Response Abilities: Performing Arts–Based Research With Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Martin Luther King, Jr.—Take Two

• In Event: 58.057 - Reexperiencing Democracy Through the Arts as Scholarly Work in the Public Sphere

Abstract

Last year (2016) at AERA we participated in Joe Norris’ arts-based research collaboration in Washington, D.C. At the start of this four-hour presentation, we spent 30 minutes walking through the Franklin Delano Roosevelt memorial and then based on ongoing research and the site-based walk, my dance partner and I performed an improvisational dance. We then spent 30 minutes walking through the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial and repeated the same process. The dance was video-taped and placed on Joe Norris’ site joenorrisplaybuilding.ca.

In this session we (my dance partner and I who live in two different countries) will discuss our performance at the Martin Luther King, Jr. site and the ongoing research and weekly SKYPE conversations and dance jams that we had over a three-month period. Additionally, we will discuss the preparation that we undertook along the way to prepare for the improvisational performance. We will share notes, revisions, structure and we will also dance during the session to show how we prepared for the structured improv.

Additionally, we will show clips from our performance and connect the improvisational movements, words, and gestures to our collaboration with each other, our site-based walk, and our dance preparation. We will explain and demonstrate our process for this performance from beginning to end. We will share how dance/voice/movement and our collaborative creative process is a place of inquiry and opening to the way knowledge, insight and perception are steeped in embodied ways of being (Blumenfeld-Jones (1995);[ blind] (2008); [blind & blind] (2003); [blind] (2012); [blind] (2002).

Authors

• Mary Beth Cancienne, James Madison University

• Celeste Snowber, Simon Fraser University