Dance Theory and Practice (Lecture)

Hamish MacPherson. 2017

This is something based on a presentation I gave to MA students at the London School for Contemporary Dance about research in November 2017. I used it as a chance to think about the relationships between practice and theory. I wonder if it might seem a bit condescending but this is really how I talk to myself and this was a way for me to try and get things a bit clearer in my own head.

First off I wanted to get my head around what research is. It’s something about finding stuff out. Like Googling maybe? Or what journalists do for example? These are forms of research but I’m specifically talking about research in the context of academia. Maybe this is what academia is: ways of finding stuff out that has some consistency and rigour; or agreed ways of finding out stuff. And it’s something about creating new knowledge - so more than just finding any stuff out.

To get doctorate for example you need to make new knowledge (like say something or discover something that hasn’t been articulated or found previously). Up to that point in academia all the way from school, research is generally about summarising existing knowledge.

Julian Klein in an article ‘What is Artistic research’ writes about how research needs to strike a balance between tradition and innovation; between connecting with other people’s research, and developing new material. “Tradition without research would be blind takeover, and innovation without research would be pure intuition.”

There are different types of research for example scientific, historical, artistic, economic and business. To illustrate some of these different types I’m going to use some made up research questions relating to dance and repetition, which is a common enough subject in dance. In doing so I’ll be showing about how academic research forms part of dance. 

SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH involves coming up with a hypothesis and then gathering data: is the hypothesis disproved or supported (it’s never proved) by the data? The method has to be repeatable. A scientific research question might be something like this (I’m pulling these questions off the top of my head): 

TrinityLaban seem to do a lot of scientific research about dance for example. Their dance science department looks at optimising elite performance and researching impact on other people who dance. Dance for Parkinsons is another quite well known area of research at the moment. Or think of Matthias Sperling working with psychology researchers to use dance as a means to study how moving together is linked to liking each other.

This brings us to the distinction between BASIC (sometimes called pure) research and APPLIED research.

Basic research might involve something like developing scientific theories and might be thought of as being driven by curiosity.

Applied research however has a specific political or business drive to address specific problems, for example researching a new product that a company wants to sell.

In reality these two things are not distinct and there might be different motives and interests running through any research activity. And these might shift over time.

Andrew Simonet is a choreographer that wrote a book called Making Your Life As an Artist.

In it he writes (this is long quote but a good one):

“I think of artists like scientists. Just like scientists, we begin with a question, something we don’t know.

We go into our studio and research that question.

Like scientists, at the end of our research, we share the results with the public and with our peers.

Some research is “basic,” useful primarily to other researchers. Some is “applied,” relevant to everyday life.

Both are essential. And most artists do some of both, creating experimental work that pushes the form as well as work that is more broadly relevant.

Just as in science, a negative result is as important as a positive result.

Finding that a certain drug does not cure cancer is a crucial discovery. And an artistic experiment that fails produces important information.

When you are working beyond what is known, when you are questioning assumptions that haven’t been questioned, you generate a lot of useful failure.

Failure in science and art is a sign that the process is working.

Though certain scientists win the Nobel Prize and get famous, all scientists know they are standing on the shoulders of thousands of researchers all over the world who have been asking questions.

And while some artists will get the fancy awards (and maybe even get on TV), we know they are standing on the shoulders of thousands of artists who have been doing artistic research for decades.

In art, as in science, there is an element of faith. Scientists don’t enter the lab saying,

“I will cure cancer.” They say, “If I join the thousands of researchers asking rigorous questions about cancer, discoveries and breakthroughs will be made.” In science and in art, you cannot say in advance that this experiment will lead to this result.

But we artists know that if we join the thousands of artists asking rigorous questions, the world will change.

It always has.

The scientific method and the artistic process are the two most robust problem- solving methodologies ever developed. Take either one away, and our world would be unrecognizable.

Look around you: every object, every surface, every technology was created, re ned, and designed using the scientific method and the artistic process.”

OK, now let’s look at some other areas of research, moving to HISTORICAL. This could be looking at original sources, conducting interviews etc. to understand history of something, for example:

HUMANITIES is another field of research. Humanities research is less about right or objective answers and more about looking at the issues around more ‘factual’ events.

We need to remember that science and historical are not ways of finding out absolute truths. They are subject to cultural, personal and structural biases of those who construct this knowledge. Often dominated by white European men. Not to say these are just opinions but nor are they absolute truths.

Lot of the popular research relating to contemporary dance is in the humanities.

FEMINIST EPISTEMOLOGY and DECOLONISATION are two examples of sort of meta-research projects that examine and seek to undo these biases.

Another key term in humanities research is HERMENUTICS which is the theory and methodology of interpretation, especially the interpretation of biblical texts, wisdom literature, and philosophical texts. Modern hermeneutics includes both verbal and non-verbal communication as well as semiotics. 

Okay let’s move onto PRACTICE BASED research. In this sort of research, creative works are considered both the research and the object of research itself. Practice based research can be non-artistic too.

A practice based research relating to dance and repetition might look like this and involve making and reflecting on different works that use repetition:

Okay, so what is the relationship between PRACTICE and THEORY?

Henk Borgdorff in The conflict of the faculties : perspectives on artistic research and academia describes four perspectives for thinking about this relationship.

1) THE INSTRUMENTAL PERSPECTIVE (music mostly - no pun intended “suggests that ‘theory’ serves the creative process or performance practice in the arts. This viewpoint, predominant in professional arts schools, understands theory first of all as a body of technical professional knowledge. Each art discipline thus has its own ‘theory’ – instrumental knowledge specific to the craft, needed to practise the art form in question.

Examples are the theory of editing in film, the theory of harmony and counterpoint in music (…) 

This might, for instance, involve research into a specific use of materials in visual arts, dramaturgic research into a theatrical text, or even the current fad of applying information technology in artistic practice.”

2) THE INTERPRETIVE PERSPECTIVE “holds that theory provides reflection, knowledge, and understanding with respect to artistic practices and products. Historically, this view is associated with academic disciplines like theatre studies and musicology, which try to facilitate understanding of artistic practice from a certain ‘retrospective’ theoretical distance.”

Here some examples of theory that are currently popular for interpreting dance:

It’s worth remembering that practice can be acknowledged/ made visible in theoretical reflection through CITATION; events, performances, workshops and other things can be referenced in written academic texts just like articles and book.  

3) THE PERFORMATIVE PERSPECTIVE holds that: “theory itself is a practice, and that theoretical approaches always partially shape the practices they focus on. Whether we are dealing with the theory of linear perspective, classical rhetoric, the twelve-tone technique, set theory in serial music, or insights into the cultural meanings and societal functions of art, the performative power of theory not only alters the way we look at art and the world, but it also makes these into what they are.

That art practitioners can be sceptical about theory – even to the point of developing a misplaced aversion to it – is perhaps not just because some theories seem far afield from the actual practice of art, but also because the performative power of theory competes with the performative power of art. On the other hand, thinkers about art who take unnecessarily reticent or aloof attitudes towards artistic practice (especially that of the present day), and who develop their own codes to institutionally protect their ‘profession’ from artistic practice, may be exhibiting a similar perception.”

4) THE IMMANENT PERSPECTIVE holds that: “All practices embody concepts, theories, and understandings. Artistic practices do so in a literal sense, too – no practices and no materials exist in the arts which are not saturated with experiences, histories, or beliefs.

“Creative processes, artistic practices, and artworks all incorporate knowledge which simultaneously shapes and expands the horizons of the existing world – not discursively, but in auditory, visual, and tactile ways, aesthetically, expressively, and emotively.This ‘art knowledge’ is the subject, as well as partly an outcome, of artistic research as defined here.

Another way to think about this is to think that the human mind - and all its abstract structures and concepts - is rooted in the human body. This is the underlying hypothesis of the field of embodied cognition.

Philosophy occurs within and through particular physical activities even if that activity is sitting still. Different physical practices enable different modes of thinking.”

I then proposed some readings to thinking about these things further before a seminar on the subject (that I did not run). I will post these next.