Hauntology and The Phenomenology of Trace Through Femme Archival Mapping in Postmodern Dance Performance / Lydia Ciaffone (2022)

I, Lydia Ciaffone, investigated Hauntology and The Phenomenology of Trace Through Femme Archival Mapping in Postmodern Dance Performance. This work explores Trace in relation to hauntology as the ghost in, dance performance and practices through a feminine lens. All of my collaborators were women throughout the entirety of this research and the performance. My collaborators and I used and further developed a methodology from choreographer Bill T. Jones to help investigate and set our physical research for the performance. This methodology was a form of archival mapping. We also used other forms of mapping to revisit and pass through old Traces we have experienced in the hope to conjure our past into the present. Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher who first defined hauntology; I have feminized this and other philosophies by utilizing women theorists, dance researchers, and philosophers’ ideas and findings, to redefine hauntology and Trace. This work acts as a feminine reclaiming of terminology, past experiences, and dance. My collaborators also experienced restaging a work that was composed for and performed by one man. This section was the only act of unison in the work that I observed and watched as it formed into a collective feminine Trace layered on top of an old Trace. This text also explores how timeless music can help aid our research and how costumes can help conjure past Traces. Through all this exploring and research, we have found Trace can not only be passed through and conjured to the present, but is also alive in performance work. I found Trace acts as the ghost and can exist without time, and that Trace can reappear for the purpose of haunting. Lastly, I found “to live is to be haunted” (Loevlie, 2013 p. 337). And to live is to haunt.