Thinking brains and bodies: distributed cognition and dynamic memory in Australian Dance Theatre. Creative thinking, learning and memory - key features of human cognition - will be investigated in the context of dance in this project. Complementary quantitative and qualitative methods will shed light on process and communication in the Australian Dance Theatre and the arts more broadly, and inform new accounts of thinking as embodied and distributed.
Conceiving Connections: Increasing industry viability through analysis of audience responses to dance performance. The development of audiences is identified by the Australian dance industry as vital to the future of the sector. The current project will investigate how audiences respond to highly evolved dance-works. It will explore the kinds of meaning communicated by such works, and the value assigned to them by tutored and untutored audiences. Methods for enhancing audience engagement will be ....Conceiving Connections: Increasing industry viability through analysis of audience responses to dance performance. The development of audiences is identified by the Australian dance industry as vital to the future of the sector. The current project will investigate how audiences respond to highly evolved dance-works. It will explore the kinds of meaning communicated by such works, and the value assigned to them by tutored and untutored audiences. Methods for enhancing audience engagement will be tested through studies in both metropolitan and regional centres. Dance-scholars, artists and cognitive psychologists collaborate with three industry partners to identify and address significant concerns for artists, presenters, advocates and funding bodies, and to train postgraduate reserachers in inter-disciplinary modes.Read moreRead less
Intention and Serendipity: Investigating Improvisation, Symbolism and Memory in Creating Australian Contemporary Dance. Contemporary dance is one of the major vehicles through which Australian stories and cultural diversity are communicated. Little is known about the processes that underpin creation and performance of communicative dance works, and less still about processes and stylistic traditions unique to the Australian form. We will investigate cognitive and kinaesthetic processes involve ....Intention and Serendipity: Investigating Improvisation, Symbolism and Memory in Creating Australian Contemporary Dance. Contemporary dance is one of the major vehicles through which Australian stories and cultural diversity are communicated. Little is known about the processes that underpin creation and performance of communicative dance works, and less still about processes and stylistic traditions unique to the Australian form. We will investigate cognitive and kinaesthetic processes involved in creating, refining, performing significant works. Combining experimental and practice-based research we examine psychological mechanisms engaged by elite choreographers, and experienced and emerging dancers, and analyse the unique Australian heritage and embodied knowledge evident in leading dancers and choreographers influenced by Gertrud Bodenwieser.Read moreRead less
Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum. This project aims to interrogate the relationship between dance and visual art practices and institutions since the turn of the 21st century, developing solutions for emerging and associated challenges for artists and art workers. As a contemporary art form, dance innovates our museums and galleries by foregrounding challenging issues such as the dematerialization of art, the nature of creative labor, digital archives, experience as economy, and ....Precarious Movements: Choreography and the Museum. This project aims to interrogate the relationship between dance and visual art practices and institutions since the turn of the 21st century, developing solutions for emerging and associated challenges for artists and art workers. As a contemporary art form, dance innovates our museums and galleries by foregrounding challenging issues such as the dematerialization of art, the nature of creative labor, digital archives, experience as economy, and participatory aesthetics. Bringing academics, curators, conservators and artists from diverse institutions together, Precarious Movements stages a dialogue between dance artists and art institutions to support exemplary creative arts practices and the production of end user processes and protocols.Read moreRead less