New book shows how dance and movement can re-position relationships between individuals

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Feb 16 2021

A NEW book explores how dance and movement can re-position relationships between individuals and the sites they live and work in and travel through.

Site, Dance, and Body, which is out now, explores human and nonhuman relationships and considers how bodies engage with the materials, textures, and atmospheres of the sites they engage in.

The book, published by Palgrave Macmillan, brings together perspectives from site dance, phenomenology, and new materialism to explore and develop how site-based body practice can be employed to explore synergies between material bodies and sites.

Dr Victoria Hunter is a practitioner-researcher and Reader in site dance and choreography at the University of Chichester, located on the UK's south coast. Her work explores site dance, materiality and corporeal engagements with space, place and lived environments.

She said:

Employing practice-as-research strategies, scores, tasks and exercises, I present a number of suggestions for engaging with sites through the moving body and offer critical reflection on the potential enmeshments and entanglements that emerge as a result.

The theoretical discussions and practical explorations presented will appeal to artists, movement practitioners, academics, and anyone interested in exploring their lived environments through the moving body and the entangled human-nonhuman relations that emerge as a result."

Dr Hunter, who began her career as a movement director and choreographer, had before the Covid-19 pandemic travelled to Lebanon to encourage dance participation across the country. She now teaches within the University of Chichester's department of dance, which was recently voted as one of the top 20 schools in the UK by WhatUni student choice awards, 2020.

Her work includes the popular book (Re) Positioning Site Dance: Local Acts, Global Themes, which she co-authored with Karen Barbour and Melanie Kloetzel in 2019, and the acclaimed text Moving Sites: Investigating Site-Specific Dance Performance from 2015.