PhD research outline

“Exploring Minor Gestures as a Mode of Appearance in Neurodivergent-Informed Performance Practice”

This PhD project explores minor gestures as a mode of appearance in neurodivergent performance-making. This study examines how neurodivergent perception manifests and creates transferable lenses, exploring the often-overlooked creative potential that emerges by foregrounding marginalised practices which challenge neuro-normative majoritarian contexts. The research examines the temporality of minor gestures, extending them through somatically informed dramaturgy to create sustained experiences and forms of creative practice.

Research question

How can a performance practice be developed that opens up minor gestures, to potentially challenge and disrupt established neurotypical majority norms?
How does neurodivergence manifest in embodied aesthetic presence? What are its distinctive creative, physical, and perceptual features?
Is there a distinctive aesthetic-politics of performance that accentuates the minor gesture?

Aims

To critically analyse minor gestures exploring their impact on contemporary body-based performance practice.
To develop a transferable and inclusive body-based performance practice that offers insights into neurodivergent creativity, empowerment, and space-holding techniques.
To examine how the minor gesture as mode of appearance for neurodivergent approaches can challenge existing power structures, embracing openness to different modes of thought, practice, and perception.

Historical context

The mediums I use stem from postmodern performance, post-dramatic theatre, and postmodern dance, which explore new materialities of presence. Lehmann (2006) describes post-dramatic theatre as exposing the material conditions of performance making. In contemporary dance, The Judson Dance Theatre significantly influenced this shift. By the 1990s, a new “conceptual dance performance” gained prominence, especially through Flemish choreographers such as Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and Alain Platel. Critics like André Lepecki (2016) argue against the term “conceptual dance” as potentially reductive, whereas Banes (1987) critiques the prioritisation of the concept over embodiment.

Contemporary context

The emphasis on the minor gesture as ‘lived expression’ (Massumi, 2013) can be seen to be co-extensive with the rejection of purely conceptual approaches and representations. This enables the deconstruction of major choreographic methods that elevate the virtuosity of the performing body. For example, Boris Charmatz’s “1000 Gestures,” exemplifies this critique of major codes by exploring gesture’s immobility and pushing “the ephemeral to the extreme.” In contrast, Gisèle Vienne’s “Crowd” presents a montage of hyperrealistic scenes rich in past, present, and future temporalities, yet appears as merely an idea-oriented representation. Meytal Blanaru’s “Ray” (2021) offers a different approach with its somatically informed dramaturgy, elongating the piece’s holistic temporality and nuancing minor gestures through subtle perceptually felt shifts. Jonathan Burrows’ “Quiet Dance” exemplifies the minor while highlighting humour’s role—a strategy for deterritorializing and politicizing normative codes (Domm, 2019). The symbolic appearance that these performances offer is an ongoing processual discovery; the minor is felt gesturally beyond the notion of representation and visual choreography. It unfolds before the audience’s gaze as they maintain their curiosity.

Theoretical context

This study examines the work of neurodivergent scholars and advocates such as Manning and Massumi (2014), who argue that ‘Autistic perception is the opening, in perception, to the uncategorized, to the unclassified’. This suggests that autistic individuals may perceive the world in a more raw or unfiltered way, a perspective that could disrupt or disturb the dominant major code. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s (2016) concept of ‘minor literature’ as way of articulating the politics of writing, I aim to extend their proposition to performance-making. For them, ‘a minor literature doesn’t come from a minor language; it is rather that which a minority constructs within a major language’ (and its deterritorialization) (16). In other words, the politics of writing carries out an operation of ‘minorization’; it changes the practice of a major language from within. Here a major language might not only be taken as being linguisitic (such as German), but as artistic (such as Theatre); the point is it is practiced in a minor key (as in music). To ‘minorize’ is therefore to harness the forces and effect variations in the use of the major and to deregulate its dominance. Similar to Domm’s (2019) notion of ‘minor dance’ as political in the interstices of movement and choreography, I aim to conceptualize minor gestures as spectators’ anticipatory stance for the unforeseen, aligns with contemporary discourse on performative aesthetics, challenging traditional notions of spectatorship (Fischer-Lichte, 2008). The research also investigates Neuroqueer theory (Walker, 2021), which proposes a radical reimagining of neurodiversity and challenges normative assumptions about neurological differences. Additionally, drawing on ideas from neurodivergent philosophers Grummt (2024), who explores the phenomenology of neurodivergent experiences, and Chapman (2019), who critically examines the concept of neurodiversity within a broader philosophical framework. By applying the ‘minor’ concept to performance practice, neurodivergent perspectives might reshape performance spaces and foster new modes of expression that ‘might subvert normative expectations’ (McRuer, 2006).

Methodology

This research employs a mixed-methods approach to develop a neurodivergent methodology for practice-based performance research. The approach is ethnographic in orientation, cultural materialist in interpretation, and autobiographical in content creation (Chang, 2008). This multifaceted strategy generates new knowledge through “Knowing-How,” “Knowing-That,” and “Knowing-What” within a practice-as-research framework (Nelson, 2013). Building on my existing choreographic practice (see section 8), I aim to develop a creative methodology for making minor gestures through solo exploration, which I will then share via participatory workshops. This methodology will guide the practice of making minor gestures and will be developed into a transferable research method to enable the contribution to new knowledge. The method will be refined by working with an ensemble to create several performances. Within this multifaceted methodology, critical literature review and case-study analysis will provide the foundation for elaborating the research contexts. Ethnographic co-creation and participatory performance research (Conquergood, 2002) will be documented through participant observations and my own writing.

Indicative bibliography

Banes, S. (1987) Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Blanaru, M. (2021) Ray. https://meytal-blanaru.com/art/creations/ray

Blume, H. (1998) “Neurodiversity: On the Neurological Underpinnings of Geekdom,” Atlantic.

Bowditch, R., Casazza, J. and Thornton, A. (2018) Physical Dramaturgy. 1st edn. New York: Routledge.

Burt, R. (2006) Judson Dance Theater. 1st edn. London: Routledge.

Chang, H. (2008) Autoethnography as Method. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.

Chapman, R. (2019) “Neurodiversity and Its Discontents: Autism, Schizophrenia, and the Social Model,” in Tekin, S. and Bluhm, R. (eds.) The Bloomsbury Companion to the Philosophy of Psychiatry. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 371–389.

Chapman, R. (2023) Empire of Normality. 1st edn. London: Pluto Press.

Charmatz, B. (2018) 10000 Gestures. https://www.borischarmatz.org/?10000-gestures

Conquergood, D. (2002) “Performance Studies: Interventions and Radical Research,” The Drama Review, 46(2), pp. 145–156.

De Keersmaeker, A.T. (n.d.) Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. Rosas. https://www.rosas.be/en/8-anne-teresa-de-keersmaeker

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1986) Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Translated by D. Polan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Domm, P.D. (2022) Towards a Minor Dance. London: Bloomsbury.

Dwyer, P. (2022) “The Neurodiversity Approach(es): What Are They and What Do They Mean for Researchers?” Human Development, 66(2), pp. 73–92.

Eddy, M. (2007) “A Brief History of Somatic Practices and Dance: Historical Development of the Field of Somatic Education and Its Relationship to Dance,” Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 1(1), pp. 5–27.

Fischer-Lichte, E. (2008) The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. Abingdon: Routledge.

Grummt, M. (2024) “Sociocultural Perspectives on Neurodiversity—An Analysis, Interpretation and Synthesis of the Basic Terms, Discourses and Theoretical Positions,” Sociology Compass, 18(8), p. e13249.

Lehmann, H.T. (2006) Postdramatic Theatre. London: Routledge.

Lepecki, A. (2016) Singularities: Dance in the Age of Performance. London: Routledge.

Manning, E. (2016) The Minor Gesture. Durham: Duke University Press.

Massumi, B. (2013) Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurrent Arts. Cambridge: MIT Press.

McRuer, R. (2006) Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability. New York: New York University Press.

Nelson, R. (2013) Practice as Research in the Arts: Principles, Protocols, Pedagogies, Resistances. London: Palgrave Macmillan.

Platel, A. (n.d.) La Geste.  https://www.lageste.be/en

Schechner, R. (2013) Performance Studies: An Introduction. 3rd edn. Abingdon: Routledge.

Vienne, G. (2017) Crowd. https://www.g-v.fr/en/shows/crowd/

Walker, N. (2021) Neuroqueer Heresies. 1st edn. Fort Worth: Autonomous Press.