adanceaday :: ethnography as sensory transduction
an experiment in ethnographic methodsThe aim of this 365-day dance project was to develop new skills for conducting research in the realm of sensory anthropology. As an ethnographer I wanted to learn how to move with and be moved by other bodies in the world. Conducting sensory anthropology requires that ethnographers attune their sensoria to their fieldsites. In this project I explored how an ethnographer might become a transducer in a field of affects and sensations. Over the course of a full year I created dances daily as a means of cultivating new dexterities for sensing, recording and propagating movements and affects. Each day I experimented with new movements or observed other bodies in motion and found ways to move with them. These dances generated an experimental medium for crafting new methods of attunement and new modes of attention. Each dance was an unfolding entanglement with some other moving body, or surface, or screen. |
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materials and methods
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gestic diagrams and kinetic graphemes
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participantsThis structure of a daily movement practice was very challenging; but it was also richly rewarding. I initiated this 365 day project on the Winter Solstice of 2008 and completed it on the Winter Solstice of 2009. I worked closely with my movement mentor Debra Bluth, a dancer, teacher, and healer in Cambridge, MA. She offered weekly guidance and support. In addition she gave me “assignments” to push my practice further. My dear friend, scholar and performance artist Natalie Loveless worked alongside me, creating her own 365-day project during the same period. We kept each other apace of the challenges of a daily practice. My most present companion through this entire journey was my beautiful 17 year-old cat Alice. Alice was a vocal and agile participant in this project. Alice passed away in my arms October 1, 2010. She is sorely missed. |