In my doctoral research, I explored how I might articulate the experience of forming movement material within a solo, contemporary dance-making practice. My final submission consisted of a solo practice, called perch, submitted in conjunction with a written thesis and a considerable amount of companion materials such as scores, drawings, photography, and video which accompanied its making.1 For the purposes of this writing, I first articulate the underlying principles of my practice and offer some reflections on the overlap between my dance-making practice and my Authentic Movement practice. Finally, I elaborate on one aspect or phase of my dance-making process: returning to movement material.

1 These materials are archived at www.amyvoris.com/perch-materials.

Within my solo dance-making practice, a making process begins by opening to or improvising with ‘what is present’ and by incorporating those materials into resources for making the work. Phases of moving are followed by phases of reflection and selection. What resonates in the moment of moving is what remains and what gets returned to. Out of this process of returning, more material is generated and arranged. Gradually, movement material begins to settle, and with this settling, a multi-layered quality of embodiment begins to emerge.

So, while I do not set out to make dance works according to a preconceived idea or plan of what a piece will be, the works as performed do adhere to a given structure worked out in some detail. A work is typically made over an extended period of time, during which I work on and off with periods of intensity according to how life circumstances permit. The ‘form’ of the work is shaped in a constantly shifting relationship with the contextual and material conditions of the making process. I experience the process of forming movement material to be a subtle, fluctuating, and ongoing process, rather than a process with a finite endpoint. This fundamentally holistic and emergent practice is difficult to describe and is not easily interpretable through extrinsic perspectives. In the context of practice-as-research, I had to decide how, then, to engage with it in its own terms and how this engagement might contribute to knowledge.

Robin Nelson uses the term ‘insider-experience’ to account for the potential contribution of practice-as-research projects to ‘knowledge production’ (Nelson 2013, 27). He proposes that articulating such insider-perspectives in performance processes is imperative to practice-as-research – for these articulations give credence to alternative, non-dominant modes of knowing. As Nelson suggests:

[…] the noun ‘knowledge’ might suggest a clearly bounded object of knowledge separate, and at a distance from, an observing subject by other viewing subjects. The verb (present participle) ‘knowing’, in contrast acknowledges a subject engaged in the act indicated and perhaps engaged in a processual relationship spatially more proximal to the object to be understood […]. (Nelson 2013, 20)

To be sure, the ‘knowing’ of making dances in my own practice is subjective, holistic, immersive, and processual. Which is not to suggest that the research follows the practice. Rather, it is present within and forms a key constituent of a dance-making practice itself when considered as a reflective and embodied practice. Since I am taking the position that my theoretical framework, methodology, and methods must emerge from inside my dance-making practice, how then to formulate these in terms that are aligned with dance-making? How would I articulate the insider-knowing that is present in my own practice in terms that emerge from the practice itself?

With a similar thrust to the Critical Articulations Process (Bacon and Midgelow 2015), I have sought to develop a methodology that is ‘fluent in and about’ dancing and dance-making, rather than drawing on an extrinsic theoretical framework. This is not because I am against adopting extrinsic frameworks per se; indeed, interdisciplinarity can communicate the unique knowledge embedded in dance practice in terms that connect and communicate beyond the field of dance. But I do question the dependence of some dance research on extrinsic sources in order to express itself, and this questioning gives rise to a concern about the potential dangers of further deferring the voice of the dancer and dance-maker (and, consequently, for dance as a distinct subject). In my research, I have drawn on principles of Authentic Movement to offer a dancer-maker’s account of the embodied processes of forming movement material.

As I became more focussed in this research on how movement material is formed – in a way that tends to identify the work with the very process of its making – it became clear that Authentic Movement offers a holistic approach that is particularly attuned to such movement processes. This led me to incorporate certain aspects of Authentic Movement as a framework for investigating the process of forming movement material. As I am also a practitioner of Authentic Movement, it already had deep synergies with my dance-making practice, and this closeness allowed me to develop out of it a reflective framework that still speaks directly from the voice of the dance-maker. The investigation into the synergies between my dance-making practice and Authentic Movement thus became a major theme of my research. My hope has been that identifying those aspects of Authentic Movement that are relevant to my own dance-making practice will not only further facilitate my own dance-making practice, but will also assist in the articulation of my dancer-maker-knowing to others.

However, despite its close connections with dance, Authentic Movement is not something that every reader will have encountered, so below I provide a brief introduction to the practice before outlining its direct significance for my research.

Authentic Movement

Authentic Movement was first developed in the 1950s and 60s by Mary Starks Whitehouse (1911–1979), a North American dancer with some training in Jungian analysis. The practice arose out of a unique fusion of Modern Dance, Dance Movement Therapy, and Jungian approaches to creativity (Whitehouse 1999a/b/c/d; Lowell 2007a/b). Whitehouse sought to develop a format for movement practice which would enable the unconscious (or that which we do not know) to surface through open-ended movement exploration (Whitehouse 1999a/b/c/d). She initially called the practice ‘movement-in-depth’ (Frantz and Whitehouse 1999) and later ‘inner-directed movement’ (Chodorow 2007). Since Whitehouse, Authentic Movement has evolved in a number of directions with therapeutic, contemplative/spiritual, and artistic applications (Pallaro 1999/2007; Bacon 2015). Underlying these varying applications of the practice is a common basis which has become known as its ‘ground’ or dyad form (Adler 1999, 142). This ground form involves closing one’s eyes and allowing movement to arise in the presence of a witness. Explicit boundaries related to time, space, and roles offer a clear counterpart to the openness of the practice. Periods of moving are always followed by periods of reflection, during which mover and witness seek to articulate their experience to each other.

It is important to emphasise that, despite its name, Authentic Movement is not concerned with being ‘authentic’ per se, but rather refers to an open and enquiring attitude toward experiencing and reflecting upon movement. For an effective critique of the term ‘authentic’ in relation to Authentic Movement, see Eila Goldhahn’s (2015) article ‘Towards a new ontology and name for Authentic Movement’, where she suggests using the term ‘MoverWitness’ instead. I agree with Goldhahn in that the descriptor ‘authentic’ is misleading and problematic, especially given how the notion of authenticity has been contested within academia for decades (Goldhahn 2015, 275–79). Nevertheless, I continue to use the term Authentic Movement, not because it is the most accurate term, but because it remains the most widely recognised name for the practice.

I first encountered Authentic Movement in 2007 through my collaboration with Swiss dancer and dance movement therapist Regula Voegelin in a project focussed around solo dance-making. This encounter prompted me to study Authentic Movement with Linda Hartley as part of the Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy (IBMT) training and as part of the Authentic Movement Ongoing Study and Practice Group (trainings held: 2008–2011, 2013–2015, 2017–2018). The IBMT training is a therapeutic modality which encompasses the areas of Authentic Movement, experiential anatomy, the developmental movement patterns, and somatic psychology, exploring their one-to-one application through movement, hands-on work, and dialogue.2 The foundations of my experience with Authentic Movement have thus been within a therapeutic context, where the presence of emotion and imagination are fully recognised and where one’s personal (and thus social and cultural) history is embraced as core material for one’s process.

2 According to the IBMT website, the Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy training programme:

‘[…] is a holistic approach to Somatic Movement Education and Therapy based on principles of Body-Mind Centering®, Authentic Movement and Somatic Psychology […] The diploma programme is an integrated programme that was developed through Linda Hartley’s therapeutic and somatic approach of engaging body, mind, soul and spirit. It aims to support the unfolding of process through the body, and the cultivation of awareness, clarity and compassion in the therapeutic relationship (Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy 1990–2018).’

As my study of Authentic Movement with Hartley deepened, the practice struck a deep chord with my dance-making practice in several ways. The importance placed on opening to what is arising, on ‘witnessing’, and on cycling between movement and reflection resonated with the emphasis on movement processing in my dance-making practice. The way that Authentic Movement embraces different modalities of attention (such as proprioception, sensation, emotion, and image) reverberated with my holistic and multi-layered approach to forming movement material. The realm of emotion tends to be less acknowledged within dance training and is also less explicitly acknowledged within some somatic practices. Authentic Movement addresses this gap by encompassing the full range of bodily experience in the perception of movement phenomena. Although one might say that these approaches to processing movement within Authentic Movement were aspects of my dance-making practice already, encountering them in the context of Authentic Movement has allowed me to intensify my engagement with what I am calling the processual qualities that they both share. As a result, this has enabled me to become more critical about my practice which, in turn, has enabled my practice to become more communicable.

Methodology and Methods: Creating with Authentic Movement

While practice-as-research encourages and values the articulation of artistic knowledge, there nevertheless remain certain potential problems for the artist who would seek to articulate this. Despite the fact that the terms ‘methodology’ and ‘method’ have been considerably reformed within practice-as-research (R. Nelson 2013, 48–70, 98–99), part of the problem in my opinion lies in the requirement to use such a language. When Nelson says that artists ‘often overlook their methods partly because they do not typically talk about them in these terms’ (2013, 98) he omits to add that artists may equally often struggle or even fail to articulate their practice precisely because they do use these terms: inappropriate ones (for them) which inhibit their ability to contribute their unique artist-knowledge.

Indeed, in order to work within certain academic norms, I adopted the notions of ‘methodology’ and ‘method’ in my own research, even though my dance-making practice is not ‘methodical’ in the general sense of the term. In their more widespread usage, the terms ‘methodology’ and ‘method’ tend to efface what is most important in my dance-making practice: that I attend closely to that which is emerging and changing, that allowing things to happen can be as essential as making them happen, and that I am participating in what unfolds rather than controlling it. My making process is more responsive and contingent than the terms method or methodology might commonly imply.

While Authentic Movement is not a methodology as such, it has the distinct advantage that it can operate as one for my purposes, while at the same time avoiding some of the widely recognised problems attached to superimposing extrinsic theoretical structures onto dance-making practices. It was important to me in developing a ‘methodology’ to remain as close as possible to articulations ‘from’ rather than ‘about’ the practice. Authentic Movement provided me with the means to speak from my own practice in a language that is sensitive and appropriate to it. Moreover, the intimacy between Authentic Movement and dance-making – in terms of how they both engage with movement processes – is a distinct advantage. Indeed, arts researcher Shaun McNiff (et al. 2013a) has pointed out that methodologies which are ‘aligned’ in such a way are likely to yield insights about arts practice which are unique to arts practice. Such methodological alignment enables creative processes to be understood in terms of their own emergent knowing. Within my own research, the making of a solo dance work, called perch, and the development of the methodology by which I communicate the experience of making it, became two sides of the same process.

In explicating the internal logic of a deliberately open-ended dance-making practice, my intention was to offer a language for it without detracting from the non-rational, fluid, and mysterious nature of the creative process. Practice-as-research is not productive of definitive explanations or formulaic approaches, but of increasingly more precise ways of engaging with, and reflecting on, both my own and others’ creative practices. To borrow an adage from Andrea Olsen, who writes in the foreword to her experiential anatomy book Bodystories: ‘the function of a book about anatomy is not to demystify the body – it is to help embody the mystery’ (Olsen 1998, i). So here, too, rather than demystifying the creative process, I hoped that my research would enable a deeper and more precise creative engagement with its mysteries.

Given all this, the methodology employed in my thesis had to fulfil three requirements. It had to adhere to the core principle that the body and the mind (and thus theory and practice) are indivisible. It had to develop as a core principle of practice-as-research – that practice itself generates knowledge. And it had to remain appropriate to (and when necessary change in response to) the practice itself, as developed at the interface between dance-making and Authentic Movement. In short, the research methods used must develop out of and change with the dance-making practice if they are to communicate its insights in a faithful voice.

My central research method has been engaging with a regular, solo movement practice for roughly four years (between August 2014 and June 2018). I would also include participation in various field activities, such as research-relevant workshops, as a method of my research.3 My dance-making practice possesses certain correlations with the practice of Authentic Movement, which is especially evident through the way that certain reflective activities such as writing and drawing (following moving) are embedded within it. These different activities (moving and writing for example) might appear as if they are distinct from one another (and indeed I sometimes describe these activities as if they are separate processes) but in actual fact, linguistic and movement processes co-mingle in my living body in a manner that is much more indecipherable. Language is present for me when I dance, and dancing is present when I write. Whatever their manifestation, these activities – or methods – of moving, writing, and drawing are different facets of the same enquiry into returning, forming, and deepening the relationship with movement material.

3 Practical/workshop-based encounters with the following practitioners have been relevant to this research: Gill Clarke (1996–2008), Deborah Hay (2005), Caroline Salem (2006–2018), Rosemary Lee (2006), Satya Dunning (2006–2010), Linda Hartley (2008–2018), Helen Poynor (2008/2012/2013), Eva Karczag (2008/2010), Rosemary Butcher (2001–2002/2015), Jane Bacon (2014), Jane Bacon and Vida Midgelow (2015), Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose (2017) and Anna Macdonald (2017).

The Processual Qualities of Authentic Movement and Making perch

The process of developing perch has taken place sporadically across four years (between 2014 and 2018). For the duration of the making process, I have worked (mostly) alone in my studio space in Hope Mill in Ancoats, Manchester. A session would typically last between two and five hours involving alternating phases of moving, writing, and drawing. My latest calculation is that there have been around 120 sessions in total. To this end, and in order to draw the reader into the detail of my making process, my written thesis was interspersed with companion materials such as journal entries, scores, drawings, and photography that accompanied the making process.

As indicated above, Authentic Movement resonates with my dance-making practice in certain simple but important ways, including the notion of witnessing and the inner witness, the attitude of inner openness, the practice of reflecting on or articulating the moving experience (following moving) and attending to the multi-layered nature of movement experience. I refer to these aspects of Authentic Movement as ‘processual qualities’, because these are the aspects of Authentic Movement that support the processing of movement material in my own dance-making practice, and because it is a term which seems to encapsulate the long-term relationship between dancer-maker and movement material. In what follows, I describe these processual qualities before expanding on how they have been configured into certain phases of forming movement material.

The notion of ‘witnessing’ – or what Authentic Movement teacher Janet Adler also refers to as ‘witness consciousness’ (2002) – is fundamental to the practice of Authentic Movement and to my dance-making practice. Witnessing aims towards an open yet concentrated ‘quality of presence’ practiced in relationship between a mover and a witness (Adler 2002; Hartley 2004). Borrowing a term from Arnold Mindell, Hartley describes witnessing as a ‘meta-skill’ or as an ‘embracing attitude which both guides and contains’ (2004, 66). Through practice, the witnessing presence is internalised by the mover as the ‘inner witness’ (Adler 2002).

Witnessing while moving supports noticing how one notices which, in turn, affects the choices that are subsequently made, like revving up receptivity prior to activity. This sensing into the moment prior to action – into contingency – is akin to the sensitivity that surrounds artistic decision-making and live composition. In the context of dance-making, I understand my inner witness to be equivalent with the embodied concentration of the dancer-maker intent on making something, albeit slowly and out of receptive processes. Dance-maker and Authentic Movement practitioner Joan Davis describes the inner – or, in her language, the ‘internal’ – witness as ‘that aspect of ourselves that can follow, recall, organise, describe and give sense and meaning to our internal experiences during and/or after an activity in which we are fully engaged’ (Davis 2007, 10). The inner witness is that capacity to pay attention generously: to remain conscious while also remaining ‘open’. In my dance-making practice, I understand my inner witness to be my general presence to what is happening, my compassionate presence toward myself, my awareness of my own culturally-conditioned standpoint, and my discernment as a dance-maker.

Adler points out that the practice of witnessing has the potential to ‘[produce] a sense of clarity in relation to one’s own behaviour, enacted or internal’ (Adler 1999, 149). Witnessing, therefore, has certain affinities with reflexive enquiry (Etherington 2004), with ‘reflection-in-action’ (Schon 1983) and with ‘mindfulness’ (Kabat-Zinn 2016). Although witnessing (or reflexivity) is identified here as a core aspect of Authentic Movement practice, it is worth noting that reflexivity is also recognised as a core aspect of practice-as-research (R. Nelson 2013). Kim Etherington characterises reflexivity as a ‘self-awareness [that] creates a dynamic process of interaction’ and as a ‘circulating energy between context of researcher and researched’ which produces a certain transparency regarding the underlying ideologies of that research (Etherington 2004, 37). With regard to dance practice-as-research such as this, reflexivity is key to dealing with the complexities that arise when one’s practice is both the means and the subject of research. This research as a whole could be considered as an extended exercise in witnessing or reflexivity.

Central to the practice of witnessing is the intention to enter the practice in a state of ‘not knowing’. Authentic Movement teacher Jane Bacon suggests that:

Authentic Movement […] relies on the individual having a particular attitude of openness towards the process. The mover waits and then allows herself to give shape and form to whatever arises not checked or mediated by a conscious attitude of what one should look like or how one should behave. (Bacon 2010, 68)

From this ‘attitude of openness’ – which has also been characterised by Bacon as ‘waiting’ (above) and by Authentic Movement teacher Penny Collinson as ‘listening’ (2005) – something arises. Attention moves towards and into whatever that might be. This attitude of waiting and listening raises awareness of sensations, feelings, stories in the body, and – in my experience – also intensifies the presence of the surrounding environment and circumstances. The language surrounding Authentic Movement tends to emphasise its introspective qualities, but in my experience, there is also a turning outward. By closing the eyes and maintaining the intention to open, the innate porosity and relationality of the body becomes heightened, drawing attention to one’s situatedness.

Following the period of moving and opening to what is present, there is the attempt to sensitively bridge the gap between experience and language (or mark-making), to speak or draw from, rather than about, experience. Speaking from or ‘articulating’ experience is a practice or discipline in its own right. Within Authentic Movement practice, ‘tracking’ is a strategy that is used for this. Bacon notes that:

Tracking operates much like an anthropologist learning to be self-reflexive or the process of developing an inner therapist […] where we are aware of our experiencing body as well as our surroundings and the implication of all we are. […The] mover works to articulate the body’s journey through the use of anatomical, rhythmical and dynamic descriptions. (Bacon 2012, 7–8)

Bacon’s description of tracking indicates a multi-dimensional awareness (including anatomical, rhythmical, and dynamic descriptions). The act of producing multi-dimensional reflections from experience (whether spoken, written, or drawn) inevitably gives weight to certain dimensions of experience over others in that what gets articulated is what gets taken forward or further unfolded.

Adler and Hartley sometimes refer to different modes or ‘channels’ of attention when moving, or ‘being moved’. In her teaching, Hartley (2010, 2011) differentiates these channels of attention into the realms of proprioception, sensation, emotion, and image – an artificial separation of intertwined phenomena which nevertheless allows for the recognition of patterns and preferences and of what layers of experience are being foregrounded. As a practice, Authentic Movement offers the potential to ‘unfold’ these layers of experience. Teachings by Adler and Hartley (following on from Adler) encourage participants to delve into a single moment and to thus reveal its layers or multitudes. In such an instance, the description of a brief moment can generate lengthy passages of witnessing. The implication of this approach for creative practice is that each of these layers has ‘hidden dimensions’ which, when ‘opened’, offers up a range of possibilities. This process of ‘layering’ finds its way into the embodied forming and transforming of emergent material and into written accounts of my dance-making process.

These processual qualities of Authentic Movement (witnessing, opening, articulating, and layering) lend a precision to the creative process that arises out of the process itself. These qualities are processual, because they nurture an attitude of ongoing enquiry (in effect a process), and because they offer means by which to notice that ongoing enquiry as it is taking place. These processual qualities of Authentic Movement underscore my methodology, for they enable fidelity to a holistic approach, emergent knowing as the product of practice-as-research, and appropriateness to the movement practice that it remains part of. As such, they provide my dance-making practice with a critical dimension that isn’t extrinsic, but which results from seeing the practice refracted through itself. They operate as what movement artist Fabiano Culora (Culora 2017) has referred to as an ‘attentional scaffolding’ through which my lived experience of making dances might be brought (at least partially) to light. It is in this sense that these processual qualities fulfil the primary functions of a theoretical framework within the context of practice-as-research, for they enable my practice to become more critical and communicable without sacrificing a certain closeness to the practice.

In this research, I explored the overlap between these processual qualities and a dance-making practice which moves through certain ‘phases’ of developing movement material. As a result of this enquiry into the processual nature of my dance-making practice, there are two key themes which came to light: the process of returning to movement material and the process of deepening the relationship with movement material. Thus, these themes (of returning and deepening) became designated phases of developing movement material in their own right. In my written thesis, the discussion of making perch moved through these phases of developing movement material – opening, harvesting, returning, and deepening – consecutively, as if they were consequential and distinct from one another, but it would be more accurate to characterise these phases as overlapping and intertwined. Nevertheless, differentiating them in such a way served to bring otherwise obscured processes of forming movement material into view. Below I offer an excerpt from a section which describes the phase of returning to movement material.

I created scores in my thesis for each of these phases of forming movement material (opening, harvesting, returning, and deepening) in order to illuminate these aspects of my process. Dance artist and scholar Kent De Spain notes that the attempt to ‘[frame] improvisational process in language […] both reflects and produces specific qualities in practice’ (De Spain 2014, 37). In this sense, within my research, such scores were composed to both describe and animate my practice. While reading the returning score further below, I invite the reader to slow down and take time to imagine your own dance/movement (or other) making process.

Returning

On the basis of reflecting on – or harvesting from – the act of moving, I select something to be returned to. Key to the process of returning to material is engaging with the embodied memory of the experience which is in a state of resonance with the verbal or visual markers that both recall and project that selected thing. This focus operates like a portal into another cycle of opening and harvesting. I have the intention, at least initially, ‘to honour the original’ – whatever ‘it’ may be that is being returned to. At the same time, the very notion of ‘returning’ – to turn back – implies encountering material with a quality of openness. Dance-maker and Authentic Movement practitioner Andrea Olsen has referred to this process of returning to movement material in her own practice as ‘the art of allowing consciousness to participate but not dominate’ (Olsen and McHose 2017). This chimes with my own approach to ‘forming’ movement, which involves attending to what is known about the concerned movement material in conjunction with attending to what is arising (or unknown) in the moment of moving.

returning score

returning

to turn
back

how does
witnessing
the work feedback
into the work

re-opening
re-visiting

honouring the
specificity

where
does it begin

how
to inhabit it
again

welcoming
any
awkwardness
strangeness
in returning

what remains
what is it now

returning
as a state
of enquiry

sensing
feeling
into
potential

portals
puzzles
of re-entry

creative
tensions

returning
as
receiving

adapting

‘the past socialising
with the present’
(Davies et al. 2014b, 4)

‘anticipating’
(Lee and Pollard 2010, 28)

sensing into

exteroception
(touch)
sensations of
temperature
texture
pressure
the organ of the skin

the special senses
smelling
tasting
hearing
seeing
interoception
internal sensations
organ presence

proprioception
orientation to space

situatedness

‘reaching
into sensation
for the next wave
of action
to arrive’ (Recchia 2015)

emotion and
imagination
as companions

filling and
emptying
form

fleshing out

receiving
the totality
while diving into
detail

investigating
particularity

what
generalities
emanate
from this
particularity

the unfamiliar
beneath
the
familiar

precision
as a
perceptual
portal

how to be
precise and
open
at the same time

the mundanity and
grandiosity
of each moment

bringing questions
about the material
back into the material

returning
as
digestion

clarification

distillation

fermentation

allowing
for development
for transformation

witnessing
movement

movement
witnessing you

the ‘felt-sense’ (after Gendlin 1978/2003)
of
personal
significance

the embodied
details
of metaphor

encapsulation

forming and
generating
simultaneously

the duration
of staying
with something
‘tests’ that thing

what
else
is there

what
does it
want

seeing
how it
ignites

forming
and dissolving

forming
and transforming

composing
and decomposing

what helps me
to be in partnership
with this material

cultivating
intimacy
with it

commitment

to stay
with

the ritual
of returning

(October 2018)

Through the process of returning in my own practice, the material may remain recognisably similar (as it did in the past) or it may undergo major shifts, depending on the attitude of returning which the selected material invokes and where the ‘live’ embodied attention (or witnessing while moving – ‘moving witnessing’) takes me. As dance-maker Siobhan Davies (et al. 2014b, 4) has indicated, returning to previously-danced material is an act of ‘socialising the past with the present […] and of trying to maintain a double consciousness about what we are doing live, as well as where it came from’. This means that there is an act of imagination and invention in returning to movement material. Returning is a generative process, because part of the act of returning to material is pluming out its multi-faceted potential. The process of returning to movement is labyrinthine, full of twists and turns, additions and subtractions, akin to the process of sculpting material across time.4 Overall, this long gestation period for developing movement through returning to it breeds perspective and coherence – a bird’s eye view – perching.

4 Here the notion of ‘sculpting time’ is borrowed from the work and writings of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) who sought to re-investigate the medium of film via the articulation of time, a process that he described as ‘sculpting in time’ (Tarkovsky 1986, 121).

perch, Amy Voris, photos by Christian Kipp

Notes

  1. These materials are archived at www.amyvoris.com/perch-materials.
  2. According to the IBMT website, the Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy training programme: […] is a holistic approach to Somatic Movement Education and Therapy based on principles of Body-Mind Centering®, Authentic Movement and Somatic Psychology […] The diploma programme is an integrated programme that was developed through Linda Hartley’s therapeutic and somatic approach of engaging body, mind, soul and spirit. It aims to support the unfolding of process through the body, and the cultivation of awareness, clarity and compassion in the therapeutic relationship (Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy 1990–2018).
  3. Practical/workshop-based encounters with the following practitioners have been relevant to this research: Gill Clarke (1996–2008), Deborah Hay (2005), Caroline Salem (2006–2018), Rosemary Lee (2006), Satya Dunning (2006–2010), Linda Hartley (2008–2018), Helen Poynor (2008/2012/2013), Eva Karczag (2008/2010), Rosemary Butcher (2001–2002/2015), Jane Bacon (2014), Jane Bacon and Vida Midgelow (2015), Andrea Olsen and Caryn McHose (2017) and Anna Macdonald (2017).
  4. Here the notion of ‘sculpting time’ is borrowed from the work and writings of Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) who sought to re-investigate the medium of film via the articulation of time, a process that he described as ‘sculpting in time’ (Tarkovsky 1986, 121).

Reference List and Additional Resources

Adler, Janet. 2002. Offering from the Conscious Body. Vermont: Inner Traditions.

Adler, Janet. 1999. “Who is the Witness? A Description of Authentic Movement.” In Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow, edited by Patrizia Pallaro, 141–159. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Bacon, Jane. 2015. “Authentic Movement: A field of practices.” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 7 (2: 205–216).

Bacon, Jane. 2014. Authentic Movement [three-day workshop, July 2014]. Coventry University: Decoda/Summer Dancing.

Bacon, Jane. 2012. “Her body finds a voice: Authentic Movement in an imaginal world.” Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy 7, no. 2: 115–127.

Bacon, Jane. 2010. “The voice of her body: Somatic practices as a basis for creative research methodology.” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices 2, no. 1: 63–74.

Bacon, Jane and Vida Midgelow. 2015. Critical Articulations Process [workshop, July 10, 2015]. Coventry University: Dance and Somatic Practices Conference.

Bacon, Jane and Vida Midgelow. 2014a. “Editorial.” Choreographic Practices 5, no. 1: 3–6.

Bacon, Jane and Vida Midgelow. 2014b. “Creative Articulations Process (CAP).” Choreographic Practices 5, no. 1: 7–31.

Butcher, Rosemary. 2015. Critical Pathways Project [workshops, five afternoons, March 16–20, 2015]. Siobhan Davies Studios, London: Independent Dance.

Butcher, Rosemary. 2014/2015. Morning Class [November 12, 2014; February 9–11, 2015]. Siobhan Davies Studios, London: Independent Dance.

Butcher, R. 2001–2. MA Choreography [workshops, n.d.]. London: Laban Centre.

Chodorow, Joan. 2007. “Inner-Directed Movement in Analysis, Early Beginnings.” In Authentic Movement: Moving the Body, Moving the Self, Being Moved, edited by Patrizia Pallaro, 32–34. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Collinson, Penny S. 2005. See and Be Seen: A Quality of Presence, An investigation of Authentic Movement in Creative Process and Performance. Unpublished Masters in Philosophy thesis, Manchester Metropolitan University.

Culora, F. 2017. Peer Practice [workshops, n.d.]. Manchester: AWOL Studios.

Davies, Siobhan. 2014a. Table of Contents [dance performance, January 2014]. London: Institute of Contemporary Arts, January 2014.

Davies, Siobhan et al. 2014b. Table of Contents [exhibition catalogue, n.e.]. London: Siobhan Davies Dance.

Davis, Joan. 2007a. Maya Lila: Bringing Authentic Movement into Performance, The Process. Norfolk: Elmdon Books.

Davis, Joan. 2007b. Maya Lila: Bringing Authentic Movement into the World, The Offering. Norfolk: Elmdon Books.

De Spain, Kent. 2014. Landscape of the Now. New York: Oxford University Press.

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contributor(s)

Amy Voris

Amy Voris is a dance-maker based in Manchester. Her practice is process-oriented and collaborative, driven by the desire to develop enduring relationships with people and with movement material. Her doctoral research (University of Chichester) is investigating the process of forming, returning to, and deepening the relationship with movement material over an extended period of time. Alongside her studio practice, Amy has worked in higher education since 1999 delivering a range of dance-related subjects within conservatoire and university settings. he completed training in Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy with Linda Hartley in 2012, an approach to the body that underpins her holistic and enquiring approach to dance-making. www.amyvoris.com