To browse Academia. Wien, center for contemporary dance, performing arts and theory, since Main areas of research, teaching posts and artistictheoretical projects focus on ethics and politics of the body and dramaturgy in contemporary dance and performance, with a specific engagement in non-Western body practices and concepts.
The following PhD by published works assembles a series of publications and creative works that focus on site-based dance practice in live performance and film. Together, this collection activates, contributes to, and expands the discourse around site dance as a cultural practice, with particular attention paid to the form's political, ideological, and ethical underpinnings.
The thesis draws from three central building blocks. First, it draws on a collection of interviews conducted by myself and Carolyn Pavlik of site-based choreographers in North America, Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces Due to this anthology's standing as the first volume to address site-based dance practice and due to its focus on first-person experiences by well-known site choreographers, the volume offers an essential primary resource that grounds many of my assertions in this thesis.
Of particular import, I argue through the text's introduction that a defining trait for the field is the concept of 'attending to place', a concept that has evolved into a thematic basis for this thesis. The second building block includes the gathering of key critical theories from the disciplines of dance studies, performance studies, visual art, geography, philosophy, architecture, sociology, and anthropology to frame the investigation of site-based dance practice; such theoriesspecifically those concerning agency, discipline and the dancing body, the unpacking of space and place, the critique of neoliberal globalization and its impacts on cultural practices, and the appraisal of site-based practices via environmental ethicsserve as a basis for scrutinizing site dance over the past fifty years.
As a third building block, my own practice-based research in choreography, direction, film editing, and performance provides concrete, hands-on data to further I would first like to offer many thanks to my incisive and inspiring Roehampton supervisors through this process, Drs. Fiona Wilkie and Stacey Prickett. Their support and guidance has been critical as I retrospectively pondered my research steps of the past decade. I would also like to thank my mentors over the yearshistorians Dan.
