Short abstract:

Choreographic Encounters is a new explorative and embodied research method combining design probes with choreographic prompts. In this study, Choreographic Encounters was utilised to research the experience of darkness and how the experience changed during the research process.

Long abstract:

“Finding a beat was exciting, it came so easily: the bird and the wind, doing movements. It was easy to move with them” (participant, 2024).

This paper examines Choreographic Encounters, a new research method, combining design probes with choreographic prompts, that was utilised for researching the experience of darkness. As a choreographer, I recognised an unexplored potential in design probes: an enhanced creative embodiment could deepen the results. This new version of design probes, Choreographic Encounters, is based on creaturely knowing and multisensory improvisation (East, 2019; Ashley, 2019). Also, Choreographic Encounters incorporates a multispecies perspective to darkness, including a human, a bat, a pine, and a planetary point of view.

First, Choreographic Encounters was created through integrating learnings from literature, specialist interviews, and darkness walks. Second, Choreographic Encounters was tested by the participants. Third, incorporating evidence from the completed Choreographic Encounters and micro-phenomenological interviews, this study demonstrates that Choreographic Encounters enabled participants to explore the experience of darkness and consequently advance the relationship with this atmospheric phenomena.

”I extended my arms completely horizontally and began to rotate them slowly as if the wind were pushing them. I felt like I was the son of the tree trying to do the same things that "my dad" tree did … I felt so much love … the darkness embraced both me and the tree.” (participant, 2024).

As a contribution, I am offering to facilitate a Choreographic Encounter for the participants, lasting between 10 – 20 minutes.