The autoethnographic act of choreography: considering the creative process of storytelling with and on the performative dancing body and the use of Verbatim Theatre methods

This article, which takes on Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1962) notion of the body as the prime means of knowing the world, starts with the understanding that we have a body, are a body and become a body. These are key concepts for those, like me, who tell stories with the body – the act of choreography. Arguing for the notion of the embodied ‘I’ and interrogating the politics of autoethnography (see, for example, Holman Jones 2005), this article offers an encounter with my own process of conceptualising and choreographing days like these (2015). Working with Verbatim Theatre (also called documentary theatre) methodologies I looked at the politics of memory and history, for a potential crossover between this theatremaking method and the choreographic process. The way I choreograph is essentially ‘verbatim’ in that I am constantly asking dancers to bring their own life experience – through their bodies – into the dance theatre we create. In looking at days like these (2015) I offer a critical analysis of my own choreography (beyond the encounter and analysis of the process of making). This is done as a feminist act of responding to the constructions and play of knowledge and power within and on the moving, dancing body: both my own body and those of the six dancers with whom I collaborated.