A choreographic notebook: methodological developments in qualitative geographical research

Abstract

This article develops the dancers’ choreographic notebook as a cross-disciplinary documentational device in the representation and analysis of multi-sensual qualitative sources. Drawing upon fieldwork collected during a London-based research placement with the dance company BalletBoyz, I endeavour to extend critical debates around the body and performance within human geography to examine the ‘more-than-representational’ methodological possibilities affiliated with performativity and its allied body of literature. In performing this methodological approach, I first hope to encourage experimental and creative documentational methods for conducting vibrant, engaging geographies of the body. Second, I affirm the centrality of sensuous, embodied accounts in the research process. Finally, this article seeks to equip others in their investigations into re-imagining what ‘physical’ thinking might look like. In documenting the body, I hope a space may be created to rethink the ontology of the body beyond the dualisms of absence or present.