What is choreographic practice as research (PaR)?
`We have to be confident that by following different, yet complementary pathways, we can create important new knowledge. After all, this is what is at the heart of art, and it is what research strives to do’ (Sullivan 2006:22).
In general terms, PaR is as a way of producing knowledge through the practice of arts, or in the case of this project, dance choreography. Many scholars have discussed in their work the epistemological implications of choreographic PaR. According to Anna Pakes, for example, the epistemological value of choreography resides in the practice, which generates through doing the know how, concept that she explains in opposition to the know that. In other words, Pakes acknowledges that doing choreography generates knowledge on how to do so, among other embodied forms of knowledge (Pakes 2009:12). This conception is relevant for this project, as my practice will involve exploring choreographic processes and methods through creating choreography.
At the same time, this notion of artistic practice that contributes to scholarly knowledge might seem to clash with the scientist positivism that dominates the production of knowledge in the Western world, that on the other hand `emphasises the importance of factual and theoretical knowledge over and above other forms’ (Pakes 2009:12). But is there practice without theory? For my research project, I am inclined to work under the conception that practical and theoretical knowledge are not independent entities but two complementary forms of knowledge that reciprocatively contribute to one another.
`Choreography can be research. But is all choreography “research choreography”?’(Spatz 2009: 80). This is another relevant issue to be raised before engaging in a choreographic practice as research project. What makes a choreographic process “research”? As I understand it, an exploratory process that leads to a choreographic outcome is not necessarily a research project. A PaR project not only discovers through practice but establishes a research methodology and pertinent theoretical framework. Moreover, the research will require detailed documentation of the choreographic practice as well as reflective analysis of the data encountered. These frameworks and documentation will complement the choreographic practice, which is the `substantial part of the evidence of a research enquiry’ (Nelson 2013:9).
Ultimately, for the purposes of this project I will define choreographic PaR as a process of exhaustive enquiry through choreography making, aiming to generate knew knowledge. This process takes a multimodal approach that understands theory and practice as complementary entities, and relies on scholarly methods of investigation as well as on comprehensive documented evidence.
As it was mentioned in previous sections of this exposition, the choreographic practice in this research project will consist of three choreographic explorations that will be inspired by the same text. This text, the poem Caged Bird by Maya Angelou, will be divided into three elements: visual elements, aural elements, and meaning. How is this approach connected to structural linguistics and semiology? To answer this question, it is relevant to explain these two very much interconnected academic fields.
Structural linguistics
Structuralism is the area of any field that is dedicated to the study of structures. For example, there is structuralism in sociology, psychology, architecture, and so forth. Redundantly so, structural linguistics is the study of the structure of language. To understand what this study means it is important to define the term “structure”. According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a structure is `something arranged in a definite pattern of organisation’ (2021). Therefore, structural linguistics seek to analyse patterns of organisation in language, or in other words, it `looks for the rules that underlie language and govern how it functions’(Mambrol 2018).
A major concern of linguistic structuralism is the fact that words do not have meanings because they connect with objects directly, but because they connect with notions that exist within our minds, that we connect with an object. These ideas are culturally conceived, therefore, are subjective and connect with other elements of society. Language in this perspective is also seen as a fundamental aspect of the structure of the human mind and there is a conception that is `through language that we learn to conceive and perceive the world the way we do’(Mambrol 2018). The following fragment develops further on this idea:
The cultural meaning of any particular act or object is determined by a whole system of constitutive rules (…) When one takes as object of study not physical phenomena, but artefacts or events with meaning, the defining qualities of the phenomena become the features which distinguish them one from another and enable them to bear meaning within the symbolic system from which they derive. The object is itself structured and is defined by its place in the structure of the system, whence the tendency to speak of “structuralism” (Culler 1975: 5-6).
Semiology
Semiology, or semiotics, is the study of signs. According to the theory of semiotics and linguistics developed by Fredinard de Saussure, language is a system of signs. Saussure’s theory of semiotics applied to language is considered to be part of the structural linguistics field. However, structural linguistics is an area that involves much more than the study of signs, as it was explained above. In this line of semiotics, a sign is any element that conveys meaning, for example, a word. The sign has two components: the signifier and the signified (Encyclopedia Britannica 2020). The signifier is the element that evokes meaning, that for the purpose of this research will take the form of the aural and visual elements of the text; and the signified is what the sign evokes, that I will refer to as meaning. While researching for this project I found a useful explanation of the relationship between sound, image, and meaning in language:
...a word is a linguistic sign consisting, like the two sides of a coin, of two inseparable parts: signifier + signified. A signifier is a “sound-image” (a mental imprint of a linguistic sound); the signified is the concept to which the signifier refers. Thus, a word is not merely a sound-image (signifier), nor is it merely a concept (signified). A sound image becomes a word only when it is linked with a concept’ (Mambrol 2018).
Structural linguistics and semiotics are very similar fields of study. In fact, literary critic Jonathan D. Culler mentions in his book Structuralist poetics: structuralism, linguistics and the study of literature (2002) that:
It would not be wrong to suggest that structuralism and semiology are identical. The existence of the two terms is in part due to historical accident, as if each discipline had first drawn certain concepts and methods from structural linguistics, thereby becoming a mode of structural analysis, and only then had realised that it had become or was fast becoming a branch of that semiology which Saussure had envisaged (2002: 6).
Nevertheless, for the purposes of this research I explained structural linguistics and semiology as two separate theoretical entities. This separation responds to a practicality of my research project. At the time of analysing text for my choreographic practice and separating the elements of the text into three, I had to decide how to approach each element for each choreographic experimentation. To work with the aural and visual elements of the text the answer was clearer, as the images of the words are just what is seen, and the sounds are just what is listened. However, when it comes to analysing meaning, the framework of semiotics that considers the separation between signified and signifier was not enough, therefore I had to find new ways of approaching meaning through structural linguistics. This way, this enlarged and broader framework will allow more possibilities when working on my third choreographic experimentation.
Qualitative research
Qualitative research is an approach to research that is mainly connected to the social sciences (Flick, 2002: 6). A major characteristic inherent to qualitative research is description of the phenomena observed. However, depending on the research tradition selected, the methods of description and posterior analysis will take different approaches.
Some methodologies in qualitative research that can be applied to artistic PaR are phenomenology and ethnography (Savin-Baden and Wimpenny 2014: 48). For the purposes of this project, I will carry out my qualitative research through an ethnographic methodology, more specifically, through self-ethnography. Ethnography is a methodology of investigation very much related with the field of anthropology, nevertheless it can be applied to other areas of study. It is a type of qualitative research that requires fieldwork in direct interaction in real time between the participants and the researcher, and it is focused on the experience of the participants (Howell 2018).
In the case of this research project, I will engage myself in observation and interpretation of my experience as a choreographer, hence the term self-ethnography. As a method, self-ethnography `combines characteristics of autobiography and ethnography’, in a way the researcher documents an experience but also reflects on it considering theoretical backgrounds and tries to investigate how their own experience could apply to someone else (Ellis; Adams; and Bochner 2011). This is a relevant part of my research, as I will attempt to understand how my own choreographic experience can relate to the work of others.
For my research, the ethnographic methods I will engage with are fieldnotes and video recordings, all of which will be appropriately documented.
Quantitative Research
Quantitative research deals with numerical data, generally considering two or more variables (University of South California 2021).
It will be included in this project to measure certain data with regards to time management. The quantitative analysis in this project will measure:
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