Dance Studies

This project investigates how community groups can explore and respond to their locations through dance and the camera. The project seeks insights into urban environments through creative physicality. Summer Scholars will create community based-dance films in New Zealand and abroad, developing their creative-research skills through all phases of film production. Each scholar will produce a short dance film with the supervisor, for submission to international film festivals.

Scholars need to be:

• tech-savvy
• confident
• organised
• independent
• able to initiate creative movement activities

This project investigates how creative arts and design teachers develop students’ skills in collaboration. The project seeks insights into lived experience of teaching and learning about collaboration through arts and design.

Summer Scholars will conduct and transcribe semi structured interviews with teachers in New Zealand and abroad, developing their research skills as educational ethnographers. Each Scholar will co-author an international peer-reviewed journal article or book chapter with the supervisor.

Scholars need to be:

• outgoing
• confident
• organised
• independent
• able to initiate discussions

This project seeks to explore the notion of difference in/through dance education encounters. The central motivating query is: how could the notion of performing difference in the context of dance education lead towards greater appreciation of difference as source of learning and living together? By unraveling theory and lived experiences pertaining to difference, cultural ecology, embodiment, performativity and the notion of the ‘other’, and then connecting this with pedagogical encounters in dance, there is the opportunity to illuminate the notion of difference for individuals and communities.

Two Summer Scholarship students could engage in this project, and there is the potential for travel to engage in fieldwork.

This project seeks to produce new knowledge on how community dance initiatives can be developed to enhance citizen creativity and communal engagement. The research considers dance as a basic service that should be available equally for all, and that contributes to well-being across a wide range of life domains. Through an action-based approach, community dance activities are explored in a diverse range of settings around the globe.

Two Summer Scholarship students could engage in this project, and there is the potential for travel to engage in fieldwork.

The research project Dance Education on the Silk Road aims to foster awareness of dance teaching, learning and curriculum practices and issues that inform the development of dance education within this geopolitical landscape. The project aims to trade and share dance teachers' stories, and in so doing developing a deep and rich insight into lived experience of teaching and learning dance in diverse landscapes.

Summer Scholars will be asked to meet and get to know local teachers and interview them. The interviews will be semi structured. The interviews will need to be transcribed. In some cases interviews will need to be translated. All interviewees will need to sign ethics forms as approved by the University of Auckland Ethics Committee.

Research outputs

Each Scholar will co-author an international peer-reviewed journal article or book chapter with Ralph.

Research outcomes

Scholars will:

• develop research skills
• learn about diverse education contexts
• be part of an international research project
• coordinate travel times with Ralph and be able to travel over the summer to China
• need to be outgoing, confident, organised, independent and able to foster conversation

This project involves working on a choreographic research project that engages multi-modality such as dance and film, creative writing, design, digital documentation, or any combination of these. Two student places are available.

This project will explore relationships between Dance and Live Art. Two student places are available.

Involves performance making in a range of disciplines, including but not limited to live art, choreography, performance art, video making, across a range of paradigms including but not limited to decolonial methodologies, environmental/climate change concerns, social justice, gender, feminist related discourses, collaboration, site situating/site specifics, theatre approaches, practice-led research and other things students may bring to their project. 

Involves performance making in a range of disciplines, including but not limited to live art, choreography, performance art, video making, across a range of paradigms including but not limited to decolonial methodologies, environmental/climate change concerns, social justice, gender, feminist related discourses, collaboration, site situating/site specifics, practice-led research, theatre approaches and other things students may bring to their project.

Involves performance making in a range of disciplines, including but not limited to live art, choreography, performance art, video making, across a range of paradigms including but not limited to decolonial methodologies, environmental/climate change concerns, social justice, gender, feminist related discourses, collaboration, site situating/site specifics, theatre approaches, practice-led research and other things students may bring to their project.