Allowing, Accepting, Walking,

                       and Play 

          A Document of Process in Artistic Research Practices


Antoinette M. Coward-Gilmore, BFA, MA

Doctoral Student

Practice Is/As Research-611301

Texas Woman's University Dance Division

Dr. Adesola Akinleye, Faculty

June 30, 2023

Walking stirs the creative conscious and provides a moment to connect with the Creator and the ancestors.


As I ask for permission and guidance to begin my process, the sound of traffic, leaves blowing, children playing, adults scurrying to meet appointments, the sound of clicking my pencil against my rings lands on my being as I walk to play with my artist child.  


To explore my warm-up, please press play on all three walking images.

As the walking progresses and revs up my creative juices, I move to do a self check-in by applying

self- massage. 

Along the walk, there are natural sounds that begin to speak to me and invite me to play.

The sounds say use me, enjoy me, make me your sound board for discovery and new knowledge

To experience a sample of inspiring sounds, please press play on your right.  Bathe in the sounds and allow the to usher and guide your gestures, play, and embodied metaphors.  

Play above for image description connecting theory, literature, artists, and scholars. 

INSPIRATION FOR ALLOWING, ACCEPTING, WALKING, AND PLAY                       

A wakening up to the sensing body, moving out of our heads and into the present moment of what is within us and around us.                                       (A Widening Field, Journeys in Body and Imagination, Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay)

Feeling with the eye…drawing with touch. Let your eye travel over the object as your fingers did before. Feeling the lines of the object…in the movement of your hand…on paper. (A Widening Field, Journeys in Body and Imagination, Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay)

Curating as a practice. Moving, thinking, and making in a curatorial framework is choreographic. The dramaturgy of curatorial assemblage. (Assembling A Praxis, Lauren O’Neal)

Walking- diagram embodied experience by moving in, around, and through the place, letting inform my next movements.                                                   (Assembling A Praxis, Lauren O’Neal)

Think outside the box. (Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit, Learn It and Use It for Life)

Art is process. Make a playdate with the artist child (The Artist Way, Julia Cameron)

Choreography is Aesthetic Grammar. Choreographic inquiry is Movement Making. Ethnographic Exchange. Embodied Metaphor. The Argument as Dance. Choreo-Thinking, use movement to stimulate your thinking/feeling or theoretical elements of your research and Meaning-Making (PLAY, Dr. Adesola Akinleye)

Outline the way of thinking about doing ethnography that takes as its starting point the multisensoriality of experience, perception, knowing, and practicing. Reconceptualize the interview (conversation) through a sensory approach. Interviews (conversation) refer to the sensoriality of experience, not only verbally, metaphor, gestures, touching, scents, images, and taste. (Doing Sensory Ethnography, Sarah Pink)

                                             “Learn By Doing”. Mind is a blank slate, passively accepting whatever experiences might write on it.                                                                                         (John Dewey and the Lessons of Art, Phillip W. Jackson)

"Less Talk, More Action." (Creative Pep Talk, Andy J. Miller)

Dr. Adesola Akinleye, author of PLAY and a practicing Pragmatist.

Press the Play button to see her image move and play. 

ATTRIBUTES

The above are sketches of an in-class play inspired by the question what is truth? Using my process of warm-up, organic inspiration, yes/accept and build, and play, the following was crafted with the following attributes in mind:


Exploring the Idea of Physicality:                                                             

To consider using physical movements to discover embodied metaphors that investigate meaning and place-making.

 

Where the Questions Get Explored:                                                      Questions are explored using the senses (see, hear, smell, taste, touch).

 

Environment is Part of the Exploration:                                                    Environment informs investigation. Allowing the environment to lead to the discovery of new knowledge.

 

Ethnographic/ “I” in Research, Your Presence:                                      Situating my identity, and acknowledging what triggers my creativity that will stimulate and ignite questions that move to deeper questions.            (Dr. Adesola Akinleye 2023) The “I” in research is a jump start to inquiry.   

 

Engaging with Time:                                                                                  Allows for a non-Liner Manner: As with the scope of a journal article, time indicates a specific era/social period, the texture of movement, speed of inquiry, and retrograde of time.

 

Juxtaposition:                                                                                              Investigating opposites and opposing sides. Past-Present, Fast-Slow, Forwards-Backwards, Right-Left, Up-Down, Joy-Pain. Juxaposition gives play to relationality in research. See right for visible representation of juxaposition. 

 

Artistic Research Practices builds on elements that creates a playground for allowing, saying YES, accept, build and play.

The folllowing are the elements and the above are examples of artwork, words, and symbols that lend toward the practice and process. 


Literature/Artwork:

Creation of diagrams, charts, and symbols that signify information and new knowledge

 

Allowing:

Saying Yes, Accept & Build

 

Senses:

Utilizing the 5 senses to inform research

 

Improvisation/Constructions:

Organic movements and gestures informed by environment and circumstances forming into loosely structured movement vocabulary and phrasing


Practicing:

Making Practice Is/As Research an everyday practice

 

Techniques:

Horton, African/Diasporic Movement, Organic Gestures, Photos, Drawing, Aroma Therapy

 

Interest:

Allow research inquiry and inquiry responses to drive the findings that lead to deeper exploration

 

Warm-Up:

Walking, Accepting, Personal Massage

 

Momentum:

Informed by Era/ Time Period

 

Activation:

Sensory investigation motivates activation toward embodied metaphor.

Inspired by Improvisation/Construction, here is an example of allowing, accepting, yes & play inspired by the question what is thinking?

Above, animated embodied metaphor images of what thinking looks like on the Black, African American woman's body. 

SENSORY ETHNOGRAPHY:

IMAGES AND THOUGHTS, PLEASE PLAY BELOW

Other organic inspirations that lend to my Artistic Research Practice is the exercise and research in watching television and movies particulary media that is based on the African American experience, prioritizing the Black, African American women lived expereince.  To describe this process, I was given Cinematic Ethnography. 

 

Further inspiration comes from the use of sage and incencse to cleanse the air and usher creative, spiritual spirits to guide me. Positive affirmations and images of Black, African American women are used as tools for creative pep inspiration, and the image of ME, reminds my artistic child there is more to do, play, and research.

 

For my exposotion conclusion, play me on the right. Ase!

Antoinette M. Coward-Gilmore is the Founder, CEO, Artistic Director of Danse4Nia, Philadelphia organization that houses project-based dance company Phoenix Danse and youth dance company Nia-Next and award-winning performing arts training program Danse4Nia Conservatory. 

A graduate of University of the Arts and New York University, Antoinette is a former dancer with LEJA Dance Theatre, Philadanco II, founding member of Eleone Dance Theatre, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre Company, Rod Rodgers Dance Company and various other dance, theatre and film projects.

An award-winning choreographer and dance educator, Antoinette has worked with various youth, college programs and professional theatre and currently a dance adjunct at Drexel University and member of the 2022 PhD Cohort of Texas Woman's University Dance Division.

Please visit www.danse4nia.org for more information on Antoinette or Danse4Nia.

Book References:


Akinleye, Adesola. 2019. "Play, Somatics Embodiment and Subjectivity". 

Researching (in/as) Motion. Helsinki. Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts of Helsikn 

 

Cameron, Julia. 1992. The Artist's Way, A Spititual Path to Higher Creativity. United States of America. Penguin Random House

 

Jackson, Phillip W. 1998. John Dewey and the Lessons of Art. Grand Rapids. Yale University Press

 

Miller, Andy J. 2023. The Creative Peptalk, Inspiration from 50 Artists. San Francisco, Chronicle Books, LLC

 

O'Neal, Lauren. 2023. Assembling A Praxis Choreographic Thinking and Curatorial Agency. Helsinki. The University of the Arts Helsinki. 

 

Pink, Sarah. 2015. Doing Sensory Ethnography 2nd Edition. Los Angeles. SAGE

 

Tharp, Twyla. 2006. The Creative Habit: Learn It And Use It For Life. Montgomery. Simon And Schuster

 

Tufnell Miranda, Crickmay Chris. 2004. A Widening Field: Journeys in Body and Imagination. Chicago. Triarchy Press