Biography

Personal Statement:

Her research examines Laban Movement Analysis (LMA), Labanotation (LN) and anthropological methods as effective tools for understanding and documenting movement as cultural code particularly in reference to African Peoples’ Dance.

Research Interests

Her PhD research (The Nama Stap: (Re)Constructing a Cultural Code Among the Nama) involving field-research among the indigenous people of South Africa, the Khoisan, merges LMA/LN and anthropological methodologies and is under examination.  This research has exposed the need for further research relating to issues concerning: the limitation(s) of Laban Analysis to the documentation of non-theatre dance forms, the question of what is ‘African’ Dance in the 21st century, and the inclusion of movement/dancing to discourse on dance. 

In collaboration with the Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance and Badejo Arts she is analysing and documenting the movement of Bata, a dance tradition of the Yoruba people of Nigeria.  Outputs from this research will consist of text based and interactive visual scores cataloguing the music, dancing, history, and context of Bata in its home context and the Diaspora.  Extended research will address Bata in its western context in which transformations in the form will be examined.

Publications

Book Chapters:

The Choreographic Notebook: A Dynamic Documentation of the Choreographic Process of Kokuma Dance Theatre, an African-Caribbean Dance Company in Buckland, Theresa (ed) Dance in the Field Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography. London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1999, pp.100-110.

Committees and Consultancy

Consultancies:

Score annotation for the National Resource Centre for Dance
Score annotation for GCE A-Level Dance Syllabus