Dance studies
Martin Givors, Researcher, Dance and Anthropology, FNRS, Université de Liège, Liège, Belgium
As a researcher in dance, I tend to consider my own body as the first site of inquiry for the questions that I find most stimulating. Thus, my academic work began at the end of an actor training program, when I decided to return to study alongside one of my teachers, no longer as a student, but as an aspiring researcher. Participant observation is the method by which I have since attempted to weave a continuum between my practical and theoretical involvements in the performing arts.
My research which focused on contemporary dance techniques and participant observation allowed me to reconcile two points of view regarding the nature of my study: the first of these perspectives is one I would describe as somatic, and the second as ethnographic. Somatic engagement opens up the possibility of thinking from the gesture; it is a matter of describing the gesture, the sensations that are brought forth, the imaginary worlds that it opens, the body-environment relationships that it offers. At the same time, keeping a logbook, conducting interviews, and setting aside time for observation all make it possible to ethnographically examine the conditions in which the gesture emerges. What influences are at work within the mind of the dancer or choreographer? How might participants be best guided through sensorial explorations and improvisations? What language is at work? What micropolitics give shape to the relationships within a class or a creation? In bringing together these two perspectives, I have been able to approach the gesture from a perspective that is both documentary and prospective: how is it produced, and what does it produce?
Now from a methodological point of view, the implementation of participant observation in dance supposes that the researcher himself is taken into consideration – his history, his technical nature, and the sensorial qualities of his own body. In October 2017, I participated in an acrobatic dance workshop given by Dimitri Jourde, an artist that I had otherwise followed through two different performances within the context of my PhD[1]. If the observation and description of his daily training became a habit for a few months, my bodily involvement in his dance brought me the discovery of many key issues that had been out of my reach for two years – the part hip flexibility plays in floor acrobatics, the importance of the trajectory of the gaze which he borrowed from capoeira, or even the animalistic imaginaries that fostered his improvisation[2]. In the end, I have drawn from this experience three lines of enquiry regarding the use of participant-observation in dance. 1/ What value is given to the (in)competence of the researcher’s body within the technique that he proposes to study? 2/ What value is ascribed to the duration of a technical exercise within the scope of his study? Should the writing be done after a single workshop, or should the techniques be repeated over the course of several weeks? 3/ And, finally, what value is accorded to the style of the researcher’s body itself?[3] Do we consider the researchers practical involvement as a process that allows us to understand the proposal of the artist we are studying from the inside, or as a way of cultivating our own body, from which a specific knowledge could emerge?
[1] Le spectacle Celui qui tombe (2014), mis en scène par Yoann Bourgeois, ainsi que le spectacle Fractus V (2015), chorégraphié par Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
[2] Givors M., 2017. « La Terre et l'Acrobate : récit d’une étrange collision », Corps-objet-image, n°3.
[3] Givors M., 2017. « À l'écoute des forces : excursion anthropologique au pays des courants d'air », Recherches en danse, n°6.
Cite this item: Martin Givors, “Participant observation”, translated by Caroline Schlenker, Performascope: Interdisciplinary Lexicon of Performance and Research-Creation, Grenoble: Université Grenoble Alpes, 2021, [online]: http://performascope.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/en/detail/177855
