Standing Still...Looking At You

Claid, Emilyn (2002) Standing Still...Looking At You. Research in Dance Education, 3 (1). pp. 7-19. ISSN 1464-7893

Abstract / Summary

This article emerged out of many years of teaching choreographic performance practice at MA level in Higher Education in the UK. It proposes a model for interweaving professional practice and academic research, whereby written theories and studio-based practices can become creative forces informing each other in praxis. Conventional methodologies for teaching choreography, in particular at MA level, are interrogated and redressed through a focus on the act of ‘standing still’. The article seeks to demonstrate possibilities for writing the internal processes and images embodied in the act of stillness. It explores approaches to interconnecting the roles of teacher and student, and choreographer and performer, through an awareness of ‘performing stillness’ as a devising tool. The dancer’s attention to the contradictions of looking inwards and outwards while standing still is considered to be an essential key in the practice of presence, evoking an energy that unlocks the dynamic engagement between dancing and watching. The article raises questions of choreography as devised process, making connections and parallels with contemporary philosophical writings that promote fragmentation, horizontality, multiplicity and the play of presence and absence (e.g. Derridean ‘différance’ and Deleuzean ‘rhizomatics’).

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