Research in Dance Education

ISSN: 1464-7893 (Print) 1470-1111 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/crid20

Embodied writing: choreographic composition as

methodology

Jasmine B. Ulmer

To cite this article: Jasmine B. Ulmer (2015) Embodied writing: choreographic composition as
methodology, Research in Dance Education, 16:1, 33-50, DOI: 10.1080/14647893.2014.971230

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 Research in Dance Education, 2015
Vol. 16, No. 1, 33–50, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2014.971230

Embodied writing: choreographic composition as methodology

Jasmine B. Ulmer*

School of Human Development and Organizational Studies in Education, University of

Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA
(Received 28 May 2014; final version received 19 September 2014)

This paper seeks to examine how embodied methodological approaches might

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inform dance education practice and research. Through a series of examples, this
paper explores how choreographic writing might function as an embodied
writing methodology. Here, choreographic writing is envisioned as a form of
visual word choreography in which words move, pause, gain emphasis, and flow
as if dancing across the open page. To explore writing as choreography, this
paper primarily draws from three theoretical perspectives on embodiment:
phenomenological, new materialist, and Deleuzian. For each of these perspec-
tives, this paper describes its approach to embodiment, provides choreographic
writing examples, and discusses the implications thereof for dance education
practice and research. Given the increasing importance of practice-as-research
and creative arts inquiry, this paper finds that choreographic writing provides an
alternative mode of communication for dance writers and qualitative researchers
alike. Significantly, choreographic writing also offers new pedagogies for dance
education researchers. In so doing, dance provides a venue for written arts-based
research.
Keywords: choreographic writing; embodiment; writing as inquiry

Introduction
Dance practitioners-as-researchers and dance scholars continue to explore how
one might write dance. I wonder how dance might reshape writing. I situate these
questions within the editors’ invitation to explore how differing embodied meth-
odological approaches might inform dance education practice and research. By
creating examples of choreographic writing, I engage practice-based and academic
composition through the lens of embodied methodological writing. Given the sig-
nificance of embodied knowledges within dance education research, the develop-
ment of new writing methodologies might help practitioners and researchers find
new ways of not only writing about their practice, but also write in a style that
perhaps is more aligned with the creative spirit of dance. Additionally, alternative
approaches to writing might increase understanding of how theories and philoso-
phies are increasingly relevant within the context of practice-as-research (Barrett
and Bolt 2007).
To work within the tensions that exist between writing movement and dancing
movement, I follow Stinson’s (2006) call for scholars to approach writing as

*Email: jasmine.ulmer@ufl.edu

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 34 J.B. Ulmer

choreography and research as a ‘a way of sensing, generating, exploring, and form-

ing, as if it were widely known that research involves both a passion and kinesthetic
sense’ (2006, 208). In so doing, I discuss approaches to methodological embodi-
ment, intersections between choreography and writing, and the implications thereof
for dance education practice and research. In the process, dance provides a vehicle
through which writing continues to explore its potential as a form of creative and
artistic expression in research.

Why choreographic writing?

The practice of dance has informed my own thinking as a research methodologist,
even in unanticipated ways. While writing, I often find myself wondering what it
would be like to
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write using more

space.

This causes me to reflect upon my own dance practice, where movement and
expression were differently available than they are in the practice of writing.
Dance choreographers, musical composers, and film directors control the flow
of time, space, and energy; the motions in each range in tempo and intensity.
Sometimes within dance performance there is silence – stillness – emptiness –
pause. Yet, the same choices are not readily available within the mainstays of
academic writing: journal articles, book chapters, and books. Consequently, I
have been contemplating how the movement, creativity, and exploration in dance
might become a part of the academic writing process, as well. For example, what
if writing danced? What if words embodied movement? How might writing be
inscribed as a material, kinaesthetic, visual process? Moreover, given how
embodied approaches to dance produce openings through which the unexpected
might emerge, where might similar creative openings be located in relation to
writing? I present responses to these wonderings through a series of examples
 Research in Dance Education 35

from my own writing practice, as well as through a description of choreographic

writing.

Choreographic writing: a definition

Though dance itself could be viewed as a manifestation of the dancer’s body writing
visual choreography (or choreographers writing visually with dancers’ bodies), I
imagine choreographic writing as visual text in which words move, pause, gain
emphasis, and flow as if dancing across the open page. Or, written as an example of
choreographic writing:
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I imagine

CHOREOGRAPHIC WRITING as
visual text in which words

move, pause, gain emphasis, and f l o w

as if

dancing across the open page.

In considering not only what choreographic writing is, but also what it could
be, choreographic writing becomes a form of word choreography that exceeds
basic tenets of graphic design and textual formatting. Typesetting regulations
tend to determine textual font, size, color, organization, and effect within aca-
demic publishing. The regulation of words on the page seemingly prioritizes
conformity and economy over expression, and space can be a scarce commodity
within academic publishing. Consequently, elements of meaning and aesthetic
possibility may be lost in the process of submitting to stylistic and space-based
expectations. This is particularly the case within academic writing, which has
become a highly specialized form of technical communication both within and
across disciplines. Yet, like dance and even poetry, writing also is a form of
artistic expression.
Though departures from conventional typesetting practices are rare within aca-
demic writing, the poetry of Mallarmé and Apollinaire is of special interest to
choreographic writing. French poets who respectively wrote in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, each experimented with written form and
representation. As a result, expression in their writings often derives from the
 36 J.B. Ulmer

ways in which their poems are visually formatted and structured. For example,
Mallarmé worked from a complex
palette of poetic textures, combining hesitation, discontinuity, motility, and stasis …
His expansion of the verse category to include any language in varying degrees of
tightness or diffuse-ness indicates how important to him as poetic tools are the
constraint and the release of fluidity, air, and blank space. (McCombie 2006,
xv–xvi)
In ‘A Dice Throw,’ Mallarmé uses not only capital letters to emphasize words, but
also places words within asymmetrical arrangements and clusters. In so doing,
Mallarmé adds varied dimensions of time, space, and movement to writing, thereby
allowing the reader to flow along with the text. Apollinaire (1918/1980) similarly
experiments with poetic form through concrete poetry, which frequently assumes the
shape of the poem’s object(s). In ‘It’s Raining,’ lines of words stream downward as
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if falling from the sky, and in other poems, Apollinaire employs a mixture of italics,
horizontal and vertical text, fonts, and occasional drawings. Though choreographic
writing is not poetry per se, it is perhaps poetic. Moreover, like the poetry of
Mallarmé and Apollinaire, choreographic writing shares an affinity for expanding
visual aspects of expression.
Importantly, written language is already a system of visual communication that
functions through the depiction and arrangement of graphic symbols. Within aca-
demic writing, however, style guides and other formatting guidelines tend to limit
the potential of writing as a form of visual expression. Like writing in general, aca-
demic writing largely serves to record speech expressions (Derrida 1976) rather than
to serve as an additional forum for artistic visual expression. This is not to suggest,
however, that the genre of academic writing would be improved by simply forgoing
all convention. In contrast, consistent expectations for academic writing provide
clarity of meaning, promote rigorous argumentation, and facilitate the sharing of
knowledge. These certainly are important components of scholarly communication
across academia.
New modes of academic writing, however, potentially are important for several
reasons. By changing the ways in which we write, we might also change the ways
in which we think. New forums in which to think, therefore, could create new possi-
bilities within the research enterprise. It could be argued that this is particularly sig-
nificant within practice-as-research, which may call not only for additional modes of
communication that draw from personal experiences, but also address the challenge
of writing about bodily experiences. I hesitate to draw firm parameters around what
such modes of writing might offer to scholarship and artistic practice, other than to
suggest that choreographic writings provide fresh venues in which to experiment
with embodied methodologies. For me, choreographic writing expands creative pos-
sibilities within academic writing – possibilities that not only reflect dance as a crea-
tive practice, but also provide opportunities for visual expression that seem
appropriate within this technological age. In this sense, embodied writing methodol-
ogies are the venue through which research may be produced. What is produced,
however, likely will be specific to the individual author in content, meaning, and
purpose. Some might produce knowledge of the dancer’s body or the dancer’s expe-
rience, which then might be written for others in an effort to create shared under-
standing of the experiences and phenomena in question. Others, as I later discuss,
might use embodied writing as a pre-writing activity or pedagogical tool. Yet, others
 Research in Dance Education 37

might remain within the realm of experimentation to see what is produced. Though I
locate myself largely within this last category, I invite readers to explore these possi-
bilities, as well as other possibilities that they may find.
Although many scholars explore the ways in which embodied dance might
materialize through choreographic writing (Longley 2009; Pouillaude 2007), in
contrast, I explore the ways in which embodied writing might materialize through
dance. Where my approach mostly differs is in the shift from approaching
writing as a means of studying embodiment in dance to approaching writing as
an embodied methodology for dance. In this conceptual paper, therefore, writing
is both the object of inquiry and the mode of inquiry (per Richardson 1994). To
study writing as a form and object of inquiry, I demonstrate how choreographic
writings might be approached as an embodied methodology within each of the
theoretical approaches described in this paper: phenomenological, new materialist,
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and Deleuzian.

Embodiment
Embodiment has become an important and sustained topic within dance research
(see Albright 2010; Block and Kissell 2001; Klemola 1991). Perhaps this is because,
as Pakes (2003) observes, dance practices embody many different knowledges.
Although embodiment is a commonly used term within dance scholarship, it is a
concept that encompasses many different definitions. For Klemola (1991), embodi-
ment is a standpoint of ‘existence as a body in the world’ (71); for Block and Kissell
(2001), embodied subjects are ‘body knowers’ and ‘body expressers’ (5). Multiple
approaches to embodiment have created new sets of embodied knowledges and
embodied knowers and, in turn, broadened academic discourse (Longley 2009). In
other words, embodiment has been taken up in numerous ways across dance
education research.
One approach to embodiment can be found in somatics, which broadly
describes the ‘bodymindthinking’ of dancers and dance professionals (Eddy 2009,
5). Though also diverse in history and application, somatics holistically approaches
the body and mind as unified subjects. Frederick Matthias Alexander is credited
with some of the earliest work in the field nearly a century ago, and it was
Thomas Hanna who coined the term in the 1970s. Importantly, Hanna’s somatics
view the body not as a site for objective or mechanical study, but as ‘an embodied
process of internal awareness and communication’ (Green 2002, 114). By teaching
movement and awareness side-by-side, somatics educators emphasize process,
experiential learning, and individual sensation. As this occurs, somatic knowledge
becomes content, pedagogy, and methodology (Green 2002). Somatics is significant
within discussions of embodiment because somatics provides a means of centering
the body in two regards: not only do dancers center the physical and mental pro-
cesses of their own bodies, but bodily experiences also are placed at the center of
dance.
Consequently, attention to somatics and embodiment has brought issues of
epistemology, theory, and ontology to the forefront of dance education research. To
discuss these elements in relation to embodiment, I examine definitions of embodi-
ment across several theoretical perspectives. I begin with the influence of phenome-
nology within dance research before describing the additional potential of new
materialism to inform practice. I then explain how Deleuzian philosophy bridges the
 38 J.B. Ulmer

differences between phenomenology and new materialism to create new openings

for embodied writing in dance.

Phenomenological embodiment
To understand embodiment, it is helpful to begin with the role of phenomenology
in dance. In dance research, embodiment has maintained strong ties to phenome-
nology and its related emphases upon experience and perception. Many scholars
specifically attribute the influence of phenomenology on dance to Merleau-Ponty’s
theory of embodiment – a theory that ‘makes the physical (somatic) being the
site of the psyche. The body determines what shows up in our world’ (Warburton
2011, 66). Albright (2011) further underscores the continuing importance of phe-
nomenology within dance by observing that in recent decades, ‘phenomenology
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has replaced aesthetics as the philosophical choice for dance studies, prodding
scholars to think about a broad continuum of moving bodies within the cultures
they inhabit’ (8).
Because theory and epistemology are interrelated, theories of embodiment
translate into epistemologies of embodiment (e.g. Parviainen 2002) that rely upon
bodily memory, experience, and perception as pathways to knowledge. Phenomenol-
ogy, like any theoretical perspective, provides a means of viewing and interpreting
the world that ‘involves knowledge, therefore, and embodies a certain understanding
of what is entailed in knowing, that is, how we know what we know’ (Crotty 1998,
8, original emphasis). Within phenomenology, knowledge is produced through per-
ception, intuition, and experience (Moustakas 1994). As a result, phenomenology
creates important openings for epistemological questions regarding how dancers per-
ceive, intuit, and experience knowledge through dance. In describing what phenome-
nology offers to dance writers, Pakes (2011) observes that a phenomenological
approach provides a ‘fresh look at dance phenomena; it proposes a first person
account, descriptive rather than constructively theoretical; and it focuses on those
phenomena as they appear or are directly apprehended, once preconceptions and
prejudgments about the dance have been suspended’ (35). Phenomenology thus
creates a compelling lens for dance practitioners and dance scholars to examine how
dance is experienced.
Because phenomenology has influenced dance research (per Fraleigh 1991;
Rothfield 2005; Sheets-Johnstone 1966, 1979), how dancers and researchers know
and what they may know often may begin within phenomenology as an existing
scholarly discourse. Though perception and experience remain pressing scholarly
concerns – particularly within dance – perceiving and experiencing knowledge are
different than determining where we are in material relation to that knowledge. This
instead brings us to ontology. Whereas epistemology is the study of knowledge,
ontology is the study of being (Crotty 1998). It perhaps could be argued, therefore,
that phenomenology has facilitated more of an examination of the former rather than
the latter in dance research. A focus on methodological embodiment, though,
requires a discussion of both epistemology and ontology. To examine ontology
within dance research and practice, therefore, I turn toward a recent development in
feminist theory that locates the body as an ontological site of being (Mol 2002) –
new materialism.
 Research in Dance Education 39

New materialist embodiment

In comparison to the descriptive essences and experiences of phenomenological
study, new materialism adopts a greater focus upon material forces and presence.
As a branch of feminist theory, new materialism regularly emphasizes the impor-
tance of bodies and bodily issues, particularly in the lives of women. Haraway
(1997), for example, advises that feminists theorists move away from deconstructing
inequities in discourse and visual images and instead address ontological ‘bodies,
and the practices that produce specific embodiment’ (186, original emphasis). By
this, Haraway prioritizes material realities over discursive abstractions. Other new
materialist scholars such as Barad (2007), Hekman (2010), and Kirby (2011) com-
bine materiality and discursivity. For them, matter affects discourse and discourse
affects matter; each is inseparable from the other. These scholars work across a
range of disciplines, yet the new materialisms they espouse are relevant to issues
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of embodiment in dance.
Embodiment takes on a different definition within new materialism than it does
within phenomenology. Following Barad (2007), ‘embodiment is a matter not of
being specifically situated in the world, but rather of being in the world in its
dynamic specificity’ (377). For new materialists, materiality and discursivity are not
separate elements. Rather, they are inextricable from one another and located within
a dynamic, vibrant world (Barad 2007; Kirby 2011).
Given new materialist scholars’ emphasis upon vibrant, material-discursive
forces, and open spaces, then, what is the role of new materialism within the crea-
tive arts? In posing this question, Barrett and Bolt (2013) write: ‘it may be argued
that the art is a material practice and that the materiality of matter lies at the core of
creative practice’ (5, original emphasis). Dance, they suggest, is an embodied prac-
tice that engages bodies as matter. What new materialism offers to dance-based prac-
tice-as-research, therefore, is an emphasis upon dancers as knowing beings within
dynamic systems of movement. By sharpening the focus on dancers as embodied
beings, new materialism offers an additional approach for embodied methodologies.
Furthermore, new materialism perhaps increases the sense of agency for, and legiti-
mation of, dancers as embodied knowers. As the dancer’s body becomes an ontolog-
ical site of being, the dancer herself gains agency to write dance – to write her body
– within embodied methodologies.

Deleuzian embodiment
Before addressing how dancers may write movement through embodied writing
methodologies, however, it is worth discussing how dance researchers also have
taken up Deleuzian philosophy as a means of writing the body. A French post-
structuralist, Deleuze remained concerned with issues of the body, affect, and
movement. Just as Deleuze’s writings provide a bridge between phenomenology
and new materialism in philosophy, his writings also provide a similar bridge
between phenomenology and new materialism in relation to embodied dance. In
emphasizing the significance of both materialism and expressionism, Deleuze
writes that ‘content, like expression, has a form of its own’ (Deleuze and Guattari,
1980/1987, 86).
Notably, Deleuze’s writings have been particularly useful to scholars of bodily
movement. As Braidotti (1999) observes, ‘The Deleuzian body is ultimately an
 40 J.B. Ulmer

embodied memory’ (159). Subsequently, several dance scholars draw from Deleuze
and their own embodied memories to explore dance as a plural form of movement
(e.g. Gil 2002; Markula 2006; Vines 2007). For example, Gil (2002) delineates how
the whole of dancers’ bodies dissolve into individual parts that compose dance upon
multiple planes. Through such dissolution, movements multiply as bodies move
asymmetrically, governed by parts rather than by a unified whole. The move away
from unification, as Markula (2006) suggests, challenges notions of bodies as stable
subjects with fixed identities. Deleuzian philosophy challenges the idea that
identities are static, and within her own practice-as-research, Markula accordingly
has danced non-feminine movements to problematize perceptions of a stable female
identity. Vines (2007) similarly demonstrates how dancing movement alongside
Deleuzian theory enables practice-as-research. By grounding emergent and
non-hierarchal movements in Deleuzian theory, Vines emphasizes dance as a non-
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linear, experimental process. Such research often invokes attention to dancing

through open spaces (Cunningham and Lesschaeve 2010) and moving through re-
imagined topographies and cartographies (Rubidge 2011). Deleuzian philosophies,
therefore, regularly inform bodily studies both within and beyond dance (e.g.
Braidotti 2013; Coffey 2013) and inspire a broad range of embodied artistic
practices (e.g. Springgay 2008).
The discussion of embodiment through Deleuze, phenomenology, and new mate-
rialism are three available theoretical frameworks that raise questions about how
innovation in dance research methodology might be advanced by theoretical per-
spectives and epistemologies rooted in embodiment. Such lines of inquiry gain
importance as dance researchers increasingly are called upon to describe their prac-
tice (Bannerman 2010; Stinson 2006). For Bannerman (2010), the ways in which
choreographers write about their choreographic practice and write about writing are
particularly significant because choreographic writing is ‘informed by both kinetic
and cognitive considerations which arise from a thinking bodily practice’ (474).
Moreover, a growing number of researcher–choreographers are finding themselves
as academic writers who continue to ‘search for and to experiment with modes of
language to intervene in choreographic practices and to interact with dance’
(Bannerman 2010, 485). For researcher–choreographers and researcher–practitioners
searching for such venues, I suggest that embodied writing methodologies may
provide one such route.

Writing dance as embodied methodology

Across theoretical approaches to embodiment, writing dance remains a persistent
challenge for many scholars. In describing the complexities of writing dance, for
example, Parviainen (2002) observes that ‘knowing in dancing always has some-
thing to do with verbal language; nevertheless, it essentially concerns the body’s
awareness and motility’ (13). Because oral and written language systems provide
different templates for communication than does dance, approaches to embodied
writing systems have been marked by tensions between kinesthetic movement and
inscribed language. As a consequence of such tensions, disparate writing systems
(drawing from disparate theories of embodiment) have emerged within dance
scholarship. Despite attempts to write choreography through scores, notebooks,
 Research in Dance Education 41

pictographic systems, and movement texts,1 written choreographic notation has yet
to be fully incorporated into dance practice (Pouillaude 2007).
As a result, many choreographers today experiment with different ideas of what
it means to write dance. The idea of writing dance, however, is not new. The term
‘choreography’ emerged when Feuillet (1701) published the Beauchamps-Feuillet
system of dance notation in Chorégraphie, ou l’art de décrire la danse (Choreogra-
phy, or the art of writing dance). In drawing from this history, Pouillaude (2007)
explains that the word ‘choreography’ means composition and that choreography
constitutes a form of writing in and of itself. For Pouillaude, this raises implications
for writing dance in which contemporary
choreographic writing no longer consists of fixing a determined gestural trace that the
performer would have to mechanically actualize from one evening to the next, but
rather of setting open apparati that would have to be reencountered and reexperimented
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with in a different way in every instance. (132)

Within Pouillaude’s definition of choreographic writing, therefore, writing becomes
a mutation in which ‘writing by matter … constitutes one of the possible modalities
of this renewed writing’ (132, original emphasis). By emphasizing how writing
might occur through engagements with matter, Pouillaude positions choreographic
writing within the center of new materialist concerns. For Pouillaude, like others,
choreographic writing materializes through dance.
Longley (2009) similarly envisions choreographic writing as a venue through
which writing materializes out of dance practice. In comparison, she defines choreo-
graphic writing as a methodology of practice-led research in which the choreogra-
pher simultaneously draws another dancer’s movement. This dynamic partnership
between choreographer and dancer produces something new and different in the
process of experiencing dance through writing. For Longley,
Writing as a choreographic mode is a form of performance practice that aims to feed
the invention and development of dance ideas at the site where they emerge … It
attempts to open out possibilities for dance ideas to form unpredictable openings across
disciplines and spaces. (Longley 2009, 8–9)
Like Pouillaude, Longley highlights choreographic writing as an opportunity to cre-
ate openings through dance – openings that are not replicable or predictable, but
rather involve the singularities and mutations described by Deleuze.
The materialization of dance into unpredictable events illustrates how inter-
sections between new materialist and Deleuzian philosophies might work in tan-
dem to create new forms of embodied writing methodologies in dance. In
another application of Deleuze within choreographic modes of writing, for exam-
ple, Vines (2007) suggests that dance and writing should co-exist as a symbi-
otic, non-hierarchical ‘dance-writing-machine’ (105). In this respect, Vines,
Pouillaude, and Longley all approach writing not only as embodied, but also as
a spontaneous, creative, productive experience laced with affect. Rather than
attempt to reflect or explain dance through writing, they focus on producing
something new when attempting to write dance. For these authors, writing func-
tions as what Kirby (2011) describes as an ‘abstracting technology, something
wherein the process of its ‘draw-ing out and away’ exerts an effective transfor-
mation that takes an essential and pure ingredient and manufactures it into
something else’ (56).
 42 J.B. Ulmer

Choreographic writing across embodied methodologies

To embody writing, therefore, I turn to examples of choreographic composition in
the contexts of phenomenology, new materialism, and Deleuze. By examining exam-
ples of choreographic writing within each of these theoretical frameworks, I demon-
strate the different aesthetics and topical concerns that might be found within each
in relation to embodiment.

Phenomenological choreographic writing

A phenomenological approach to choreographic writing provides a useful lens for
experienced and novice researchers alike. For experienced researchers (especially
researchers who already draw from phenomenological frameworks), choreographic
writing may provide new venues for scholarly expression; for others, choreo-
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graphic writing may provide a natural foray from practice into research. Rather
than begin by attempting to learn and understand the various rules of academic
writing, for instance, practitioners instead might begin by tapping into their own
embodied perceptions and memories as the basis for scholarship. Notably, the
potential for experience and perception to inform knowledge are among the basic
tenets of phenomenology. As phenomenologist Moustakas observes, ‘The most
significant understandings that I have come to I have not achieved from books or
from others, but initially, at least, from my own direct perceptions, observations,
and intuitions’ (1994, 41). To demonstrate how this might occur, the following
choreographic writing illustrates my own perceptions of time and space as
experienced through dance.

Dance deterritorializes and reterritorializes

boundaries. Of time. Of space.

Bypassing uniformity, conformity, -formity,
transcending our space-time continuum.
When I dream re-memories of dancing,
body flies through the air,
my momentarily
defying gravity .

Here, writing within choreographic frameworks facilitates connections between

experiencing space in dance and experiencing space in other settings, such as
writing.
 Research in Dance Education 43

New materialist choreographic writing

Like phenomenology, new materialism addresses space as issue of perception.
Within new materialism, however, space also has material dimensions. This
materiality extends beyond physical, bodily space into space for composition, as
well.
New materialist approaches to choreographic writing facilitate a re-envisioning
of space within academic settings. In particular, an expansion of space may create
room for agency within writing – agency on the part of the writer and on the part
of the words themselves. With respect to writers, a new materialist approach may
be particularly useful for scholars such as those described by Stinson and Dils
(2008). As they write, ‘Scholars seeking to integrate their ‘dancer-self’ with their
‘researcher-self’ often recognize the significance of the researcher’s body as an
‘instrument’ even when discarding instrumental language’ (184). By incorporating
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the kinaesthetic body into composition, choreographic writing takes on material

dimensions and allows writers to use their bodies as instruments. With regard to
the words themselves, words move beyond simply serving as ‘instrumental lan-
guage’ and become vibrant instruments instead. Imagine, for example, if words
moved, slipped through the confinement of expectation, and overflowed onto the
page.

mounting their great e

The agency and vibrancy within new materialism attributed to humans and non-
humans alike (Kirby 2011) enable such an imagining.

Deleuzian choreographic writing

New materialist philosophies, however, are not the only theoretical perspectives that
re-imagine creativity, agency, and space. Like new materialism, Deleuzian thought
also re-imagines the body within open spaces and creative thought. In so doing,
Deleuze might also ask:
 44 J.B. Ulmer

What if writing
escaped
the boundaries of academic convention?

What if writing also took form

outside the lines – outside style guides – outside expectations – and

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escaped
into the smooth open beyond (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).

Following Deleuze and his creative concepts for movement, then, I wonder how
writing might similarly choreograph within and across what Deleuze describes as
nomadic space. I wonder how dancers – who Deleuze might refer to as bodies
without organs – might move along lines of flight, might move throughout
exploratory, non-linear, rhizomatic pathways, might dance intensities. I wonder,
therefore:

how one might

dance Deleuze –
how one might dance conceptual figurations –
and dance within a fluid assemblage …

… bodies without organs

dancing intensities dancing lines of flight dancing nomadic space dancing the rhizome
dancing lines of flight dancing intensities dancing repetition dancing difference dancing
intensities dancing …
 Research in Dance Education 45

The possibilities of Deleuzian philosophy within dance are potentially infinite.

Importantly, embodiment occurs within Deleuzian space through the materialization
and movement of words. Embodiment occurs as writing becomes more corporeal
and the material and discursive intertwine.

Discussion
What, then, does choreographic writing achieve? This paper finds that writing
extends across theoretical perspectives to expand and explore how the written text
can be re-written, re-visualized, and re-imagined given available technologies. In the
process, an unexplored genre of academic writing broadens opportunities for writing
to become an embodied methodology. Whereas readers of choreographic writing
might find new methodological venues through which to read dance, choreographic
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writers, in turn, might find new forums in which to write embodied dance. Yet, it is
both choreography as movement and dance as writing that enable the embodiment
of visual writing. Writing is, by nature, a performative act; the addition of a visual
dimension simply expands what is already possible within writing. Moreover, choro-
graphical extensions into writing potentially expand into the realm of creative
academic practice and artistic research. This expansion, as I shall explain, intersects
with dance education, dance education research, and approaches to writing in
qualitative inquiry.
As I have discussed, choreographic writing may be a useful means of expand-
ing academic writing for expert researchers, novice researchers, and practitioners-
as-researchers alike. My illustrations of choreographic writing in this paper thus
far, though, have addressed what choreographic writing might look like in aca-
demic publishing. Yet, the potential role of choreographic writing is not limited
to journal articles or books. Rather, choreographic writing also has pedagogical
implications, particularly with regard to the study and application of embodiment
in dance.

Choreographic writing as writing pedagogy

Within dance education, choreographic writing as pedagogy might take several
forms. Choreographic composition could be used as a pre-writing activity within
several contexts. It could be used as a free-writing activity to generate ideas for writ-
ing. It could also be used to explore students’ knowledge, understandings, and per-
ceptions of dance in relation to embodiment or materiality. Further, it could be
modeled or used as an in-class lesson to demonstrate the performative and creative
possibilities of writing. Though I have created illustrations of choreographic writing
by using electronic word processing software, dance writers also could sketch cho-
reographic writing by hand on notepads, or even use full-body sheets of bulletin
board paper to create larger installations for purposes of pedagogy or performance
display. Choreographic writing on large sheets of paper also could facilitate a collab-
orative writing process among two or more dancers (and/or researchers and choreog-
raphers). Beyond pedagogy within dance and choreography courses, choreographic
writing on full-body sheets of paper could also be used to facilitate improvisation
sessions.
 46 J.B. Ulmer

Choreographic writing as qualitative methodology

In addition, choreographic writing may be useful to those with an interest in qualita-
tive research methodology. Certainly, there are overlaps between dance and many
strands of qualitative inquiry, both among dance researchers who use qualitative
methods as well as qualitative methodologists who draw from dance to describe their
research practice. In describing the relationship between qualitative research and
dance research, for example, scholars have performed research through dance
(Markula 2006); conceptualized dance as a metaphor for qualitative research
(Janesick 1994, 2000); compared research design to choreography (Blumenfeld-Jones
2008); and posited that dance is methodology (Vines 2007).
In drawing parallels between qualitative inquiry and dance, however, it is
important to note that qualitative inquiry is a broad field marked by competing
traditions and histories. Denzin and Lincoln (2005), for example, identify four
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major interpretive paradigms and eight moments that mark qualitative research to
date. Moreover, qualitative inquiry is a dynamic discipline that continues to
expand in breadth, depth, and imagination. Though the nuances particular to each
of these paradigms and historical moments remain beyond the scope of this
paper, I find that choreographic writing is specifically relevant to two related
movements within qualitative research: writing as inquiry and writing as
performance text.
These two types of qualitative writing each mirror the practice of dance as a
creative art. Though many forms of conventional qualitative research (such as eth-
nographic or interview-based studies) seek to report empirical findings in tradi-
tional manuscript form, for example, writing as inquiry and writing as
performance often have separate aims. As I shall explain in the following sections,
inquiry-based and performance-based writing in qualitative research may report
empirical research findings in creative form. In the alternative, these types of writ-
ing also may be more exploratory or experimental in nature (see St. Pierre 1997;
Wyatt and Gale 2014). The aims of knowledge production vary accordingly. With
respect to the former, creative forms of writing as inquiry become another means
of disseminating research; with respect to the latter, compositions that emerge
from the process of writing then become the products to be reported. Both are of
interest to practice-as-research in dance, given that dance can be a vehicle through
which to perform research findings, as well as a site upon which to conduct
research.

Choreographic writing as a method of inquiry

Writing as a method of inquiry challenges the dominant model for academic writ-
ing. According to Richardson (1994), traditional academic writing ‘ignores the
role of writing as a dynamic, creative process’ (924). In response, Richardson
devoted a career to writing inquiry in the form of poetry, drama, and scripts,
among other forms of creative academic writing (Richardson 1997). In following
Richardson, therefore, this series of choreographic writings form an inquiry in
which ‘writing is thinking, writing is analysis, writing is indeed a seductive and
tangled method of discovery’ (Richardson and St. Pierre 2005, 967, original
emphasis). Hence, choreographic writing in this paper is another example of
writing as a method of inquiry.
 Research in Dance Education 47

Choreographic writing as performance text

In addition, many qualitative scholars have experimented with textual innovation in
relation to performance (Saldaña 2003). Because dance and writing are performative
practices, choreographic writing provides a bridge between both. Notably, qualitative
researcher Denzin (1997) describes performance writing as an embodied process.
Writing grounded in textual performance, according to Denzin, involves ‘a continual
rediscovery of the body’ (181). Moreover, ‘the performance text always works out-
ward from the body’ (181) and ‘interrogate[s] the concepts of specularity, reconcep-
tualizing the framing features which define the visual apparatus of the stage’ (182).
When the written text itself enters the center stage of pagination (and enables, for
example, additional narrative readings or danced performances), texts-as-perfor-
mances facilitate choreographic writing.
Thus, choreographic writing is perhaps a yet-to-be-explored type of performance
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writing within qualitative inquiry. Because choreographic writing has implications

for qualitative research in regard to writing as inquiry and writing as performance,
choreographic writing illustrates the reciprocal relationship between certain branches
of written qualitative inquiry and dance. This relationship can be productive for both
disciplines, particularly with respect to the shared concern of embodiment.

Conclusion
Given the increasing importance of practice-as-research within creative arts
inquiry (Bannon 2004; Barrett and Bolt 2010), as well as calls for embodied
scholarship in dance (Markula 2006), choreographic writing provides an alterna-
tive mode of communication for dance education researchers and qualitative
researchers alike. Though debate exists regarding the ideal role of research meth-
ods within dance scholarship (see Bonbright and Faber 2004; Stinson and Dils
2008), it may be a reversal of these considerations that is more useful. Rather
than describe how research methodology advances dance scholarship, imaginably
it is choreographic writing that illustrates how embodied dance can inform both
research methodology and dance practice-as-research. In so doing, choreographic
writing creates space for the occasional excess of expression or the occasional
writer who choreographs outside the line.

Acknowledgment
The author would like to thank the two reviewers for their thoughtful comments and insight-
ful suggestions.

Note
1. Though a full discussion is beyond the scope of this paper, several scholars have
called for and created pictorial codes to record dance. Farnell (1994), for example,
advocates for the development of movement-based text as a methodological resource.
Farnell instead suggests a ‘script that will provide the means to become literate in
relation to the medium of movement just as we have been able to achieve literacy in
relation to spoken language and music’ (997). For Farnell, that script is Labanotation,
an inscribed system of movement that has been adopted by others within dance
education research (e.g. Maletic 1987).
 48 J.B. Ulmer

Notes on contributor
Jasmine B. Ulmer is a graduate research fellow and a PhD candidate at the University of
Florida. Her research focuses on the intersection between writing as inquiry, new materialisms,
and poststructural theories in qualitative research. She once danced. She now dreams embodied
memories of dancing. Her work is forthcoming in Qualitative Inquiry.

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