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Practice
as Research
I have recently completed my PhD in Performance Practice at Exeter
University. This has been an intriguing, exhilarating and challenging
process. My research was based on Move into Life practice as
a teacher, performer and director. I articulated an approach
which I have called 'The Ecological Body' and which you can
find out more about here.
I see this as an ecological approach to soma and body in movement,
which means that I approach movement practice and theory from the
moving experience rather than from a mechanistic, static view.
The
basics of eco-somatics develop embodiment, awareness and creativity
within each person's unique movement vocabulary. It deliberately
makes no distinction between movement for personal development,
movement for performance training and movement as a therapeutic
skill. The basic training ensures that life, creativity and health
remain intrinsically woven together.
However
in the next stages of work, a person often clarifies their intention
and chooses to develop their movement from a particular angle, sense
of aesthetic or professional need - be it for their life, as a performer
or as a therapist. Some people move between prioritising personal,
professional or artistic applications of their movement practice
at different moments in time.
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Eco-somatics
is a dynamic, systemic and process based approach to the art of movement.
We live and move from apparent certainty towards the unknown and back
again in a constant state of inter-dependency and dialogue both with
our changing selves, with the changing others and, crucially, with
our environment - movement in the present and in presence.
I
see "movement in presence" by its very nature as transformative
for the participant, for the witness/audience and for the environment.
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My practical submissions included a performance with Suprapto Suryodarmo and three "movement studies", in which I investigated in depth some key practices within eco-somatics as a movement artist. I applied the same key practices with performers as co-director of an ecological performance at Bristol Zoo and investigated the same practices, as a teacher, during a week's residential workshop in Autobiographical Movement. This is a module within the Move into Life basic training programme, which many of you are familiar with. Some of the central ideas explored in my PhD thesis can be read/watched/seen here.
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| Drawings
by Greta Berlin |
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