Practices of un-disciplining: Notes on the interface of dance and moving image in performance

This article articulates a series of creative practices in which ‘un-disciplining’ becomes central to making inter-disciplinary Dance-Moving Image (Dance-MI) performance. In this context Dance-MI performance implies the discourses between the live body and moving image within a performance whole. Motivating questions are: what sorts of interface processes could be devised and what would happen as a result? The integration of theory and practice is central to our interrogations and inspires movement, MI and sound materials. The article dwells on the processes by which movement and MI materials are generated and placed in dialogue with each other, and the complex potentials of those relationships. Practices recognize and build upon the specificities, overlaps and disparities between both Dance and MI, catapulting each form out of its determined disciplinary confine into spaces where sharing, exposing and recreating inspire new choreographies and thus new experiences for maker, performer and viewer. We articulate stilling, connecting and sensing as key concepts that emerge from our practice and are exemplified in selected works created by and with undergraduate students. The un-disciplining of Dance and MI as two movement-based forms liberate each to interface with the other and so create a new wholeness of experience that in turn privileges multiple perspectives over any singular vantage point. The article concludes by positing Dance-MI performance as experiential through a newness created by the co-presence and interaction between both forms – dance and moving image.