My practical and written work explores my own ageing and non-heterosexual identities in dance and performance. Here, adopting an entirely appropriate analogy, I offer what Nancy Miller terms ‘the obligatory dance cards of representivity’ in which the author dances ‘the waltz of the as a…’ (1991: 121; my emphasis) where the author fills the ellipses with one’s markers of identity of choice. As an interdisciplinary artist/performer, my work explores and challenges notions of (my) ageing and counters the notion of ‘normative’ bodies. I use the term ‘artist’ and ‘performer’ now, when I used to call myself a ‘dancer’. With a background in live art and both contemporary1 and western classical dance, I pursued both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in these areas, before embarking on my own career in performance arts education, as an academic in dance and performance art. To be truthful, the term ‘dancer’ began to sit uncomfortably with me when my practice output was studio based with my students, as a number of years had passed since I was involved in ‘professional’ dance work. Equally, the wider scope of performance studies enabled me to recognise the interdisciplinary nature of my creative output. Within this introduction, I would like to identify the frames of ‘dance’ to which I make reference throughout this book. My use of the term ‘dance’ acknowledges it as an art and a discipline; its performative form. Aside from being performance based, I appreciate dance as recreational, such as community dance and the emergence of healing dance therapies such as somatic practices and dance movement therapy (DMT). Yet, my reference to ‘dance’ as a noun in this book, because of the issues of age and representivity which underpin my work, refers to dance in its performance form.
My performance research interests have been driven by experiences of ageing resulting in three main questions. These questions, which are answered throughout the course of the text, are informed by the idea of explaining and exploring the dynamics of creative performance making in the context of my life trajectory. With a focus on how (self) ageing is understood, experienced and reflected upon, I use my personal context to explore subjectivities in relation to myself as an ageing performer. These themes include identity, embodiment, transformation of the bodily agent and an archiving of the body. In positing these lines of explorations within the book, the questions below are interwoven as follows:
- How do I, as a mature artist, explore age(ing) and embodiment as a cultural and social construct through my practice?
- How do I, as a performer, engage with reflective methodologies when creating performance and how does the documentation form part of my practice?
- How does my (maturing) dancing performers’ body negotiate and renegotiate age(ing) in performance?
Following this introduction, Chap. 2 provides a literature review of both emic and etic literature in the interdisciplinary areas of sociology, performance studies and identity theories. Chapter 3 frames the current position of performance-based studies into ageing and performance, with a review of practitioners and performance work. For me, my research actually emerges from my professional practice, therefore I use the term practice-led to describe my working methods. In such a context, the choice of autobiographical practice-led research is one of the main methods I used to generate and analyse performance in relation to theoretical investigations. It is within Chap. 4 that my original mode of inquiry, built on the foundation of autobiography and autoethnography is discussed, using what I denote as a more accessible term ‘mesearch’.2 The work then explores three practice-led works: Falling Apart at the Seams, Council House Movie Star and Dying Swans and Dragged Up Dames. In referring to my practice-led work, I offer reflections of the practice, photographs and underpinning academic sources that are offered for the reader. My practice chapters (Chaps. 5, 6 and 7) focus explicitly on engagement with reflexive methodologies and the documentation of my process, yet each one also looks at the negotiation of age through both social and physical lenses, yet which are personal to myself. Finally, Chap. 8 offers some closing reflections on mesearch and the need for such subjective explorative inquiries.
Although the practice work itself aims to demonstrate its own coherence and intellectual rigour, this book provides the academic and scholarly context of the research projects. This book merges and glues together my practice in terms of exploring my archived documentation, critical reflections, writings and visual material. Originally seeds were sown in my doctoral thesis, yet my research has also seen the germination of ongoing theorising and ideas set out in my previous publications in the following areas: mental illness, identity and dance (Edward with Bannon 2017), mesearch and risky ethics (Edward 2018), mesearch and ethics in doing self and sexuality in performance (Edward and Farrier forthcoming), queering and que(e)rying the site and body through drag costume (Edward 2014a) and autoethnographical and ethnographical research into dancing negativity among boys who engage in dance (Edward 2014b).
This text seeks to provide a distinct contribution to knowledge in the areas of practice-led research, self-reflexivity, self-ageing and performance, in which I offer my own experiences and reflections as self-as-practice to detail my engagement with performance and ageing. This text is offered as a unique self-study discussing the impact of ageing in dance and performance, and I am both author and content of the investigation. The research seeks to provide a space where I, as a performer, renegotiate the process of ageing, and I seek to value my new embodiment in its maturing performing form. So, instead of claiming to explore solely a personal paradigm, I explore what Boud and Griffin term as a ‘new paradigm’ (1987: 113). In light of this ‘new paradigm’ I explore the possibilities of performance beyond the culture backdrop of dancing youthful elitism that appears to discriminate against getting older, which is ripe for original, distinctive, unique and creative possibilities for performance.
Bibliography
- Boud, D. and Griffin, V. (1987) Appreciating Adults Learning: From the Learners’ Perspective. London: Kogan Page.
- Edward, M. (2014a) ‘Council House Movie Star: Que(e)rying the Costume’. Special issue in Scene, 2: 1+2, pp. 147–153, https://doi.org/10.1386/scene.7.1-7.147_1
- Edward, M. (2014b) ‘Stop Prancing About: Boys, Dance and the Reflective Glance’. Special issue in Men Doing (In)Equalities Research, 470–479. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
- Edward, M. (2018) ‘Between Dance and Detention: Ethical Considerations of Mesearch in Performance’ in Iphofen, R. and Tolech, M. (Eds.) The Sage Handbook of Ethics in Qualitative Research. Sage.
- Edward, M. with Bannon, F. (2017) ‘Being in Pieces: Integrating Dance, Identity and Mental Health’ in Karkou, V., Oliver, S. and Lycouris, S. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Wellbeing. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Edward, M. and Farrier, S. (forthcoming) ‘Doing Me: Researching as Me-searching. Ruminations on Research Methodology in Drag Performance’ in Claes, T., Porrovecchio, A. and Reynolds, P. (Eds.) Methodological and Ethical Issues in Sex and Sexuality Research: Contemporary Essays. Barbara Buldrich Publishers, Lerverkusen, Germany.
- Miller, N. (1991) Getting Personal: Feminist Occasions and Other Autobiographical Acts. London: Routledge.
Footnotes
1
Before my formal training in contemporary dance and ballet I was part of the 1988 UK acid house movement where I engaged in dancing at illegal raves, consuming recreational drugs and developed a ‘fuck you’ attitude towards a Thatcherist society. This 1980s raving period allowed me to understand who I was becoming (through a sense of self-discovery) during my teenage years as a young gay man living in the northern working-class community of Shevington, near Wigan. For further reading see Edward, M. (2015) ‘Dance: Anarchy from the Margins and Free Expression’ in Gillieron, R. and Robson, C. (Eds.) Counter Culture UK: A Celebration. Twickenham: Supernova Books. http://supernovabooks.co.uk/products-page/.
2
See Emma Rees’s article in https://www.timeshighereducation.com/features/self-reflective-study-the-rise-of-mesearch/2019097.article. Mesearch is a term which has been adopted from my doctoral thesis. That said, I would not claim to have coined a new term, but it is unique to me in describing my creative and autoexplorative methodologies in performance.