Mirror and Disarray: A Moving Reflection on Ballet Technique
Aiming to build a manual of dance technique as practice-based research, the project endeavors to create a self-reflexive manifesto about holding on to and letting go of classical ballet. Elaborated through performative exhibitions, writing, pedagogy and film, the project examines the way classical ballet technique enters fields of activity in contemporary art. Placing the researcher’s personal embodied knowledge in relation to documented somatic experiences, phenomenology, and queer feminist politics, the project considers how a repetition of steps from the Western archive can be deconstructed, defamiliarized, and disarrayed. Can a re-definition of ballet, in terms of contemporary practice, yield new insights into Eurocentric techniques and their future use?
