This article addresses the work of researchers Francesca Reyes Aquino, Sally Ann Ness, and Benildanze, all of whom use embodied practices to study Filipino folk dance in the academy but with divergent methodologies: Aquino uses ethnography, Ness phenomenology, and Benildanze practice as research. It examines the processes by which dances have moved from functioning rituals to representative artifacts and research tools. These processes reveal a complex and constantly developing relationship between dance practice and the academy.
Playing with 'Others': Strategies in Intercultural Performance explores ways in which There's Danger in the Dance engaged with approaches to exploring difference. There's Danger in the Dance was an intercultural performance project that took place between 2007 and 2012. This piece of writing explores some of the strategies taken in conception, rehearsal and performance of this practice-as-research project. The rehearsal and performance investigated a complex intertwining of three dances from the Philippine folk dance canon, English performers and a range of ideas, including ideas around identity, nostalgia, memory and nationalism.
It is interesting, as a Kiwi living in Europe, to understand the ways in which New Zealand is perceived to those outside its borders. When I tell people I am from Aotearoa, their immediate reaction is to identify the country with images: beautiful scenery, the Lord of the Rings movies, sheep, and in particular rugby and the Haka. This ubiquitous image of the All Blacks performing a particular sequence of movement and sound before executing a performance of skill and strategy within the strict confines of an improvisational game is one explored by Stephen Jackson and Brendan Hokowhitu in their 2002 article Sports, Tribes and Technology: The New Zealand All Black Haka and the Politics of Identity. They suggest the conflation of rugby, the Haka and national identity is a deliberate representational strategy. While Jackson and Hokowhitu concentrate on the commercial aspects of this strategy, there is also a strong and present governmental presence within these representational strategies also.
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