Dance as a place-making device: examining environmental psychology and place-identity through choreography and performance

This research investigates the experience of place, and how it influences personal identity. The physical and metaphorical example of home serves as a source to examine the Environmental Psychology theories, Place-Identity and Place-Attachment, through dance. I explore the following questions: How does one's relationship to place create identity? And in turn, how do our identities influence the places we inhabit? Being a dance performer, improviser, and choreographer, what sense of place do I offer my self, my audiences and collaborators, as well as the spaces where we perform? I assert that dance is a "Place-Making" device by engaging people with the encoded knowledge and story within place, through which one can participate simultaneously in perception of and reciprocity with one another and with the location. The "Place-Making" tool works first by experiencing and then by naming the experience of two dances: one in the city (The New Pedestrian) and the other on the stage (Between the Attic and the Cellar). These dances were a way for me to experience place as home, and to remedy my fragmented and nomadic lifestyle. I argue the feeling of home can be accessed anywhere and yet changes over time and space, thereby implying place-making is an ongoing and dynamic process of reinvestment.