Featured Image by Ian Douglas
I can’t believe my final year at Sarah Lawrence College is coming to an end and that I am wrapping up my thesis research (for now). The past nine months have been incredibly challenging, but simultaneously very exciting. I have learned so much about my bi-cultural identity and how it influences my choreographic choices and desires as a dance maker. I’ve become an official dance researcher and I have an entire written thesis and two choreographies to show for it. To watch my most recent work Achtung!…Identity Crossing (2019) please click the title of this post.
Here is what I’ve learned:
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Plurality is embedded in the foundational structure of the body. Plural identities can exist in the dancing body because the body houses a kinetic flow of energy that allows for fluidity and transition to occur.
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Code-switching is a process that I have made into a choreographic praxis. Identity theory can be put into conversation with dance through choreography (dance-writing). Thank you Eleanor Bauer.
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Language is a form of movement. When we speak we breath, therefore, we move. Thank you Édouard Glissant.
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Dance is a kinesthetic knowledge and therefore, choreographic praxis is a type of kinesthetic knowledge.
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Practice-as-Research is a discipline with gaps and flaws. As research practitioners we are innovators and it is our duty to continue expanding the field and improving its methodologies.
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Writing makes dance in the body legible through words. Dance makes dance legible through actions. Something is lost when writing takes the place of dance in an institution of knowledge.
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Sharing your identity with others on stage makes me feel both vulnerable and powerful.
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My work is context specific, which is a contextualizing practice that exists as a part of code-switching.
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I still have many questions… how is my work perceived by others? How can I take responsibility for my privilege as a white German-American artist in my choreographic work? What does it mean to make work about identity? How can take knowledge be legitimized through a research method different than PaR?
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Where might my research go next? I wonder if intimacy is synonymous with privacy? So, space would be the next step for this thesis project. I wonder where identity falls on the scale of private and public space (specifically in performance)? Since space is a physical place in which identities exist, then is it our choice as individuals to decide how we present ourselves in private and public spaces? Although some parts of identity are seemingly “public” because they are visible (for example physical appearance) is considered public identity information?
Thank you for sharing this journey with me. To read my written thesis please contact me at idehler.seter@gmail.com.
