2.4 Water Dance Field Research
The interviews, audio recordings and transcripts below document my water dance labs and field research in Mexico, which involved two trips, between 1 April - 2 May 2021, and 20 March - 14 April 2022.
Aqueous zones
Xayol
Overview
Files 1-4 document interviews and discussions with Andrea Sheel, and reflect a period of shadowing her specialist aquatic practice in Bacalar, and on the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico. Files 5 and 6 feature snapshot reflections made during labs with a group of 5 contemporary dancer’s, whom I questioned to explore their experiences of dancing in water in Bacalar between 16-30 April 2021. File 7 features the transcript from a follow-up online interview with aquatic specialists Andea Sheel and Manuela Blanchard, that I conducted after having worked with them during my second field trip to Mexico in 2022 at the Contact&Flow Contact Improvisation and Water dance Festival in Bacalar. The interview I organised featured in Dialogues in Creative Practice, a Techne-sponsored symposium I co-organised on 4 May 2022.
For further videos, drawing, and creative writing from my field research in Mexico, please visit the following pages (Password: Otherness).
1. Interview with Andrea Audio, 18.04.2021
3. Discussion about adherence with Andrea and Janette 10.04.2021
4. Water dance reflection with Andrea 20.04.2021
5. Snapshot Group Lab Reflections Xul ha, Bacalar 13.04.2021
6. Group Lab Reflection on Waterdance, Bacalar 13.04.2021
Is Water alive? Is it conscious?
Following field trips to warm water locations in Mexico and exchanges with international CI aquatic specialists, I invited Andrea Sheel and Manuela Blanchard to interview at a Techne symposium entitled Dialogues in Creative Practice on the 4th May 2022. I asked the aquatic dancers and bodywork therapists to expand on their practices and given the climate crisis, what could it mean to move with, feel and think with water?
See with Water on the symposium website and transcript below: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/1489535/1496418
Photograph: Underwater Rosalind Holgate Smith with pole, courtesy of Andrea Sheel taken during Water Dance Research in Bacalar, Xul Ha, April 2021