Embodying multiplicity: the independent contemporary dancer’s moving identity

Abstract

In this article, I argue for an acknowledgement of the significance of the dancer’s role in the creation of independent contemporary dance. I propose the term ‘moving identity’ to outline the independent contemporary dancer’s ‘way of moving’ which could be perceived as the accumulation of various factors including training approaches, choreographic movement traces and anatomical structures. The concept of the moving identity allows us to appreciate the dancer’s unique signature movement style as the collation of embodied experiences into a unique way of moving. However, the moving identity is also open to change when the dancer encounters new choreography and the choreographer. Professional dance training produces particular types of dancers, depending on the techniques with which they engage. I demonstrate how the independent contemporary dancer troubles this distinctiveness by engaging with a multitude of movement styles and approaches throughout a career. This leads me to a fresh description of the dancer’s activity through the lens of Deleuzean concepts of multiplicity and de-stratification. Finally, I propose a definition of the dancer as a fluid and mutable body-in-flux with the creative potential to significantly influence the outcome of the choreographic process.

Keywords:

• moving identity
• independent dancer
• embodiment
• multiplicity

Notes

1. In this practice-led research, I adopted the role of researcher/participant in creative processes with four contemporary choreographers, Rosemary Butcher (UK), John Jasperse (US), Jodi Melnick (USA) and Liz Roche (Ireland). The outcome included three original solo works which were performed in the Dublin Dance Festival in 2008 and four discussion texts, outlining the unique creative process undertaken with each choreographer.

2. Some of these contributions are anonymous. Otherwise, the interviewees are credited. However, all participants are named in the appendix of my PhD thesis (Roche 2009).

3. Michel Foucault (1977: 148) stated: ‘The body is the inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dissolved by ideas)’.

4. Although this cannot cover current trends in independent dance that have developed since 1992, Foster’s mapping of different kinds of ‘dancing bodies’ is useful as a means of uncovering how the creative practice of the contemporary dancer developed from earlier approaches. Foster’s descriptions remain relevant to current and future developments in dance because many of the techniques she describes are still used today within the dance profession. Even more significantly, many of these techniques are utilised within the majority of training systems for contemporary dancers.

5. Sally Gardner (2007) makes a distinction between industrial modes of dance production and artisanal practices. She states that industrial models are linked to the hierarchical structures of classical ballet and that within the industrial framework ‘artists/artisans lose control of… [their] practices – becoming alienated from their own labour, losing the power of self-regulation and artisanal self-definition’ (Gardner 2007: 40).

6. Foster (2005: 113) uses the term ‘originary’ when describing the unique movement approach developed by Judson choreographer Elaine Summers’ (USA) in a physical practice through which she questioned ‘the process of training through which one’s own body becomes imprinted with others’ aesthetic visions’. Summers engaged in these explorations in the 1970s and influenced seminal artists in the UK, such as Rosemary Butcher (Foster, 2005).

7. See Butler (1990) Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.

8. In my PhD research, the majority of interviewees were female contemporary dancers and my own perspective as a woman was also prominent. As gender was not the focus of the research, differences between the experiences of male and female dancers were not explored in detail.