‘Practices of tactility, remembering and performance’ is a practice-led inquiry in which performance-making and writing are equal partners. The thesis comprises a performance folio and a dissertation. The folio comprises two performance works. / the backs of things: This 35-minute work for two dancers had a public season mid-way through the candidature (September 8th – 11th 2005). A DVD documentation is submitted with the dissertation. / here, now: This 50-minute multi-modal performance was presented for assessment during a public season of six performances (March 22nd – 25th 2007). It is a solo piece in which I perform. The work was attended by the examiners and a DVD documentation is submitted with the dissertation. / The dissertation provides a ‘narrative of a practice’ focused on tactility, remembering and performance. It elucidates what has arisen through the dual modalities of performance-making and writing. The dissertation is not an exegesis of the performance folio. Rather, it is a critical and reflective account of the practice within which the performances reside. / The arc of emergent meaning in the narrative of practice comprises three phases: Precedents; Choreographic Tactility; and Intercorporeal Remembering. In the first phase, I discuss the precursors to my subsequent practice of tactility and remembering. I detail how I sought to diminish the effects of the objectifying gaze by staging a series of interventions into the visual field of the dance. In the second phase, I articulate my use of touch, naming it a practice of choreographic tactility. I outline the connectivity of touch and suggest that it fosters an understanding of the intercorporeal nature of selfhood. I posit practices of tactility as arenas for a relational ontology. / In the third phase, I take the notion of intercorporeality thus established and show how it engenders an embodied knowledge of remembering. I define a range of heuristic devices that I established so as to craft remembering in my performance practice. Finally, I draw the discussion of tactility and remembering towards what I term an ‘aesthetics of tactility’. I describe this as a performance domain where intercorporeal remembering is privileged. This is instantiated in the poetic remembering of here, now with which the dissertation closes.

This dissertation explores how the subcultural practice of liquid dance emerged from US rave culture and continues to sustain itself and evolve in today’s era of social media and EDM festival culture. I draw upon the concept of flow as a lens to trace the historical, aesthetic, digital, social and subcultural trajectory of liquid dance. I analyze how this subculture continues to evolve through individual practice, as well as how dance is shared through online and live dance exchange. My dissertation consists of seven chapters that provide both academic and practitioner perspectives of liquid dance. My research methods combine a multidisciplinary approach to implementing semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and digital archival research. My fieldwork consists of interviewing fourteen liquid practitioners, as well as conducting ethnographic research at an EDM festival where liquid dancers annually attend and participate. The purpose of this project is twofold. One, to contribute new knowledge to the field of dance studies on the specific dance genre of liquid, which up until now has not been documented in this field. Two, to provide a space for practitioners to openly share their perspectives in a collaborative effort to produce new knowledge. From the beginning, it has been my intention to produce a dissertation that provides the foundation for a continuing series of academic discussions from which to draw upon for further, future research and critical engagement with liquid dance. This document may also be used as a template for scholars across disciplines to deploy as a lens to analyze and critique other subcultural dance practices within the continuum of rave, club and dance music festivals. / Dance

Indelible is a performance and dance research project. It has three outcomes or pathways, presented on DVD-ROM, via which the user-reader can experience multi-modal perspectives on remembering, memory, and representing performative ideas, events and actions. These pathways are video, writing and interactive and together they form a series of hypermedia framings by which the corporeal and philosophical underpinnings of the project are witnessed. The research is considered to be practice-led, in which my practice consists of choreographic strategies, physical actions, media-based processes, and writing. Within these core representations I have sought to confront the methodological and theoretical paradox affecting performance makers electing to recontextualise their work beyond live processes. How might the absence or disappearance of a so-called live work contribute to the overall design and representational practices underlying the outcomes? In this sense the three pathways that comprise Indelible generate a complex network of artistic, scholarly, poetic, and methodological layerings or enfoldings in which the user-reader is presented with possibilities for experiencing the vital subjectivity and inherent fallibility of memory and remembering. (For complete abstract open dopcument)

The individual's experience of inner authority takes centre stage in the majority of scholarship on New Ageism, with many writers highlighting this theme as a defnitive characteristic of the spiritual culture. The aim of this thesis is to explore this topic and to ascertain the place of the individual and the collective within two commercial New Age feld sites in London. The qualitative data which lead this investigation were collected from a yoga centre called Shanti and a Suf dance organisation called the Suf Order. From this data, the thesis identifes an individual-collective dialectic, one which manifests in particular forms and with divergent orientations; the result is a multiplicity of types of individualisms which include collective forces. The study makes the case for this argument by focusing on four modes in which, at both sites, the individual and the collective co-produce each other. One, the (collective) class culture of the practitioners informs and is informed by the (individual) ideologies of self that the informants assert. Two, the (collective) capitalist context of the organisations infuence and are perpetuated by the ways the (individual) representatives of those organisations express themselves. Three, (collective) shared principles regarding 'positivity' and 'energy' enforce and are sustained by the (individual) feelings of the student. Four, the (collective) communities of practitioners depend on and contribute to the (individual) set apart status of the teacher. These four manifestations of the individual-collective dynamic appear with different orientations in each feld context; in all versions and in both settings, individual and collective are both present and mutually- constituting forces, but at Shanti the dialectics lean more towards the personal and at the Suf Order, the 'same' dialectics lean more towards the social. Each organisation refects and adds to the intersections, both in their forms and their orientations. In so doing, the two New Age centres present divergent balances of the individual-collective dynamic that correlate with the personal and social dispositions of their respective student bodies.

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Den här uppsatsen undersöker experimenterande danspraktiker med ett- och tvååringar i förskolan, praktiskt och teoretiskt, vilket hittills endast studerats i ett fåtal studier och aldrig tidigare i ett empiriskt och praxisnära projekt med förskolans yngsta barn. Syftet är att undersöka hur danspraktiker kan göras möjliga och kommer till uttryck i experimenterande dans tillsammans med de allra yngsta barnen i förskolan när de görs till aktiva deltagare i danshändelsernas processer, utformning och innehåll i förskolan. I den tre månader långa praktiknära, empiriska studien experimenterar forskaren ihop med en grupp barn 1–2,5 år på en förskoleavdelning, vilket dokumenteras med film- och stillbildskameror av forskaren och barnen. Metodologiskt tar genomförandet stöd och inspiration i a/r/t-ografin som är en praxisnära och estetik-baserad forskningsmetod där forskaren använder den egna kroppen som forskningsverktyg. Analyserna av datamaterialet, vilket består av filmer, foton och processanteckningar, är genomförda med stöd av immanensfilosofisk teoribildning, främst med texter från Gille Deleuze och Felix Guattari samt Erin Manning och begreppet som metod, som analysmetod. Resultaten visar att när förskolans yngsta barn får möjlighet att experimentera i dans ihop med en initierad och deltagande forskare blir danspraktiken mycket varierad och dynamisk i sitt förlopp. Den tar även andra uttryck till innehåll, form och rörelse, gruppkonstellation, materialval och tidslängd än vad som vanligtvis beskrivs om dans i litteratur och forskning. Ett ytterligare kunskapsbidrag är att visa hur tillgången till immanensfilosofi kan producera nya sätt att göra och tänka om danspraktiken och den dansande kroppen och alternativa sätt att arrangera dans med förskolans yngsta barn. Studien erbjuder även förskoledidaktiska kunskaper om hur pedagoger i förskolan kan arrangera kreativa danspraktiker för de yngsta barnen i den dagliga verksamheten. / This essay examines experimental dance practices with one- and two-year-olds in preschool, both practically and theoretically, a topic which has up until now only been examined in a few studies and never before in an empirical and praxis-oriented project with the youngest children of preschool. The purpose of the study is to investigate how dance practices can be made possibleand what comes to expression in experimental dance practices with the youngest children in a preschool environment when they are made to be active participants in the content and execution of experimental dance in a preschool environment. During the three months long practice-based empirical study, the researcher experiments in participation with a group of 1-2,5-year-olds at their preschool department. This work is documented with still image and film camera by the researcher and the children. Methodologically, the study has been conducted through support and inspiration from a/r/t-ography, a practicebased and arts-based research method wherein the researcher uses her own body as an instrument of research. The analysis of the data material, which consists of films, photographs and process notes, is carried out using the concepts of immanence-philosophy, mainly through texts by Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari and of Erin Manning, and the concept as method, as a method of analysis. The results show that when the youngest children are given the opportunity to experiment in dance together with an initiated and participating researcher, the dance practice becomes varied and dynamic during its course of events. The dance practice also shows novel expressions of form and movement, group constellations, and choices of material and duration than what is commonly described of dance when discussed in literature and research. Furthermore, this essay contributes additional knowledge to the field by showinghow the access to the philosophy of Gille Deleuze and Felix Guattari can produce new ways of doing and thinking about dance practice and the dancing body and alternative ways to arrange dance with the youngest children of the preschool. The study also offers didactical knowledge of how teachers in a preschool environment can arrange creative dance practices for the youngest children in everyday activities.