ΈΡΕΥΝΑ
THE PROJECT
The research questions of this project are these:
How can we create in a way that honours the cultural DNA within us?
How can we not only ‘make-space’ but ‘hold-space’ for the nuanced and often silenced ‘bodies’ that resist coming forward?
How might we fold in all the many and complex layers within our practice ?
These questions have acted as channels, eddies, or root systems, leading me to other fruitful terrains. These ‘root-systems’ are continuously spreading out, entangling, and inter-weaving. At times, this research (primarily led by the interviews and workshops) have taken me to places I had not anticipated. Places that had not been part of my initial exploration.
These include, but are not limited to:
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The intimate relationship between dance and spirituality.
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Colonisation and the oppression of spiritual and/or traditional dance.
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Dance as therapeutic restoration of identity.
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The inter-connectivity between dance-music-land.
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Body sovereignty and body submission (Gillon p. 174)
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The issues of cultural identification and cultural ambassadorship
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Cultural practice as a fixed traditional space, in relation to contemporary artistic enquiry.
Phenomenology, ethnography, auto-ethnography, historiography and neo-materialist theory are underpinning my understanding and thinking around all of the questions here. I am drawing this thinking into the interviews that have thus far formed the tap-root of my research.
The dance-artists I have chosen to work with are from diverse cultural backgrounds, do not identify with the Anglo-European status quo, or do not see themselves entirely reflected or culturally supported by current industry conventions. As I live and work primarily in Aotearoa-New Zealand, I am focusing my research on practitioners here, and thus, a significant number of the artists I am working with are Māori. It is important for me to mention here that I do not have the lived experiences, or come from a Māori background myself, and therefore can not speak with expertise or knowledge of Māori tikanga (customary practice), or the colonised experience. The same is true for the Chinese, Senegalese, Pacifika, Japanese, and Polish practitioners I am speaking with. I can not speak for them, I cannot claim to know their lived experiences. The aim of this research is not to allege knowledge or adopt histories that are not my own. If I did so, I would run the terrible risk of re-doing exactly what I am trying to un-do. Instead, I must approach this entire research with deep sensitivity, empathy and clarity. My own lived experiences (as a first generation Greek migrant cis woman) can colour and guide my thinking, but can not, and should not assume a ‘same-ness’ with each of the people I speak with.
Any kind of homogenising in my research and practice would compress and even deaden the aspects of cultural embodiment that I endeavor to champion.
Rigorous empathy then, and not equivalency, is the guiding principle of my research into this subject.
I add here a music video of the Greek/Sudanese Arab artist Marina Satti. This is very inspiring to me. It enmeshes the staunchly traditional and fiercely contemporary. Neither element is depleted or diminished by the presence of the other. Instead, it creates a third space, a fertile one. It is a space borne of synthesis, confidence, self-awareness and self-determination.