April Nunes Tucker, MPhil, MA (Dance) works as a Lecturer in Dance at University of Bedfordshire, UK. Her PhD looks at the relationships involved in dance performance from a phenomenological perspective. April’s teaching and research interests lie in choreography, sitespecific performance, improvisation and the influences of somatic practices such as yoga on contemporary dance technique.
April Nunes Tucker
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Changing repetition: a ‘practice as research’ study on dialoguing, drawing and dancing
What insight into the knowledge of the body can a study on dancing, dialoguing and drawing bring? This study looks at two teacher-artists undertaking a pilot project that involves spontaneous dialoguing whilst engaging in the process of drawing and dancing. The study firstly investigates the impact of the relationship between attention and intention in the execution of physical movement and applies it to the media of drawing and dancing. The study then explores questions about knowledge held in the body, intersubjective relationships and pedagogical implications which emerge as a result of lived experience. Written from the dancer’s perspective, this paper takes a non-dualistic stance in terms of mind and body and the writing style alternates between the conversational and theoretical. Two preliminary studies were carried out prior to this project. The first was a collaborative practical workshop between a fine art teacher at a secondary school in London and me. The second was another collaborative study, carried out informally in a practical studio setting with a life drawing artist and Tai Chi teacher who painted as I danced. The writing which follows has focused on the relationship and insights gleaned from subsequent work with this second teacher/artist.