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Copyright

Laura Karreman

Published On

2025-10-24

Page Range

pp. 21–42

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

1. Concept-Based Analysis

Chapter of: Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies(pp. 21–42)
This chapter introduces concept-based analysis as a method in performance research, grounded in cultural analysis as developed by Mieke Bal (2002), a Dutch scholar in literature, art history, and cultural theory. It highlights Bal’s notion of theoretical concepts as “searchlight theories”—tools that illuminate specific layers of meaning in an object of study. The chapter also emphasises the potential of “travelling concepts” for interdisciplinary work. Such concepts retain core theoretical insights from their original disciplines but can be adapted and operationalised in new contexts. A step-by-step guide is proposed for conducting concept-based analysis, including selecting and contextualising the concept and object, formulating guiding questions, and reflecting critically on the method and the researcher’s positionality. The method is illustrated through a student project on queer presence in the work of Sasha Velour, a genderfluid drag artist (Van der Vegt 2023). This project uses the concept of the “shimmer” to explore visibility and identity. Another example employs “the imaginary” to analyse motion capture technology in dance, as in Karreman (2017). The chapter concludes by showing how concept-based analysis can be applied in interdisciplinary and pedagogical contexts, such as using concepts from performance studies to examine and develop social robotics.

Contributors

Laura Karreman

(author)
Associate Professor in Media and Performance Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University
https://orcid.org/0009-0002-5214-9213

Laura Karreman is an Associate Professor in Media and Performance Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. She teaches in the MA program Contemporary Theatre, Dance and Dramaturgy and the Research MA Media, Art and Performance Studies (MAPS). She is also the programme coordinator of the MAPS programme. She researches the role of embodied knowledge in dance transmission practices, the role of digitization in performance archives, and epistemological questions that relate to new notions of performance knowledge emerging from developments in the area of AI and Human-Robot interaction. Within the research group Transmission in Motion of the Department of Media and Culture Studies (UU), she relates to topics such as dramaturgy, somatechnics and mobilizing the archive. In her current research she continues to investigate the rapid growth of motion capture as a tool for movement research and animation in order to critically evaluate the cultural and ethical implications of such practices, which now often remain invisible. She is co-editor of the volume Performance and Posthumanism: Staging Prototypes of Composite Bodies (Palgrave Macmillan 2021). Other recent publications include the book chapters “Breathing Matters: Breath as Dance Knowledge” in Futures of Dance Studies (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) and “How does motion capture mediate dance?” in Contemporary Choreography: A critical reader (Routledge, 2017), and a chapter on “Cultural Dreams of Datafied Bodies” in the Routledge Companion on Performance and Technology (forthcoming). In 2024, she was conference director of the 9th International Conference on Movement and Computing (MOCO) at Utrecht University.