Whispering Birds: Site-specific dance, affect and emotion

Abstract

Researching embodied experiences of affect, feeling and emotion in site-specific dance offers understandings beyond the visual and aesthetic aspects of performance, opening consideration of both the performers’ and audiences’ participatory experiences. In this chapter, I discuss embodied experiences within site-specific dance for designed gardens. I draw on over ten years of site-specific work created for a regional arts festival, for which I have had the opportunity to investigate choreographic approaches to complement and enhance specific sites through embodiment. To begin, I provide an introduction to site-specific dance and discuss how live performance events allow affect, feeling and emotion to arise. Drawing on a range of writers from varied disciplines, I discuss affect as a fluid and relational, collective experience that extends beyond individual experiences as dancers, and may be shared with and between particular audiences at particular times and places.