Output details
35 - Music, Drama, Dance and Performing Arts
Roehampton University : B - Drama Theatre and Performance
Move
Move was a creative research project that I devised in collaboration with dancer / choreographer Wendy Houstoun. The performance was designed to be shown in an open gymnasium or sports hall. Research outcomes were disseminated as a journal article (with contributions from Houstoun and Prof Joe Kelleher) published in Performance Research in 2012.
Developed within the framework of my five-year AHRC-funded research (Say the Word) into models for collaboration and performative exchange, Move was concerned in particular with methodological democracy in dance/theatre practice. As with all Say the Word projects it began with a donated word – ‘move’ – the basis for an investigation of movement as a shared area of contestation between dancer and theatre maker. The project appropriated two methodological techniques from Forced Entertainment, a company in which I am a core member: 1. improvisation through the identification of gaming rules and 2. performative use of written questions with improvised answers. The research focused specifically on the relation between movement and speech in performance, and its inherent power dynamics.
Under a giant projection of the word Move, the performance staged a series of recorded questions about the relations between movement and speech, whilst an area of the floor is masked with flour. This area becomes the canvas for a choreographic improvisation based on rules that I developed with my collaborator in rehearsal. The sequential distinction of text and movement created a dialogic process for the audience; both an exchange between movement and speech and an exchange between the artists (myself and Houstoun), re-‘voice’-ing years of professional assessments concerning the status of movement in Forced Entertainment and other contemporary work.
The accompanying portfolio contains the published essay where research findings are discussed, alongside contextual materials including research and development documentation, and photographs of a performance showing at Roehampton University in 2011.
