Module 2, Literature review, Step 1, collecting articles
Module 2, Literature review, Step 1, Collecting articles
Areas I am interested to research:
- Transcendent storytelling in performance
2nd source
Choreographing lived experience: dance, feelings and the storytelling body
https://mh-bmj-com.ezproxy.mdx.ac.uk/content/41/1/63
Citation:
Eli, K. and Kay, R. (2015) ‘Choreographing lived experience: dance, feelings and the storytelling body’, Medical humanities, 41(1), pp. 63–68. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1136/medhum-2014-010602.
'As Lauren described it, in choreographing her dance, she allowed herself to feel, or ‘connect with’, painful memories which, she told KE, she had numbed, over the years, through anorexia.'
'his exploration was, at times, difficult; Lauren said that when she performed part of her solo to the group, she was suddenly overcome by a feeling of ‘real fear’, which she later understood was related to the traumatic recollections she explored through the dance.'
'All participants, including those who had never danced before, spoke of a ‘logic’ of movement that allowed them to convey their experience.'
"This communication entailed the choreographing of movement to elicit visceral empathy—an embodied understanding of the pain which, throughout the years, she had never been able to speak of, and for which she had never received help or recognition. And as she choreographed the dance, she sought to convey the fact of pain and its intensity, expressing that which is inherently unspeakable."
"The participants spoke of the empathy they felt for one another as they performed, an empathy that went beyond compassion to encompass a sense of the other's experience. ‘Seeing oneself in others’ meant more than seeing a reflection of oneself; it meant recognising a range of movements, and movement possibilities, through one's own embodied being.""Through dance, the participants said they could communicate experiences that would have remained unspoken otherwise. Yet, notably, dance practice also enabled participants to begin defining and describing their experiences verbally."
"As the dancer immerses herself in remembered spaces and times, she embodies these experiences in the moment.24 Dance, then, is marked by presence; it unveils embodiment through dialectics of being and creating, imagining and acting, collapsing binary divisions of mind and body, thought and feeling."
"Yet, while the participants were not asked directly to choreograph their solos with or from feelings, the centrality of feeling occurred, time and again, in their interviews."
"as Gia explained, the ‘logic of storytelling’ in speech also required a sense-making that perhaps she was not ready to do; dance allowed her to articulate eating-disordered experiences in feeling and motion, yet keep them raw and unencumbered by explanations.
In finding the internal logic of their solos, the participants also had to come to terms with the logic of their own bodies. The links and disconnects between imagined and actualised movement came into the foreground during the solo-work sessions. For Gia, this was the emergence of a ‘bodily logic’"
"The unspeakable moments of eating disorder were related not to events, but to sensations—sensations which were part of eating-disordered embodiment, and which the participants felt were inaccessible to non-eating-disordered others, and inexpressible through language."
"The participants held multiple roles in this project—choreographer, dancer, performer and observer. When asked about their experiences of watching the other group members perform their solos, all participants spoke of feeling a strong sense of connection."
"dance can change the emphasis of storytelling in healthcare contexts. The participants’ solos were not accounts of ‘what happened’, but rather danced renderings of ‘how it felt’. Their creating of, and reflections on, feeling-centred bodies of knowledge opened up possibilities for further inquiry into their experiences of eating disorders.""Through dance, the participants said they could communicate experiences that would have remained unspoken otherwise. Yet, notably, dance practice also enabled participants to begin defining and describing their experiences verbally."
"As the dancer immerses herself in remembered spaces and times, she embodies these experiences in the moment. Dance, then, is marked by presence; it unveils embodiment through dialectics of being and creating, imagining and acting, collapsing binary divisions of mind and body, thought and feeling."
"Yet, while the participants were not asked directly to choreograph their solos with or from feelings, the centrality of feeling occurred, time and again, in their interviews."
"as Gia explained, the ‘logic of storytelling’ in speech also required a sense-making that perhaps she was not ready to do; dance allowed her to articulate eating-disordered experiences in feeling and motion, yet keep them raw and unencumbered by explanations."
"In finding the internal logic of their solos, the participants also had to come to terms with the logic of their own bodies. The links and disconnects between imagined and actualised movement came into the foreground during the solo-work sessions. For Gia, this was the emergence of a ‘bodily logic’"
"The unspeakable moments of eating disorder were related not to events, but to sensations—sensations which were part of eating-disordered embodiment, and which the participants felt were inaccessible to non-eating-disordered others, and inexpressible through language."
3rd Source:
Citation:
Loots, L. (2016) ‘The autoethnographic act of choreography: considering the creative process of storytelling with and on the performative dancing body and the use of Verbatim Theatre methods’, Critical arts, 30(3), pp. 376–391. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2016.1205323
"The way I choreograph is essentially ‘verbatim’ in that I am constantly asking dancers to bring their own life experience – through their bodies – into the dance theatre we create. "
"The performative imperative to tell stories is, perhaps, a need to reflect ourselves back to our world, to reflect our world back to us, and to try and make sense of our physical, lived-in realities."
"I tell stories in two mediums: the linguistic and the physical. As with all good storytelling the starting point is always the self; and more acutely for a dancer and choreographer (and feminist), the body."
"I claim Randy Martin’s (2005: 59) notion of ‘dance as a continuing site of self-recognition’ and take up the autoethnographic turn (see, e.g., Holman Jones 2005) of looking into the embodied self as a site of meaning- making and, indeed, storytelling."
"In The phenomenology of perception (1962) he puts forward the idea that the lived experience of the body, by its very visceral being, denies the detachment of subject from object." - he meaning The French existential philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty rejects this dualism and places into sharp focus the centrality of the body and embodied experiences, both in terms of knowledge production/creation and meaning-making processes.
"Fundamental to Merleau-Ponty’s theories is thus the idea of embodiment in which, he argues, we never perceive the world as pure consciousness; consciousness is always enmeshed or tangled up in the visceral flesh, bones and blood of the body:
The body is primarily a way of being in the world. It is a form of lived experience which is fluid and ever-shifting. And it is also a way of interacting with one’s environment, of shaping it and being shaped by it. (cited in Cavallaro 1998: 88)"
"Taking up Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the body, my body, as the prime means of communicating with the world, what starts to emerge is the phenomenology of speaking from the embodied ‘I’. This embodied ‘I’, the self as the knower and the storyteller (on and with the body) becomes the self-referential conveyer of theory and process; of personal history and memory."
"As a choreographer I am thus consciously an ethnographer who works out the stories of other bodies, who uses my craft to read meaning into other (dancing) bodies’ constructions of evolving self, identity, culture and being."
"Nicholas Holt (2003: 18) defines autoethnography as ‘highly personalised accounts where authors draw on their own experiences to extend understanding of a particular discipline or culture’. This research methodology emanates from one’s own experiential body. Peter McIlveen (2008: 15) elucidates that
the prominent features of autoethnography as writing about oneself as a researcher- practitioner, not an autobiographer, is a specific form of critical enquiry that is embedded in theory and practice."
"My engagement with the visceral, lived bodies and shared life stories of the dancers I work with offered my own body – as storyteller and dance maker, too – the chance to see how we abandon the grand narratives of history that have so often been written and have silenced us, to find a performative place where we can accurately (truthfully?) speak ourselves into agency."
I asked them to focus on three themes I had chosen: politics, love and loss, and food, and to bring three memories/stories for each theme. - "Zinhle Nzama, shared after the process that she had been ‘terrified that I would have nothing to say and no stories to tell’, but as the process evolved, she remarked: ‘I found I had literally hundreds of what we called “memories” and had to actually sit at night and decide what to choose to tell – this was a surprise for me.'"
"(much like the making of theatre and the telling of a story) asks us to construct, re-construct and de- construct, in an endless interplay of private and public."
Source 4
APOL, L. and KAMBOUR, T. (1999) ‘Telling Stories through Writing and Dance: An Intergenerational Project’, Language arts, 77(2), pp. 106–117.
"dance could serve as a meaningful way for older adults to address and express some of the complex physical, social, and psychological issues in their lives (Caplow-Linder, Harpaz, & Samberg, 1979; Ler-man, 1988; Levy, 1992); I had discovered, as Lerman (1988) puts it, that "what senior adults bring to the activity [ofdance] ... is an expressive body filled with life experience"
"Our first get-acquainted dance activity was called a "movement signature," an exercise on which we focused on combining a movement phrase with telling ones name" feelings."
"Several wrote that the project had taught them about their own lives (parts of their lives that one student said had been "unintentionally discarded"). As well as teaching them "about the lives of other people."
"whatever my role is that of choreographer or writer, I am interested in the telling of a story, be it literal or abstract."
"they had shared some of what they knew about living in the world. They had moved, both literally and figuratively, from silence into story - powerful story told together."
Source 5
reference:
Loots, L. (2018) ‘Embodied storytelling: using narrative as a vehicle for collaborative choreographic practice – a case study of FLATFOOT DANCE COMPANY’s 2016 HOMELAND TRILOGY (South Africa and Senegal)’, South African theatre journal, 31(1), pp. 58–71. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2017.1408422.
"At its core, theatre and performance is an act of storytelling."
"'Identities are forged, re-forged and challenged in the stories we tell. Clandinin and Connelly argue that, ‘humans are storytelling organisms, who individually and socially, live storied lives’ (1990)"
"Kraus argues that the making and telling of narrative is about ‘situational self-positioning’ and that ‘identity thus becomes a reflexive project, open to self-analysis and self-scrutiny’ (Kraus 2006. p, 103)""Waskul and Vannini (2006) offer: The body is always performed, staged and presented; the theatres [sic] of the body are raw materials by which the ritual drama of everyday embodied life are produced. (p.2)"
"As Kreigar says; Bodies tell stories about – and cannot be studies divorced from – the conditions of our existence; bodies tell stories that often – but not always – match people’s stated accounts; and bodies tell stories that people cannot or will not, either because they are unable, forbidden, or choose not to tell. (2005, p.350)"
Source 6
Source 7 (from now on google scholar)
Choreographing Cabaret: A Guide to Storytelling through Dance and Movement
situation:
Bradley, K.C., 2008. Choreographing Cabaret: A Guide to Storytelling through Dance and Movement.
"I have discovered the important lesson of "telling a story". A musical number needs to take an audience on a truthful and emotional journey and aid in the flow of the play."
"Oklahoma! was the first musical to incorporate dance as a further development of the plot, Oklahoma! signaled a new era for music theatre in many ways. One of its most influential innovations was the use of dance as a story-telling tool."
"It is important to me, as a choreographer, that each dance tell its own tale. If I do not make the audience feel something, I have not done my job. How does a choreographer create a dance that furthers the plot?"
"When researching, images will appear that will help in the creative process. These images are just as important as the facts found. I find images immensely helpful, because they show tone and movement."
"Research helps the choreographer begin to use their imagination. It helps them come up with concepts, ideas, and hooks that will aid in their task of developing musical numbers."
"Each artist has their own unique vision and opinions as to what should go into the piece. To create a captivating story, all of these individuals must come together to create a shared vision of the work."
"A choreographer shapes bodies in space and creates images to tell a truthful and emotional story to the audience."
"Within the music is a story that the choreographer must find and convey within their dance. Music can take the listener on a journey that is individual and unique."
Source 8
https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/mdx/reader.action?
docID=179536https://mdx.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991000109699704781&context=L&vid=44MUN_INST:hendon&lang=en&search_scope=Hendon_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default&query=any,contains,theatre%20anthropology&offset=0
Reference
Barba, Eugenio (1995) A Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
"For the performer, to have energy means knowing how to model it. To be able to conceive of it and to live it as experience, s/he must artificially modify its routes, inventing dams, dikes, canals. These are the resistances against which s/he presses her/his intention — conscious or intuitive — and which make her/his expression possible. The whole body thinks/acts, with another quality of energy."
"Pina Bausch has often said how important it is for the dancer to be able to dance seated on a chair, apparently immobile, dancing in the body before dancing with the body. In her performances she has often ‘ immobilized ’ her performers ’ dances. When the visible, the external (the body), does not move, then the invisible, the internal (the mind), must be in movement."
"In terms of general stage deportment, no matter how slight a bodily action, if the motion is more restrained than the emotion behind it, the emotion will become the Substance and the movements of the body its Function, thus moving the audience."
got to page 60 continue laterScorce 9
reference
Barba, E. and Savarese, N. (2006). A dictionary of theatre anthropology : the secret art of the performer. London ; New York: Routledge.
"Performers’ energy is a readily identifiable quality: it is the performer’s nervous and muscular power. The mere fact that this power exists is not particularly interesting, since it exists, by definition, in any living body."
"On the visible level, it seems that they are expressing themselves, working on their body and voice. In fact, they are working on something invisible: energy. The concept of energy ( energeia = ‘strength’, ‘efficacy’, from én-érgon , ‘at work’) is a concept both obvious and difficult. We associate it with external impetus, with an excess of muscular and nervous activity. But it also refers to something intimate, something that pulses in immobility and silence, a retained power which flows in time without dispersing in space."
got to page 82 continue later
scorce 10
Leach, M. (2018) ‘Psychophysicalwhat? what would it mean to say “there is no ‘body’ … there is no ‘mind’” in dance practice?’, Research in Dance Education, 19(2), pp. 113–127. doi:10.1080/14647893.2018.1463361.
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