School of Contemporary Music - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 4 of 4
-
ItemIndelible: a movement based practice-led inquiry into memory, remembering and representation( 2005)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)
-
ItemDialogical dancing: illuminating dimensionality in solo dance practice( 2009)This research manuscript directly pertains to and partially documents my practice-led solo investigation Dialogical Dancing as undertaken toward the Masters of Choreography (by Research). It has been composed to support and co-exist with the two live performance works presented in a season at The Victorian College of the Arts and Music toward the end of these investigations.
-
ItemThe art of presence: contemplation, communing and creativity( 2009)The Art of Presence: Contemplation, Communing and Creativity reflects on the making of a dance theatre work called Song of Longing presented at Victorian College of the Arts in 2008. Song of Longing was made in collaboration with the cast, who participated in a process centred on improvisation. The resulting performance was a synergy of dance and unaccompanied singing. The thesis is an investigation of the choreographer's ongoing exploration of movement, singing and improvisation, informed by Buddhist philosophy. Both the writing and the performance mirror an embodied practice - making tangible themes and concepts that have emerged into consciousness. Central interests include the ‘life-world’ of the artist and its influence on the creative process, the concepts of spirituality, spirit and ‘flow’, the experiential focus of the inquiry, improvisation as presence and the value of art as healing and therapy. While the perspective of the writing is drawn from the subjectivity of the practitioner, the aim of the work is to draw on the broader fields of research in these areas and to connect with the creative practices of other artists. To this end, a conventional survey of the literature has been augmented by writings and teachings on Buddhism and other spiritual practices, documentaries and visual art. Interviews with artists in Australia and India and thoughts from the performers of Song of Longing are also included.
-
ItemPractices of tactility remembering and performance( 2008)‘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.