Abstract:
This thesis will examine works by Kushana Bush (b.1983), Francis Upritchard (b.1976) and Sriwhana Spong (b.1979) that evoke notions of dance. Each chapter focuses on a key work or series which I argue creates opportunities for interdisciplinary readings using concepts from dance studies as well as art historical and philosophical approaches. Key concepts explored are: choreography as a manipulative strategy, the implications of various spatial relationships and relationships between bodies and gravity. I also discuss Emilyn Claid’s notion of stillness, William Forsythe’s choreographic objects and André Lepecki’s proposition of dance as a melancholic plaint. Concepts from outside the discipline of dance studies are also utilised such as performance theorist Rebecca Schneider’s thesis relating to intertextuality as cross-hatching, as well as French theorist Gilles Deleuze’s (1925-1995) notion of symptomatology and those he elucidated with Félix Guattari (1930-1992) such as affect, material, sensation, the refrain and becoming. Throughout this thesis I explore how artists bring artwork and viewer together in the world, commingling and create a certain unexpected coalescence of elements as an event or transformative encounter that is becoming-dance. Beginning with the paintings of Bush, moving to the installations of Upritchard and ending with the films of Spong, this thesis travels from the inanimate to the animate, from the twodimensional, to the three-dimensional through to the complexity of cinematic space and time. Each of the three main artworks discussed in this thesis include dancers as part of their subject matter but more importantly they also animate various themes and iconographies to create particular and distinct iterations of becoming-dance. Bush’s paintings animate themes of group behaviour, corporeality and an iconography of enigmatic rituals. Upritchard’s sculptures present themes of futility and striving and an iconography of private rituals and lastly Spong’s film introduces themes of mourning, channelling and an iconography of ceremony. Also included are explorations of the working process of each artist, possible approaches from which to view or read their works as well as how all of these concerns combine to create particular occurrences of becoming-dance.
