Figures of speech

Figures of Speech is a live performance, creative research project that examined movement practices and traditions that are centered in the sociality of the moving body. The concept of a “social” body in the context of this research encompassed practicing and seeing movement through a lens of dialogue – transmission, communication, cultural exchange, discourse – and using this lens to develop relational approaches to creative process, choreographic design, and performance. The research additionally investigated translation as a form of dialogue and interrogated the tenets of Western Post-Modern and Contemporary improvisational dance practices and Afro-Diasporic social dance practices. Figures of Speech examined these tenets for choreographic and creative process methodologies and examined their social blueprint of call and response dynamics – how do their ideologies of movement generation and composition provide relational approaches for developing choreography? The studio research investigated what it means to be both a speaker and a listener; how to embody and live in multiple layers of attention at once – being in a reflexive state while also being deliberate and conscious. Thus, Figures of Speech is an interplay of spontaneous and structured materials, examining how performers can build and share in the cooperation of empowered choice-making – making individual choices while also engaging in ensemble thinking to determine outcomes throughout the performance. I examined how to organically create allowance for interruption and re-direction in the pre-arranged choreographic materials and structures. The research explored how embodying practices and sensibilities of receptivity and reciprocity could map and shape the architecture of a live performance work as the dancers performed and composed simultaneously. As the director and choreographer, I aimed to explore democratic modes of making and challenge my own methods of making work by interrogating choreographic structures and creating choreography through the concept of relationship. Overarching research questions included examining how movement artists and performer physically lean into uncertainty and generate from it? What are the choreographic strategies and directorial processes that stem from this engagement and commitment?