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PETER GLOSSARY FOR 2022

Dance

A personal, collective or institutional relationship to dance.

Professional dance is the advocacy of that relationship, be it a personal relationship, a community or an institution.

Glossary

This glossary is a way for me to advocate for my relationship with dance.

Dancing

It is to sensorially engage and negotiate with an experience.

To borrow from Brooke Smiley it is a “Body centered learning”. A knowledge situated in a sensorial, bodily experience.

To borrow from Chyrsa Parkingson it is a practice of listening, memory and touch. An approach, an attention and type of engagement. 

Also see appreciation

Choreography

That which informs.

Anarchism

The belief people can organise themselves without cohesion.

The belief that power corrupts, and that institutions only serve themselves.

Is this it?

A question which generates more questions.

A question I ask myself whilst dancing.

Proximity

If choreography is that which informs us on how to behave, think or experience a situation then proximity to didn’t choreographies is the largest measure for its influence upon us. 

Our relationality is dependent upon the distance between us.

Collaboration

That which occurs between things.

Something shared, something no one person can own.

Everything is collaborative.

Also see authorship

Authorship

Authorship is a myth.

For a singular person or person to be the sole author of a thing and not overlook an influential person is impossible. So long as that which is authored exists, more people contribute and influence its existence.

Authorship can be a useful tool to orient attention towards a singular person’s contribution.

Authorship can be a fun game we play.

Also see PETER

PETER

Is a name which can and can not contain everything I am.

Is a concept to which everyone has a different relationship to.

Student center learning

Is one way to recognize knowledge is not unidirectional, and that the teaching model of learning is built of inequality.

Not dance

Is a score which invites you to immediately do something else if you feel as if you are dancing.

Is a score which asks you to break the contract with yourself of dancing whilst still remaining within the contract of dance.

Appreciation

Is what we learn.

As dancing engages or negotiates an experience, which one has, is, and will be doing, in dancing one learns to appreciate what one has done, is doing, and could do.

Appreciation becomes the currency through which we measure ours and others dance.

Also see dance.

Blank page, Empty dance studio, Empty stage, A body

In different situations one practices “blanking” things, making things neutral, as to start a new engagement. 

One collectively agrees that the page is blank as to start creating something on it. One ignores the patterns, tones, qualities and behaves as if the page is blank. This approach is used in  dance studios, stages, and on bodies. None of which are empty, blank, or without history.

Our appreciation may come from us focusing on experiences we have previously ignored.