Performing the archive
Summary
It builds upon the unique resources of the Laban Archive housed in the National Resource Centre for Dance (NRCD) at the University of Surrey since 1982. There are two current AHRC-funded projects in progress - The Pioneer Women Project and Digital Dance Archives (DDA).This latter project is concerned with archival interactivity and extends this research grouping into consideration of audiences, and interactive communities.
Details
Research Projects
2008 –2010
Professor Fensham, Professor Alexandra Carter (Middlesex University) and staff at the NRCD will use untapped historical archives based at the NRCD, particularly those linked to Natural Movement and Classical Greek Dance, to research Pioneer Women: early British modern dancers.
This 22-month project is funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Resource Enhancement Scheme. In addition to preserving and producing an electronic catalogue of the materials within the archives, a number of research outcomes and events will be undertaken. These include journal articles, an academic symposium, study days, oral histories, reconstructions, and an edited DVD. The project ends in March 2010.
For more detailed information about this project, please click here.
September 2008
Professors Wynne-Davies and Fensham in association with Chawton House Library hosted "Her Make is Perfect": a seminar interrogating seventeenth century women’s dramatic writing, text and performance. Funded by the Institute for Advanced Studies, Surrey, £2600.
2006-2008
Transnational and cross-cultural choreographies: the politics of cultural transmission interprets choreographic genealogies as postcolonial history. It employs an RA Dr Odette Kelada (Monash) and has spawned an international symposium (ANU, December 2006), a performance workshop (2006) and conference panels (SDHS, Paris 2006; CORD, NY 2007). Funded by the Australian Research Council, $157,000.
2002-2004
Poesio and Roberts led a three-year project, Dance Data On-line , funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Board's Resource Enhancement Scheme, which focused on preparing the NRCD's catalogue of archival holdings for the web.
The project involved conversion of current electronic data to the archive database software CALM 2000, enhancement of existing catalogue records, improving search capabilities, and developing a database of dances.
In addition, 11 archive collections were electronically catalogued during the project, doubling the number of records in the catalogue, and a number of images from the Rudolf Laban Archive were digitised and embedded in the web accessible catalogue.
The major outcome of this project resulted in researchers being able to access information about the NRCD archival holdings via the internet . £286,000
2000-2002
AHRB Research Fellow, Laban specialist Moore undertook detailed work on his scores. Publications include Movement and Making Decisions: The Body-Mind Connections in the Workplace, New York: Dance-Movement Press, 2005. And Introduction to Movement Harmony, Denver: Cottage Industries, 2004.
2001
Lansdale investigated De-centering the Dancing Text
This project, with ex-Surrey PhD RA Deveril, received an Innovations Award for designing a hypertext webtool for dance analysis, innovatively involving partnership with the University of Southampton Electronics Department. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00007304. Funded AHRB, £48,876
1998-2001
Lansdale completed Synthesising Human Motion for Virtual Performance, with Prof Illingworth, Electronics. Funded, £250,000, EPSRC, 1998-2001.
Conferences and Presentations
Jackson’s ongoing research on the lived ballet body as choreographic archive includes:
- Invited choreographic workshops at Gotland International Dance Seminar (2005); Paper on William Forsythe at House of Culture, Stockhom (2002)
- Dance Pedagogy conference, Dallas, Texas (2004)
- Teaching with the prestigious Comma Company, Japan (2007).
Hammond provides a radical reconstitution of British ballet history through feminist and Brechtian theory (2005, 2006).
Publications
2007
In the monograph Relative Values, Professor Wynne-Davies examines family discourses (Palgrave, 2007).
Her examination of unpublished 16th and 17th century plays written by women considers them as early performance texts (2003, 2004, 2005, 2006).
2003
Wynne-Davies casebook (Palgrave) considers the reinvention of the Shakespearean archive through film adaptation.
Digital Production
Archival documents for the Ballet Independents’ Group, funded Arts Council England, London. All transcripts are lodged with the NRCD http://www.surrey.ac.uk/NRCD/arc-comp.html.
Still Angela (2003) and Shifting and Sliding (2004) (DVDs from www.hushvideos.com) were developed by Fensham with Jenny Kemp as examples of a surreal feminist theatre aesthetics.
Creative Artists Fellowships
Choreographer Rosemary Butcher became a Creative and Performing Arts Fellow 2003-2004 (AHRB £131K) congruent with Lansdale's research on her choreographic history (2005).
2000-2003
AHRB Fellow Emilyn Claid, (PhD, Surrey 2001) established an innovative project on performer spectator relations, Embodying Ambiguities with Valerie Briginshaw (Chichester). It produced a web-presence - www.embamb.com - and the sole-authored book, Seductive Ambiguity in Dance (Routledge, 2005). Funded AHRB, 2000-2003 £138,000.
