“As an artform, ballet absorbed the richness of the cultures into which it was introduced. However, imperialist sponsors have repeatedly used the artform to further colonial aesthetics. Such heteronormative, classed narratives of the notion of ballet can pervasively drown out the spectrum of human sensibilities that dance can so ably exemplify, but the working class, non-White, Queer constituents who have loved and danced ballet steps have legacies of their own that prevail—albeit often as part of ‘underground’, invisibilized cultural histories and communities”. (3)

— Adedola Akinleye. Ed. (Re:) Claiming Ballet, 2021.

My research is primarily concerned with the Euro-American ballet cannon, however, my project focuses less on current or historical ballet concerts, and more on the experience of learning ballet and engaging with ongoing training and facilitation of its techniques.

My project aims to tell a story about navigating complex power structures in the process of embodying the historical technique today, through the lens of my body and its world of perception. It starts with the pain of being injured and seeks to document subtle ways in which the perception of emotions such as fear and anger might lead to critical thinking about ways in which an individual who practices and aspires to practice ballet is already engaged with the suffering of others.

My research goal is to make my personal intellectual-emotional process explicit by asking questions aligned with the philosophical traditions of phenomenology, critical dance studies, and embodied research, which foreground the material fact of the body and its embeddedness in contemporary society and politics.

Robin Nelson outlines Practice as Research as a “multi-mode, dialogic, dynamic approach” that I’ll work with to outline three aspects of my process, all of which imbricate theory in practice (38, Robin Nelson, Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistance, 2013)

KNOW HOW

‘Insider’ close up knowing

— Experiential, haptic knowing

— Performative knowing

— Tacit knowledge

— Embodied knowledge

Know-how was the starting point to my project. I studied classical ballet since I was four years old and up till now, I have studied three distinct techniques including a Russian method from the lineage of Agripinna Vagonova, a twentieth century Russian-American technique developed by George Balanchine, and an Italian approach from the lineage of Enrico Cecchetti. These techniques are called Vagonova, Balanchine, and Cecchetti, respectively. They are cited here not in their historical order of appearance in the world, but in my personal encounter with these ideas as they have been condensed and expanded in my body. All of these movement philosophies share a French terminology, that extends from the Renaissance to postmodern art period.

As I have migrated into the field of contemporary performance and work with a range of practices in my pedagogy, from somatic to athletic, I seek to value and contextualize multiple realities and aesthetic influences that shape my insights on ballet as a constantly changing artform. My perspective includes my practical experiences in somatics techniques, yoga, and other dance styles that exemplify the range of physicalities that constitute “contemporary” dance praxis. While these are rarely brought into relation to the aesthetic universe of classical ballet, I am working with a variety of technical movement lineages, that also inspired my values of difference, juxtaposition, and complex processes of identity construction and knowledge production.

know what

The tacit made explicit through critical reflection

— Know what ‘works’

— Know what methods

— Know what principles of composition

— Know what impacts

My interest in facilitation arises from my artistic practice, which extends from my work as a movement teacher in the dance field, and also involves my proximity to choreographic and performative practices. My artistic research experiments with the flexibility of classical ballet in terms of the facilitation and performance of embodied techniques. Through my ballet pedagogy, I open doors to the somatic field, therefore asking ballet to become available to multiple aesthetic and subjective points of view, often neglected in the historical record of the discipline.

Know THAT

‘Outsider’ distant knowledge

— Spectatorship studies

— Conceptual frameworks

— Cognitive propositional knowledge

Conceptual framework I’m developing is interested in the relationship between specialized embodied practice and everyday life. Phenomenology and process philosophy such as somaaesthetics are being considered.

Sara Ahmed’s theories of the cultural politics of emotion and Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the repetition of generalities are being explored. Also systems and theories of collecting memory, emotional and physical experiences, including pain, grief, and love.