Choreographies of the gaze. A research-creation project in dance

Abstract

Artistic research-creation is an emerging research program in the academic field, of interest for the production of knowledge, the generation of discourse, education and the communication, and the dissemination of contemporary performing arts practices.

In the field of dance, research-creation acquires special relevance from the moment in its practice goes beyond the narrow disciplinary frameworks and conventions of performing arts to come into contact with the socio-historical and cultural contexts in which it operates.

On the other hand, research-creation addresses the processes and interrelations that occur between the subject and the object of the research, involving the body and the sensorial, socio-affective, and intersubjective systems of the participants.

The focus on processes, as opposed to the products of creation, is not merely a technical, methodological, or aesthetic option, but represents a thought in action whose performativity involves political, ethical, and discursive questions. These questions relate to the way of configuring and defining the objectives and interests of the research, the values involved, and the positioning of the subject in relation to the tensions and conflicts present in the contexts in which it lives, and in relation to which it is committed and acts.

And it is precisely this positioning that makes research-creation a project of knowledge and social transformation, and of knowledge and transformation of the subject of the research itself, by making sensitive and thinkable, as well as ethically and politically approachable, questions that, for one reason or another, have been relegated and excluded from the social space and, consequently, from the possibility of dissent, debate, and public deliberation.