Defining our Research through practitioner "Rosemary Lee"

Our main area of research has stemmed from our chosen practitioner "Rosemary Lee" who is a choreographer who often explores human relationships whether it being a live performance on stage or more often as site specific. Our final choreographic work focuses on 3 aspects, performing not to perform , gaze and twin exploration. Rosemary Lee's choreographic work "The Suchness of Heni and Eddie" has specifically inspired some of our exploration tasks which we have carried out in our sessions with our two performers. Her piece has inspired us to highlight human behaviour and experiences when we perform to an audience or alone. This has influenced the idea of " performing not to perform" which is one of our main areas of focus, highlighting the question of at what point do we fake our performance qualities and when do we loose the sense of truth when exposed to an audience. This piece also uses the idea of inter-dependency in physical terms , which is underlined in our twin exploration. Her piece has also inspired us to highlight human behaviour and experiences when we perform in an audience. 

We have recorded how these tasks have made our performers and ourselves feel and we have given them questionnaires that will determine how our instructions have influenced rawness and emotions when performing to an audience or alone. We have been using different types of data collection such as questionnaires, journals, voice recordings and video diary's to gather our dancers reflections on their individual experience and thoughts when carrying out these tasks. Each method of collection is important to our research process and towards our choreographic work as it allows us to evaluate each performers experiences and enables us to develop and improve on what did and didn't work in our sessions.   



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Boundaries 

As a group we were interested in the idea of exploring what happens if we break the boundaries between the performer and the audience. We used a variety of explorations with our dancers and ourselves to identify when boundaries can be broken and a persons emotion and performance can be portrayed as false. We firstly experimented with a task with Tommy which outlined the distance that would usually be created between the performer and audience. The task began with Tommy being asked to enter the space and to act as if he would do normally if he was in the space alone. Whilst observing his performance we were able to evaluate the sense of awkwardness portrayed by he's facial expressions and bodily movement.When he had entered the space he walked into the middle of the room and sat down and avoided eye contact with both Joanne and I. Once the task had been completed we discussed and documented through video and through a dairy of his reflections when participating in the task. He stated that "your body feels exposed to others and you can feel a sense of awkwardness when acting as if no one is watching you". Once this task had been carried out with Tommy I then experimented with the same exploration to measure the similarities and differences and to experience the task for myself. Whilst carrying out the task I automatically felt uncomfortable knowing that Joanne was constantly watching me , I began to notice that I was not allowing my body to act naturally in the space , it was as if in my mind I was choreographing what to do next. I noticed stillness in my body , exposure and hesitation to move to a different area in the space. I also felt myself questioning my right and wrongs, asking myself is this right to act in this way when not performing. This task was interesting as it allowed us to explore further the idea of performing not to perform and also to identify what we would normally do if the space was empty.

For the second task we used the idea of meditation which allowed us to clear our minds and to focus on exposing our own thoughts when being placed in front of an audience. This exploration highlighted the boundaries that were being broken ,whilst expressing our emotions and thoughts out loud in a performance environment. We discovered from completing this task that we were breaking our inner boundaries as our random thoughts were being exposed to others.

We looked into practitioner Rosemary Lee's choreographic devises used in her work which also questions the idea of boundaries being crossed and how people are expected to react when performing in front of an audience. We therefore intend to highlight what would be seen as unusual  and unlikely when carrying out movement in an professional environment.

By Michelle Morgan and Joanne Schwarz