choreo | graphy

Abstract: The doctoral project choreo | graphy is an inquiry into the relationship between thinking through dance and thinking through written language, taking the notion of choreography literally as dancing-writing. Respecting that different media afford different thought processes, ideas, and concepts to be reached, this practice-based artistic research project has unfolded within artistic processes and experiments to explore and develop the relationship between dancing-thinking and writing-thinking. Investigating the media-specificity of thought in dancing together (khoreia) as it relates to the media-specificity of thought in writing (graphia), this project experiments with their relation in a way that serves both art forms and respects their differences, while challenging historical hierarchies between embodied sense-experience and the written word. Cycling through three areas of inquiry, the project asks 1. how dance thinks, 2. how dance writes, and 3. how a (re)considered relationship between dancing and writing might inform choreographic practice. Following these three areas of inquiry, the project’s contributions to artistic research are summarized as follows: articulating what is particular to dance-thought (how dance thinks), practicing and devising procedures for dancing-writing (how dance writes), and pursuing forms of exposition which invite observers to think with and through dance by applying the aforementioned insights to artistic creation (choreo | graphic outcomes). The separation of the word choreography into choreo | graphy signals the project’s intention to open space for consideration and reinvention of the poetics of choreographic practice and discourse.