Affective Choreography In Performance - Awareness of touch in developing innovative movement methodologies in performance
- Submitting institution
-
University of Northumbria at Newcastle
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 25954241
- Type
- I - Performance
- Venue(s)
- Customs House, South Shields
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first performance
- May
- Year of first performance
- 2014
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- Yes
- Additional information
- Affective Choreography in Performance (ACiP) applied embodied knowledge relating to touch in developing innovative movement methodologies within performance. It consisted of a body of choreographic work which Pavey undertook for two productions of Ann Coburn’s play Get Up and Tie Your Fingers, a 2014 Scottish/English tour and a community adaptation presented in Eyemouth, Scotland in 2016. The play tells the story of the Eyemouth Fishing Disaster of 1881 from the perspective of the herring lassies.
The research investigated how awareness of the qualities of touch can develop performers’ aesthetic and somatic sensibilities, and how this can result in newly informed actions solicitous of empathic forms of audience response.
Underpinned by scholarship regarding touch, materiality, perception and affect, and influenced by Eastern perspectives on the liveliness of all matter, the research foregrounded the social and environmental productivity of the embodied experience of touch. It explored how touch can foster the subject’s sensitivity to the self, to others and to their surroundings. The project was distinctive in applying its work to two particular and overlapping areas of practice/enquiry: a) music theatre productions and b) heritage studies. These were brought together within innovative storytelling heritage performances by, and for, contemporary coastal communities.
The practice research had two phases: 1) working with community choirs and professional actors; and 2) girls from a community cast. Utilising somatic techniques within rehearsals, including guided sensory discovery, the research developed methodologies for touching the real and the imaginary. Development involved the use of weighty and light things, and enactments of expressive/mimetic gestures which physicalized text and song words.
The 2014 national tour was funded by Arts Council England and other providers. The Eyemouth community production attracted funding from Creative Scotland and Borders Live Touring Scheme. Research findings were presented at Touching Past Lives symposium, London 2018.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -