Dancing the in-between-ness: (re)articulating Bartenieff Fundamentals through improvised dance performance-making

This thesis evolves the movement system of Bartenieff Fundamentals centralising questions of bodily-spatial explorations through improvisation. Nuanced relationships with Bartenieff’s framework for the moving body are developed within approaches to artistic practice in dance. The thesis presents performance work, notes from practice, movement scores, images, and academic text, to demonstrate a new methodological approach to Bartenieff Fundamentals and new methods of practice developed through somatic enquiry.
Three performance works - espacement, KnowingUnknowing, and …whispers are positioned as sites of exploration of Bartenieff’s Principles and Fundamentals. A (re)articulation of approaches to Bartenieff Fundamentals specifically in ways which encourage consideration of the practice beyond its established form is demonstrated. Applying methods more common to improvisation practices, notably the use of scores, to Bartenieff Fundamentals illustrates a new approach to it as an artistic practice. The research is developed in relationship with the work of other artist-scholars in the fields of somatics, dance and improvisation, including Ann Cooper Albright, Martha Eddy, Sondra Fraleigh, Erin Manning, Lisa Nelson, and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone and the embodied philosophies of Shannon Sullivan.
Acknowledging other bodily-spatial perspectives to somatic practice and performance this thesis attends specifically to Bartenieff Fundamentals, drawing particularly on the interpretation of Bartenieff’s work through the writing of Peggy Hackney. Bartenieff’s philosophies for moving which are inherent in the origins of the practice are renewed through an embodied feminist-transactional approach.