Abstract
In recent years, lived experience of gender violence has become the subject matter for many British female choreographers working with Hip Hop dance theatre. This thesis explores the spatial orientation through which British female choreographers experience a transference of power in the creation, rehearsal, and performance of Hip Hop dance theatre works. The research asks how spatial reorientations within these works draw upon notions of resistance, agency, and the transference of power in relation to lived experiences of gender violence. I propose that these choreographers discover power over their own narratives and identities as women and as survivors of gender violence through a series of circular choreographic, dramaturgical, and presentational devices. Their use of these devices is at times extrinsically linked to their marginalised positions as women who work with Hip Hop dance theatre in Britain. This research is situated in relation to the following theoretical frameworks: Sara Ahmed’s theories of alignment and reorientation (2006; 2014; 2017); Iris Marion Young’s analyses of feminine bodily comportment (2005); and feminist standpoint theory; principally drawing on the perspectives of bell hooks’ discussion of margin and centre (2000), and Patricia Hill Collins’ exploration of “outsider within status” (2004a). I follow feminist theorists such as Donna Haraway in positioning this research as situated knowledge, and thus speak from my own “limited locations” or standpoints (1988, p. 583). I argue that the choreographic, dramaturgical, and performance processes experienced by three British female choreographers have enabled them to engage in multiple standpoints on their violent experiences, and these women have – through these processes – come to understand in more detail the socio-political circumstances in which their experiences sit. This has, in part, enabled them to move beyond the experience and rewrite their own narratives.