Becoming-with movement : life course mobilities and alternative cartographies of Independent Contemporary Dancers

(With)In movements of dance, the life course mobilities of Independent Contemporary Dancers emerge. Described as transient (Lea, 2012) or as scavengers (Card, 2006), this thesis investigates the life course mobilities of Independent Contemporary Dancers. Taking lead from humanistic geography and the mobilities turn, this thesis’ contribution is its critical discussion of mobility as bodying, as becoming-with movement — illuminating assemblages of movement, moving. In conferring mobility as bodying through the thesis, I attend to mobilities at the nexus of movement techniques, geographies, and vitalities. The meta-discourse within the interdisciplinary field of mobilities situates everything ‘on the move’, thus pitching material corporeality and representation as equal components (Cresswell 2006, 4). I take Erin Manning’s (2013, 2014) proposition that ‘the body doesn’t move, movement bodies’ to frameworks of mobility, where movement is situated as ‘contentless, [and] apparently natural’ (Cresswell 2006, 2). I draw from Massumi’s (2002) theorisation of movement, emphasising how abstract notions of movement are actively put to work in the trajectories and mobilities of Independent Contemporary Dancers. With assemblages of movement, this thesis traverses discourse and practice, threaded with participants’ data. I devised and implemented an innovative methodology capable of separating, condensing, and interweaving the various complex and imaginative strands that comprise a life course with(in) dance. A movement practice entitled ‘Day Out of Time’ was an invitation to dwell with(in) movement, and echoed onwards in thinking-with participants data (Kotsalouis, 2016). To enable diverse articulations of these life course mobilities, a participant cartographic exercise — charting a ‘Lifetime Map’ — and danced ‘movement responses’ were utilised in concert with interviews. Via this methodological assemblage life course mobilities are charted as trajectories unfolding with imagination, movement, and events. In-depth examination of Ann’s life course mobilities demonstrates how abstract notions of movement are put to work via attuning to body, movement, sensation, and change. Assembling movement responses, yarns of a life course, and a ‘Briwyant’ event of choreography reveals movement 'infolding' as the forging and questioning of future geographies (Van Hout, 2011). In the mobilities of Independent Contemporary Dancers, geography and vitality is at dance