Multiplicity, Embodiment and the Contemporary Dancer: Moving Identities

In recent years, the practice of contemporary dancers has altered significantly in the transition from canonical choreographic vocabularies to a proliferation of choreographic signatures within mainstream and independent dance. Dancers are often required to collaborate creatively on the formation of choreographic material, thus engaging conceptually with emerging cultural paradigms. This book explores the co-creative practice of contemporary dancers solely from the point of view of the dancer. It reveals multiple dancing perspectives, drawn from interviews, current writing and evocative accounts from inside the choreographic process, illuminating the myriad ways that dancers contribute to the production of contemporary dance culture. A key insight of this book is that the dancer's signature way of being is a 'moving identity', which incorporates the past dance experience, anatomical structures and conditioned human movement of the dancer as a self-in-process. The moving identity is the movement signature that the dancer forms throughout a career path.

Table of Contents:
Introduction 1. Dancing Multiplicities 2. Descending into Stillness: Rosemary Butcher 3. Veils Within Veils: John Jasperse 4. The Shape Remains: Jodi Melnick 5. From Singular to Multiple: Liz Roche 6. Corporeal Traces and Moving Identities 7. Further Iterations and Final Reflections Notes Select Bibliography Index

About the Author :
Jennifer Roche is a Lecturer in Dance at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. She had an international career as a contemporary dancer and was artistic director of Rex Levitates Dance Company. She writes about the creative practice of the contemporary dancer from philosophical, somatic and narrative perspectives.

Review :
'How refreshing is this - academic research written through the lived experience of a dancing performer. Dancers' embodied engagement with choreographic process and performance often slips through the net of academic research. Considered as ephemeral dancers' contributions remain unspoken and undocumented. In this book the author's voice vibrates loud and clear, as she allows us access to her thinking and movement-based research working as a dancer with four internationally recognized choreographers. Taking ownership of each stage of production, commissioning, choreographic process and performance, Jenny Roche documents the heart of her practice - dancing - contextualizing her experiences with a breath of knowledge drawn from philosophical and artistic sources. Yet this is more than a personal story. The author offers independent contemporary dancers a model for developing stylistic moving identities through practice led research that recognizes the powerful contributions made by dancers to choreographic process.' - Emilyn Claid, Roehampton University, UK