In summer 2025 I undertook a period of research, supported by the Jerwood x Fabric choreographic research project. This enquiry attempted to decentralise a popular performance modality; unison. In order to do so I began the thinking at If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam and Live Art Development Agency, London, before organising a public workshop in Glasgow in August, co-facilitated with dance peers (members of The Work Room). Undermining unison’s authority by queering the approach; we learned intention is more important to us than form. We learned to love failure and limitations. We used insistence and inclusion to discover the remarkable in the inevitably irregular. In order to challenge the model of production, we invited an attitude of intentionality to the fore.
My current questions regarding unison:
Attention: how can we discover the difference between unison in feeling & unison in form?
Failing forwards: acceptance of failure makes the togetherness more remarkable. How do we re-frame & claim irregularity in unison?
The notion of insistence comes from Lesbian poet & playwright Gertrude Stein:
A rose is a rose is a rose: "... there can be no repetition because the essence of that expression is insistence, & if you insist you must each time use emphasis & if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis."
I seek to discover an insistence of emphasis not across time but across bodies.
