School of Performing Arts - Theses
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ItemReframing tradition: renegotiating flamenco dance within contemporary contexts( 2016)‘Reframing Tradition: Renegotiating Flamenco Dance within Contemporary Contexts’, is a practice-led inquiry undertaken between 2014 – 2016 at the Victorian College of the Arts as a Master of Fine Arts (Dance) by research. There are two parts of the research: a creative performance work and a dissertation. ‘Fragmentos’ (58 min) was performed to a live audience from 9Th – 12Th December 2015 at the Grant Street Theatre, Southbank. A documented record of this event is complementary to this written dissertation. This practice-led research explores first hand the underlying qualities and values within a traditional embodied form and their presence and transformation in contemporary performance settings. Such a process references my individual perspective gained through my experience of dancing flamenco, together with the understanding I have acquired of the theoretical, ideological and historical values embedded in the dance aspect of the form. Alongside this I explore other multidisciplinary approaches to making work that includes foregrounding somatic practice and dramaturgical awareness. By setting up a middle ground where the potential of the transformative process of traditional form to contemporary adaption meet, the creative aspect explores the reflexive relationship and uncovers the latent and the unfulfilled potential of both. The written outcome reviews the convergence of these practices through the practitioner (self), and evaluates the potential of meaning that transpires from it. Coincidently this research has intersected with the impact of my father’s state of decline, diagnosed with the crippling disease of dementia that has ironically energised the essence of these investigations.
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ItemA Brief History of My Body: the space between the fiction and the real in contemporary performance( 2011)An investigation into the space between the reality of the performance act and the fiction presented within it. This research has been carried out in two parts: the creation of an original performance work, A Brief History of My Body (presented at the Victorian College of the Arts in September 2010), and the following dissertation. The creative work and dissertation research the work of contemporary practitioners relevant to the project, explore the potent ‘live’ space between reality and fiction with particular regard to the physical body in performance, and investigate the agency of the performer who plays consciously with and between fiction and reality. The dissertation has a major focus on the stages of thought that led to the creative process, concluding with a work of performance. The thesis is structured in two distinct parts. The first and major part is framed as a series of eight meditations, chronologically tracing the arc of the theoretical research prior to beginning work on the practical project. These meditations underpin the creative work, A Brief History of My Body, track the thought process behind it, and illuminate the ideas being slowly shaped. The second part of the thesis briefly reflects on the practical research.