A phenomenological approach to performers' self-awareness in dance

This study explores performers’ self-awareness in dance focusing on my own experience as a dancer as well as on participants’ responses collected from workshops and interviews. Working between these experiences and reports and from a phenomenological lens I question how dancers’ self-awareness might change throughout the transition between rehearsal and performance contexts. The dissertation has a narrative-like quality where I use various episodes reported by dancers or from my own experience. One of this study’s main findings suggests that dancers’ self-awareness in performance is affected by the type of rehearsal that precedes the performance. Furthermore this research delves into dancers’ video usage and its influence on their capacity of bridging how they feel with how they see on video. Also the thesis considers dancers’ ‘inner conversations’ while dancing and what that process is and means. The study not only aims to understand the shifts that occur in dancers’ self-awareness in function of their surroundings but it also considers ways in which dancers may heighten their self-awareness.