In Company: an investigation into how interdisciplinary practices/ collaborations can be used to translate the digital archive and serve as a choreographic tool. / Maddison Willmott (2022)

This thesis is preliminary research into the value of interdisciplinary practices as a
choreographic tool. Questioning how a collaborative approach can enrich aspects within the
creation, execution and recording of a live performance event. This is explored by reviewing key artists who work with these methods, such as Martha Graham and Trisha Brown. This research
also seeks to further promote the importance of digital spaces, focusing on the role technology plays in the facilitation of collaboration and how, in its development, we are seeing everincreasing possibilities for what is achievable both in digital exchanges between artists and visually on stage. It unpicks methods used by dance practitioners to excavate, translate and reimagine archive materials by looking at practitioners such as Alison Curtis-Jones, Wayne McGregor and Ella McCartney. Exploring methods used by different artists in the handling of digital and analogue archive material. Finally, this research will touch on the Kaeja method of ‘Structured Innovation’ to identify successful improvisational methods and tools for choreography.

This research uses the Arts-Based Research (ABR) approach, laid out by Patricia Leavy in her
handbook, to unpick how to centre creative disciplines as a method of enquiry and to quantify
this research using a qualitative data approach. The research has comprised a series of studiobased workshops, developing a methodology for interdisciplinary exchange that utilises
improvisation as a choreographic tool. This methodology has then been used to collaborate with
12 artists, creating the choreographic score, visual story and recording of live performance, In Company, performed at the Trinity Laban Theatre in October 2022.