On the emergence of choreographic material in silent pact

Abstract

In this essay, I critically reflect upon a choreographic process that evolved working from an intimate affective trace as a driving force. In Silent Pact (2018), I developed a practice of layering and distilling movement material as an improvisational practice that allows the affects of the dancing experience to be at the centre of the creative process. I define affective trace as an embodied felt-object, an imprint of an intensity that gathers in the dancing. Considering the implications of the perspective of the present in embodied research, I arrive at the idea of thinking dance improvisation as a practice of attending to the emergence of movement forming. Informed by a working approach that involves creating aesthetically stimulating choreographic spaces, I argue for the making of space as a form of choreographic thinking in which both movement and space are produced together (McCormack, 2015) from a process of “affective commotion” (Thain, 1998). I draw on the ideas of relational movement by Erin Manning (2013) and on emergence as an opened-futurity by Elizabeth Grosz (1998) to advance understandings of the experience of sensing as a choreographic tool. In addition, I suggest that Manning’s pro- position of placing relation at the centre of analysis offers a model for advancing practices of seeing in movement research. The essay concludes with a reflection on the implications of a model of emergence for ways of doing in artistic practice. This text is supported by a visual exposition hosted by the Research Catalogue.