Embedding Systemic Constellation Work Within Contemporary Movement Practice
- Submitting institution
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Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance
- Unit of assessment
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output identifier
- REF2021RB023
- Type
- T - Other
- DOI
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- Location
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- Brief description of type
- Practice-based research
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month
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- Year
- 2020
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
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- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- Dowling’s practice-based research offers innovative approaches to critical acting pedagogies through a combination of Alexander Technique and Systemic Constellations. Her research has contributed new systems and methods of actor training that ask participants to approach their performance practice contextually, reflectively and academically. Specifically, it uses metaphor, imagination and visualisation to make internal, invisible processes visible. She stresses the importance of language to create conditions for transformative learning through changes to performers’ frames of reference, as well as how they contextualise their internal and exterior worlds. The research has been disseminated nationally and internationally through workshops, training events, and online videos. Extensive funding, including from the British Council and Erasmus+, has allowed Dowling to actively engage professional practitioners in the field through a generative, practice-based process. This includes British Council-funded teacher training and movement direction in Tashkent, Uzbekistan at the Institute of Arts and Culture (2019) and professional acting company ADO in Baku, Azerbaijan to use Dowling’s research to develop artistic leadership skills. Through €80,000 in Erasmus+ funding, Dowling brought her research over four years to professionals at the Shota Rustaveli Theatre and Film Georgia State University in Tbilisi, Georgia (2016-2019). She led workshops at International Platform for Performer Training at the University of Kent, Perforum: The Body in Performance at the University of Cork and The Makings of the Actor in Athens. She also gave papers at Gardzienice 20th Annual Festival of Wandering Theaters and the 2nd Shanghai Academy International Forum on Actor Training and Education, in China.
Dowling’s engaged, practice-based and participatory research has contributed new languages and vocabularies of movement and movement training to global researchers in critical acting pedagogy. Dowling’s research is presented for review via a video, in which she describes and demonstrates her methodology and findings. The accompanying PDF document give details of dissemination.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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