Rebecca Hilton, Professor of Choreography in the profile area Site, Event, Encounter at the Stockholm University of the Arts, was one of the keynote speakers at Hugarflug 2019.
Rebecca's lecture, I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS YOU - Situating an Embodied Practice, took place on Saturday 16th at 10-11am in IUA Laugarnesvegur 91, in the Lecture room.
Rebecca Hilton Biography
“I’m an Australian born dance person living in Stockholm. My research practices incorporate dancing, performing, choreographing, conversing and writing. At the Stockholm University of the Arts, as Professor in Choreography for the research area Site Event Encounter, I am working on GROUPNESS, series of experiments researching relationships between embodied practices, oral traditions and choreographic systems. I work in environments including universities, hospitals, community based organisations, friendship circles and family groups. Currently I am an artistic researcher in residence at Malarbacken, (Sweden's largest elder care centre) as part of DoBra (Good Death), a scientific research project orchestrated by the Karolinska Institute. DoBra is a decade-long, nation-wide research program exploring relationships to death and dying in Sweden.”
I REMEMBER WHEN I WAS YOU
Situating an Embodied Practice
SITUATE
verb
1. To place or position (something)
2. Put in context; describe the circumstances surrounding (something)
3. (To be situated) to be in a specified position with particular relations to (something)
EMBODIED
verb
1. Represented in a physical form; incarnated or personified
2. Included or represented, especially as part of a cohesive whole
3. United in a body or a mass
PRACTICE
noun
1. Repetition of an activity to improve, or expand a skill
2. An organised event for the purpose of performing such repetition
3. A customary action, habit or behaviour: a manner or routine
4. Actual operation or experiment, in contrast to theory
Every Thursday afternoon for much of 2018, I spent time at the Malarbacken Residential Elder Care Home in Stockholm. Alongside residents, carers and my fellow artistic and scientific researchers, I was working on doing choreography, on situating an embodied practice, within the context of the everyday activities at Malarbacken.
This residency is På Plats (In Place) and it is part of DöBra (Good death), a large-scale, trans-disciplinary, action research program hosted by the Karolinska Institutet investigating experiences of, and relationships to, death and dying in Sweden.
Situating a dance practice in an Elder Care Home, a place described by one resident as ‘my last place’, has produced in me and my fellow researchers an array of realisations in relation to bodies and autonomy, institutionalisation and agency. Working in an environment designed specifically for people to age and die in, has also focused a certain attention on bodies, both my own and other peoples, in relation to perception and experience, sensation and transformation. Framed by something I call DANCERNESS, I am interested in ways in which embodied knowledges, tacitly, implicitly and explicitly, might inform, ‘transform and continue the world’*
*from Poiesis: to make, an action that transforms and continues the world.
