Creating Contemporary Choreography through the Post-Traumatic Lens

As a professional Canadian dancer-choreographer, I have recently observed unpremeditated elements of dissociation arising in my choreography. This has led me to question the possible links between my history of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and my recent choreographic practice, and to speculate on how the embodiment of trauma as a material-generating source and a lens for staging dances may inform the choreographic praxis. My practice-based Master of Fine Arts research focused on developing and analysing my choreography from a PTSD point of view. Over the course of three distinct creative processes, I have tracked emerging insight on the potential and pitfalls inherent to developing choreography from places of traumatic memory, and how those vary from context to context in regards to performers’ level of training and group sizes. This led me to devise what I now understand to be the basic constants of trauma-based choreography and its necessary considerations.