Jane Carr | University of Bedfordshire (original) (raw)
Books by Jane Carr
Dance Research, 2023
This article returns to issues raised in the pages of this journal regarding dance in the context... more This article returns to issues raised in the pages of this journal regarding dance in the context of UNESCO’s 2003 adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Bakka and Karoblis’ article published in 2021 refuted the proposal made by Iacono and Brown in 2016 to replace the Convention’s term ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH) with the concept of ‘living cultural heritage’. However, Bakka and Karoblis’ response was written in the spirit of ‘a discursive unity’ and, sharing in this spirit, I aim to consider both articles with the aim of highlighting how the discourses surrounding safeguarding ICH and those that consider dance as a significant part of culture might inform one another.
The discussion is shaped by my experiences working on a project led by Dr. Violet Cuffy, a Creole specialist in the field of tourism, that drew together researchers, policy makers and practitioners to explore approaches to safeguarding Creole Intangible Cultural Heritage. This experience highlighted for me what Bakka and Karoblis emphasise as the importance of UNESCO’s aims to counterbalance cultural and economic inequalities, the impact of which threaten the sustainability of many older traditions, particularly in what they refer to as the ‘global south’. However, my experiences as a dancer and dance teacher, born and educated in the UK, suggest that, even in this economically privileged part of the globe, the cultural significance of dancing is all too often undervalued and dance practices are vulnerable to being irretrievably lost. From this perspective I have long been interested in debates regarding the cultural significance of dance that have relevance to Iacono and Brown’s article.
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Narratives in black British dance: embodied practices, 2018
New styles of dancing that may, collectively, be termed British (underground) jazz dancing,1 emer... more New styles of dancing that may, collectively, be termed British (underground) jazz dancing,1 emerged in British clubs during the late 1970s and early 80s that also featured in pop videos, film, television and live stage shows. Although these styles
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The negotiation of significance in dance performance: aesthetic value in the context of difference’ in Farinas , R. and Van Camp, J.(eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy, London and New York: Bloomsbury. , 2021
I explore how dance may be appreciated in a contemporary context in which it can no longer be ass... more I explore how dance may be appreciated in a contemporary context in which it can no longer be assumed that performers and audience make sense of dancing with reference to a shared culture. I do not write as a philosopher, but rather from my position as a former dancer and now dance academic, to draw upon my experiences of dancing, researching and teaching dance with the aim of proposing some avenues ripe for philosophical investigation. I will start by emphasizing that dancing is a communicative phenomenon.
In this context, I find the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides a welcome recognition of the human capacity for intersubjective, embodied experience which is of key importance to engagement with dancing as meaningful. This is not to suggest dancing can be conceived as communicative in the naïve terms that propose some sort of universal expression or movement language. Nor can the meaning of dance be directly intuited through kinesthetic empathy as proposed by early theorists of Modern dance. Rather, I consider how the significance of dance performance might be understood through a process of negotiation grounded in intercorporeal experience. Here I recognize the challenge of difference – in relation to gender, sexualities, and/or cultures and abilities - to the self-other relationships which sustain such negotiations. Finally, I situate these reflections within the broader field of philosophical aesthetics to consider the potential of such encounters to contribute to aesthetic values attributed to dance.
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Improvisational Practices in Jazz Dance Battles’, in Midgelow, V. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, Oxford University Press, 2019
With specific reference to bebop, one of the new styles of improvised jazz dancing that developed... more With specific reference to bebop, one of the new styles of improvised jazz dancing that developed in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this essay explores the improvisatory practices associated with the dance challenges, or battles, which were an integral feature of the club scenes within which this dancing emerged. Drawing on the authors' different perspectives-Irven Lewis' first hand experiences of dancing and teaching this style together with Jane Carr's analysis of the embodied experiences of dance-allows for reflection on the improvisatory practices and their significance. The pan-African cultural influence on the development of this dancing is recognized alongside consideration of how this jazz dancing embodied resistance to a binary division of Western-Africanist culture. Further, the improvised dancing is shown to be reciprocally related to the specific contexts within which it is practised by virtue of the complex interrelationships between those participating.
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Ashley, T. and Weedon, A.(eds.) Developing a Sense of Place, The Role of the Arts in Regenerating Communities, London: UCL Press. , 2020
This interview with Luton based jazz dancer and DJ, Perry Louis, is contextualised with referen... more This interview with Luton based jazz dancer and DJ, Perry Louis, is contextualised with reference to my previous research into the ‘UK’ or ‘underground’ jazz styles that developed in Great Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Carr 2012, 2017, 2018). The introduction situates Perry’s discussion of the styles of jazz dancing that he engaged with during this period and their close relationship to styles of music played in clubs. Where my previous explorations of the significance of this dancing emphasise how dance was a site for the negotiation of new British identities within a post-colonial context, Perry’s account also reveals how, through dancing and music, he developed a sense of belonging. Perry also reveals why he continues to promote jazz dance and music and his commitment to maintaining its place in Luton where he often hosts his ‘Shiftless Shuffle’ club nights.
Free download available from :
https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/152829#
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‘Researching British (Underground) Jazz Dancing c1979-1990’, in Adair, C and Burt, R (eds) British Dance: Black Routes, Routledge, 2017
The jazz dancing that is the focus of this chapter emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1970... more The jazz dancing that is the focus of this chapter emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What has become collectively known as UK, or sometimes old school, jazz incorporated a range of styles that developed around a network of ‘underground’ clubs. In contrast to much previous jazz dancing that was performed by, or emulated, African Americans, these styles, even whilst recognising American influences, are also self-consciously British and, by virtue of the important part played by the children of immigrants to Britain from the Caribbean, have a sense of connection to African diasporic traditions that are not solely reliant on those transmitted via America. My approach to this research of UK jazz dancing is interdisciplinary, drawing on concepts and methods from history, dance analysis, sociology and cultural studies. Rather than providing a comprehensive introduction to this field, my aim is for this research to be understood as laying a foundation for future investigations of this part of recent British dance history.
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In The Intertwining-The Chiasm the philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) conceptualises the f... more In The Intertwining-The Chiasm the philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) conceptualises the facticity of the world-as-lived in terms of an elemental but non material “flesh” to support his account of an intercorporeal transitivity that accords with how many dance artists consider the interrelationships upon which performances are founded. Yet the sense of a shared experience of the lived world that Merleau-Ponty describes, may in a contemporary context be felt to be unsustainable. In the years since his final text was written there has been increasing acknowledgement both of the differences between people and the problematic nature of ascribing universal principles and values to their lived experiences. Nevertheless, I will argue that it is particularly in the context of diversity and inequality that the potential of dance to engage people in embodied interactions becomes increasingly important. Drawing on my previous research amongst dance artists and reflections upon my own experiences -as a dancer, teacher, choreographer and co-creator –I will suggest that a dance event may be conceived as a site of intercorporeal interaction through which significance is negotiated. I will first revisit Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the ‘doubleness’ of embodied experience to explore his analysis of the interrelationships between self-other-world that provides for a breaking down of the binary oppositions between self-other, consciousness-world. This, I will argue accords with what dancers value in performance even while recognising the challenges of making and performing work in the context of difference and inequality. Noting what may be perceived as a lack of consideration of questions of inequality and difference in Merleau-Ponty’s text, I will then outline how his concept of flesh might be developed so that it is understood as being interlaced with the play of power relations. Drawing on developments of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in the fields of philosophical aesthetics, social philosophy and the philosophy of mind, I will then reconsider the reciprocal embodied experiences of creating, performing and being part of an audience to explore whether some current dance practices foster sensitivities and skills that provide for the capacity to negotiate across difference in ways that do not necessarily reinforce established normative relationships.
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Writing in the 1970s, the philosopher David Best warned dancers and their audiences that the use ... more Writing in the 1970s, the philosopher David Best warned dancers and their audiences that the use of the term ‘embodied’ may serve to obscure an expressionist viewpoint dependent on a problematic body mind dualism. Yet ‘embodiment’ is a prevalent concept in today’s dance discourses. While its use in relation to ‘Contemporary’ dance may sometimes gloss over the continued legacy of expressionism, it also suggests that understanding and appreciating dance as significant is bound up with issues of the interrelationship of mind: body or self: world that are explored in discussions of human embodiment in other disciplines. However, the contrast between how dancers experience ‘embodying’ movement and how sociologists have often viewed culture as embodied raises questions with regard to how consciousness and agency are conceptualised that are particularly important for dance. Considering these questions in relation to my findings from previous case studies of dance artists, it is proposed that it is useful to consider the later writings of the existential phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His posthumous writings open up ways of articulating the interrelationships between self:other:world that might lay the foundations for a means of conceptualising embodiment that accounts for what dance artists and audiences experience in performance while aiming to avoid lapsing into the dualism and essentialism that, as Best recognised, has infused so much of how dance was (and often still is) discussed.
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How cultural difference is contemplated has changed since Laban first formulated his theories.In ... more How cultural difference is contemplated has changed since Laban first formulated his theories.In Britain today, informed by experiences of diversity, dance theorists may be more wary of accepting the universalism underlying Laban's therories. However, it is argued that it is important to keep in mind that the experience of dance is enriched by an engagement that, in Laban’s terms, requires thinking in movement. This paper revisits Laban's effort theory to suggest how his work might provide the means to develop a sensitivity to how different ways of being in the world are manifested, and perhaps even negotiated, in performance.
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Papers by Jane Carr
Dance Research, May 1, 2023
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Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2014
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In Britain, before Hip Hop and House ruled the dance floor, the sons and daughters of the ‘Windru... more In Britain, before Hip Hop and House ruled the dance floor, the sons and daughters of the ‘Windrush’ immigrants, dancing alongside other young people who lived in the UK’s poorest areas, had forged their own dance styles with which to battle for supremacy on the dance floor. What remains of this phenomenon are the testaments of those involved and a few brief video clips that can be retrieved from films or postings on the internet. These reveal how in a Britain struggling with issues of ‘class’ and ‘race’ a generation of youths developed their own dance identities.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
They were not copying black America but minting something new ... Robert Farris Thompson[1] The p... more They were not copying black America but minting something new ... Robert Farris Thompson[1] The paper discusses forms of jazz dance that developed in British clubs in the 1970s and ‘80s, situating them in their social and cultural context to examine how a complex of artistic and social attitudes made it difficult for these dance forms to be more widely appreciated within the UK.
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Dance Research
The Black Dance Archives project collected materials that record the activities of black British ... more The Black Dance Archives project collected materials that record the activities of black British artists who created and performed dance predominantly in the later years of the twentieth century. Through the form of a dialogue we bring the perspective of the dance producer who led the project together with a more academic interest in the potential of the materials collected to contribute to dance research. Our shared reflections reveal how a focus on archiving the work of dance artists of diasporic heritage emphasises that dance, as a form of intangible cultural heritage, is particularly vulnerable to becoming lost to future generations. This leads to reflections upon the role of dance archives within the context of post-colonial Britain that brings to the fore some of the complexities of the archival process and the significance of how this project resulted in materials being dispersed across different institutions.
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Dance Research
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... influences: Nina Anderson, who describes her ethnicity as African Caribbean, was brought up i... more ... influences: Nina Anderson, who describes her ethnicity as African Caribbean, was brought up in one of the most economically deprived parts of South London and is trained in Egyptian dance; and Sushma Mehta, who describes her ethnicity as Indian, is trained in Kathak. ...
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A discussion of Merce Cunningham’s 1967 work Scramble within the context of it being learned and ... more A discussion of Merce Cunningham’s 1967 work Scramble within the context of it being learned and performed by Laban students in London 2010. Cunningham’s significance to a new generation of dancers is considered drawing on discussions with the students and the Cunningham dancer and teacher, Patricia Lent, who set Scramble and is a trustee of the Cunningham legacy. In particular Cunningham’s approaches to dance, both in terms of his technique and choroegraphic methods, are examined in relation to how dance can embody both the potential and limits of human agency.
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Dance Research, 2023
This article returns to issues raised in the pages of this journal regarding dance in the context... more This article returns to issues raised in the pages of this journal regarding dance in the context of UNESCO’s 2003 adoption of the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Bakka and Karoblis’ article published in 2021 refuted the proposal made by Iacono and Brown in 2016 to replace the Convention’s term ‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ (ICH) with the concept of ‘living cultural heritage’. However, Bakka and Karoblis’ response was written in the spirit of ‘a discursive unity’ and, sharing in this spirit, I aim to consider both articles with the aim of highlighting how the discourses surrounding safeguarding ICH and those that consider dance as a significant part of culture might inform one another.
The discussion is shaped by my experiences working on a project led by Dr. Violet Cuffy, a Creole specialist in the field of tourism, that drew together researchers, policy makers and practitioners to explore approaches to safeguarding Creole Intangible Cultural Heritage. This experience highlighted for me what Bakka and Karoblis emphasise as the importance of UNESCO’s aims to counterbalance cultural and economic inequalities, the impact of which threaten the sustainability of many older traditions, particularly in what they refer to as the ‘global south’. However, my experiences as a dancer and dance teacher, born and educated in the UK, suggest that, even in this economically privileged part of the globe, the cultural significance of dancing is all too often undervalued and dance practices are vulnerable to being irretrievably lost. From this perspective I have long been interested in debates regarding the cultural significance of dance that have relevance to Iacono and Brown’s article.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Narratives in black British dance: embodied practices, 2018
New styles of dancing that may, collectively, be termed British (underground) jazz dancing,1 emer... more New styles of dancing that may, collectively, be termed British (underground) jazz dancing,1 emerged in British clubs during the late 1970s and early 80s that also featured in pop videos, film, television and live stage shows. Although these styles
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
The negotiation of significance in dance performance: aesthetic value in the context of difference’ in Farinas , R. and Van Camp, J.(eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Dance and Philosophy, London and New York: Bloomsbury. , 2021
I explore how dance may be appreciated in a contemporary context in which it can no longer be ass... more I explore how dance may be appreciated in a contemporary context in which it can no longer be assumed that performers and audience make sense of dancing with reference to a shared culture. I do not write as a philosopher, but rather from my position as a former dancer and now dance academic, to draw upon my experiences of dancing, researching and teaching dance with the aim of proposing some avenues ripe for philosophical investigation. I will start by emphasizing that dancing is a communicative phenomenon.
In this context, I find the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty provides a welcome recognition of the human capacity for intersubjective, embodied experience which is of key importance to engagement with dancing as meaningful. This is not to suggest dancing can be conceived as communicative in the naïve terms that propose some sort of universal expression or movement language. Nor can the meaning of dance be directly intuited through kinesthetic empathy as proposed by early theorists of Modern dance. Rather, I consider how the significance of dance performance might be understood through a process of negotiation grounded in intercorporeal experience. Here I recognize the challenge of difference – in relation to gender, sexualities, and/or cultures and abilities - to the self-other relationships which sustain such negotiations. Finally, I situate these reflections within the broader field of philosophical aesthetics to consider the potential of such encounters to contribute to aesthetic values attributed to dance.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Improvisational Practices in Jazz Dance Battles’, in Midgelow, V. (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, Oxford University Press, 2019
With specific reference to bebop, one of the new styles of improvised jazz dancing that developed... more With specific reference to bebop, one of the new styles of improvised jazz dancing that developed in Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s, this essay explores the improvisatory practices associated with the dance challenges, or battles, which were an integral feature of the club scenes within which this dancing emerged. Drawing on the authors' different perspectives-Irven Lewis' first hand experiences of dancing and teaching this style together with Jane Carr's analysis of the embodied experiences of dance-allows for reflection on the improvisatory practices and their significance. The pan-African cultural influence on the development of this dancing is recognized alongside consideration of how this jazz dancing embodied resistance to a binary division of Western-Africanist culture. Further, the improvised dancing is shown to be reciprocally related to the specific contexts within which it is practised by virtue of the complex interrelationships between those participating.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Ashley, T. and Weedon, A.(eds.) Developing a Sense of Place, The Role of the Arts in Regenerating Communities, London: UCL Press. , 2020
This interview with Luton based jazz dancer and DJ, Perry Louis, is contextualised with referen... more This interview with Luton based jazz dancer and DJ, Perry Louis, is contextualised with reference to my previous research into the ‘UK’ or ‘underground’ jazz styles that developed in Great Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Carr 2012, 2017, 2018). The introduction situates Perry’s discussion of the styles of jazz dancing that he engaged with during this period and their close relationship to styles of music played in clubs. Where my previous explorations of the significance of this dancing emphasise how dance was a site for the negotiation of new British identities within a post-colonial context, Perry’s account also reveals how, through dancing and music, he developed a sense of belonging. Perry also reveals why he continues to promote jazz dance and music and his commitment to maintaining its place in Luton where he often hosts his ‘Shiftless Shuffle’ club nights.
Free download available from :
https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/152829#
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
‘Researching British (Underground) Jazz Dancing c1979-1990’, in Adair, C and Burt, R (eds) British Dance: Black Routes, Routledge, 2017
The jazz dancing that is the focus of this chapter emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1970... more The jazz dancing that is the focus of this chapter emerged in the United Kingdom in the late 1970s and early 1980s. What has become collectively known as UK, or sometimes old school, jazz incorporated a range of styles that developed around a network of ‘underground’ clubs. In contrast to much previous jazz dancing that was performed by, or emulated, African Americans, these styles, even whilst recognising American influences, are also self-consciously British and, by virtue of the important part played by the children of immigrants to Britain from the Caribbean, have a sense of connection to African diasporic traditions that are not solely reliant on those transmitted via America. My approach to this research of UK jazz dancing is interdisciplinary, drawing on concepts and methods from history, dance analysis, sociology and cultural studies. Rather than providing a comprehensive introduction to this field, my aim is for this research to be understood as laying a foundation for future investigations of this part of recent British dance history.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
In The Intertwining-The Chiasm the philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) conceptualises the f... more In The Intertwining-The Chiasm the philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1968) conceptualises the facticity of the world-as-lived in terms of an elemental but non material “flesh” to support his account of an intercorporeal transitivity that accords with how many dance artists consider the interrelationships upon which performances are founded. Yet the sense of a shared experience of the lived world that Merleau-Ponty describes, may in a contemporary context be felt to be unsustainable. In the years since his final text was written there has been increasing acknowledgement both of the differences between people and the problematic nature of ascribing universal principles and values to their lived experiences. Nevertheless, I will argue that it is particularly in the context of diversity and inequality that the potential of dance to engage people in embodied interactions becomes increasingly important. Drawing on my previous research amongst dance artists and reflections upon my own experiences -as a dancer, teacher, choreographer and co-creator –I will suggest that a dance event may be conceived as a site of intercorporeal interaction through which significance is negotiated. I will first revisit Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the ‘doubleness’ of embodied experience to explore his analysis of the interrelationships between self-other-world that provides for a breaking down of the binary oppositions between self-other, consciousness-world. This, I will argue accords with what dancers value in performance even while recognising the challenges of making and performing work in the context of difference and inequality. Noting what may be perceived as a lack of consideration of questions of inequality and difference in Merleau-Ponty’s text, I will then outline how his concept of flesh might be developed so that it is understood as being interlaced with the play of power relations. Drawing on developments of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy in the fields of philosophical aesthetics, social philosophy and the philosophy of mind, I will then reconsider the reciprocal embodied experiences of creating, performing and being part of an audience to explore whether some current dance practices foster sensitivities and skills that provide for the capacity to negotiate across difference in ways that do not necessarily reinforce established normative relationships.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Writing in the 1970s, the philosopher David Best warned dancers and their audiences that the use ... more Writing in the 1970s, the philosopher David Best warned dancers and their audiences that the use of the term ‘embodied’ may serve to obscure an expressionist viewpoint dependent on a problematic body mind dualism. Yet ‘embodiment’ is a prevalent concept in today’s dance discourses. While its use in relation to ‘Contemporary’ dance may sometimes gloss over the continued legacy of expressionism, it also suggests that understanding and appreciating dance as significant is bound up with issues of the interrelationship of mind: body or self: world that are explored in discussions of human embodiment in other disciplines. However, the contrast between how dancers experience ‘embodying’ movement and how sociologists have often viewed culture as embodied raises questions with regard to how consciousness and agency are conceptualised that are particularly important for dance. Considering these questions in relation to my findings from previous case studies of dance artists, it is proposed that it is useful to consider the later writings of the existential phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His posthumous writings open up ways of articulating the interrelationships between self:other:world that might lay the foundations for a means of conceptualising embodiment that accounts for what dance artists and audiences experience in performance while aiming to avoid lapsing into the dualism and essentialism that, as Best recognised, has infused so much of how dance was (and often still is) discussed.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
How cultural difference is contemplated has changed since Laban first formulated his theories.In ... more How cultural difference is contemplated has changed since Laban first formulated his theories.In Britain today, informed by experiences of diversity, dance theorists may be more wary of accepting the universalism underlying Laban's therories. However, it is argued that it is important to keep in mind that the experience of dance is enriched by an engagement that, in Laban’s terms, requires thinking in movement. This paper revisits Laban's effort theory to suggest how his work might provide the means to develop a sensitivity to how different ways of being in the world are manifested, and perhaps even negotiated, in performance.
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Dance Research, May 1, 2023
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Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 2014
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
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In Britain, before Hip Hop and House ruled the dance floor, the sons and daughters of the ‘Windru... more In Britain, before Hip Hop and House ruled the dance floor, the sons and daughters of the ‘Windrush’ immigrants, dancing alongside other young people who lived in the UK’s poorest areas, had forged their own dance styles with which to battle for supremacy on the dance floor. What remains of this phenomenon are the testaments of those involved and a few brief video clips that can be retrieved from films or postings on the internet. These reveal how in a Britain struggling with issues of ‘class’ and ‘race’ a generation of youths developed their own dance identities.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
They were not copying black America but minting something new ... Robert Farris Thompson[1] The p... more They were not copying black America but minting something new ... Robert Farris Thompson[1] The paper discusses forms of jazz dance that developed in British clubs in the 1970s and ‘80s, situating them in their social and cultural context to examine how a complex of artistic and social attitudes made it difficult for these dance forms to be more widely appreciated within the UK.
Bookmarks Related papers MentionsView impact
Dance Research
The Black Dance Archives project collected materials that record the activities of black British ... more The Black Dance Archives project collected materials that record the activities of black British artists who created and performed dance predominantly in the later years of the twentieth century. Through the form of a dialogue we bring the perspective of the dance producer who led the project together with a more academic interest in the potential of the materials collected to contribute to dance research. Our shared reflections reveal how a focus on archiving the work of dance artists of diasporic heritage emphasises that dance, as a form of intangible cultural heritage, is particularly vulnerable to becoming lost to future generations. This leads to reflections upon the role of dance archives within the context of post-colonial Britain that brings to the fore some of the complexities of the archival process and the significance of how this project resulted in materials being dispersed across different institutions.
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Dance Research
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... influences: Nina Anderson, who describes her ethnicity as African Caribbean, was brought up i... more ... influences: Nina Anderson, who describes her ethnicity as African Caribbean, was brought up in one of the most economically deprived parts of South London and is trained in Egyptian dance; and Sushma Mehta, who describes her ethnicity as Indian, is trained in Kathak. ...
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A discussion of Merce Cunningham’s 1967 work Scramble within the context of it being learned and ... more A discussion of Merce Cunningham’s 1967 work Scramble within the context of it being learned and performed by Laban students in London 2010. Cunningham’s significance to a new generation of dancers is considered drawing on discussions with the students and the Cunningham dancer and teacher, Patricia Lent, who set Scramble and is a trustee of the Cunningham legacy. In particular Cunningham’s approaches to dance, both in terms of his technique and choroegraphic methods, are examined in relation to how dance can embody both the potential and limits of human agency.
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Choreographic Practices Volume 9 Number 2 ©, 2018
The Possibilities of Different Geographies 'The Possibilities of Different Geographies' is the ti... more The Possibilities of Different Geographies 'The Possibilities of Different Geographies' is the title of a dance work Jane Carr and Bruce Sharp first created in 1997 that investigated the significance of human embodiment. Twenty years later they revisited the themes informing their earlier work in order to create a participatory performance-installation focused on the significance of the embodied dimensions of inter-subjective experience. The authors present the philosophical and political ideas underpinning their aims to challenge the boundaries that act as limits upon how humans experience their embodied identities and reflect on how, in developing the project, artistic and activist principles became interwoven. They describe the creation of movement scores for participants to perform and consider how elements of movement, sound, lighting and opportunities for reflection contribute to an environment that affords creative participation focused on the inter-corporeal dimension of human geographies.
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Creole as Cultural Heritage: Framing, Strengthening and Advocating Key Note Paper, University of the West Indies , Roseau, Dominica August 16th , 2019
Key Note Paper
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Within social philosophy the performative nature of social identities has been well acknowledged.... more Within social philosophy the performative nature of social identities has been well acknowledged. I propose that the movement responses of dancers in the context of improvisation may suggest a paradigm for creative interpersonal responsivity in more everyday ‘performative’ interactions.
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Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 6.1, Jun 2014
In the performance installation, LandMark (2011), dancers Deborah Saxon and Henry Montes and the ... more In the performance installation, LandMark (2011), dancers Deborah Saxon and Henry Montes and the visual artist Bruce Sharp explore both the facticity of human experience and the frailty of connections between people and between them and the world that they inhabit.1 I suggest that their work may also be understood to probe the complexities of the interrelationships between consciousness-world and self-other that are the focus of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s text, ‘The intertwining-the chiasm’. His analysis of intercorporeality is particularly relevant to understanding the significance of the dancers’ somatic investigations that inform their artistic practices. Further, by drawing on developments upon Merleau-Ponty’s work in ecological aesthetics and social philosophy, I explore how the artists’ creative practices may be understood to foster intercorporeal negotiations of significance. This is suggested to be of increasing importance within an intracultural context in which people have a complex variety of cultural experiences even while sharing in a national identity.
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Dance Chronicle, Dec 2012
A case is made to consider, through the historical process of re-remembering, the styles of jazz ... more A case is made to consider, through the historical process of re-remembering, the styles of jazz dancing practiced in clubs in Great Britain in the early 1980s as an important aspect of British dance heritage. A particular jazz dance battle that took place between dancers from the groups IDJ (I Dance Jazz) and Brothers in Jazz serves as a focus for the discussion of how a generation of dancers established hybrid British styles of virtuosic dancing. In so doing they generated new forms of dance praxis that challenge received categories bifurcating dance into social versus theatrical dancing and popular culture versus high art.
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During January and February 2010, Laban students learned Cunningham’s 1967 work Scramble from the... more During January and February 2010, Laban students learned Cunningham’s 1967 work Scramble from the Cunningham dancer and teacher, Patricia Lent. Planned before Merce Cunningham’s death, the project took on another dimension as those involved contemplated his legacy. This, then, is the context for the following discussion of Scramble that considers Cunningham’s significance to a new generation of dancers. While it is informed by discussions with Patricia Lent and the students together with findings from a very short, voluntary, student questionnaire, it must be made clear at the outset that this account is also shaped by issues that are of current concern to this writer. Current historiography would suggest that I acknowledge how my own concerns bring certain issues to the fore (Carter, 2004). However, reading others’ accounts of Cunningham’s work, and listening to the students’ discussions of their experiences of Scramble, also suggests to me that it is almost impossible to write about his work without revealing something of one’s own ideas about dance. This perhaps relates to the particular ethos of Cunningham’s choreographic practices which, by virtue of his not seeming to present a particular idea beyond the activities on stage, leave the audience to make sense of his works for themselves. Hence, the following account is offered as a particular perspective on Cunningham whilst recognising that it is just one view among many.
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This thesis offers an interdisciplinary exploration of 'embodiment' in relation to the appreciati... more This thesis offers an interdisciplinary exploration of 'embodiment' in relation to the appreciation of dance as a performing art practised in contemporary London at the beginning of the twenty first century. Consideration of different uses of the term 'embodiment' suggests that while artists may approach the embodiment of their dance with a sense of personal intention, their dancing may also be understood to embody 'ways of being' that, enmeshed within a wider culture, raise questions as to the relationship between individual agency and the discursive practices within which dance is understood. Such conceptual reflections establish a theoretical context from which to investigate the viewpoints of dance artists themselves. Fieldwork amongst dance artists thus contributed to the research. Working in London but coming from a range of dance traditions and making work outside the 'mainstream' dance companies, their input provides valuable insights into what, at present, may be important aspects of culture that influence what is perceived as embodied in dance. In addition, their experiences of making and performing dance inform investigation of the relationship between phenomenological and semiotic approaches to dance. In this context consideration of what is embodied in dance is found to be important to reflection on its appreciation. Further, the appreciation of dance performance is considered as an embodied act, important to which is the phenomenological experience of dance as communicative. Such experience is suggested to be dependent on, but not completely bound by semiotic systems thus allowing for the personal agency of both performer and audience.
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