Choreonavigation
2/1/2022
Aeon Satori and Russell Patrick Brown dancing on Christopher Street Pier in New York City, 2017.
Abstract
I propose choreonavigation as a practice-based method of wayfinding through maritime dance's legacies of colonialism, racism, "discovery" and resilience. This method treats choreography as a compass reading traces in the body to chart routes through memory, diaspora and place. This project emerged from my New York City pierdancing with Queer, Trans, Black, Indigenous People of Color as as a Romani voguing Irish step dancer orienting movement across histories, geographies and identities.
Overview
Choreonavigation emerged in my practice as I worked with maritime and migratory archives. I began to see how many "street" and "traditional" dance forms survive from the Atlantic world, which was full of dance coursing through land, ship and sea. In turn these choreonavigational practices still have the potential to act as a countermaps to exploitative cartographies. I use step dance and task-based scores to “map” wayfinding, then build choreographies and storytelling with audiences, community and legacy.
Methods
- Task scores for embodied wayfinding
- Dance as indigenous countermap
- Reflexive choreonavigational storytelling
Artifacts
- Lecture–demonstrations and performance excerpts
- Three-day online symposium
- Academic article
References & mentions
- Brown, Russell Patrick. “‘This Little Wooden World’: Choreo-Navigating Maritime Dance.” In Celebrating Flamenco’s Tangled Roots: The Body Questions, ed. K. Meira Goldberg and Antoni Pizà. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2022. (Introduces choreonavigation as a “wayfinding self” in the opening of the chapter.)
PDF sample - Celebrate & Recalibrate Flamenco (Coventry University). I was a co-collaborator on the project; on Day 3 I presented a walking paper (performance paper) on space, place, and protocols.
Project page · Day 3 video
Keywords
Choreonavigation, Post/Colonialism, Critical Race Theory, Embodied Wayfinding, Wayfinding Self, Maritime Dance, Oceanic Dance, Spatial Choreography, Embodied Mapping, Psychogeography, Walking Methods, Site-Specific Performance, Step Dance, Task Scores, Attention Mapping, Somatic Practice, Diaspora and Place, Romani Studies, Atlantic World, Blue Humanities, Migration & Movement, Spatial Humanities, Dance Ethnography, Performance Studies, Choreography as Research, Protocols of Space, Memory and Place.
Contact
Booking, residencies, or collaborations: info@timedancers.org
Image credit
Aeon Satori and Russell Patrick Brown dancing on Christopher Street Pier in New York City, 2017.
