To go out of time

To go out of time is a promenade performance that unfolds across three distinct spaces, offering audiences a moving encounter with improvised dance performance shaped by scores and structures. Developed through my Honours practice-led research, the work investigates how propositions in verbal, written, or conceptual form activate the dancing body in the present moment and how the arrangement of segments in time and space generates an overarching conceptual arc. Each iteration becomes a live study in how being watched influences the dancer’s choices, presence, and sensitivity to the shifting environment.

Chrysa Parkinson proposes that practice involves trying, reiteration and inscription. I have ‘tried on’ numerous types of scores (bodily, movement and conceptual) to understand the varying effect these have on my dancing body in the present moment. There have been many iterations of this work; each one pairing scores and structures together to understand the relationship that exists between them. With each reiteration inscription into my body and my writing occurs, shaping my understanding of the relationship that exists between scores and structures and the effect that being watched has on my improvised dancing.

To go out of time is a framing of my practice of improvising with the use of scores and structures while being watched, with reference to the body in time and space. The scores all have a relationship to, or are indicative of time, while the structures adhere to a framework of time and space. This is a ‘body of work’ that comprises multiple dances performed in multiple spaces.