The SocioKinetic-bodymAPP, an Improvisation Tool for a Dance and Movement Practice applies a practice-as-research fieldwork methodology, framed by a sociokinetic form of analysis, to an interrogation of the negative influence of familiarity and habit in the choreographic workplace and practices of contemporary dance. The bodymAPP is an innovative system that offers a uniquely embodied method for exploring and experiencing human movement that is targeted to students, professionals and educators in the dance and performing arts who wish to uniquely enhance and expand their creative skills, expertise and understanding of improvisational techniques and possibilities. The need for such a ‘tool’ arose from my awareness, as a contemporary dance choreographer and educator of over 30 years standing, of the difficulty to avoid ingrained work patterns and practices when attempting to innovate or produce radically different ideas and directions in one’s daily routines as an artist. This thesis demonstrates a structured method and system for re-routing habitual work tendencies towards enterprising new areas of insight and surprise. Through applied concepts and holistic techniques, this research’s devised movement application tool and system, the bodymAPP (a ‘movement APP’ for the body), is formed and informed by a cross-disciplinary triangulation and integration of three key areas: sociology, everyday life and dance. From everyday life, an analytical deconstruction of walking and other pedestrian activities in public space supplies sociokinetic principles of movement that form the backbone of the bodymAPP system. Sociologists of the everyday provide a catalogue of techniques and ‘lenses’ for re-perceiving and re-engaging familiar territories of daily practice. Three in particular, accredited separately to 20th century Surrealism, Georges Perec’s notion of the ‘infraordinary’, and Husserl’s ‘phenomenological reduction’ – oblique, minutiae, epoché - were utilised in the bodymAPP’s development and are ingrained into its processes. Influenced by the legacies and precedents of Rudolf Laban, William Forsythe and Judson Dance Theatre in the areas of improvisational dance and movement analysis, this thesis is predominantly a practical manual containing the many tasks and strategies devised and tested in the studio with the assistance of a team of semi-professional and professional contemporary dancers. These exercises are used to learn the bodymAPP and apply it as an embodied tool to the exploration and invention of new movement experiences and possibilities. Crosspollinating Madeline Gins and Arakawa’s notion of ‘architectural body’ and Drew Leder’s ‘phenomenological anatomy’, the SocioKinetic-bodymAPP can be described as an ‘architected phenomenological anatomy’ whose purpose is to create, in the words of Michel Serres, ‘an exquisite proprioception’. This research centrally contributes to improvisational practices and creativity in the fields of dance and performance.

This thesis constitutes a performative research enquiry the outcomes of which are three live ensemble choreographic works by the author, Shrink’d (2005-2007), Doing, Done & Undone (2007-2009) and The Living Room (2010-2011). These have been documented and are presented on DVDs and online. The written thesis serves as an exegesis of these works by examining the notions of in-between contained within an aesthetic of ‘everydayness’ as manifested in the works and the ways in which these works intersect and dialogue with performance and dance theory, phenomenological, feminist and post-colonial theoretical perspectives. The writing begins by outlining the key choreographic concerns and ideas driving the research, specifically the notion of in-between and the works’ everyday aesthetic. It continues with a contextual framework charting the practice-led research methodologies employed, the key phenomenological metaphors and theoretical notions underpinning the enquiry as well as situating the works within a historical trajectory of choreographic practice. The main part of the thesis (Chapters Two to Four) serves as an analysis of the primary output of the research project – the works themselves, bridging distinct strands of critical theory. This section of the written thesis journeys from the ‘outside’, via an analysis of theatrical framing, to the core of the practice in an exploration of the choreographic concerns and processes that drove the research. The examination of theatrical framing discusses the dramaturgical methodologies employed in the submitted works, including the reconfiguration of theatrical space in Shrink’d, the compositional use of space, in Doing, Done & Undone and the referencing of the temporal frame in The Living Room arguing that by pointing to the performance frame and fraying the fourth wall the works facilitate an in-between embodied and reflective mode of viewing between performers and audience members. The investigation of the core of the practice examines portraiture via textual address and the interface of text with moving body, and then moves on to discuss the body as a parallel corporeal form of address, ‘a body that speaks’.

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.

The phenomenon of 'new dance' has received little sustained study, either in terms of its own history or in terms of its efforts to reconstruct the representation of gender in dance. This study assesses the extent to which representations of masculinity in the work of British new dance artists have differed significantly from the ways in which masculinity has been represented in mainstream theatre dance. A theoretical framework is developed for analyzing dance which takes account of theories already in existence and examines them critically from an ideological perspective. Whereas almost all existing dance theories confine their examination of dance as art to an analysis of its formal and aesthetic properties, the framework developed in this study takes account of the social and historical conditions of production and reception of the dance. While there has been recent work on images of women, issues relating to the representation of masculinity in dance have not received attention. This study therefore examines the relationship between the social construction of masculinity and the conventions and traditions through which masculinity is represented in cultural forms including theatre dance. This extends existing theories of the social and historical construction of the male body. In order to establish the context and antecedents of British new dance, representations of masculinity within theatre dance are examined from specific periods between 1840 and the present. An analysis of selected pieces of choreography by new dance artists identifies the ways through which these artists have been critical of, and challenged, dominant norms of representing masculinity in cultural forms. By critically dismantling mainstream dance conventions and problematizing technical virtuosity in male dance, new dance artists brought about a situation in which a new relationship was defined between the dancer's body and the meaning of dance movement. In some cases new dance pieces challenge the spectator to reassess aspects of masculine identity and experience that are generally denied or rendered invisible in mainstream cultural forms.

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