Alys Longley is a writer, performance maker and a senior tutor at the University of Auckland where she specialises in teaching Performance Writing, Research Methodology and Interdisciplinary Creative Practice. Her doctoral research melds poetic writing and choreographic practices. Read her PhD thesis Moving words: five instances of dance writing.
Alys Longley
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Rethinking dance writing
This presentation begins with the question: ‘how might language crease and fold from dance practice?’ Writing is conceptualised as a form of translation that rises up and into the mobile weight of movement, offering creative and documentation strategies that directly interweave with choreographic, collaborative and improvisatory processes. Examples of and methodologies for writing that emerges out of dance will be drawn from the development and performance of the duet, The Little peeling Cottage (Longley and Smith 2007). Research draws on the dancing/ writing practices of Simone Forti (Forti 1974; 2003; 2006); Brian Massumi’s parables on transition and sensation as modalities of philosophy (Massumi 2002); and Gayatri Spivak’s writing around the politics of translation (Spivak 2000).