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Copyright

Andrew Fuhrmann; Lise Uytterhoeven; Rachel Fensham

Published On

2025-10-24

Page Range

pp. 85–106

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

4. Movement Analysis

Chapter of: Performance Research Methods: Interdisciplinary Methods for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies(pp. 85–106)
This chapter proposes a layered framework for analysing movement in performance, combining multiple historical, theoretical, and cultural perspectives. Rather than prescribing a fixed method, it introduces six key concepts (movement dynamics, gesture, transposition, social choreography, rhythmic milieu, and algorithmic performance) distributed across three analytic levels: individual, ensemble, and ecological. Case studies of small metal objects by Back to Back Theatre and the virtual concert ABBA Voyage demonstrate how this conceptual framework can reveal the political, ethical, and affective dimensions of movement, including the challenges posed by neurodivergent embodiment and algorithmically-generated choreography. The chapter also situates movement within wider socio-technical and historical contexts, examining how performance reflects and reshapes systems of power, identity, and attention. By engaging with traditions such as Laban effort analysis, Brechtian gestus, and Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, the authors insist that movement analysis can be both rigorously attentive and adaptable to contemporary hybrid performance environments. The aim of this chapter is therefore to attune researchers to the layered textures of motion, human and non-human, live and virtual, so as to develop bespoke analytical strategies responsive to the specific affordances and meanings of each performance.

Contributors

Andrew Fuhrmann

(author)
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4272-6814

Andrew Fuhrmann completed a PhD on the works of the Australian choreographer, Lucy Guerin, and has published on the affective affordances of postmodern choreography.  He is a guest lecturer at the Faculty of Fine Arts and Music, University of Melbourne and co-directed the creation of the Theatre and Dance Platform, a repository of significant Australasian performing arts collections hosted by the University of Melbourne. He maintains research interests in the creation, expansion and maintenance of performing arts archives in the digital realm and is on the management committee of the AusStage database. He writes regularly on contemporary performance as the dance critic for The Age newspaper and other publications.

Lise Uytterhoeven

(author)
https://orcid.org/0009-0009-7197-6215

Lise Uytterhoeven is Chief Academic Officer at The Place, London. Her monograph Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Dramaturgy and Engaged Spectatorship is published by Palgrave Macmillan in the New World Choreographies series. She has published articles and chapters in a range of publications on dance, theatre and performance. She co-authored the study guide What Moves You? Shaping your dissertation in dance, published by Routledge. Lise was Co-Chair of the Society for Dance Research from 2018-2023 and is a current member of the Associate Board of Dance Research.

Rachel Fensham

(author)
Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at University of Melbourne
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0339-4848

Rachel Fensham has been a Professor of Dance and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne and the University of Surrey, and her research fields are performance, cultural history, and digital humanities. She is the author of Movement: Theory for Theatre (Bloomsbury, 2021) and the forthcoming Fabrications: Costume, Dance and Material Culture (OUP 2026) and co-author of Cultural Data: an Intimate Analytics of Cultural Collections (Routledge 2026). She was founding co-editor of the award-winning book series, New World Choreographies (Palgrave), and other scholarly work includes chapters on digital laboratories (Routledge 2023); on archives (Routledge 2016); and on costume in Small Data is Beautiful (GSP 2023).