expressed in performance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 306-335).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Wisconsin, 1963. / Typewritten copy. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 88-89).

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.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Texas Woman's University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-32).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Texas Woman's University, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 26-27).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Dance. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-76).

Thesis (M.A.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Dance. / Electronic thesis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 73-76). Also available in print ed.

This practice-led research employs choreographic and somatic practices, and their mediation through performance and/or technologies, to facilitate critical engagement and apprehension of notions of embodiment. The core concerns are movement, dance and the body, as sites of knowledge and as modes of inquiry, with particular focus on lived experience approached from a nondualist perspective. Central themes are action, attention, bodyscape, tensegrity, improvisation, interactivity, memory, language and gesture. Taking as a starting point the position that knowledge and mind may be embodied, and that the movement habits and stress markers which pattern bodyscape may in turn inform cognition, the choreographic practice seeks to illuminate, rather than explicate or demonstrate, aspects of embodiment. The methodological approaches are (en)active, heuristic and reflective. Dance, as a exemplar of movement, and choreography, as a mode of creative and critical engagement with dance, are the primary research tools. Somatic approaches to practice, performance and philosophy are investigated for their potential to develop or reveal embodied knowing and awareness. Technological mediation is employed to inform and augment perception and apprehension of the embodied experience of dance, from the perspectives of choreographer, performer and audience. The thesis comprises five dance-based performance works and a written text critically engaging the concepts behind and emergent from this praxis.

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’.