PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Allegranti: Beatrice | UK

Personal Text, Public Body:

The Performance of Gendered Identities with/in interdisciplinary practice

My practice-based doctoral inquiry weaves a tripartite connection between Dance Movement Therapy (DMT), Performance/Choreography and aspects of Postmodern/Feminist thought. Within this investigation I seek to interrogate how interdisciplinary insights can be used to deconstruct and re-constitute the "performance" of gender in every day life and in 'performance' (dance/theatre and filmatic images).

As both Choreographer/Performer and Dance Movement Therapist my interdisciplinary practice over the past decade manifests in a variety of domains including performance for dance/theatre and film, training

actors, dancers and therapists as well as clinical practice primarily in adult psychiatry. Emerging from this diversity is the personal text/public body model  (Allegranti 2004) and within this model I hold a deep awareness of the dialectical nature of the body, it is both personal and public. To this end, my intention is to build on current feminist postmodernist discourses in philosophy, psychotherapy and language where I suggest the development of an embodied language which speaks of the deep interconnection between the 'personal' psychological and the 'public' social world. My critique of these textual representations spans; identity development and the importance of the gendered body in early attachment bonds (Orbach 2003), subjectivity and the deconstruction of dualistic gendered texts in relationships (Chaplin 2002), the autobiographical construction of gendered identities through language (Coates 1996, Bruner 2003), and gender performativity (Butler 1997). Consequently, an important feature of my interdisciplinary practice is a fluid view of gender where identities and relationships are co-created by the 'dreaming body' (Mindell 2000) and in a constant state of flux. This oscillational space of change has encouraged me to evolve an ethical stance wherein my (artistic and clinical) interventions I seek to transform hierarchical relationships into more egalitarian ones and deliberately confront marginalised beliefs and experiences of gendered lives.

A Key objective within this inquiry is to acknowledge, interrogate and work with my embodiment of the mutually influencing and constantly shifting roles of clinician and artist. Drawing from the Personal Text/Public Body Model I propose working with this embodiment in two ways, firstly, by creating an autobiographical solo performance practice and secondly, by establishing a performance Lab for a mixed group of professional arts/therapists and performance practitioners. My intention in the Lab is to facilitate individuals' unfolding of personal and public gendered identities.These activities have received support from the Arts Council England and Roehampton Universitythus allowing this practice-based research to become research as practice in performance.

Interwoven within this PARIP presentation will be excerpts of my solo performance practice and the Lab, together with a reflection on how the ethics and politics of feminism inform the methodological and epistemological decisions I make as a researcher. By highlighting the debate around 'feminist methodology', I will introduce a refined ethical use of various qualitative research methods. Moreover, I plan to articulate how current feminist pluralistic frameworks (Ramazanoglu &Holland 2003) are consistent with my DMT/choreographic approach where I use a variety of methods in order to address and work with individuals' personal process unfolding in the studio. Consequently, an additional aim in this research is to consider a fleshy encounter between everyday life, performance and research methodology.