Authorship in the Interstices: Collaborative Performance Making
Society of Dance History Scholars and Congress on Research in Dance Joint Conference, November 2014
This paper explores the interstitial nature of authorship in collaborative creative processes. Considering theoretical paradigms proposed by Hans Joas, Jo Butterworth and Lisabeth Wildschut, Larry Lavender, and Emma Govan, Helen Nicholson, and Katie Normington, as well as experiential evidence from particular collaborative creative research projects and pedagogical experiments (Avalanche & Forewrod/Afterword), this paper examines how both authorship and knowledge construction spring from processes with fluid organizational structures. It argues that, through collaboration, the unique character of a work emerges from “voices” somewhere “in between” those of the individuals involved, and it examines how various models of authority might differently sculpt the nature of authorship as new dances are written by, on, in, and through bodies.
This paper explores the interstitial nature of authorship in collaborative creative processes. Considering theoretical paradigms proposed by Hans Joas, Jo Butterworth and Lisabeth Wildschut, Larry Lavender, and Emma Govan, Helen Nicholson, and Katie Normington, as well as experiential evidence from particular collaborative creative research projects and pedagogical experiments (Avalanche & Forewrod/Afterword), this paper examines how both authorship and knowledge construction spring from processes with fluid organizational structures. It argues that, through collaboration, the unique character of a work emerges from “voices” somewhere “in between” those of the individuals involved, and it examines how various models of authority might differently sculpt the nature of authorship as new dances are written by, on, in, and through bodies.