Forging Paths & New Narratives

FORGING PATHS & NEW NARRATIVES

LCDS Credits

With thanks to Sonia Bacca, Librarian

Tamar Steinitz, Learning Support Coordinator

Rho Thomas, Producer

Jake Burgess, Lead Technician

Unit 7 Tutors

Alethia Antonia, Andrew Sanger

Baptiste Bourgounon, Carolyn Roy

Chisato Ohno, Eva Recacha

Jeannie Steele, Katrina McPherson

Lise Uytterhoeven, Lucie Clement

Natasha Goldstein-Opasiak, Stephanie De’Ath

Sam Wilson, Thea Stanton

Tom Hastings, Tom Afiyian English

Tina Afiyan Breiova, Yael Lowenstein

Thea Stanton, Unit 7 Leader

Lise Uytterhoeven, Director of Dance Studies

Baptiste Bourgougnon, Director of Undergraduate Studies and International Development

Anna Helsby, Director of Wellbeing and Registry

Josh Slater, Deputy Director of Undergraduate Studies

DAJ Credits

Katie Hagan, founder & editor

Angel Dust, producer & designer

DAJ writers

Francesca Matthys

Stella Rousham

Josephine Leask

Paula Catalina Riofrio

Janejira Matthews

Isaac Ouro-Gnao

Isabela Palancean

Dance research has tremendous value, because it brings together theory and practice in the most direct sense – through a body moving, a body thinking, a body writing or a body dancing. Dance researchers demonstrate agility in engaging with theoretical frameworks, bringing interdisciplinary challenges to those frameworks and bridging the gap between dancer, reader, participant and audience. I am thrilled that these final-year undergraduate students’ research is disseminated beyond the community of London Contemporary Dance School and grateful to Dance Art Journal for supporting these dance artists in a public engagement with their research.

- Lise Uytterhoeven

I have always believed that research has the power to affect change. That’s one of the exciting things about it, whether it’s a change or development to one’s own practice or even a change to the world. Throughout this unit I have tried to empower the students to use their creative and reflective research tools to know that they can make a difference. On the day of the ResLAB sharings, as I moved from dance piece to installation to film to workshop, the phrase that kept returning to me was from Shakespeare’s Tempest, ‘O brave new world that has such people in it’. Looking at this first cohort about to graduate from the new UAL undergraduate programme, I feel both hope and excitement for our dance sector and ecology.

- Thea Stanton

Dance research and writing are fundamental to the industry’s ecology, and I send the warmest, biggest thanks to all for recognising this and making this publication possible. Huge thanks to the DAJ writers, Angel and the student volunteers for their terrific work, and extended thanks to Thea and Lise for choosing dance art journal (DAJ) to platform the students’ works.

- Katie Hagan

Letter from the student editors................................................................5

2. “Identity: new pathways” by Francesca Matthys................................6-11

Abstracts (research projects).......................................................12-15

3. “Different approaches to dance” by Stella Rousham.......................16-21

Abstracts (research projects).......................................................22-25

4. “States” by Josephine Leask...........................................................26-31

Abstracts (research projects).......................................................32-37

5. “Group practices” by Isaac Ouro-Gnao...........................................38-43 Abstracts (research projects)......................................................44-45

6. “Viscerality and narratives” by Paula Catalina Riofrio.....................46-51 Abstracts (research projects).......................................................52-55 7. “Feminism and queer theory” by Isabella Palancean......................56-61

Abstracts (research projects).......................................................62-67

8. “Inclusion” by Janejira Matthews.....................................................68-73

Abstracts (research projects).......................................................74-77

Dear reader,

It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to this publication, showcasing the research and work of London Contemporary Dance School’s third-year students.

This magazine features articles written by Dance Art Journal, responding to the research and realisations presented by London Contemporary Dance School’s third year students in their dissertation works. The magazine has been divided thematically, with the work of the students spanning from identity to inclusion to queer theory. This magazine celebrates the findings of the LCDS students - a generation of contemporary dance artists set to embark into the dance sector - and their hard work, inquisition and creativity.

As graduating students our vision for the future of the dance world is one that is vibrant, exhilarating, and profoundly meaningful. We hope to transform the dance world into a dynamic space that reflects the diversity and creativity of society itself, making dance an ever-evolving dialogue that resonates deeply with all who experience it.

We hope that this magazine showcases the curiosity and ingenuity of this generation of dance artists. And it is our hope and belief that the students will continue their pursuits for knowledge, equality or truth beyond the walls of London Contemporary Dance School and into the wider world.

We want to send a huge thank you to everyone who made this magazine possible. We hope you enjoy reading “Forging Paths & New Narratives: LCDS x DAJ ResLAB Reflections”.

Luella Rebbeck, Ailsa Hobbins, Leanne Tran, Olivia Foskett, Maisie Faul and Faye Singleton

GENEVIEVE FELDER

JUDE VERO

ANNA STRØM

LEWIS COLE

CECILIA DONALDSON-KING

MING CHIN HSIEH

AVA EMERY

DARINKA BOJORQUEZ

Words by Francesca Matthys

Diversity is certainly being welcomed in the dance world these days. Yes, commissions and call outs are announced day in and out for a small pool of diverse candidates to bare their souls, share their truths. But, how diverse is the European dance world really? Though there has been significant development over time, there is a long history of exclusion in dance spaces in the Western world. This exclusion still echoes through every performance of The Nutcracker (no shade on The Nutcracker but…).

Observing the work, for instance, of dance students taking their steps into the world as artists is a great reflection on how they may be experiencing their bodies and diversity within and parallel to the current dance landscape. In Body Shaming in Ballet, a research dissertation by Ava Emery, the author shares that they intend to “unravel the intricate web of psychological consequences, particularly in the impressionable minds of pre-pubescent and pubescent dancers.” In the same vein, I hold awareness of these detrimental consequences as I reflect on work by young artists that interrogate identity and inclusivity at LCDS’s BA3 2024 ResLAB Day.

I was lucky to reflect on these six works ranging from live performance to film

“Encouraging independent research opportunities during undergraduate dance studies are invaluable. They give space for young dancemakers to begin excavating what truly matters to them”

which guided my journey through The Place. The building felt particularly alive with the creativity of the thirdyear students sharing their offerings as part of their final ‘Integrated Learning and Independent Research’ Unit. Encouraging independent research opportunities during undergraduate dance studies are invaluable. They give space for young dancemakers to begin excavating what truly matters to them.

One of these curiosities was discovered in Please Leave Your Shoes at the Door by Genevieve Felder. The title of the work is mirrored in the opening as the performers all enter the space and remove their shoes and socks, leaving them on the outskirts of the space. I had sat outside the performance space before seeing the work and had seen the performers rehearsing together with reassuring sentiments from their choreographer. This collective energy joined us in the room as the performers merged community and sacredness, being present in postures of respect,

prayer, washing and prostration. The work is in conversation with the diverse East Asian cultures that make up the cast including Singapore, Taiwan, Vietnam, China and Hong Kong.

These actions of deep respect are present in many East Asian cultures, and removing shoes in particular can be seen as both an etiquette of respect but possibly even a symbolic action of leaving behind the physical dirt of the outside world and the spiritual baggage we carry. Prostration is a divine form of absolving oneself of ego. This careful and slow pace reminds me of Butoh as an art form and the ability to connect to a spiritual consciousness and awareness of self. The lineage of this ancient art form feels relevant here.

The sound of the sea is another layer available to us through the score. As the performers move backwards in the space with their shoes surrounding them as anchors, the work creates a stunning composition that is a commentary on progress and progression, perhaps as dance practitioners and artists from East Asian backgrounds within Western spaces. The sea is the momentum that carries us and them as they push and press towards one another.

The tender nature of the opening of the work explodes into a militant expression of unison. Compositionally I wonder whether the two parts are disjointed or cohesive? It’s a militancy, a reference to the political past and present of some East Asian countries, that flirts with realities of delicate tradition and humbleness. I did however appreciate how we returned back to the opening sentiments of slow and composed movements to close the work. It’s

almost as if the expansive unison was a dedication to the suppressed desires of bodies that perceive themselves within conservative spaces, both East Asian and Western. It was an opportunity for them to break free for even just one moment.

Ming Chin Hsieh also focuses on East Asian identity, drawing on embodied practices such as Tai Chi in their film Employing Tachi mentality to develop my contemporary dance practice. Both Ming Chin Hsieh and Genevieve Felder put forward the stillness of the body, the pulse and breath. I appreciate the distilled nature of the film, mainly filmed in a studio, that allows us to focus on the performer’s movement. The body is expansive with both organic and round movements as well as articulate arms that develop into angular expressions.

I watched this short film a couple of times and enjoyed finding nuances each time in its simplicity. The film uses continuous shots that serve to create vulnerability, exposing every possible movement. Referencing their inspiration, Cloud Gate Dance Theatre (a Taiwanese company), Hsieh’s intentions are clear and precise. The close ups are mesmerising. I was sitting almost alone in the room where the film was set up, and it felt special and meditative alongside the steady rhythms of monk wooden bells, the zen that Ming hoped to achieve.

The choice to show a film is a great alternative to sharing one’s final culmination of work live. Emery speaks about the ‘ballet body’ and the pressure to uphold a certain type of physical aesthetic in dance that is often idealised and scrutinised more so in live performance. The presence of a

physical body onstage can be seen to uphold the standards of bodies in dance but also serve as defiance against any expectation of what the ideal dancing body may be. The absence of live bodies perhaps held in time within film may also be seen as a protest in itself.

Cecilia Donaldson-King’s work overtly sets the context for diverse bodies. Bodies that take up space within nightclub spaces. Ekuhs Ob Coluh translated as Echos of Colour is just that. It’s an echo of technicolour Black bodies thriving in their bodies and truth, in conversation with other Black bodies being prodded, probed. In Donaldson-King’s work the juxtaposition of liberated pelvises and grounded centres through dancehall and other Caribbean styles, parallel with the eyes, the ears and face of a Black body being obstructed. Black bodies have historically been either prohibited from being seen in public performance spaces or portrayed through the white colonial gaze as objects of entertainment or abjection. In this film, we see bodies performing perhaps for themselves as an opportunity to reclaim what it means to dance and relish in their bodies.

Ekuhs Ob Coluh offers a dialogue between the intuitive and cerebral within the multitude of the Black experience. How do Black bodies hold their ability to be truly grounded and earthed through their rich ancestry and culture while being subjected to the injustices and oppressions of their Western surroundings? This snippet of what I believe can develop into a beautiful full length work is pensive and proud with an ominous score. The Banana Boat Song by Harry Belafonte has its origins as a traditional Jamaican folk song sung from

the perspective of dock workers working at night to avoid the heat.

In SONDA: Trauma by Jude Vero film, ancient East Asia and contemporary cultural references merge to create one intriguing offering. Jude Vero’s Hackneybased upbringing influences this work that uses anime as a tool to explore effects of trauma. In this Japanese art form the large eyes can be seen as the windows to the soul, which is appropriate as we exist within territories of trauma and healing. Merging anime with dance creates a stylised world where perhaps trauma is held within the safe confines of another artform, or a medium to process for both performer and audience.

Jude Vero is wonderful to watch as a dynamic and sensitive performer. We feel a lot in SONDA: Trauma and relish in the clown-like expressions, playful grooves. Surrounded by cultural artefacts of current and past selves, this work feels as if it is about acknowledging

what exists within and being vulnerable enough to sit with it, move though it and reassure oneself that one can actually do it.

Continuing on the topic of masculinity is Lewis Cole’s improvised solo Masculinity’s Evolution. What does it mean to improvise one’s masculinity? What does it mean to play within this rigid landscape that has been constructed over time? Cole offers nuanced rhythms with his feet in conversation with the score that are carried by various animalistic representations of masculinity. The motif of birds as expressions of manhood is present; the peacock veers its cocky head and feathers. It is great to see a young performer grapple with such a dense subject as masculinity and actively find new pathways to process their lived experiences of it.

Again we are confronted by how external influences may inform personal experiences of the body. The extension of evolution through the suit jacket, as a costume, references constructs of masculinity in the material world and how much we are in conflict with what restricts us, binding us to habitual ways of expressing masculinity. I admire Lewis’s willingness to be vulnerable through improvisation of such a heavy subject matter.

When it comes to identity politics in art it is easy for work to prioritise the struggle and strife. As an artist myself who works within this subject matter, I definitely see the significance of this but do appreciate the moments of celebration within these explorations. Anna Strøm in particular shares that she hopes for her work to further the agenda of celebration.

“It is clear that young dancemakers are actively grappling with not only what brings them joy and curiosity but also what is uncomfortable, raw and uncertain.”

Strøm’s I Used To Wish I Was White is an improvised processing of identity and sincerely shares Strøm’s experience as a multi-heritage woman of colour. This work explores multiplicity in both lineage of birth but also lineage of practice as Størm works with Street style practices informed by their Miami upbringing. The powerful title is a relatable reality for minority women of colour who grow up in predominantly white spaces. The score, which includes voice recordings from individuals in Strøm’s life in both English, Norwegian and Punjabi, allows a nuanced window into stories of race, racism and identity politics. Once again using improvisation as a tool to express identity politics is admirable as a tool for cathartic relief and moments of both conscious and subconscious led performance.

What I appreciated about all these makers is their ability to be true to their identities regardless of how their bodies may be perceived. It is clear that young dancemakers are actively grappling with not only what brings them joy and curiosity but also what is uncomfortable, raw and uncertain. They are problem solving through their identities. They are finding solutions, and that is beautiful.

Cr. Cecilia Donaldson-King

and abstracts

“Please Leave Your Shoes at the Door: Defining and Representing Asian-ness Through Contemporary Dance”

By Genevieve Felder

This essay will follow my journey of defining my cultural identity through the use of contemporary dance movement. My work is a visual representation of my journey in collaboration with fellow East-Asian classmates attending LCDS. This piece is a conversation between Asian bodies and movements that represent us, a negotiation of our cultural identities within the spaces we inhabit. It carries the overarching question of what is Asian-ness and how can it be held by contemporary movement? Through naming and embodying our understandings of what it means to be Asian I hope to give my dancers a sense of ownership over their experiences – to find beauty and grace for themselves in their journeys of becoming.

Borders in motion: embracing liminal spaces and identities through movement

By Darinka Bojorquez

“Border as in line. Line not as in limit, but as a succession of points, stories, lives. [...] We meet, perhaps in space and time, or perhaps in thought. And so we tell them what we trace with our feet and what we see with our eyes.” (Personal writing)

I used to wish I was white

By Anna Kornelia Amrit Kaur Strøm

I am proud to be a person of colour. I am a mixed-race woman born to a Punjabi mother and a Norwegian father. I am grateful to sit between two vastly different cultures that have enriched my life; however, taking pride in being a person of colour and taking pride in my culture wasn’t always my perspective. I feel ashamed to say there was a version of myself who couldn’t embrace and accept my ethnicity due to internalising the racism I was experiencing. I believe this reality rings true for many, especially those whose environment lacks diversity. It has led me to critically reflect on the role a lack of representation played in my life and question how I might consider representation and inclusivity in a creative practice, whilst also tending to my identity.

This research is immersed in personal experiences and decolonizing studies that aim to provide a multidimensional understanding of borders as a series of interactions and an ‘always-in-transition’ path of existence. It explores liminality, or the ‘in-betweenness,’ in the current space and time by challenging binary perspectives that dominate contemporary understanding, thereby embracing border and liminal identities. The study highlights that borders, when perceived through movement, reveal their inherent complexity and historical depth. Movement, as the research proposes, offers a powerful means to reinterpret the conventional mapping of our lives, which is typically constrained by legal norms and static spatial boundaries. By engaging with lines, feet, maps, and borders through movement, we can honor the paths we inherit and the continuous motion of human existence. This perspective challenges the imposed, static notions of borders that prioritize division and power, presenting negative connotations associated with non-binary identities in a world dominated by rigid demarcations. Instead, this study advocates for a fluid, ever-growing interpretation of borders that reconnects with suppressed knowledge of ‘pre-Cuauhtemoc’ visions and practices.

This research is first approached through a physical score that explores lines, maps, and feet. This physical exploration is later framed and integrated with ideas provided by anthropologists, historians, writers, archaeologists, cartographers, and artists, such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Tim Ingold, Ursula Thiemer-Sachse, Miguel Olmos Aguilera, Angella Enders, Jennie Marie Luna, among others, who in some way uncover the intersections between borders and lines, borders between the lines of maps, and borders between the lines of feet. This research draws explicit

attention to the ideas of lines presented by Tim Ingold in his book “Lines: A Brief History” and connects them to Indigenous knowledge related to maps and footprints in Mesoamerican symbolism, applying them to my own areas of interest and knowledge, including my experiences as a Latin American artist raised in a border zone.

“How has Masculinity Evolved Through a Dance Lens?”

By Lewis Cole

What I found out about myself as a movement artist throughout the process of structuring this improvisation is that I embody masculinity in a variety of forms that have enabled me to become not only a more versatile and multifaceted dancer, but a human who is now far more in tune with what my masculinity is. My personal experience with masculinity is fluid and ever-changing, and has now enabled me to display my vulnerability in scenarios where prior to my research I would not have, due to fear of judgement or shame that comes from stereotypes of masculinity. I now no longer feel that fear and feel empowered and comfortable to handle situations where vulnerability is necessary.

Cr. Lewis Cole

JULIANNA SCHMAUS

JASMINE MASSEY

JESS YEO

THEODORA MARASESCU

CYNTHIA CHEUNG CHARLOTTE GUILBERT-GREEN

BRONTE ADELMAN

ALGO AU

Words by Stella Rousham

“Just be yourself” is a phrase I have often heard in dance spaces, particularly in pressured environments like auditions. The assumption here is that the self –and by extension, dance styles – are internally coherent, static objects that one can, and should, know and present legibly to others. The student pieces that I reflect on in this article complicate the binary understanding of dance styles, identity and success. Through varied use of film, writing, live performance, group facilitation and music, these works emphasise that finding, succeeding and being oneself as a dance artist is an on-going negotiation with external social relations, structures and norms.

A paradox for many dancers is the desire to master technique whilst also unearthing an authentic movement quality. Through a series of short excerpts of her improvising across various studios at The Place and other public spaces, Cynthia Cheung’s dance film Improvisation: The process strikes to the heart of this paradox.

The splitting of the screen into a grid formation, showing four different clips simultaneously, has the effect of an optical illusion tricking the brain to find patterns and coherence amongst the chaos of “unchoreographed” movement. The swinging of Cheung’s arm in the top right-hand corner of the screen seems to

“Through varied use of film, writing, live performance, group facilitation and music, these works emphasise that finding, succeeding and being oneself as a dance artist is an ongoing negotiation with external social relations, structures and norms.”

initiate a leap in the bottom left-hand corner. Stillness arrives in the top two segments as the lower two squares depict her body coiling, turning and curling with full force.

Through the segmentary editing of the film and sudden changes in the musical soundtrack – lurching from the lyrical ballads of Hozier to more ambient tones and electronic beats – Cheung effectively blurs the distinction between the real/ imagined, choreographed/improvised, individual/collective.

Comparable to Cheung, in BREW

Algo Au makes use of film to explore the disorientation, loss and thrill of locating a dance identity. As a solo performer in a tunnel-like space, the film focuses on Au as he bounds between motifs reflecting different dance styles: slinky contemporary rolls in and out of the floor, lyrical pirouettes and precise popping.

Triggering questions around agency, power and control, the camera seemed to adopt its own choreography; weaving up, down and around Au as he ducked, leaped and turned back and forth through the tunnel.

Adorned with lurid, patchwork-like patterns, the walls of the tunnel space gave the film a video game quality, as if Au were a character evolving through different levels and worlds. With very few moments of stillness, a fleeting moment of calm – as Au reaches his hand towards and stares directly into the camera – reflects the impossible yearning for stability and clarity.

Dynamics between psychological states and artistic practice are similarly at the fore of Jess Yeo’s written dissertation: The F Word Drawing insights from personal experience, contemporary dance artists and psychology, Yeo urgently calls for rethinking failure as a tool to feed creativity. Nuance shines through this dissertation, challenging dominant literature which has (ironically) failed to understand failure beyond the capitalist rubric of increased productivity.

Reflecting on the ways that a fear of failure has inhibited her own development as an artist, Yeo offers critical insight into how dominant pedagogical frameworks within dance – such as syllabus-based exams –straightjacket creativity through the reliance on stratification, penalisation and binary prescriptions of success. Subversive in both theory and form, the inclusion of her own original illustrations and poetry within the essay is itself a radical re-evaluation of what is considered legitimate academic knowledge.

Equally, recognising risk as indispensable to both creativity and failure, Yeo makes a compelling case for reframing creative spaces through the lens of courage, rather than merely safety. By re-defining growth as circular rather than linear, educational and artistic spaces can resist the stigma and hierarchical judgement associated with failure, enabling divergent thinking to thrive. In doing so, brave spaces, as conceptualised by Yeo, recognise that creativity is a distinctly human practice. Allowing artists to be human starts from embracing vulnerability, incoherence and uncertainty.

Skilfully combining live movement and film, Brontë Adelman’s duet Soul Dance similarly emphasises the porosity of boundaries across technological, relational and embodied interfaces. Wearing large headphones and keeping her back to the audience, performer Sophie Morrison remained transfixed watching excerpts from famous dance films which were projected on the back wall. Meanwhile, reversing back and forth diagonally across the studio, Adelman moved through a juxtaposing choreography of forceful grand high kicks, delicate arm ripples and upper back curves.

The contrasting dynamic quality in Adelman’s movement coupled with the simultaneous video projections and accompanying music reflect an impossible struggle to perfectly replicate movement as it is imagined or envisioned. Whilst there was no physical contact or visual recognition between the two performers, Morrison’s subtle sways and head bops conveyed an unconscious synergy between the two live bodies in space.

The overlapping nature of the film clips, including shimmies from the ‘Dancing Queen’ number in Mamma Mia! and the Sugar Plum Fairy’s dizzying pirouettes in The Nutcracker, was reminiscent of an Instagram ‘For You Page’ – a comment on the competitive and oversaturated nature of the dance industry. Through a playful assemblage of live and mediated choreography, Adelman’s Soul Dance raises salient questions around what it means to move and be moved.

“This is the voice. This is the drums.”

Through a series of interviews and improvisational tasks, Charlotte Guilbert-Greene’s video essay, Rhythm in Motion further ponders the question of what moves us. Focusing specifically on the relationship between instinctive movement and music, Guilbert-Greene’s experimental film is therapeutic in tone, observing the ways music can trigger bodily feelings and emotional states. Full of intriguing insights, the layering of different tasks in the film was a real strength, allowing space for deep exploration without prescribing a certain answer or conclusion.

I was particularly compelled when the two dancers in the film compared sketches they had ‘free drawn’ in response to the same piece of music, before attempting to re-embody the music using the sketches. How does the prang of guitar strings instigate a ripple in the spine? Does a musical genre create or reflect our bodily emotions? What does it mean to be in control when dancing instinctively to music? Brimming with exciting questions, this video essay opens bountiful avenues for further development – what would happen, for instance, if a live musician

was introduced to improvise with the dancers?

The role of dance as an embodied, therapeutic tool is equally examined in Jasmine Massey’s striking dissertation: Embodiment and Healing: How Can One Nurture Embodiment Through Somatic Practices? For Massey, disembodiment is rife in a contemporary Western culture of hyper-productivity and mass consumerism, fuelling a range of physical and mental health conditions, from chronic fatigue to anxiety and depression.

Moving across diverse literature around dance movement psychotherapy, embodied trauma and her own experience assisting community dance projects, Massey makes a sophisticated argument for integrating somatic principles to achieve positive outcomes on both an individual and societal level. Through cultivating self-awareness, somatic practices afford individuals greater understanding of their embodied sensations, needs and boundaries, in turn nurturing greater empathy for the beings, bodies and environments around them.

Embodiment via somatic practices thus can enable greater reciprocity in a culture driven by excess, exploitation and inequality. At a time of intersecting crises of the climate, housing and mental health, I frequently feel a deep helplessness and frustration. Massey’s thought-provoking dissertation provides both hope and practical solutions to address some of the most pressing issues of our time.

Putting somatic theory into practice, Julianna Schmaus’ participatory

“Embodiment via somatic practices thus can enable greater reciprocity in a culture driven by excess, exploitation and inequality.”

workshop Ripples of the Now followed a task-based score, encouraging participants to notice the bodies, sounds, pathways and colours on, around and in-between them. Simple and pedestrian tasks – such as observing people’s clothing and different objects in the room – combined with Schmaus’ gentle facilitation style, generated a surprisingly intimate environment that was both safe and creatively stimulating.

Moments of recognition between participants – tapping feet together to indicate similar coloured socks or exchanging fist pumps to connect rings worn on matching fingers – dissolved the physical and cognitive boundaries that exist between, and are part of creating, strangers. Despite the fact no one uttered a word, the practice of noticing simultaneously required and enabled participants to be open, vulnerable and indeed, to know one another.

Private thoughts, property and journeys were transformed into opportunities for connection and collective creation. Through the acts of acknowledging and responding to visual, audible and textural stimuli – shards of light reflected on the wall, the shimmer of jewellery, sounds of bells tolling – Schmaus crafted the choreography of a communal, embodied and sensorial poetry.

and abstracts

Exploring Blending Dance Styles: A Journey of Identity and Expression

By Algo Au

This research explores the impact of blending dance styles on personal movement practice, driven by my 16-year dance journey that fuses street dance with contemporary dance training. Pursuing formal training at LCDS catalysed my exploration into artistic identity and the transformative potential of hybrid dance styles. The research aims to refine methodologies for blending dance styles, shaping dance identity, and contributing to contemporary dance discourse. Through workshops, personal reflection and creative practice, I investigate the synthesis of diverse styles and create a short dance film embodying these findings. The study underscores the importance of cultural sensitivity, innovation and experimentation in contemporary dance, fostering cross-cultural dialogue and artistic evolution. The resulting dance film and audience feedback provides a tangible representation and broader understanding of the blending dance styles explored in this research.

The F Word: a repositioning of failure within psychological models of creativity to better understand the role of failure in a contemporary dance creative process.

By Jess Yeo

Failure is an innate condition of a contemporary creative dance practice. The ephemerality of dance makes it a fitting location to practice failing, risk-taking and creative vulnerability. For this intersection between creativity and failure to be accessible, a psychologically safe space is key to managing the stress response and its inhibitory effects on creative thinking from a biopsychosocial perspective. Devising my own model to guide my exploration I ask: How do failure and creativity intersect within psychological frameworks, my personal experiences and existing literature, and how can psychologically safe studio environments facilitate failure’s contribution to creativity and the creative potential inherent in failure?

Physical, Emotional, and Visceral Manifestations of Kinesthetic Empathy: With a Focus on Spectators of Dance Performance

By Brontë Adelman

Kinesthetic empathy involves reacting to another person’s actions either physically, emotionally, or viscerally, implying an awareness of another’s body that affects one’s own. In the practical part of my dissertation, I investigate the thoughts and patterns that happen in the brain of a spectator watching a dance performance as a result of kinesthetic empathy. My research combines a mix of personal experiences as an audience member as well as scientific and literature-based research, and looks through three lenses, all of which are intertwined, to understand an audience member’s experience. This research was conducted with the aim of optimising a spectator’s experience while watching a dance performance.

By Charlotte Guilbert-Greene

When music is played, it provokes an embodied reaction from dancers, manifesting in movement language that reflects their interpretation of the music’s essence. This interpretation is deeply subjective and can vary significantly based on an individual’s personal connection to the music. Each dancer brings a unique set of experiences, emotions and cultural influences to their interpretation, shaping the way they perceive and respond to the music. Consequently, the establishment of dance styles is not only a product of choreography but also comes from the collective interpretations and expressions of dancers within a particular community or subculture. From classical ballet to hip-hop, the type of music played profoundly influences the style and intensity of movement.

Embodiment and Healing: How Can One Nurture Embodiment Through Somatics Practices?

By: Jasmine Massey

Pursuing professional dance training has given me an inside perspective on how dance in an institutional setting can paradoxically cause a disconnection from the body. This started my search for a kind of dance that felt more meaningful and in personal alignment with my values. The kind of embodiment that I am referring to is a particularly important way of being that should be nurtured within this digital world. The assumed ‘efficiency’ of everyday life brings significant losses to our human experience. Although I believe that embodiment is an integral component to our wellbeing, as it is evidenced so, I consider how disconnection from the body sometimes occurs as the result of a necessary and natural internal mechanism that has been designed for our safety.

Exploring how the influence of the athlete paradigm on integrating targeted mental and physical training methods can cultivate a growth mindset and increase self-motivation towards dancer development. – An autoethnographic exploration

By Theodora Marasescu

The athlete paradigm encapsulates a distinctive set of approaches to attitudes and behaviours toward excellence in sports performance. This study aims to explore the intersections of utilizing this perspective in a dance training environment, through a mixture of mental and physical components to evaluate the transformation potential of the growth mindset and self-determination theory. Understanding the principles and their impact on an individual’s capabilities, effort and dedication can provide a solution to the challenges of the contemporary dance industry. Following an informed auto-ethnographical method, the impact of cultivating a growth mindset and self-motivation in dancers will be explored to highlight its importance in a dance setting, to support overall well-being, and to develop dancers’ attitudes towards a view of athleticism in training.

CAMILLA LAURILA

MARJORIE HUNZIKER

MARK HALTON

SUNNY COCO MARKO BENNETT

RONAN CARDOZA

AMANDA PANG

KATHERINE SARNEY

EMILY MELANSON

Words by Josephine Leask

The BA3’s practice-based dissertations that I watched were grouped around the theme of ‘states’. Each of the works, including two written dissertations, explored different states or moods shaped by how the dancers moved and interacted with their environment, music, or with themselves. Thinking about how all this work connected with the theme, I felt the students collectively embodied mood as an internal state of feeling, an emotional state, a tone, an aura or an atmosphere, all of which generated different feelings: anxiety, bewilderment, pleasure, joy or fulfilment.

Camilla Laurila’s film portrayed the negative atmosphere of a particular dance studio, while Marjorie Hunziker’s film explored her uplifting emotional and physical response to a wild, outdoor landscape. Mark Halton’s solo created an ill-at-ease mood triggered by his attempts to dance, relying on unfamiliar sensory experiences.

Sunny Coco Marko Bennett’s solo had an optimistic vibe as she engaged hyper physically with the music of a jazz saxophonist, and Ronan Cardoza investigated various states of introspection and movement that emerged from very little. In the written dissertations, Amanda Pang examines how the mood and indeed well-being of a dancer are affected by hormone imbalances and Katherine Sarney analyses whether feelings of empathy are inherent within dancers.

Camilla Laurila’s film installation Idea (L) of Space, portrays the psychological effect of rehearsing at Studio Wayne McGregor. Laurila communicates through camera and choreography the difficulties she experienced while trying to make work in the immaculate, state-ofthe-art dance studio. The film highlights the flattening, grey-whitish colour of the windowless walls, the lighting and the scale of the studio; an uninspiring space that made her feel creatively frozen.

With inventive film techniques and editing, Laurila generates the feeling of being a dancer lost inside this large, soulless place. Close-ups juxtapose the emotional humanness of the dancers with the characterless studio. Bodies appear from all directions trying to fill the studio and ground themselves but then give up and disappear. Dancers huddle together or try to measure the diameter of the space with a string that isn’t big enough. Certain shots, repeated throughout the 10-minute film, emphasise Laurila’s stress; for example one dancer appears isolated and seemingly stranded as she grips anxiously onto a small moving piece of flooring. Split screens that separate one dancer from another imply the inability to make contact. Superimposed shots of shadowy bodies appear above Laurila’s dancers, darting across the screen.

These images make me think about the presences of other rehearsing dancers that linger in the studio also stressed out

by the atmosphere of expectancy and a constant requirement to produce. It’s an evocative film which questions how rehearsal spaces sometimes impact not only dancers’ creativity but also their mental health.

Marjorie Hunziker’s immersive film

Moved by beauty: an embodied conversation places her on the beautiful cliffs of the Dorset coast. An aerial shot captures her striding out across the rolling fields towards the beach - a tiny, distant figure. The camera slowly pans the horizon and the vast expanse of purple-tinted sky. Next on the beach, we follow her walking past statue-like rock formations in the sea. Reflectively, she pauses and arches her spine, arms extended to the sky, inspired by the great sculptural matter.

As the waves lap over her feet she undulates her torso and makes circular hand gestures in a conversation with the tide. Hunziker converses with her environment the air, sea, sand, rocks, fields and sky, which causes moments of humbled stillness or joyous high-energy choreography. Close-ups of Hunziker contrast the textures of her human body with that of the intricate and varied land habitats. Her choreographed sequences respond to the pleasure she feels being in nature and the quality of the filming heightens our immersive experience as we watch.

I can feel the air temperature, the sounds of sea and birds, the smell of the grass, or the presence of ancient rocks and slow drifting clouds. Deeply moved by nature’s beauty, Hunziker communicates her feelings of vulnerability and transience in this ancient, majestic landscape.

“All of the students’ works shaped a strong sense of mood and different states of being that clearly articulated their feelings as well as impacting mine.”

In A Different House, Mark Halton’s short solo movement exploration investigates the sensory world and what it must feel like for animals or insects with their reliance on different senses to that of humans. Using a kaleidoscopic headpiece to distort and restrict his vision and proprioception, Halton tentatively enters the blacked-out studio guided by two assistants and arrives in a spotlit circle. Wearing black club gear and long antennae goggles he already looks disconcertingly non-human.

As he pushes himself to connect with other beings’ sensory worlds, he creates an aura of unfamiliarity through his bewildered actions. He breathes loudly and forcibly as if on high alert, while

performing small contortions through the body. Once familiar with his new environment and visual limitations, his movements become relaxed and fluid. He becomes more adventurous, stimulated by the jazz music of John Coltrane and hurls himself in rapid circular motions and spirals, finding ways to balance. Overall it’s a riveting solo that pushes Halton out of his comfort zone and makes us think about what it must feel like to inhabit unfamiliar sensory territory.

Without theatrical devices or props, exposed in the large, airy upbeat space of the Founders’ studio, Sunny Coco Marko Bennett also pushes their body out of its comfort zone. In Rhythmic Conversations, a brave, non-stop, 10-minute freestyle solo performed in the round, Bennett’s alert state develops in response to a piece of jazz, Prologue, played by American jazz saxophonist Kamasi Washington.

She dialogues with a variety of moods conveyed by the music. Making spontaneous movements that draw on popping and body percussion, Bennett morphs through different physical states inspired by the complex and rapidly changing rhythms of the saxophone. At one point she taps out rhythms on their own body, finding different ways to articulate what she hears and feels. As she follows the chaotic polyrhythms, Bennett develops their own voice in the moment of performance, directing their body to where the music suggests. Bennett conveys not only the energy and thrilling unpredictability of the music but also their own unbeatable energy and creativity.

Cardoza lies on a white sheet in the middle of the floor. Her contained performance space is theatrically lit to emphasise her whitened body and face. With her solo Void Bride Cardoza creates a space or a void, in which she explores and discovers new things about herself.

The work that draws on Butoh performance is minimal, without sound or expressivity and durational (audiences are invited to come and go during the hour she performs). Her minimal costume of white underwear exposes a body either at birth or death while a white gauze garment, reminiscent of a wedding veil, suggests some kind of union. Cardoza communicates with herself. She moves slowly, with contemplation and introspection, seemingly oblivious to the audience or anything happening outside of her void. She maintains an introverted, interiorised focus as she concentrates on manipulating different parts of her body, testing out where the resulting movement will take her or how.

Holding limbs in awkward positions in relation to her torso she struggles to hold a balance, one moment crouched precariously on the balls of her feet, another falling over. She is commanding to watch; a powerful, liberated and selfcomposed presence that is both intense and baffling to experience. Accompanied by the shadows of her body that flit across the walls, she accompanies herself and offers another possibility of being, one that seems totally free of limitations or boundaries.

In Hormone Health: A Dancer’s Perspective, Amanda Pang’s written research examines hormone health and its impact on the overall wellbeing and

performance capabilities of a dancer. Gathering evidence-based solutions from her own personal experience and making interventions that promote good hormone balance, the dissertation sheds light on how dancers might achieve equilibrium with the endocrine system and find their full potential.

Katherine Sarney’s research, Do You Feel Me, questions whether dancers are naturally empathetic by nature of their training and interaction with other dancers. Like Pang, she reflects on her own embodied experiences and interrogates examples of being in empathetic states, or how she understands emotional intelligence and cognitive processes in dance. The work questions the connection between minds and bodies, from where kinaesthetic empathy develops, and argues how feeling empathy can make one a more fulfilled dancer.

All of the students’ works shaped a strong sense of mood and different states of being that clearly articulated their feelings as well as impacting mine. The fascinating practices I was lucky enough to see and read about shows how the students understand mood and its enrichment of dance, adding nuance, pathos, colour and texture for both the performer and spectator.

Rhythmic Conversations

By Sunny Coco Marko Bennett

By using methods drawing from rap music theory, Popping, and Body Percussion, I have developed my freestyle practice through the lens of conversing with the music, the people around me, and the societal context that I live within. I have researched and then drawn on ideas of warping perception of time, visual and aural polyrhythms, micro-timed flow, and the creation of tension through rhythmic repetition. To bring this research further I would like to continue refining my freestyle practice by researching more deeply about each framework’s connection to rhythm. I would love to create choreographic work based on rap flows and rhythm, that would stem from what I have learnt whilst developing my freestyle practice.

Hormone Health: A Dancer ’s Perspective

By Amanda Pang

By examining the interplay between hormonal factors such as menstrual health, energy balance, and stress responses, my research paper seeks to uncover the underlying mechanisms that impact dancers’ overall health and career longevity. Concluding my research, I found the intricate interplay of factors in a dancer’s life to have adverse effects on their hormonal health, with potential long-term repercussions for well-being and career longevity. This underscores the importance of comprehensive interventions focusing on menstrual health awareness, nutrition education, and psychosocial support to enhance dancers’ hormone health and overall well-being. By advocating for a holistic care approach that emphasises education, support, and resource accessibility, dance communities can cultivate environments where dancers feel empowered to prioritise their health and performance needs without fear of judgement or discrimination.

A different house

By Mark Halton

Do we have to experience to care? In my opinion, we don’t have to experience to care, but by attempting to step into another ’s world, it can help with understanding another’s experience, which, in turn, may lead to a willingness to help and care for others very different from ourselves. Are we innately good, or is goodness a veneer?

Moved by beauty: an embodied conversation

By Marjorie Hunziker

In this short film, I’m exploring different ways to interact with the landscape. I’ve chosen a sensory, somatic, and visceral approach to space. I invite you to immerse yourself in this nature with me and to connect with your senses. And to be aware of what the connection with nature and a body produce in you.

“I had to meet the landscape on its terms, not how I wanted to shape it.”

“There’s an unconscious vocabulary of sensations, experiences, atmospheres, images, textures, and thoughts available to the mover. There is nothing to create; everything is already in the body.”

“My body is a tool that facilitates the spectator’s fully experiencing the environment.”

Cr. Marjorie Hunziker

By Camila Laurila

The bidirectional connection between a dancer and the surrounding space is indisputable and extensive. Covering both physical and psychological experiences, space has an effect on a dancer’s performance and creative abilities as well as mental health and psychological safety. This unique connectivity between a physical aspect and an embodied experience sparked my interest in researching this through the lens of psychology. My research aims to achieve and depict a deeper understanding of the knock-on effect of the physical and the embodied experience through reflective practices, as well as visual presentation emerged from this.

Do You Feel Me? A Dancer ’s perspective on emotional intelligence, empathy, and cognitive processes in dance.

By Katherine Sarney

Dancing can be understood as a language without words. Audiences can understand complex narratives and emotion through interpreting abstract movement, facial expressions, gestures, and body language. Through this wordless expression, dancers build an awareness of and connection between their minds and bodies and are therefore also able to closely connect with other people’s body language and emotions. It poses the question: Are dancers ‘more empathetic’ or ‘more emotionally sensitive’ than the average person? In my work I consider whether, and how, dance training has affected my ability to be in-tune with my own and others’ emotions. I look at how dancing can build emotional intelligence, and how we can maintain ourselves emotionally, as highly empathetic, and sensitive people.

Cr. Camila Laurila

The Unique Expressions of Christian Worship: Kinetic Images,

Words and Art

By Emily Melanson

In a world of constant longing, finding Jesus Christ filled the hole in my heart. Over the past two years, I’ve observed how the Spirit moves us in worship—not just in our hearts and minds, but in our bodies. Gestures, movement, and posture reveal our desperation and willingness for the Lord. While secular society often dominates dance with expectations and self-consciousness, worship should embrace movement and dance.

This dissertation explores the possibilities and triumphs of including dance in Christian worship. It categorizes dance into impromptu and performed forms, both Spirit-led and valuable. Impromptu movement involves spontaneous, Spirit-guided dance, often personal and inwardfocused. Performed worship is more structured, typically accompanied by musicians and observed by the congregation. My video features two sections: one with myself and one with my Christian friends, some dancers, some not, to investigate our different relationships with movement in worship.

Contextually, understanding Christianity and firsthand experiences with the Holy Spirit are crucial. Gesture, defined as an intrinsic sensory form of utterance, plays a significant role in worship. Liturgy, corporate responsibility, and the integration of movement into worship are explored through conversations with worship leaders, dancers, and theologians like Laura Hellsten. The dissertation addresses the complexities of motivation versus ability in dance. While some argue that lack of ability should limit dance in worship, I believe that motivation and Spirit-led movement transcend these limitations. Postures and gestures like open palms, kneeling, and swaying are common in worship, reflecting our entire being’s involvement in devotion.

In conclusion, integrating movement into worship enhances the holistic worship experience. Future research will further explore embodied knowledge and practical practices, fostering a deeper understanding of how the Spirit moves us in worship.

ESME LOVELL

VIOLETTA LINARES

LUELLA REBBECK

JACY KEDDIE

ELLIE CHICK

ELVI ROSE CHRISTIANSEN HEAD

CHUN FAIN LEE

Words by Isaac Ouro-Gnao

“How do you feel?” asks Esmé Lovell to three participants as she opens the holistic wellbeing workshop. She invites them to reflect on this question internally and respond within their bodies. Body scanning is an important exercise within somatic practice, done to raise sensorial awareness and be in tune with oneself and those around.

I’m an observer, sitting on the side of the studio, but I take the time to do the same. It’s 10am and the early morning heaviness in the body can still be felt. I shift into a more comfortable position and continue observing.

The workshop then shifts towards interacting with props to bring to life memories that bring joy. The participants craft daisies, seashells, and beads into heart-shaped sculptures, long strands of floral fabric winding around the ballet barres, and green moss-like ribbons with yellow and purple sweet wrappers dotting the floor, before moving between and around each crafted world.

The workshop is titled Can Dance Help You Learn and Flourish? and Lovell’s approach to instigating learning and flourishing is clear in the way she centres care and connection; creating a space for those taking part to have agency and explore movement from joyful spaces held in the body. One participant, Luella

Rebbeck, voices this gratitude in having their need met, to “not necessarily feel better, but to just be”.

Elvi Rose Christiansen Head follows in similar fashion with her workshop – How can you facilitate artistic processes/ environments that enable participants to access their own needs as humans and artists? – attuned to the needs of her participants. Rather, she asks how to best facilitate artistic spaces where participants can safely access their own needs as humans and artists.

Head offers a meticulous workshop, with each facet laboured and thought through (I’m offered the workshop plan showing six detailed phases). I’m invited to join 13 others (filtering in and out over the course of the workshop) to create self portraits through collage making.

We’re each invited to make song requests to fill the space with sounds that bring us comfort, before putting all the finished portraits up onto a string hung across the whole space.

Throughout, Head’s priority is to ‘get people talking’ and interacting with one another to build a collective connection before moving on to more bodyfocused tasks and movements. Head’s practice is gentle and people centred, navigating different answers and options

to create space for participant agency – in art making choices and movement improvisation. The answer to her enquiry on creating an environment for people to access their needs seems pluralistic, aptly reflecting the multifaceted participants present in her workshop.

Jacy Keddie, the following artist, explores this idea of the plural through a single lens. In Isolation, a 15-minute film, she places herself as the sole subject questioning what was missed for artists like herself while in isolation at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. “How did we cope as artists,” she reflects in the programme, while on screen, a series of clips appear in succession in an episodic fashion. The footage shows her improvising in various studio spaces at The Place, moving with softness and ease with arching lines and fluid expressions.

The titles of the vignettes are most striking; ‘Ikigai’ the most resonant.

‘Ikigai’ is a Japanese word and term that translates roughly to ‘a reason for being’. It was especially striking to see different versions of Keddie improvise, at times at the same time in split screens, cleverly referencing the multiscreen streams we’ve become accustomed to through applications like Zoom. Isolation, in turn, can be read as an exercise of reconnecting with a reason for being, and cultivating a digital shared space and community through a singular and multiple lens at once.

The Pleasure in Hesitation continues this line of thinking. In this instance, Ellie Chick’s interests lie in experiencing pleasure through enjoying one another’s company in a physical space. In the onboarding process, it’s made clear that there are no expectations from us as an audience, nor of her as a dance artist to perform or be the centre of attention. By this verbal and written statementcum-manifesto, the work resists a label of performance or dance, yet feels like the makings of performance art. I try to resist viewing it as such but make a note on the friction this creates – perhaps by design.

Chick sets her timer for 20 minutes and sits in the middle of the dance studio in silence, knees tucked and with arms locked around her legs. As to be expected, the participants sitting in the round on the edges of the dance studio are reserved and quiet to start with. An audience member arrives a while later than the rest and their entrance causes laughter to ripple through the space. Nerves are calmed, and motion begins. Chick hums and drags herself across the space at a snail’s pace. Others in the room relax and engage in conversations that bring the room to life. Someone

Cr. Elvi Rose Christiansen Head

gets up and walks around the room in childlike glee. The volume picks up. To my right, a competition of who can slide on their back the farthest from one push of the leg ensues. I make my offering to the space by playing music at a barely audible volume. I enjoy seeing ears and eyes perk up in uncertainty.

Chick cultivates an interesting environment that allows for people to enact their spontaneous desires without judgement. There’s an unspoken understanding of play at the core of every interaction. Despite the freedom, many keep to themselves and only disrupt the environment (doors, windows, mirror, curtains) or friends they entered the space with. Chick’s provocations also explore ‘having a deeper awareness of one’s own and other’s boundaries’ in order to find the space and experience pleasurable.

I wonder if the time given was longer perhaps, that we might delve deeper into becoming more attuned to those boundaries, and tap into desires of verbal or physical interaction. But where it stands, the work is a powerful testament of what happens when permission is given in a loosely held space to just be and find pleasure in that simplicity.

Following the Grain by Violetta Linares follows a similar immersive line of interrogation. Rather than simply being given agency to enact and move how we choose, we are challenged to think about conformity, herd mentality, and whether the choices we make are our own or influenced by an external force.

We are invited into the studio space turned into an installation. There’s writing

“... the coming together of different mediums, dancers and practitioners, is key to achieving a holistic experience of art.”

on the walls, and several sheets of large paper scattered on the floor with writing utensils surrounding them. The dancers, dressed in off white baggy clothing, filter in one by one, striking the floor in stomps. In one corner, a projection plays a looping film of the dancers (Mark Halton, Hannah Cope, Madi Plunkett, Olivia Foskett, Charlotte Guilbert-Green) interacting and moving in urban and green spaces.

The movements flow from soft contact improvisation motifs to game-like exercises of clapping call and response. A striking moment occurs where one of the dancers zealously dances across the length of the ballet barres across the whole room, twisting and winding with vigour between barre and bodies in their way.

There’s a turning point in the piece, where as if by design, the audience begins to sit one by one in near canon. Physical tiredness plays a large part – we’ve been standing for a good 15 minutes at this point and encouraged to walk around the space as we entered – yet it’s still an odd thing to observe this subconscious decision-making as the audience themselves observe the dancers. Is this a moment of the herd mentality in action?

There’s a throughline in ASSOCIATION AT ITS FINEST AND ITS ABSOLUTE WORSE. This work too concerns itself with how the body sits and reacts in a

physical space. For Luella Rebbeck however, the focus is on how words can elicit physical responses and occupy space independently.

Monosyllabic words moving at birdspeed are projected on the back wall of the space. Voices, from Rebbeck and Elina Wates, narrate the poetic text, with only a few words caught. ‘Being apart from art’ and ‘Being a part of art’ flash by but their impact lingers. A synth-like soundscape composed by Talitha Burrows drones in the background, scratching and pitching up and downwards. I feel uncomfortable.

Soon, shadows fall from two bodies in space. Rebbeck and Willow Fenner wrestle with the inbetween; to be a part of and apart from the space, each other, the audience, and the text. There’s an effortlessness present in their movement as this motion of expansion and contraction develops, and an ease settles in my body.

ASSOCIATION AT ITS FINEST AND ITS ABSOLUTE WORSE feels quite meditative; the music, movement, and poetry all occupy a monotonous quality with stark spikes that disrupt the comfortable state created.

As Chun Fain Lee puts it in their dissertation on effective strategies for preparing and executing contemporary dance productions, “interdisciplinary collaboration stands as a cornerstone of creativity and innovation in contemporary dance”. As Rebbeck and all the practitioners I’ve reflected on display, the coming together of different mediums, dancers and practitioners, is key to achieving a holistic experience of art.

This is primarily achieved through, by

Lee’s estimations, “embracing diverse communication strategies tailored to the unique needs and preferences of the project team”; in this instance, the needs of participants, dancers, and audiences alike. Lee carefully constructs a thesis around the need for effective communication, reflected in each choreographer and practitioner above in their ability to cultivate communal spaces and experiences through clear verbal and non-verbal means, as this the “cornerstone of successful productions” and practices.

ASSOCIATION

AT ITS FINEST AND ITS ABSOLUTE WORST.

By Luella Rebbeck

My research investigates the interaction between language, the body, and space, focusing on how words can elicit physical responses and how bodily movements can imbue words with meaning. Drawing from personal poetry, the study explores both verbal and non-verbal communication, examining how the body reacts to words and how it occupies space independently. By analysing these interactions, this research aims to clarify the reciprocal relationship between language and embodiment, underlining the role of words in shaping bodily experiences and sensations with spatial contexts.

HOW CAN FACILITATORS FACILITATE ARTISTIC PROCESSES AND SPACES THAT ENABLE PARTICIPANTS TO ACCESS THEIR OWN NEEDS AS HUMANS AND ARTISTS?

By Elvi Rose Christen Head

Facilitating workshops with students at LCDS, I researched how to facilitate artistic processes that enable participants to nurture their psychological and physical needs. I embraced frameworks of critical and feminist pedagogy, recognising the importance of understanding positionality, broader contexts, and adapting to participants’ needs. Through interdisciplinary creative and improvisational tasks as a collective we nurtured a feeling of connection and attentiveness towards ourselves and each other. Central to this exploration was cultivating an environment where participants felt equally valued and free to express themselves authentically. One participant reflected: “The workshops reinforced the knowledge of the need for an environment to allow mental space and time in order to have everyone’s creativity flow.”

Isolation - Covid-19’s impact on the creative sector and freelance dance artists

By Jacy Keddie

I looked at the impact of Covid-19 on the career and wellbeing of freelance artists, informed by research looking globally and locally to the UK, and to the cultural and creative sector. Through repeated themes found within my theoretical exploration of data as well as taking anecdotal experiences from my research, my film focused on the absence of touch. The film looks to emulate the idea of separation and loneliness, as the dancers onscreen explore the boredom of being trapped alone versus the joy of being able to move freely.

By Esme Lovell

This paper explores whether holistic experience through dance movement practice can improve a person’s wellbeing and what methods and mindsets can be used to achieve this. The core outcome is to create an original workshop practice that will evolve beyond this project; potentially in the future, other dance practitioners could facilitate. I can identify the perspective that links together all aspects of my research such as Holisum, Well-being, Existentialism, Phenomenology, Freedom, Buddhism The Eightfold Path, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

Can Dance Help You Learn and Flourish

Cr. Jecy Keddie

ANDREA MORALES

PETTER SKURDAL

FAYE SINGLETON

ALEXANDER CARPENTIER

MAISIE FAUL LEANNE TRAN

Words by Paula C. Riofrío

What are the sounds and the acoustic images that come to you as you read: Viscerality?

For me it is bodies, not necessarily what we are wearing, I hear tension, energy bouncing, being constrained and released. But, viscerality is not solely flesh. Viscerality is also to be: earthy, instinctive, emotional.

Viscerality is the theme I was given to guide you through the work of six students in the third year of their degree in Dance at LCDS. Without further ado, let me introduce you to Andrea Morales and her science fiction story named Awake. Her dissertation proposal involved taking her writing into a 15-minute choreographed performance.

The dancers played the roles of synthetic humans arriving on Earth from another planet. Among mechanical movements, pelvic impulses and impacts, explosive sounds as those of gun machines, Awake took dancers and audience into a spiritual journey overlooking humanity. Both the story and the performance feature humans as an inactive society, passive and docile, involved solely in their routines, disregarding the true beauty of nature. In her story Andrea includes a list of complaints regarding the routes humanity has taken. Ironically,

she closes her story with this lines:

pretend that I’m lying to you when I tell you that your eyes are less eyes day by day. Trust everything you look at, and you’ll soon stop looking. The capsules that feed your bubble and make it heavier and heavier also make you more and more docile and sleepy, you live inside a sleepy, sleeping population. Just keep sleeping dear human, you ́re doing great.

I was blown away by Maisie Faul’s introspection into what I would like to describe as a visceral philosophical sharing named Toward the Weight of Words. The first time I entered the room I felt compelled to read out loud the words pasted on the wall, from the bottom to the top and then from the middle to the side, constructing all possible meanings with my tongue, but I didn’t. I kept myself in silence, reading the black inked sheets of paper on the floor. Masie’s figure pasting words and syntagms onto the wall felt like a meditative prophet writing the world’s destiny on an infinite wall.

The second time I entered the room I noticed slight differences in the full text. I read again as the wall was slowly being

filled with collaged words, poetry, fresh and lively. This time I could say what I was experiencing was an installation on silence and space. What is visceral about silence? The silence lets the body communicate by opening the perception to the non-visible, yet tangible.

The third time I entered the room the voices of the readers opened in me the intention to speak out loud. We had a collective dialogue, we were both performers and the audience of it; just like in real life. “Why must I be here?” I said, or someone else said, it did not matter. Several replays continued to unfold. Maisie continued to paste words on her infinite wall. I started collaging some words on the floor, suddenly someone approached; we started to co-write. I would have enjoyed staying there for the three hours it lasted. Why? Because there was space, silence, for me to stay, that was my conclusion. One of the attendees talked with Maisie at the end of the installation. “I feel very silenced and calm” Maisie replayed, as she collected words from the ground.

Now let’s talk about images and sensations. Alexander Carpentier’s piece, Inferno, was inspired by WilliamAdolphe Bouguereau’s oil-on-canvas painting, ‘Dante and Virgil in Hell’. As the lights went out I felt like entering the painting. I saw bodies dismembered laying on the ground and then I saw them growing together into their vertical position. There was a palpable division in the stage: two encountering forces on the rhythm, two different shades of vestment.

The bodies resemble statues because of their angles, but they move as vividly as the motion present in rituals. The

“What is a human body without a soul to direct it? Is the tragedy of human experience its inclination towards the flesh or the mind? I wonder.”

choreography allowed the constant metamorphosis from human into evanescing soul; ethereal-angelic airs in contraposition with the terrestrial. The harpies surrounded Dante’s body as he descended into hell. What is a human body without a soul to direct it? Is the tragedy of human experience its inclination towards the flesh or the mind? I wonder.

Are we not shaped and deformed by our fears, the smiles we have shared and the distances we’ve crossed, the pavement and mountains we have walked on; our birthmark, in the centre of our whole?

Using our bodies as the conductor of emotions is such a visceral act. Must all dance be visceral?

I had the pleasure to talk to Petter Skurdal; and you, reader, will read about this later. But first let’s hear about Petter’s work Infinite Monologue. Petter was seated in the middle of the room with a balloon. He read his notebook, then read again varying the prepositions, making use of language for meaning and entertainment. He sang a song about strawberries, linked to the red balloon he was holding (this is my guess). He explored the movement with freedom, he improvised.

There was no linear story, just a performer running in circles. He used speech and movement as a stream of consciousness. He lets us know “When I

read my diary I try to sympathise with the person that was writing at that time.” The simple viscerality of presence, I think. The viscerality of honesty, something tells me viscerality cannot lie, should not lie. He read a passage about his time in London: “I had the feeling we all feel hopeless, eaten by cement”.

I remembered the feeling in my skin when I’ve cycled, how I am always afraid of turning into a brick as I pass through the city. Viscerality seems to be less when it comes to words; even though it triggers sensations to the flesh. “I am loved by my insides right now” Petter says as he feels. He moves maniacally, and it is his dance. Caresses the wall and sings a love song in the corner. Something inside the performances triggered him to do so; he now decoils from the wall and sighs.

Later, and rather unexpectedly, I was fortunate to speak with Petter. This was my first question to him: Was it all improvised? He answers yes. He works on an improvisation basis, but revisits certain places too, as a way of retrying. The conversation we have opens itself as a rhizome, but to me it ends up joining all the bifurcations into a circle after all.

Communication is a round circle from what is felt into what is expressed and then what is decoded. Petter says “I wonder, am I letting things out, am I letting you in?” I assume that the intention is there, regardless of the outcome. As linguists say, Chomsky to be specific; our minds are like a black box, and it is there where we interpret reality. He questions himself: am I a dog chasing a bone, desires, on each performance or am I a different person changing every time I visit a new place

in the map? (the map is the performance and the new place is that exact present moment suddenly created in time). Petter and I ended our conversation.

I would like to title this part of the article as: VHS without nostalgia. What Vic Did by Faye Singleton is an immersive analogue horror experience. It clashes together multimedia recorded work with live performance. Before entering the room there were some codes outside, symbols and letters that had to be decoded to understand what Vic did. The work was singularly designed as a visceral experience of a horror movie.

Inside the room the windows were covered; everything was dark, the only light was coming from the TV. The film showed two profiles by the window, then more bodies joined the frame. All I could hear was the old recording noise of a VHS.

The old TV showed bodies moving under a blanket. Tapes with a sign that said “play me” were lying on the top of the table that held the audiovisual

equipment together. I looked at the very end of the room to discover the laying bodies of the dancers. I changed the tape out of distress, but it was the same exact recording. One person moved the recording forwards and the bodies in the back started to move. One person on the tape mentioned how she felt claustrophobic by standing on the underground. I felt claustrophobic too, even nauseated. Bodies approached us moving like zombies and I needed to get out. I have never seen more realistic zombies, their movement was precise, involving, truthful. Inside the TV were bodies exercising, bodies acting the same, bodies moving choreographically. I left the room thinking when something is tangled, does it need to find an understanding?

The last stop in this article is Leanne Tran’s dissertation Digital Dancer, which asks to what extent can social media nurture an artist’s career? On one side, it is an analysis about the role of digital media in Sean Lew, Derek Hough, and Smac McCreanor’s dance careers. It delves into key moments of their professions that were supported by social media.

On the other side, Leanne experiments with the use of her Instagram account to evaluate the outcome of active self-promotion as a dancer. In both scenarios, social media showed positive results, with numerous interactions and active engagement with clients and collaborators. The non-visceral, yet highly developed mediums of storytelling related to social media show indeed a great advantage in terms of selling and connecting.

Cr. Faye Singleton

and abstracts

Toward the Weight of Words

By Maisie Faul

My research comes from a general and very complex, layered, all encompassing fascination with performance and language. To me it has always felt as though you cannot have one without the other. This research has led me to consider the links I can find between both language and performance, and their challenges. It doesn’t feel to me that this is about change, although movement is inherent in the construction of this text, which asks me to question the definitions I hold of what separates change from movement. It doesn’t feel to me that this is about lineage, although change is inherent in the construction of this text, which asks me to question the definitions I hold of what separates lineage from change.

DIGITAL DANCER

By Leanne Tran

DIGITAL DANCER offers an intimate exploration of social media’s significant impact on an artist’s career. Specifically, it delves into Instagram’s influence on business, art, and modern culture, and uncovers its crucial role in developing a career in this generation. This dissertation investigates Instagram’s relationship with dance artists, and how it serves as a dynamic tool for building digital portfolios and connections with industry professionals. While acknowledging Instagram’s proficiency during the experiment’s success, DIGITAL DANCER prompts critical reflection on the interplay between online and offline strategies. It suggests that while social media offers unprecedented visibility and connection to a wider audience, offline engagements and traditional foundations (such as professional training) remain integral to holistic career development.

In my monologues and dialogues

By Petter Skurdal

She asked me to see what happens but nothing has really happened I probably understand now but I don’t understand anymore and let me fully feel this feeling I will never have am I living my life through imagination and do I feel that I am alive right now? And how am I supposed to find a job when I am on fire and what does being alive actually mean to me which I guess can be looked at in a definitive way I am alive because I am not dead but also in a philosophical way do I become alive when I dance or when I write or when I see you or when you see me and what is a guitar if it is not being played am I experiencing the full emotional and intellectual spectrum and this artwork makes me feel alive because I see myself in the skeleton figure eating a hot dog

‘What

Vic Did’. AN EXPLORATION OF FOUND FOOTAGE HORROR AESTHETICS AND IMMERSIVE THEATRE

By Faye Singleton

The use of the handheld camera meant that the dancers were being observed by what feels like a being that is in between our reality and another. When discussing films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and Rec (2007) I noted that if there were static wide angle shots, the story wouldn’t be as compelling. The energy and anxiety that seeps through the screen wouldn’t be read. We believe that we are experiencing everything at the same time as people on screen, you don’t wonder how many takes it took to get the perfect shot, because there are no perfect shots. Despite our perspective always being in the literal hands of Vic, we hardly know anything about her, we are just living within her world for a short amount of time, seeing her kaleidoscopic view of reality.

By Alexander Carpentier

My research explores how paintings or images can be used to do scored improvisation and generate choreographed dance material. This means using everything we can see and the narrative behind it as sources for inspiration. The goal of this research is to gain a deeper understanding of working with a painting/image/ drawing and making a piece of choreography. An understanding of approaching and experiencing a choreographic process with another art form whilst working with performers to gain a collective view and understanding of how to capture the essence of a painting in a physical way through the means of devising improvised scores and pieces of choreography. The narrative of the painting and the book also play an important factor and are the backbone for improved insight of the artworks.

BROOKE SORENSEN

WILLOW FENNER

SERENA THOMAS

OLIVIA FOSKETT

LILY MCDONALD

ALEX WHELAN

ROMINA F. DAZZAROLA FORNO

Words by Isabela Palancean

A selection of works from this year’s graduates of the London School of Contemporary Dance demands new attention towards the constantly expanding field of feminism and queer theory. Although individually unique, the six pieces selected work along a common thread of rethinking the body-self relationship within late-stage capitalism. Adopting a critical approach, they show how dance as a discipline often parallels the disciplining of bodies by structures of patriarchal authority. However, the pieces also present dance as a powerful conduit for conscious performativity, whereby established gender, identity and sexual frameworks can be critically reconfigured.

In her dissertation, The glass escalator in British contemporary dance Olivia Foskett poses the question: where are all the female choreographers today?

Tracing the current power imbalance in contemporary dance to its origins in ballet, she argues that the historic commodification and sexual objectification of female dancers explain why women are still so underrepresented as choreographers and theatre directors. The ‘glass escalator’, a term coined by Christine L. Williams in 1992, further explains this, by illustrating how men

(white and heterosexual) are fast-tracked into positions of power despite entering female-majority industries.

In view of Foskett’s dissertation, the following selected dance-works created by LCDS’s third-years pave new ground for female and non-binary voices in an industry that is still so heavily genderbiased and male-dominated.

The strive for individual integrity is what emanates from Willow Fenner’s piece ‘Body is Whole’. This piece seeks to reconcile the ‘self’ with the physical form it inextricably inhabits. As Simone de Beauvoir notes, a woman’s body is the site of a continuously circulating ambiguity, for she can use it as a vehicle for freedom and simultaneously feel oppressed by it.

Fenner’s piece powerfully captures this ambiguity while questioning the idealisation of the ‘female form’ through the lens of a post-human materialism. The use of textile props reminiscent of artist Louise Bourgeois’ woven sculptures portrays the intrinsic attachment between the woman’s (self) and her (body), which can be positively harnessed to empower, or negatively, to subjugate.

The dancers stage this duality through prop-play, oscillating between constriction and sensuality. Struggle exists in parallel with more tender expressions of touch, showing the body as the contested locus for both pain and pleasure, strength and vulnerability.

On the surface, the dancers’ contortions look like a battle against physical limitation. More subtly, it signifies a destabilisation of the idealised female form. Perhaps, the problem doesn’t lie in having a body, but rather in not having the perfect body. This seems to be Fenner’s statement here.

This becomes most evident during the climax of the piece, when a roll of fabric bearing the text: “For body grieves/ Body beats/ Body is desire/Body is disgust”, is pulled out in a subversive act of birthgiving. Fenner imbues motherhood with new symbolism as the broken umbilical cord is converted into a manifesto of empowerment.

“On the surface, the dancers’ contortions look like a battle against physical limitation. More subtly, it signifies a destabilisation of the idealised female form.”

In response to the existentialist claim of universal freedom to create ‘oneself’, De Beauvoir highlights the female subject as conditioned by the male gaze, dictating how she should ‘look’, ‘act’, ‘be’. Nothing makes this condition more manifest than Mattel’s mass-produced Barbie, with her spectacularly blonde hair, porcelain features and hourglass figure.

Serena

Thomas’ satirical piece All New

Real Life Human Person Barbie Doll plays into this male fantasy, poking holes into its structure from within. Interspersed with Barbie’s display of gymnastic prowess, momentary glitches unmask the artifice. Barbie’s malfunctioning indicates a kind of innate resistance; a desperate need to escape the trap set by her ‘creators’, which the ultra-ornate set design aptly conveys.

From the initial ballet poise and angular symmetries starkly controlled by Mattel’s commercials, the performance becomes progressively softer and more tentative, reflecting the transition from product to a living, feeling entity. The motif of coiling suggests transitional turmoil, as Barbie learns how to navigate a newly found ‘human’ autonomy against external expectations.

Cr. Jacy Keddie

Autonomy can also be referred to as ‘stepping into one’s own skin’. In Lily McDonald’s work In Her Skin, the process is catalysed via the symbolic act of pulling the curtains closed over the studio mirror.

By obstructing their own mirrored reflections, the dancers reject the objectification of female bodies by the spectacle, in which the audience is itself complicit. What would happen if a woman was allowed to dance like nobody is watching? What would happen if she used her body to take up space, rather than performing to please?

A dancer’s world, as noted in Foskett’s dissertation, is still held in the patriarchy’s tight fist, where strictly regimented routines and extreme competitiveness leave little room for self-expression, or indeed any sign of ‘weakness’.

McDonald’s piece offers an alternative by NOT eschewing the reality of suffering, inherent to both dancer and human experience. She allows her dancers to jerk, twitch, contract, fling their arms in the air, before they can eventually take flight in a touching sequence of diaphanous spins and soars.

In her durational piece Meeting the Studio Halfway, Brooke Sorensen subverts the dancer-audience dynamic – the ‘spectacle’ – by placing herself in the position of both subject and object, observer and observed.

Inspired by Karen Barad’s book ‘Meeting the Universe Halfway’, Sorensen embodies a diffraction apparatus to illuminate the entangled web of matter and meaning. As Brarad puts it: “all bodies, including but not limited to

human bodies, come to matter through the world’s iterative intra-activity, its performativity.” This can be closely perceived during diffraction as lightwaves encountering an obstacle form patterns of difference. It is this difference that makes matter, matter.

Through slow and focused movement, Sorensen sets out to explore the diffractive relationship between bodies in space. An arched step forward makes the floorboards screech; poetic arms create shadows absorbed by the wood’s grain; a pounding run makes the floor vibrate.

However, diffraction works both ways, and Sorensen is equally affected by the environment which she seeks to affect. The presence of other bodies as they come and go throughout the performance intersects with Sorensen’s state of flow, similarly to the obstacles that may arise in a light-ray’s path.

Significantly, this further negates the separation between performer and their external reality, while also

pointing to a wider boundary-crossing, transdisciplinary methodology advanced by Barad’s quantum physics.

The film by Alex Whelan, How do shame, vulnerability and social pressures affect movement and social choreography throughout queer males’ lives?, connects ‘the world’s iterative intra-activity’ to Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, i.e. how “masculine and feminine roles are not biologically fixed, but socially constructed.”

Further engaging with Andrew Hewitt’s notion of ‘social choreography’, Whelan makes the connection between discourse and bodily practice, ideology and performance – sharply underlined in the adjacent text: “anti-neutral pelvis, batty boy, faggot”.

While the first half is marked by a distinct theatricality, projecting a fetishised image of ‘queerness’: hypersexual, eccentric, and slightly frivolous, the remaining part of the series represents an attempt to break free. Plunging into the sea, battling, they leave all gestures of affected seduction behind.

“What if I just ran and could not see in front of me but did not mind because my back was facing what was over and I was going somewhere again?” The final film marks a new beginning. The performer’s previously exhibited aggression creates room for expansive aerial lines, suggesting detachment. Here the pleasure of dancing unrehearsed coincides with the pleasure of expressing one’s own gender/sexual identity outside the socially prescribed norm.

The autoethnographic piece by Romina F. Dazzarola Forno, Cuir Tales, continues to address the theme of queer experience, by bringing the ‘private’ into the ‘public’ sphere.

Hanging the laundry out to dry becomes a metaphorical act of sexual expression, where emphasis is given irreverently to items such as underwear. The silence in the first act of the performance creates an intimate bond between audience and performer, while also noting quiet struggle. Feelings of discomfort as Dazzarola Forno silently arranges laundry on the line, allowing the audience to empathise with the isolation of those marginalised through their difference.

The second act takes the domestic metaphor further, seeing the performer activated by the garments previously hung out to dry. An extension of the body and society itself, these garments can be utilised to both liberating and obstructing ends, as noted by de Beauvoir earlier. In a striking scene, Dazzarola Forno uses a folk-patterned scarf to tighten their waist until their back is painfully bent. The scene portrays suppression due to fear of being rejected by a lover, and more broadly by society itself.

In stark contrast, the end of the performance sees Dazzarola Forno laying a bed sheet on the floor. Spacious and print-less, this piece of fabric offers a canvas upon which the performer is finally able to express their feelings. Both the use of reflexivity and domestic setting highlight the autoethnographic practice informing Dazzarola Forno’s critique at the intersection between self and society.

and abstracts

The Glass Escalator in British Contemporary Dance: The paradox of male dominance in a female-majority industry

By Olivia Foskett

There is an obvious lack of successful commissioned contemporary female choreographers in Britain, and we must ask why and how this can be the case. How can contemporary dance, an art form often applauded for its forward-thinking, progressive and inclusive nature, and an art form that often tackles issues of discrimination and challenges norms, fall so short in supporting and promoting female choreographers? Although women have been pioneers within the contemporary dance world - Pina Bausch, Isadora Duncan, Twyla Tharp, Trisha Brown and Martha Graham, all examples of female pioneers in contemporary dance - we were perhaps always doomed to revert back to the patriarchal frameworks that shape our society and structures of power, as these are the frameworks within which contemporary dance exists.

Body Is Whole

By Willow Fenner

How does a female body materialise in space? How can we mutate expectations of the feminine? And how can the post-human lens be embodied to create a state of liberation? In my work I explore ways to redefine and reconstruct our understanding of femininity and feminine physicality. By investigating what it meant to be a post-human body activating post-human sculptures, I discovered a state of constant transformation and metamorphosis through different bodily structures. And through this physicality I found a state of reclamation: reclamation of my body, the power that it holds, and the physical images it can create. Through these lenses, I uncovered my own metamorphosis of femininity, where I can liberate and hold my continuously morphing identity both in movement and also in life.

Cr. Willow Fenner

By Serena Thomas

It’s said that a dog is man’s best friend, a loyal companion whose main purpose is to love and obey unconditionally. Using this phrase to find a suitable equivalent for women, all roads lead to the same blatantly obvious answer: Barbie. She’s blonde, career-driven, and most importantly, she was based on a human sex toy. But what happens when you place Barbie, the plastic pinnacle of femininity, in front of a young girl whose brain works a little differently? This brings me to the premise of my research, what impact has Barbie had on me as an autistic woman?

Meeting the Studio Halfway

By Brooke Sorensen

At a time where our Earth is at stake, a time of overconsumption and political polarisation, where hate and greed feeds the waste that eventually feeds us, I believe embodying a diffraction apparatus, and other diffractive methodologies, have potential to be planet-saving practices. Through tending to the extremely specific details of a single moment (the entanglement of the now), sensing the diffraction patterns left by entanglements of the past (concealed labour), and making way for entanglements of the future, my practice works towards developing a heightened sensitivity to our relationship with all matter.

lens, as I found an abundance of my material simply in memories and documentation of my life up to this point. These films are a result of my ongoing exploration of what it means to be queer in this age, how this reality impacts and affects queer men specifically, in both a physical and emotional sense, and furthermore how certain barriers explored here can be overcome.

Cuir Tales

By Romina F. Dazzarola Forno

Cuir Tales reflects on the practice of attentiveness in repetition, temporalities, space and safety in daily life experiences, addressing an exposition of queer narratives that come from a South American context. The use of the Hispanic ‘cuir’ instead of ‘queer’ refers to the South American Cuir community and their life experiences. The performance plays with a sense of temporalities, bringing the past to the present by an embodiment of past experiences, playing with a fictionalised recreation of cuir yearning.

How do Shame, Vulnerability and Social Pressures Affect Movement and Social Choreography Throughout Queer Males’ Lives?

By Alex Whelan

When speaking on the movement of queer and gay men, there are many things we must consider. Some of the most prevalent things I found were shame, social pressure, vulnerability, and authenticity. These are concepts that resurfaced repeatedly throughout all stages of my research. The final output, in the form of a film anthology, explores these ideas around queer men and movement through a partially autobiographical

Cr. Romina F. D. Forno

By Lily McDonald

Delving into how somatic and phenomenological perspectives illuminate pathways to deeper embodiment, my work has an emphasis on feminism and how the multifaceted experience of womanhood has an impact on our personal embodiment. Underpinning the entire research was a reflection on the ever-evolving nature of personal identity.

LUCY TURNER

MELINA KOUTAVA

JULIETTE MOTTE

FREDDIE WONG

SOPHIE MORRISON

SAMARA LANGHAM

AILSA HOBBINS

Words by Janejira Matthews

LCDS third-year students have certainly achieved an inspiring collection of performances, workshops and written research as part of their final assignments. Each is framed in a distinct approach to dance, either as the core subject or an explorative lens. Where approach is so carefully considered, the opportunity to explore the unfamiliar and half-hidden is opened. A workshop may offer the chance to wonder what living in a different body might feel like. A dance circle might form connections with a culture that is not your own. The breadth of these approaches is a valuable thing; one that extends dance as an art form beyond its more performative dimension.

Performance, however, is where we start. Lucy Turner’s Don’t Wake Dad draws us into the mind of a disabled child whirring round the complexities and play of well-known games. Connect 4 is played by a pair at the front of the stage, and the dancers behind don red and white gloves in imitation of the progressing game. They crumble away from each other when a player meets frustration – at losing or understanding the game?

Although the piece is covered in colour and the dancers’ angular shapes, a

gloomier air occasionally threatens the fun. One dancer shuffles away from the wider group through littered playing cards, hunched, bearing the weight of clothes piled gradually on top of them. We’re reminded that the world isn’t built for everyone, and we are forced to accommodate.

“Where approach is so carefully considered, the opportunity to explore the unfamiliar and half-hidden is opened.”

As a topic, childhood disability isn’t easy, and Turner makes a strong point by having us watch from the outside, piecing together sometimes overwhelming busyness with game after game after game. Intelligently choreographed, Turner also includes a nod to Fosse’s Rich Man’s Frug where the dancers fan giant playing cards as they contort their torsos. It all ends in cheeky triumph; as one dancer completes a chess game with an audience member, they knock the opponent’s piece and look up with glee: “Checkmate!”

Continuing with themes of overcoming

barriers in an able-bodied world, Sophie Morrison constructs a thoughtful inclusive creative workshop that features charades, arts & crafts and affirmations that culminate in improvisation. Explaining that the workshop is aimed at people who live with chronic pain, Morrison has evidently considered participants’ energy levels, possible communication difficulties and how to encourage everyone to move comfortably for themselves.

When she adds that she has previously done these activities with stroke survivors as well as dancers, it suddenly became obvious how beneficial the workshop could be. Charades in particular (not something I often play) made me realise how much we consciously rely on our voices rather than our bodies to communicate. The improvisation later on returned to physical communication and exploration, allowing us to connect as a group.

Bonding through movement as a large group underlines Melina Koutava’s Kefi, a dance circle arising from Koutava’s own Greek background. A little awkward at first, the room soon warms up and then kicks into full swing with Koutava’s gentle guidance. Joining a Greek dance circle is thrilling, delightful and sweet, a spiral into a part of Greek culture and

“A workshop may offer the chance to wonder what living in a different body might feel like. A dance circle might form connections with a culture that is not your own.”

relaxed human connection not often seen through dance in the UK.

Understanding culture through a kinaesthetic approach is perhaps rare to people unfamiliar with dance, but Koutava’s choice to bring Greek dance to us reveals how a country’s artistic practice might build a sense of community. We’re all laughing with each other if someone claps at the wrong time, or the fact that as the circle moves it’s difficult to keep up with the person next to you as the circle gets bigger! There are people breaking off into the centre to dance, the room is warm with joy.

In yet another contrasting approach to dance research, Freddi Wong’s Dance Through Animation: How does the use of animated visual materials facilitate movement creation in adults? is a curious venture into what happens when dancers turn to animation for movement creation. It’s common to see animators working off dancers for films, rarer to see the process switched. Wong has offered her dancers cute animals, objects and suggestions of narratives through GIFs to experiment with. We’re taken through some movement demonstrations before Wong discusses her research process and findings.

The short solos the dancers present us with are strong in character, marked by a cheeky sense of humour. Wong goes on to explain the advantages of using

animation as movement stimuli, with particular attention to keeping dancers engaged with tasks during their classes. Upon reflection, Wong suggests that she would like to extend the research to a wider variety of age groups, and I wonder if communities with different abilities would also benefit.

Also examining the relationship between dance and art is Samara Langham with Traces of the Body: an exploration of drawing as an embodied practice which does exactly what it suggests. As Langham marks lines in charcoal or pen, dancer Petter Skurdal reacts through movement. Sometimes the conversation is reversed, or one person goes solo. They explore the texture of drawings, shape and sound before pausing to discuss their embodied findings and then agree on the next score.

Spattered with unexpected amusements, the conversation becomes especially interesting in the final 15 minutes as Skurdal allows himself to free-flow into various trains of thought. Speaking aloud all sorts of odd contemplations, his movement takes on a meandering lilt that reflects his mental wanderings and the squiggles Langham has created (granola is a key word here – something that evidently entered my own subconscious as I unwittingly selected it for lunch the next day).

At times, it’s possible that the exploration is too episodic. It may have been intriguing to see a mix of moments that allowed spontaneous non-verbal conversation, with no set agreement on the score but an amalgamation of different ideas.

Alongside the performances and

workshops, written dissertations also feature. Juliette Motte’s Dance/ Movement Therapy: The Empowering Movement introduces dance movement therapy (DMT) and the way the practice can empower the disabled body. Motte’s research is touching as well as informative, their work driven by the experience of a disabled father alongside personal challenges around disability and mental health. Motte’s dissertation is a reminder of how society centralises people who are physically able, arguing that DMT provides a space for disabled persons to be proud of who they are by allowing connection with themselves and others. The result is well-considered research that is empowering in itself.

Ailsa Hobbins’ written research approaches the role of dance in society from a different angle. Dancing to Success: How Dance Training Could Solve the Soft Skill Shortage Within 20th Century Workplaces examines the advantages of dance training in building soft skills for the workplace. Hobbins convincingly argues the practical relevance of dance education in modern society by diving into neurological knowledge and literature surrounding soft skills. Her willingness to read into other fields of research sets the paper up nicely for potential future exploration, whilst viewing the possible impact of dance beyond the performing arts industry. Indeed, attention to the practical impact of dance rather than its emotive or expressive qualities considers how dance might be valued across broader Western society by non-dancers.

Each piece of research nudges another aspect of dance towards visibility. It is a pleasure to find students taking risks with their approaches, not

allowing themselves to be confined to conventional academic expectations. Consequently, their individual topics drive home points in ways that are compassionate, enriching a diverse array of subjects.

There is also a strong sense that each of the LCDS students understands how powerful dance can be as a platform for discovery, not just as a research subject in itself. Knowing what dance can achieve for a range of perspectives that are formed by different bodies and life experiences strengthens the presence of community and mutual understanding. It is this feeling of togetherness and hope that I am left with.

and abstracts

Don’t Wake Dad Up

By Lucy Turner

Don’t Wake Dad is a choreographic work exploring the retrospective realisation of childhood disability. The work challenges whether universal concepts fed to us as children are actually accessible: paralleling an ablebodied society with being forced to play board games without knowing the rules. Hint: The youngest player goes first!

Illuminating Psychoneuroimmunology: How Could One Improve Inclusion for People Living with Chronic Pain Within the Dance Industry?

By Sophie Morrison

I am aiming to create a practice that counteracts the isolated nature of people living with chronic pain, potentially reducing a patient’s feeling of alienation and providing methods of support. The foundations of my research are an exploration of psychoneuroimmunology, a theory developed by neuroscientist Gabor Mate in his international bestseller ‘The Body Says No’. This concept explores the inevitable connection between the mind and body. Traditional medical intervention often addresses symptoms directly, whereas psychoneuroimmunology considers the reasonings behind physical pain. It explains how childhood trauma, excessive stress or isolation can result in physical retaliation, otherwise known as the ‘immune system’s suicidal assault’.

Kefi

By Melina Koutava

The Greek word ‘Kefi’ loosely translates to the spirit of joy and enthusiasm, in which good times are expressed with an abundance of excitement. In my culture this joy is often expressed through dance. Greek traditional dances allow people to be free and to connect. Our dancing circles are a space of acceptance, liberation and euphoria where

different people come together to celebrate life. This research explored the influence Greek traditional dances may have on a contemporary dance practice and participatory performative experiences.

Dance Through Animation: How does the use of animated visual materials facilitate dance movement creation in adults?

By Orangugu Freddi Wong

My research experiments with the use of animation in creative dance teaching. During four movement creation workshops held at LCDS, participants were asked to compare the difference between using spoken words versus animated visual materials (GIFs) as creative stimuli. My results showed that a third of participants found GIFs more useful than verbal prompts when creating movement. GIFs brought a sense of cuteness, joy, and playfulness which could be helpful in the movement creation process. GIFs could be used together with words to facilitate learners’ access to their creativity in movement creation, regardless of one’s personal preference for animation as an art form.

Cr. Orangugu Freddi Wong

Traces of the Body: an exploration of drawing as embodied practice

By Samara Langham

Though drawing has always been a part of my life, as has dance, this is the first time I have intentionally integrated the two practices. My project offers an opportunity for exchange between the two mediums and discover relationships between them. I investigate how drawing can be used as both a stimulus and response to movement in order to document, translate, communicate or inspire. I also consider how drawing can be an embodied activity, so in a sense, I am interested in how drawing might be considered as movement and how movement can feel like drawing. Through experiments with drawing and movement improvisations, themes of dynamics, spatial and temporal relationships emerged. This project enabled me to expand my creative tools and methods for exploring movement ideas through the integration of drawing practice.

Dancing to Success: How Dance Training Could Solve the Skill Shortage within 21st-Century Workplaces.

By Ailsa Hobbins

Within the modern workplace, soft skills are fundamental for personal growth and professional development. However, many recent graduates often lack these interpersonal skills, according to employers, leading some employers to integrate soft skills training into their onboarding processes. Dance’s unique combination of physical and artistic elements is connected to its ability to develop soft skills, as dance class environments foster risk-taking, necessary for learning. Furthermore, professional dancers successfully transition into other careers within their portfolio careers or when retiring, demonstrating that this soft skills transference is achievable. Given the uniqueness of this proposal, no previous research has been conducted on this specific proposal. This paper ultimately aims to encourage future research and implementation of dance training as a means to develop soft interpersonal skills within both arts and non-arts sectors.

Cr. Samara Langham