RESEARCH
Academic Research
Sarah’s research interests span the areas of choreography and performance, creativity and collaboration, practice-led research, ethnography, leadership, community, pedagogy and education.
Sarah’s masters and doctoral research investigates collaboration within choreographic contexts.
Doctoral research: Sarah’s PhD thesis explores how collaborative dexterity is developed in the choreographic dance classroom within tertiary dance education.
Book chapter: Knox, S. (in press) “Choreographic pedagogies: Teaching creatively within dance teacher education in Aotearoa/New Zealand” In N. Brown, Ince, A, & Ramlackhan, K (Eds). Creativity in Education: International Perspectives. Published by UCL Press.
Book chapter: Knox, S. (in press) “Response to: Teach about creativity or teach creatively – does it have to be a contradiction?” In N. Brown, Ince, A, & Ramlackhan, K (Eds). Creativity in Education: International Perspectives. Published by UCL Press.
Book chapter: Knox, S., & Martin, R. K. (2022). “Making waves: Identity, relationships and leadership within dance in the South Pacific”. In S. Burridge (Ed.) The Routledge Companion to dance in Asia and the Pacific. Routledge.
Book chapter: Knox, S. (2020). “Shapeshifting collabortive paradigms across borders, within tertiary choreography education”. In C. Svendler Nielson, & S Burridge (Eds.). Dancing across borders: Perspectives on dance, young people, and change. Routledge.
Journal Article: Knox, S. (2017) “It’s all of me there, all of the time”: Meanings and experiences of a holistic view of the individual within choreographic collaboration Journal of Emerging Dance Scholarship, Issue 5, 2017. ISSN 2309-267X
Book chapter: Knox, S., & Martin, R. K. (2014). Artist voices and biographies. In R. Buck, N. Rowe (Eds.) Moving Oceans: Celebrating dance in the South Pacific. New Delhi, India: Routledge India.
Dancer-Centered Dance Making: Five professional contemporary dancers’ meanings and experiences of agency within choreographic collaboration (Master of Creative and Performing Arts, 2013, First class honours).
Within professional contemporary dance, collaborative dance-making processes can involve navigating myriad choreographic procedures, such as movement exploration and generation. Additionally, dance-making may be understood as a social experience in which dancers and choreographers may be required to negotiate various hierarchical and socio-cultural factors. This research focuses specifically on the dancer’s perspective of the choreographic process and has attended to the personal and creative possibilities that lie within the dancer’s role.
The central question guiding this research is: within collaborative choreographic processes what are dancers’ meanings and experiences of agency? Through interviews, this ethnographic research has engaged five professional contemporary dancers currently working within New Zealand’s dance industry. Drawing on the researcher’s own professional career in contemporary dance it provides an intimate insider‘s perspective of the dance-making process. As qualitative and post-positivist paradigms were selected, no single truth was sought. But rather, the diversity of the dancers’ perspectives and experiences have been valued and explored (Silk, Andrews & Mason, 2005).
Through considering the dancer as an agent within a creative endeavor such as the choreographic process, connections were drawn between the potential of agency and person-centered theory (Rogers, 1961, 1969, 1977, 1980; Rogers & Stevens, 1967). Subsequently this research, and therefore the choreographic process, is viewed through a dancer-centered analytical paradigm. This viewpoint has been created through drawing on person-centered literature from the areas of psychology, education and leadership. Within a dancer-centered paradigm, the dancer as a holistic being is brought to the heart of the dance-making situation, contending the notion of what could be called choreography or choreographer-centered processes. Thus, reimagining the hierarchical frameworks between choreographer and dancer that may be evident within professional western concert dance.
This research has revealed that each dancer may hold many different perspectives of dance-making. These in turn may result or impact upon a range of understandings of what is possible or desirable within choreographic collaboration. Subsequently particular issues are revealed, some of which are related to authority and power, opportunity for dialogue, emotions and the choreographic climate. It is recognized that the issues revealed through this research have been drawn from New Zealand dance. However, it is offered that they may be equally valid of consideration globally within professional contemporary dance, within dance-making in education, or in other dance disciplines or cultural contexts.