Paper short abstract:

In this talk, I will present creative methods I developed for an ethnographic investigation on the phenomenon of intimacy in contemporary dance: somatic workshops and research-creation allowed me to grasp/share affects with dancers; autoethnography and video-essay to transmit/disseminate them.

Paper long abstract:

Running an investigation on the phenomenon of intimacy in contemporary dance (in Montreal, Paris and Dakar), I’ve been looking for the right methodology to investigate sensoriality in dance. Convinced by the potential of art-based practices to access the affective dimension, I carved a method based on workshops to explore intimate experience through somatic exercises. A research-creation emerged from one of my fieldwork’s encounters with a Senegalese contemporary dancer. In our duet Dereskina, we address the question of appropriation of another sensorial culture through movement. Made of “der” (skin in wolof) and “skin”, Dereskina expresses an intimate encounter through dance. We experimented the way dance enables to taste another way of moving, sensing and inhabiting the world. Drawing on this duet, I will show how co-creation allows to enter in another gestural, emotional and artistic language. The research-creation generated an intimacy that also brought us to face our different conceptions about contemporary dance, dramaturgy and performance. Dancing myself allows me to share the sensitive life of dancers and consequently, ask accurate questions. But how can I give account of this affective dimension through words, avoiding epistemic violence of otherness' representation within ethnographic accounts? In this talk, I will also address the issue of representation. What are the potentials of new formats such as video-essay to give account of the sensorial intimate experience? (Vionnet and Becholey Besson 2020) I will stress on autoethnography to transmit fieldwork’s affectiveness, responding to the question of how to write about/with affects (Vionnet and Ingold 2018).