Somatics, Creativity, and Choreography: Creative Cognition in Somatics-based Contemporary Dance Rebecca Weber Submitted version deposited in Coventry University’s Institutional Repository Original citation: Weber, R. (2018) Somatics, Creativity, and Choreography: Creative Cognition in Somatics-based Contemporary Dance. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Coventry: Coventry University. Copyright © and Moral Rights are retained by the author. A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge. This item cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Some materials have been removed from this thesis due to Third Party Copyright. Pages where material has been removed are clearly marked in the electronic version. The unabridged version of the thesis can be viewed at the Lanchester Library, Coventry University. Somatics, Creativity, and Choreography: Creative Cognition in Somatics-based Contemporary Dance By Rebecca Weber January 2018 Janet Rebecca Weber A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the University’s requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Library Declaration and Deposit Agreement Title: Forename: Family Name: Mrs. Janet Rebecca Weber Student ID: Faculty: Award: 6145169 FAH - CDaRE PhD Dance Psychology Thesis Title: Somatics, Creativity, and Choreography: Creative Cognition in Somatics-based Contemporary Dance Freedom of Information: Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) ensures access to any information held by Coventry University, including theses, unless an exception or exceptional circumstances apply. In the interest of scholarship, theses of the University are normally made freely available online in the Institutions Repository, immediately on deposit. 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If Yes please specify Organisation: Please specify the nature of their interest: Signature: Date: 12 Aug 2018 For Doctoral College and Centre for Research Capability and Development use Date Final Thesis Submitted Date of Thesis release to Library 1 Certificate of Ethical Approval Applicant: Janet Weber Project Title: Somatics, Creativity, and Choreography This is to certify that the above named applicant has completed the Coventry University Ethical Approval process and their project has been confirmed and approved as Medium Risk Date of approval: 26 October 2015 Project Reference Number: P36865 2 Acknowledgements There are many people I would like to thank, without whom this PhD would not exist. I am particularly grateful to the Leverhulme Trust, for funding the ‘In the Dancer's Mind’ project, and to the project team, including principle investigator John May, and co-investigators Sarah Whatley and Emma Redding, for allowing me the opportunity to complete this research. Thank you, too, to the Rebecca Skelton Fund for Dance, Research and Performance for the grant in support of my fieldwork with Miranda Tufnell, and to Bates Dance Festival for supporting my fieldwork with Andrea Olsen. I also thank Coventry University’s Centre for Dance Research, Centre for Global Engagement, and Chancellor's Fund for supporting my fieldwork and the dissemination of this research. To my supervisors, Sarah Whatley and Sara Reed, I thank you for your unflagging support and keen critiques, each always exactly when I needed them. Throughout this process, I appreciated your availability for feedback and advice, unceasing faith in my abilities, and endless patience. Your guidance has indelibly shaped this work, and my thinking, and I could not have asked to be blessed with a better supervisory team. Thank you. I am particularly grateful to the artists, Andrea Olsen, Sandra Reeve, and Miranda Tufnell, for their generosity, openness, articulateness, and candour about their own processes. Thank you for allowing me repeated access to your work and thinking, and thank you for laying the inspiring groundwork which provided the impetus for this research. Likewise, I thank Phillip Barnard for his obliging and benevolent spirit in discussing my ideas and helping me to understand his. I thank, too, those who have otherwise supported me and offered insight at critical moments in developing the ideas I present here, including Kate Stevens and her colleagues at the MARCS Institute of Western Sydney University, Kim Vincs, and Emma Meehan. To the friends who have offered sounding-boards, assistance, and encouragement throughout—especially Rebecca Stancliffe, Sanne Weber, Megan Mizanty, Sarahleigh Castelyn, and Eveleigh Buck-Matthews—you helped me get here. Likewise, working alongside my colleagues at C-DaRE was an intellectually stimulating joy; thank you for the support and scholarly insight. And generally, I express thanks to all of my artistic and academic mentors, and my parents and family, who helped guide me to this point. Perhaps most of all, I thank my husband, Weston Aenchbacher, without whose love and support none of this would be possible. This thesis is dedicated to you. 3 Disclosures Though not full chapters, portions of this thesis and the thinking that develops within it have been previously published (or are in press) in the following: • Weber, R. (2018 in press), ‘Somatic Movement Dance Education: A Feminist, Cognitive, Phenomenological Perspective on Creativity in Dance’, in Bond, K. and Gardner, S. (eds.) Dance and the Quality of Life: Springer Social Index Series. Springer: Dordrecht • Clements, L. and Weber, R. (2018), ‘Making Space for Creativity in Dance Science’. International Journal of Art, Culture, and Design Technologies, 7(1), 30-45 • Weber, R. (2018) ‘Creative Cognition and Dance,’ in Ellis, S., Blades, H. and Waelde, C. (eds.) A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance. Coventry: C-DaRE at Coventry University, n.p. • Weber, R. (2017), ‘Interacting Cognitive Subsystems and Dance: Choreographic Creativity’, in GraZia Sindoni, M., Janina Wildfeuer, J., and O’Halloran, K. (eds.) Multimodal Perspectives in Performing Arts: Routledge Studies in Multimodality, Routledge: London, 106-126 I am grateful, in addition to the artists generously giving of their time, to the following sources that have supported the development of this research: • The Leverhulme Trust-funded ‘In the Dancer’s Mind’ Project • The Rebecca Skelton Fund for Dance Research and Performance • Coventry University’s Centre for Global Engagement • Coventry University’s Chancellor’s Fund • Western Sydney University’s MARCS Institute • Bates Dance Festival Furthermore, this work was presented at the following: • The 27th Annual Conference of the International Association for Dance Medicine and Science held in Houston, Texas, USA, October 2017 • The Dance and Somatic Practices conference held in Coventry, England, UK, July 2017 • ‘The Dancer’s Mind’ Symposium held in London, England, UK, December 2017 4 Abstract This doctoral thesis will comprise an in-depth, multidisciplinary and mixed- methods research project examining creativity in Somatics-based choreographic practices. The project draws on methodologies from phenomenology, ethnography, close reading, grounded theory, and thematic analysis. It involved data collected from three well-known Somatics practitioners who embody a professional hybridity as artists, authors, and Somatic Movement Educators—Sandra Reeve, Andrea Olsen, and Miranda Tufnell—and who each use their somatic practice as instrumental in their choreography. Each practitioner utilises different Somatics modalities (Move into Life, Authentic Movement, Embodied Anatomy, Alexander TechniQue, among others) in various settings (higher education, community arts, professional practice, etc.), which provides an international (US and UK) and cross- modality scope to examine shared ideologies within Somatics. Data was collected in a semi-structured, open-ended interview process, participant observation of workshops and intensives delivered by the artists, and a close reading of their published texts. It was analysed for emergent shared themes. I posit that these themes identify connections between the identification, definition, and facilitation of creativity within Somatics-based choreographic practice and cognitive psychological theories of creativity. I identify shared elements of the pedagogical environment and argue that they facilitate the development of a refined perceptual ability. This perceptual expertise is presented as a change-agent in facilitating both novelty in movement generation and the generation of meaning, allowing for a discerning, selective retention of this movement material in giving