EMERGENT CHOREOGRAPHY: SPONTANEOUS ENSEMBLE DANCE COMPOSITION IN IMPROVISED PERFORMANCE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE TEXAS WOMAN’S UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF DANCE COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCE BY NINA MARTIN, B.A., M.F.A. DENTON, TEXAS AUGUST 2013 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To the participants that have made this study possible: all my gratitude. Over the years, my students and my colleagues in the performance ensembles of Channel Z, Locktime, and Lower Left Performance Collective have served as the fertile fields of inquiry that inspired my work. I value the support of my Ph.D. cohort, including that of Valerie Alpert, Tamara Ashley, Adrienne Clancy, Joan Frosch, and especially Nona McCaleb, whose camaraderie in scholarship and life has been invaluable. My dissertation chair, Dr. Linda Caldwell, and my committee members Dr. Rosemary Candelario and Sarah Gamblin, M.F.A., have helped me immeasurably toward my goals as a scholar. I am grateful to my graduate professor and mentor, Dr. Frances Bruce, who elevated the intellectual framework that underpins this research and served as my content reader. I thank Dr. Steve Sherwood, Director of the TCU Writing Center and Josh Wariya-Daniel who have helped shaped my words in order to more eloquently convey my meaning. I appreciate the support of my siblings, Sharon Martin Kocurek, Laura Martin Labatt, Helen Martin Reeves, and Loretto Martin Patterson, whose support for this endeavor has been crucial to my success. I especially value my sister, Dr. Mary Martin Patton, Dean of the College of Education at TCU, who has mentored me from my return to undergraduate studies in 2003, through my Master of Fine Arts degree in 2008, and iii now the completion of the Ph.D. Mary, your steadfast encouragement has been crucial to the completion of my goals. I appreciate the support of my colleagues on faculty at TCU School for Classical & Contemporary Dance who generously accommodated my needs in the writing of this dissertation are appreciated. I especially thank my department chair, Ellen Page Shelton, for accommodating my writing schedule and Roma Flowers, along with her husband John Spray, who cooked so many meals for me to support the writing of this dissertation. Finally, to my dear friend Evelyn Luciani and to my mother-in-law Adeanya Hunt, my husband Paul Hunt, and my son Ian Martin Hunt – It has been a long 10 years through this educational process, and I could not have completed it without your support. It takes a village to make a scholar. Thank you all! iv ABSTRACT NINA MARTIN EMERGENT CHOREOGRAPHY: SPONTANEOUS ENSEMBLE DANCE COMPOSITION IN IMPROVISED PERFORMANCE AUGUST 2013 This study examines the experience of dancemakers, who choreograph spontaneously within the complexity of the ensemble while embedded in a performance environment. The dissertation articulates such themes as the self-organizing aspects of spontaneous ensemble dancemaking; the role of implicit choreography and motivations for engaging in improvised performance; and the function of recursive dance practices that cycle through the spontaneous performance event and the participant’s studio practice. The research focused on five evenings of performance by four different ensembles: the Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation ensembles (Seattle, WA), the LIVE Dance Theater (San Diego, CA), and the Lower Left Performance Collective (Stolzenhagen, Germany). I also conducted face-to-face interviews with three dance artists, Barbara Dilley, Lisa Nelson, and Susan Sgorbati, all of whom have developed ensemble compositional methods for dancemaking. I employed a constructionist approach and engaged in the research process as a participant observer. The data set includes post-performance journaling, performance videos, a study questionnaire (see Appendix B), my research journal, and post-performance group interviews with the v performers. I interpret this data through a lens that incorporates a dynamical systems approach that provides models for understanding self-organizing systems such as the individual choreographer in spontaneous ensemble dancemaking, the ensemble exhibiting characteristics of emergent group cognition, and the live audience. As the narrative emerges through the dissertation chapters, The Continuum of Deliberation serves to disrupt binary understandings of terms such as choreography and improvisation and, instead, proposes a dialectic relationship wherein the dance artist enacts both an implicit and explicit spontaneous choreography. This dialectic provides ground for framing individual dancemaking epistemologies emerging as an Ensemble Epistemology in performance. The self-organizing principles underlying ensemble dancemaking in performance allow each dance to choreograph itself and to create a new dance that is expressive of an Ensemble Aesthetic. As the dance unfolds in performance, the dynamic environment includes a live audience that emerges in the study as a co- creator of the dance. The data indicate that communal aspects of this dance form motivate the participants’ growth as dancemakers and social beings as well as contributing to the vibrancy of this complex choreographic method. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................3 ABSTRACT .........................................................................................................................5 LIST OF TABLES .............................................................................................................10 LIST OF FIGURES ...........................................................................................................11 Chapter I. DANCING ON THE EDGE: SPONTANEOUS ENSEMBLE DANCEMAKING IN PERORMANCE ..................................................................1 Entering Ensemble Performance ........................................................................1 Brief Overview of Dance Scholarship ...............................................................2 Exploring the Bi/nary: Choreography~Improvisation .................................4 Improvising Choreography ..........................................................................6 Entering Complexity ..........................................................................................9 Dancing the Implicit~Explicit Body~Mind .....................................................13 Dancing in the Illusion of the Present ........................................................15 Dancing What I Know: Bringing Prior Experience to Spontaneous Dancemaking ............................................................17 Dancing the Body~Brain: Timely Short Cuts to Dancing ...............................18 Perceiving Affordances in the Ensemble Environment .............................21 Dancing an Ensemble Epistemology as Ground for an Ensemble Aesthetic ........................................................................23 Design of Study ...............................................................................................28 Conclusion .......................................................................................................32 II. FRAMING THE STUDY: IMPROVISING A DANCED WORLD ....................34 III. OF RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS ......................................................................34 Purpose Statement ............................................................................................35 Mode of Inquiry ...............................................................................................36 Dancing between Constructivism and Constructionism ............................37 Participant Observer ...................................................................................38 Problem Statement ...........................................................................................40 vii Selection and Recruitment ...............................................................................41 Methodology and Procedures ..........................................................................44 Data Collection ..........................................................................................45 Data Analysis ...................................................................................................51 IV. A SENSE OF ENSEMBLE: CHOREOGRAPHING THE UNKNOWN .............55 Choreographing the Unknown .........................................................................56 Scoring Spontaneous Ensemble Dancemaking ................................................58 Dancemaking Communities .............................................................................60 Theatrical Conventions and Unconventional Dancemaking ............................62 Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation Faculty Ensembles .....................63 LIVE Dance Theater ..................................................................................77 Lower Left Performance Collective ...........................................................83 Conclusion .......................................................................................................91 V. EMERGENT ENSEMBLE DANCEMAKING: DIVERSE EPISTEMOLOGIES AND MOTIVATIONS .......................................................93 Bringing One’s History into Spontaneous Performance ..................................93 Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation