Material for the brain #48

Emergence in dance.

Cultural Boundaries in artistic expression

Episdoe #48 - Beyond Representation

My guest for this episode is Nita Little - a dance researcher, theorist/artist, and one of the founding developers of Contact Improvisation (CI). Nita holds a PhD in Performance Studies with a focus on the articulation of presence and creative actions of attention.

Her life work is inclusive of mindbody training, performing, choreographing, researching and writing about the ethics, politics and entanglement of somatic relations.

I invited Nita to discuss the practice of choreography. During the conversation we ended up talking about many things: We talked about her current projects, including performances and teaching practices, we talked about The concept of emergence in choreography and its transformative potential, how to move beyond representation in dance, exploring choreography as an act of "doing" rather than "showing”.

We talked about The interplay between identity and dance, and the limitations of cultural constructs in artistic creation. We talked about Trance states and altered states of attention as tools for enhancing creativity in dance. We talked about Dance as a relational practice that fosters interconnectedness and dissolves boundaries between performers and audiences and the importance of dancers claiming their authority as creators and researchers and more.

 

Connect to Nita:

https://www.nitalittle.com/

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Photo by Christian Ariel Heredia