L i g h t h e s i t a t e s ( t u r n, a m i d, p a t t e r n ) 2023 …
Considering hesitancy as a space of possibility: dubiousness, this way-that way, dither, shimmer, a split-second suspension, a poetic blur. Hesitancy too as a state of poised-to and per-haps-ness, a useful alternative to certainty, frontality, straight-forwardness. Distinct from ‘doubt’ and weighty indecision, I’m working with ‘hesitancy’ as a light, playful and vibrant force that opens, lets (unexpected) things in (large and micro scale), encourages a sense of co-existing in the midst of it all.
A diagram is operating as a kind of starting-point and framework for the project. I am exploring how language, specifically words, inhabit and resonate from the body and can fold back into the body’s observations and physical practices, how these words open philosophical poetic landscapes that rub against each other, overlap and spark. I am playing with the edges of writing (through the body) as a way of experiencing and thinking.
Developing through residencies eg PAF [Performing Arts Forum] France 2022 and Hospitalfield Arbroath Scotland 2023 and emerging from an entanglement of moving-drawing-writing-sonic-voice recording and editing activities, the work is gradually forming a future choreographic work as a collection of text-image and sound-voice pieces.
D o r s a l p r a c t i c e s
a collaborative research project 2021-2025
Dorsal Practices — is a collaboration between choreographer Katrina Brown and writer-artist Emma Cocker, for exploring the notion of dorsality, back-ness in relation to how we as moving bodies orientate to self, others, environment. How does cultivation of a back-oriented awareness and attitude shape and inform our experience of being-in-the-world? A dorsal orientation foregrounds active letting go, releasing, even de-privileging, of predominant social habits of uprightness and frontality — the head-oriented, sight-oriented, forward-facing, future-leaning tendencies of a culture intent on grasping a sense of the world through naming and control. Rather than a mode of withdrawal, of turning one’s back, how might a backwards-leaning orientation support an open and receptive ethics of relation? How are experiences of listening, voicing, thinking, shaped differently through this tilt of awareness and attention towards the back?
Research through somatic scores and experimental language practices is gathering on the Research Catalogue online platform for artistic research Dorsal Practices
We are excited to have a recent publication, Dorsal Practices—Towards a Back-Oriented Being-in-the-World, in Humanities 2024, 13(2), 63, which you can read here: https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/13/2/63
t i l t – r h y t h m – b a c k : d a n c e s & d r a w i n g s
a choreographic project
This hybrid choreographic project explores a notion of the ‘dorsal’ through a series of residencies, workshops and collaborative conversations with choroegraphers Grace Nicol, Bakani PickUp, dance-artists Maria Evans, Zachary McCullough and Yixuan Kwek, sound artist Rob Gawthrop and writer-artist Emma Cocker.
Developing in residency at Dance4 Nottingham 1-14 July and Siobhan Davies Studios 23-26 July and CAST Helston & VOID Falmouth University 26-30 July 2019.
The back of the body as that which cannot be seen, an investigation of the dorsal as extending to the unseen surfaces of the body.
Developing dances for gallery-like spaces and promenade audience with three dancers in solo, duet and trio formats – to produce a series of interconnected dances that can resonate together and be configured differently in relationship to each other and to the architectural complexity of each venue.The dances as part of the wider hybrid choreographic project are exploring a notion of the ‘back’ or ‘dorsal’ as a way of orientating to our bodies, to others and to the world. Moving through the back and walking backwards creates a different relationship to the spine, weight, gravity, breath, skin, peripheral vision – manifesting often as a slightly disorientating force.
I am interested in how working physically opens up and reflects philosophical and poetic ideas of time and orientation: offering entry points for making choreographic materials and structures. Read and see more at tilt-rhythm-back
.
.
P u b l i c a t i o n J A R 1 8 July 2019
I’m pleased to have been selected as one of five expositions published in the Journal for Artistic Research, Issue 18 July 2019. Translucent surface/Quiet body, redistributed shares ideas from my practice-based PhD thesis surface/intersect/body: A Choreographic View of Drawing investigating drawing as a choreographic activity in relation to horizontality and surface dimension and exploring a performing body working-low in the horizontal plane amongst other surfaces, materials, bodies.
i n t e r s e c t / s u r f a c e / b o d y : A C h o r e o g r a p h i c V i e w o f D r a w i n g
Practice-based PhD – Falmouth University/University of the Arts London 2018
The research was a practical investigation of drawing as a choreographic activity in relation to material process, scoring event and surface dimension and operated through three interconnected projects: the collaborative project what remains and is to come with Glasgow-based choreographer Rosanna Irvine, in which we worked with material relations between charcoal, paper, body and breath, the series of durational drawing scores exploring line and surface She’s only doing this: scores and the installation Translucent surface/Quiet body existing as installed work and artist-page and documenting the moving-drawing body below the surface/screen.
The project addresses a heterogeneous and hybrid approach to choreographic practice that operates across dance and visual arts contexts and aims to contribute to discourse in the field of choreography concerned with how a co-presence of human and non-human forces can be incorporated into choreographic processes and how drawing can present as choreographic knowledge through a consideration of material agency in approaches to performance-making.
The key terms intersect, surface, and body operate as working concepts and facilitate a way of organising the observations and findings of the practical investigation into distinct areas of enquiry while recognising that these areas increasingly overlap and complicate one another. The thesis is extended through a critical engagement with ideas of non-human agency and materiality and a reconsideration of horizontality through Leo Steinberg’s notion of the ‘flatbed picture plane’ (1972) which informs a choreographic view of drawing in relation to orientation and surface distribution.
P u b l i s h e d A r t i c l e s :
.behind from appears noticing in Theatre, Dance & Performance Training vol 12/2 2021
Working Low: Activating the Horizontal Plane’ Ch 4 in Body, Space, and Place in Collaborative and Collective Drawing Eds Jill Journeaux, Helen Gorrill & Sara Reed. Cambridge Scholars Publishing 2020.
‘Translucent surface/Quiet body’, redistributed‘ in Journal of Artistic Research JAR, issue 18, July 2019 JAR18
‘She’s only doing this: scores’ in Theatre, Dance and Performance Training On Showing and Writing Training 7(2) 2016
‘Translucent surface/Quiet body’ Performance Research On An/Notations 20(6) 2015
‘what remains and is to come’ Katrina Brown & Rosanna Irvine Performance Research On Ecology 2013
An Essay unfolding as memories of walking on chalk cliffs Danswetenschap Edition 5 University of Utrecht 2007
.
M o v i n g – D r a w i n g : A n A r c h i v e o f T r a c e s
A website offering an interactive look into the vocabularies of moving-and-drawing and the choreographic extensions of this activity in relation to trace, memory, time. The website is an outcome and dissemination of an artistic research project at Dance Unlimited, AHK (Theatre School Amsterdam) 2004-2006 alongside live performance events. Working with video, flash animation and texts, the site was co-designed with web-designer/choreographer Eileen Standley, with Nora Heilmann (moving-drawing) and Sher Doruff (artistic advice).
Flash Player ceased to be supported at the end of 2021 and I decided to let the website disappear online and keep a personal archive of the Archive of Traces pages.
