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Introduction

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Site, Dance and Body

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Abstract

This section lays out the key theoretical and practical territory informing the discussions and explorations developed throughout the book. It outlines the phenomeno-materialist approach to movement exploration and ‘being-in-the-world’ advocated throughout the work and presents a framing of body-world synergies central to the work’s research design. The main research questions are presented and the methodological, practice-based orientation towards the exploration of these questions and associated ideas is outlined. Key themes and approaches are presented and outlines of the various thematic and practical concerns in each chapter are defined. The introductory chapter frames the research and practice in relation to the author’s own practice-led research explorations and the wider fields of site dance exploration and site-specific performance practice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a detailed discussion of site dance history and its evolution as a form in America and Canada see Kloetzel, M. and Pavlick, C. (2009) Site Dance and the Lure of Alternative Spaces, University of Florida Press and for a discussion of site dance lineage in the UK see Hunter, V. (ed.) (2015) Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance, London: Routledge.

  2. 2.

    This differs from the work of environmental movement practitioner-scholars such as Andrea Olsen, Helen Poynor and Sandra Reeve who present writing and accounts of body-site practice from often autobiographical and therapeutic perspectives in which they explore body-environment connections as a means of promoting self-development and ecological awareness by interweaving anatomical, anecdotal and poetic writing in their published work.

  3. 3.

    Subsequent critiques of Bennet’s early work problematize her assertion of or assignment of agency to nonhuman objects and materials in an indiscriminate manner. Writers such as Stacey Alaimo, for example, argue that agency and intentionality are not experienced or enacted in the same way across species and across human-nonhuman beings and objects. This discussion is expanded in Chap. 2.

  4. 4.

    The work of artists such as Mirko Nikolic (http://www.mirkonikolic.com) and Fiona McDonald (http://www.feralpractice.com) provides pertinent examples.

  5. 5.

    https://becomingsensor.com/.

  6. 6.

    My interest in new materialism has developed through my engagement with the COST European scholarship network How Matter comes to Matter https://newmaterialism.eu/.

  7. 7.

    The incorporation of somatic techniques has emerged as a tangible feature in UK and European dance training over the past twenty years and marks a notable shift away from ‘sole authored’ approaches to contemporary dance training prevalent in the seventies, eighties and nineties in which Cunningham, Graham, Humphrey and Limon techniques reigned as predominant modes of training dancers in UK Dance Higher Education and vocational dance training programmes.

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  1. University of Chichester, Chichester, UK

    Victoria Hunter

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Hunter, V. (2021). Introduction. In: Site, Dance and Body. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64800-8_1

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