Musings #1: Developments of a paper for Undisciplining Dance Symposium 2016: Parental Practices and Performance

I thought that it might be interesting to revisit the thinking process I underwent to present a paper at the Undisciplining Dance Symposium in July this year. What I eventually presented was quite unlike the earlier versions, and was based on quite a different and more specific subject matter, but in the process of arriving at this subject matter, quite a lot of other interesting things came up. Re-reading them now, I'm interested in developing more conversations with others around these ideas.

These are purely cut and pasted form word docs I wrote in kind of note/stream of consciousness form..

What does parenthood do to undiscipline a body, practice, performance?

What does parenthood do to discipline a body, practice, performance?

 What does an ‘attachment’ or ‘responsive’ parenting model do to a body, practice, performance?

What do these parenting practices offer to us as dance and movement practitioners?

Hierarchies of teacher/student, choreographer/dancer?

Bodies in fluidstates, bodies exploding, food and sleep cycles, community, families of support, roles of mothers and fathers, roles of women and men, how do we feel in our skin, in the skins of these roles.

What are the expectations of parents, and in particular, mothers, to be able to work after baby? What are mothers expectations? What are everyone’s needs in relation to the work they hope to continue with? How do families negotiate everyone’s needs? What are ways in which they feel supported, or let down by the people they are working for, by the institutions, companies, families they work for?

How do mothers, fathers, parents, negotiate bodily needs and the shift from disciplined to undisciplined bodily experiences, and sometimes back again?

What is the perception of a disciplined body, and it’s usefulness within the wider experience of life outside of a dance box? How have parents used their dance practice within their family life? Punishment? Self control? Physical interaction with children? How do dance practices come into the small everyday details of family interactions?

In the absence of a studio practice, where do dance practices exist to enable parenting dancers to continue to feel like they practice?

What communities exist that encourage parents and children to dance together?