Transdisciplinary practice and the expansion of the dancer identity : thinking and writing through artistic practice

Abstract

This thesis explores how my transdisciplinary artistic practice informs and expands my identity as a dancer. Initially framed through questions of performance, friction, and the body produced through artistic work, the text evolved into a broader inquiry into how dancer identity is constructed, internalized, and continuously renegotiated. Rather than seeking fixed definitions, I approach identity as an embodied, relational, and non-linear process shaped by lived experience in all its complexity, artistic conventions and broader socio-cultural conditions.

Drawing on practice-based research, the thesis positions artistic practice as both method and subject. Through reflections on the solo work Portraits of Motherhood when we go to sleep (2023) and the experience of working with Others (Choreographers, Dancers, Performers), I examine how embodied knowledge, collaboration, and inherited ideas of the dancing body inform my position as a performer and artist. The research is further contextualized through engagement with theoretical and artistic perspectives, including Ursula K. Le Guin, Bojana Kunst, Deborah Hay, Anni-B Parson, and Amy Sillman. A key aspect of the thesis is the integration of everyday life into artistic practice, particularly through the lens of parenthood. Conditions such as time pressure, fragmentation, and interruption are not treated solely as limitations but as generative forces that actively shape working methods. The thesis also foregrounds a sustained notebook practice as an extension of the body and a site for thinking, collecting, and making connections over time.

Writing itself functions as a central methodological tool, enabling reflection and the articulation of embodied knowledge. Rather than presenting definitive conclusions, the thesis adopts an intuitive, process-based approach that mirrors the logic of my artistic practice. It proposes an expanded understanding of dance as a flexible, transdisciplinary field, and of dancer identity as something multiple, shifting, and continuously in motion.