Created and Performed by Olivia Millard
Music by Victor Renolds & Morgan Renolds
Technical support: Olivia Fisher & Ashlee Barton

Continuous Unrest is a performative exploration that focuses on the dancing body as the site of research and the act of dancing itself as the mechanism through which new knowledge is generated. Through the development and performance of this work I ask two questions: Is dancing thinking? and Who dances?

I draw on the work of phenomenologists Shaun Gallagher, Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Philipa Rothfield and Susanne Ravn and my dancing practice of three decades to consider how the body knows and comes to know through dancing. Sheets- Johnstone asserts that “whatever we know of dance and whatever we may seek to know, it is the immediate encounter which constitutes the foundation of our knowledge” (2015, p. 3). In line with this thinking, I suggest that not only do I engage in the generation of knowledge through dancing but that I share or convey that knowledge through performing that dance (ing).

I also aim to demarginalise the ‘older’ dancing body to (re) frame it as one that is full of knowing and to ask who should dance and what might be required, or expected, to share that dancing for others through performance? In doing this I consider the work of Ann Cooper Albright and Andre Lepecki, building on notions such as bodies taking on “resistant motions as they reconfigure the limits and potentials of presence” (Lepecki 2004, p.3). I acknowledge that while I dance solo in this instance, my dance arises from my intersubjective experiences, not least my regular practice of dancing with others.

References:
Gallagher, S. (2020) ‘how moving is sometimes thinking’, IDEA Journal, 17(2), pp. 58–68.
Kronsted Christian et al. (2021) ‘Dances and Affordances: The Relationship between Dance Training and Conceptual Problem-Solving’,
Lepecki, A. (2004) Of the presence of the body : essays on dance and performance theory. Wesleyan University Press.
Rothfield, P. author. (2020) Dance and the Corporeal Uncanny : Philosophy in Motion. 1st edition. Routledge.
Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2015) The phenomenology of dance. Temple University Press.
Sheets-Johnstone, M. (2009) The corporeal turn. Imprint Academic, Charlottesville

Olivia Millard is a Senior Lecturer in Art and Performance (Dance) at Deakin University who completed her PhD in 2013. Olivia’s early career was as a performer and choreographer working nationally and internationally and she received grants to create twelve works as an independent dance maker as well as several local and international commissions. Olivia’s current research includes various collaborative projects centred around improvisation in dance performance including the AllPlay Dance project looking into the benefits of inclusion in dance activities for children with disabilities.