'My hands are plunged in oranges'.: an experiential account of a working process

This presentation incorporated the live performance throughout, by the author, of movement from “The All Weather Project” by Liz Roche. Movement sections are indicated by italics. “I am going to start by dancing for you… Movement: Live performance of solo approximately 10 minutes in duration This is the introduction. Through my PhD research, I am examining the choreographic process from the perspective of the independent contemporary dancer, through embodying this role as a researcher/participant. My methodological frameworks, which utilise video documentation and journal writing, could be characterised as ethnographic, multi-modal embodied theorising, leading to “multi-dimensional theorising” (I adopt this term from Susan Melrose). In this way, I am unwinding the embodied practice of dancing, through the co-existent layers of experience, towards forming a theoretical understanding of the issues that arise for the dancer. The issues that I have identified as relevant to my research are those relating to the dancer’s ‘moving identity’ or way of moving, as a mutable and adaptable form that must alter and re-adjust to each different choreographic engram or movement vocabulary, that she/he encounters. I am examining this interplay between stability and change. I also reflect on the impact of destabilisation and flux on the dancer’s identity in a wider sense, as she/he relates outwardly to signifying factors within the social strata. Today I am going to bring you through a reflection on the working process of a dance piece as experienced from the inside. By doing so, I hope to capture and elucidate the multi-dimensional layers which existed for me within this process. Through displaying these fragments together, I endeavour to invoke the ‘totality’ of the experience.