Reciprocal Encounters: An Investigation into the Perception of Language Through the Interpretation of Instructions in Movement Scores / Nina Murphy (2023)

This thesis explores a year-long journey into the investigation of the perception of language using instructions in movement scores. This thesis follows the above by examining the ideas of Ecologist David Abram and his connections with the teachings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenology of perception. These understandings in relation to how language has previously been practiced by artists such as William Forsythe and Miranda Tufnell were a guide in developing a series of movement workshops culminating in five weeks of movement sessions with two participants. These sessions showed how, as a facilitator, changing the language used in a movement score elicits diverse outcomes. As a result of these sessions, a forty-minute structured improvisational performance was created where the audience experiences an intimate relationship with the performers as all persons are in the Trinity Laban Conservatoire’s Bonnie Bird Theatre. A central element of the performance was a series of instructions delivered to the audience as suggestions on how to experience the performance.