The experience of the participants of a durational dance research

Abstract

This dissertation addresses questions regarding the experience both performer and audience may gain from participating in a durational performance. The embodied knowledge that the dissertation introduces was collected during a two-week-long studio research in early 2022. The project was supported by the Nulladik Lépés Programme (Step Zero – translation from Hungarian) of Sín Arts Centre in Budapest, Hungary. My research partner was Molnár Dávid Márk in the studio whose role consisted of witnessing my durational improvisations and giving insight into his experience as the witness. We observed both the performer’s and the audience’s experience in relation to the particular context of durational performance, however, our collected data is rather subjective and mainly only speaks for our experience. Hence, I did not aim to conclude the studio research to generalised ideas about durational works, instead, this dissertation documents the process of our studio practice and introduces our main research findings. The whole study draws on the ideas of French philosopher Henri Bergson regarding time and duration. This theoretical framework stood as the starting point of the practical research, which as it evolved it began to take the shape of an embodied research. The discussion also looks into our particular method of gaining embodied knowledge. As the studio research included two participants – me as the performer and Márk as the audience member – we researched duration in a one-to-one performance format. The methodology of the research hence merges ideas connected to one-to-one performances, embodied research, and performance art. The central aim of the dissertation is to unfold the subjective perspectives of both Márk and I about the unique experience of durational dance. An insight that we could only access through the extension of time. We merge the perspective of the performer and the audience in order to point at the commonalities in the unique experience that the format of durational dance performance can provide. The dissertation arrives at the research findings by observing specific aspects of the studio research that are, although not closely related to duration, still greatly affected our experience of time during the studio sessions. These are the way the presence of the witness affects the journey of the mover, the natural ups and downs in interest and focus for both performer and audience, the intimacy that the one-to-one format creates, and our particular approach to productivity in performing arts compared to what society dictates.