The entanglement of choreographic and pedagogic practices is the theme of the PhD project of Mari Flønes at The Faculty of Performing Arts.
How do four primary school teachers and a choreographer/researcher co-create and carry out a creative dance project together with third graders, and which choreographic-pedagogic insights, principles or premises are created in the process?
Mari Flønes is a PhD-scholar in dance and education at the Faculty of performing Arts at the University of Stavanger. She is also a freelance dance artist with a special interest in dance and community contexts. Her art-making and researching are created through dance and choreography in collaborative and interdisciplinary projects. Mari is currently inquiring the intertwinement between choreographic and educative practices and processes through a dance project in a Norwegian public school.
Expanded choreography expanding dance making/researching/teaching
The research project is brought out and created through the notion of expanded choreography, supported by the methodology of a/r/tography, situated in a performative research paradigm and the theoretical landscape of agential realism.
Through-out the process the notion of expanded choreography has moved how Mari, as a choreographer, teacher and researcher, engages with the research and the relations between all the bits and pieces in the project. Understanding choreography as Klien and Valk states « If the world is approached as a reality constructed of interactions, relationships, constellations and proportionalities, then choreography is seen as the aesthetic practice of setting those relations or setting the conditions for these relations to emerge » (2007, p. 220). The research process moves as a co-created choreography where the entanglement of the autobiographical journeys of the participants, practice, theory, art, school, teaching, creating, dance, birds, children, grown-ups, writing, drawing, talking, past/present/future, laughing, resisting, moving, stopping and lingering creates something new.
"The methodology of cooperative engineering in didactics allows me to enlighten and investigate the conjoint action “While dwelling and lingering on what the notion of expanded choreography can create for the entanglement of dance and education, but also for me in my journey as a researcher, choreographer and teacher, the research project continues to move.” Mari Flønes says.