Friday, June 9, 2017

Artistic Research and PhD Land

I haven't posted in a while--- close to 4 years...I think...

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Tumbler and the websites for Restless Productions and Project CPR became my social media platforms. Email, texting, and documenting rehearsals through the same device as all other communication became my way of life.

I kept up the National Novel Writing Month too, though last year I failed at my attempt due to...below...

I am now in the depths of a Practice as Research PhD in the UK (University of Chichester), which also means that I have moved countries again, or rather I am dividing my time between two countries...again...

I am dancing under the influence of words, ideas, and discourse and making connections with some incredible artists whose minds are as sharp as their work is creative. My networks are expanding, but more importantly seem more appropriate for me- less cliquey- more about the work somehow, rather than where the work is seen or who sees it...somehow.

I need this space to rant, to outpour, as a way to deal with all of the facets of my thinking around choreographing and dancing and to cope with the PhD process. It is going well btw, but I need more coping mechanisms to see this all the way through. I don't know where it will lead... that excites me... but it also makes the journey particularly isolating...though I am crossing paths with fellow explorers on their own trajectories.

I will be posting here regularly -- also providing documentation of the work I have been creating and presenting in the UK over the last year or so.  Thankfully I am surrounded by ambitious, strategic and   independent thinkers who don't mind dancing with me from time to time and who think that my perspective is exciting enough to follow it!

I continue to write, create, read and evaluate how art and surrounding matters are contributing to an understanding of the chaos we are creating in the world, the strength of humanity, and ways to relate to power structures as we fathom the messiness of "progress" and "future".  

I am grateful for Brain Pickings and Performance Philosophy for keeping my mind active and outward-working, and the many Dance Studies authors who have saved me from having to write about the value of dance and choreographic practice as an academic area of study.