Resistance: In Practice, as Process, and as Metaphor

Resistance: in Practice, as Process, and as Metaphor is an ethnographic and a practice-based research project. Michel Foucaults theory of the docile body is firmly embedded within the dissertations methodological framework that works toward signifying new considerations of relationships between theory and practice, and the relationships between individual dancers and their dance practices. My dissertation positions the practices that contributed to the creation and performance of the contemporary dance work Resistance, as the main focus of the dissertations scholarly inquiry. This inquiry asks: given that I am a docile body, what else could I be?

In dialogue with selected theories that consider the body and individual subjectivity, the dissertation aims to address the marginalization and objectification of the dancers body-as-object, devoid of personal experience. This absence of the dancers personal experience permeates Western theatre dance scholarship. The dissertation serves as a form of resistance to existing theories that privilege the position and experiences of the spectator/observer of a dance performance over the creators and performers of the work. I frame my own dance practice as the primary field site for this ethnographic study that considers the body, individual subjectivity, art and the individual, choreographic processes, and agency. Positioned at the center of this practice-based research project is the creative act as a form of knowledge and scholarship.