Dance Artist/Academic, Vida L Midgelow, joined Middlesex University as Professor in Dance and Choreographic Practices in 2012 where she leads the postgraduate research provision in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries. Prior to this position, she was Professor and Director of Research at the University of Northampton, establishing taught and rsearch programmes in dance and performance studies. She has over 25 years experience facilitating and lecturing in performance and completed her doctoral research at Surrey University.
Her movement practice and research is grounded in release based and somatic approaches, she is also a qualified yoga practitioner.
Her movement and video work has been shown internationally and she publishes her research in professional, online and academic journals. As a movement artist/researcher her work currently focuses upon artistic research methods, somatic approaches to dance training, improvisation and articulating choreographic processes. Recent performance works include: BreathBone, Skript and the performative lecture 'Everywhere and Nowhere'.
Selected essays include: Practice-as-Research (in Dodds, 2019), Improvisation as a paradigm for Phenomenology (in Fraleigh 2018); Some Fleshy thinking (in Geoge-Graves 2015), Creative Articulations Process (CAP) (co-written with with J. Bacon, Choreographic Practices 2015); Nomadism and Ethics in/as Improvised Movement Practices (Critical Studies in Improvisation, 2012) and Sensualities: dancing/writing/experiencing, (New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing, 2013). Midgelow's extensive edited volume Improvisation in Dance with Oxford University Press was published in 2019 and her monograph, Reworking the ballet: Counter Narratives and Alternative Bodies was published by Routledge in 2007.
She is the director of the Erasmus Plus funded 'Artistic Doctorates in Europe Project' which has published guidance for best practice in Artistic Research Degrees (see: www.artisticdoctorates.com) and the resource for dance research in practice 'Researching (in/as) motion'. She also co-ordinates the 'Transdisciplinary Improvisation Network' (a research cluster based at Middelesex) and a member of the Choreography research cluster (https://www.mdx.ac.uk/our-research/research-groups/choreography-cluster).
Professor Midgelow undertakes mentoring, dramaturgical, curatorial and consultancy roles for artists and organisations. These facilitative activities combine with her own research within the framework of the Choreographic Lab, of which she is co-director (with Professor Jane Bacon). The Choreographic Lab, based at Dance4, Nottingham, has sought to provide platforms for sharing choreographic practices and critical inquiry (www.choreographiclab.co.uk).
Extending these interests she conceptualized was the founding co-editor of the hybrid peer-reviewed journal, Choreographic Practices, published with Intellect (http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=170/).
Professor Midgelow was Chair of 'The Standing Conference on Dance in Higher Education (DanceHE, UK)(www.DanceHE.org.uk) ' (2010-13), served on the boards of 'The Society of Dance History Scholars (USA) for over 10 years (www.sdhs.org), Vice-chair of the board at Dance4 (www.Dance4.co.uk) and is currently a board member for Jaivant Patel Dance (www.jaivantpateldance.com).
She is a regular peer reviewer for several funding bodies (inc. AHRC, Leverhulme, British Academy and Austrian Science Foundation) and for publishers/journals (inc. Routledge, Palgrave, Oxford University Press, Dance Research Journal and Theatre, Dance and Performance Training).
http://danceimprovisationpractice.blogspot.co.uk
http://writing-dancing.blogspot.co.uk
http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-Journal,id=170/
Vida Midgelow is Director of Research Degrees for the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries and is a committed educator. Her teaching interests encompass: research methods, choreographic and practice as research methodologies, release and somatically based movement practices, dance making and improvisation, dance writing, critical approaches to contemporary performance and dance analysis/writing.
Midgelow is an experienced Ph.D. supervisor and she invites potential research degree students to discuss proposals for study in areas related to her research interests.
She specialises in supporting Ph.D.'s by Practice as Research and her current supervisions include:
Helen Kindred: Improvisation Practices
Pete Gomes: Improvised Cinema
Funke Oyebanjo: Script writing for the Web
Heashin Park: Dance in schools and Experiences of Deaf Childern
Sharon Reshef Armony: Stage Screen Performance
Leah Antonellis: Austism and Dance
Dominque Rivoal: Somatic / relational film practice
Athina Valha: 'Agon' and choreographic Practice
Zhibo Zhao: Beijing Dance Academy - Creativity and Improvisation
Abigial Diaz: Dance and technology
Kevin Skelton: Opera training, breath and somatics (External Supervisor, University of Toronto)
Jamieson Dryburgh: Dance technique and creative pedagogy
Completed projects:
Amy Voris: Authentic Movement and choreography (External Supervisor, University of Chichester)
Victor Fung: Dance4 and the Centre for Advanced Training (co-funded Ph.D. with Dance4)
Lotti Nichol: Screen/Body performance practices
Sarah Black: Mother as Curator: Sited performance practices
Stina Sommerlade: Dance ecologies and funding policy
Stephen Fossey: Activating social space and performative practices
Susanne Martin: Dance Improvisation and Aging
Sara Giddens: Still Small Acts (AHRC funded Collaborative Ph.D. with Dance4)
Rosanna Irvine: Towards a non-representational poetics of choreography (AHRC funded Collaborative Ph.D. with Dance4)
I-Ying Wu: Improvisation and Daoism (External Supervisor, University of Northampton)
Jonathan Chapman: Painting and intertextuality (Ph.D. by publication/portfolio, University of Northampton)
Luis Stoleo: Mapping and performance (Ph.D. inc. Practice, University of Northampton)
Rachel Durden: Genital sensation (University of Northampton)
Hilary Elliot: Vision and Improvisation (External supervisor, University of Huddersfield)
Midgelow has sought to provide platforms for sharing choreographic practices, critical inquiry and debate. As a movement artist / scholar her work focuses on somatic approaches to dance training, improvised practices, and articulating choreographic processes.
Current areas of research include:
*Dance Improvisation – expanding discourses, framing ontologies and evolving new practices of 'real time' dance composition
*Articulating Dance – developing creative 'languaging' and documentation strategies to enable processes to be revealed to both makers and viewers
*Practice as Research – exploring notions of 'knowing' and the implications of PaR.
*Somatically based movement practices
*Intimate and immersive video installation practices
She is the director of the Transdisciplinary Improvisation Network (a research cluster based at Middelesex) and a member of the Choreography research cluster (https://www.mdx.ac.uk/our-research/research-groups/choreography-cluster).
She also co-directs/ co-edits:
Choreographic Lab (founded 1996 and funded by Arts Council England) www.choreographiclab.co.uk
Choreographic Practices (international peer reviewed journal).www.intellect.co.uk
Selected / recent outputs:
Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, Oxford University Press (2019)
Practice as Research (2018), in Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies.
Improvisation as a paragim for Improvisation (2018), Back to the Dance itself, UIP.
Scratch: a duet for two woman, Nottingham Contemporary (2017)
Skript: a micro-installation, NottDance13 (2013)
Sensualities: dancing/writing/experiencing (2013) New Writing, Routledge.
Nomad and ethics in/as Dance Improvisation (2012), Critical Studies in Improvisation at http://www.criticalimprov.com
Voice (a retracing): An emerging lexicon (2012), Journal of Artistic Research at http://jar-online.net
Dear Practice…: the experience of improvising (2011), Choreographic Practices, Intellect.
Articulating choreographic practices, locating the field: An introduction (2011), Choreographic Practices, Intellect.
Sensualities: Movement/Screen/Experience Exhibition (2011), The Beetroot Tree Gallery and Avenue Gallery.
Dance Improvisation Practices Project (2010 – on-going) at http://danceimprovisationpractice.blogspot.co.uk.
Voice (a re-tracing), video/sonic work (2008)
Reworking the ballet: counter-narratives and alternative bodies (2007), Routledge. Trace: playing with/out memory (2007), solo video and dance production
Trace (improvisation in a Box) (2007), Artfully Bound
Midgelow is an experienced Ph.D. supervisor and she invites potential research degree students to discuss proposals for study in areas related to her research interests.
Midgelow, Vida L. and Bacon, Jane (2020) Creative articulations process: a rhizomatic practice (video exposition).
Bacon, Jane and Midgelow, Vida L. (2019) Reconsidering research and supervision as creative embodied practice: reflections from the field, Artistic Doctorates in Europe: third-cycle provision in Dance and Performance. Other. Artistic Doctorates in Europe, UK.
Midgelow, Vida L. and Bacon, Jane (2019) Breathbone. [Performance]
Midgelow, Vida L. (2019) Recommendations for action: enhancing artistic doctoral education in dance and performance. Artistic Doctorates in Europe. (Published online first)
Machon, Josephine (2019) Audience improvisation in the immersive experience: the sensuous world of the body in the work of Lundahl & Seitl. In: Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance. Midgelow, Vida L. , ed. Oxford Handbooks . Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199396986 (Accepted/In press)
Prof V L Midgelow is director and lead researcher for:
Artistic Doctorates in Europe: Third cycle provision in Dance and Performance (ADiE)
Artistic Doctorates in Europe (ADiE) is a three-year research project that will investigate the experience and practice of doctorate candidates in the field of dance and movement-based performance and the impact of these projects at the interface with the profession.
ADiE is Erasmus+ funded and its principal aim is to develop productive and meaningful provisions for Practice as Research Doctorates that are suitable to the fluid, increasingly interdisciplinary and global, creative industry/research environments with which they intersect. Addressing the needs of research candidates, supervisors, universities and the creative industry the resources and guidelines seek to enable the rising number of artists entering into, and being nurtured by, university environments to receive the best possible support for their artistic/scholarly endeavors and for doctorate candidates to be well prepared to become our future leaders in the arts.
ADiE asks:
What are the expectations, perceptions and experiences of the Artistic Doctorate?
What are the methodological tools and other training needs of artistic researchers in Dance and Performance?
How are doctoral 'thesis' in artistic research best supervised and supported?
How do doctoral studies through artistic research respond to, and prepare candidates for, the future?
How might universities and creative partners better support artistic research doctorates and reflect the future needs of creative industry and higher education environments?
Led by Prof Vida L Midgelow at Middlesex University, this is a collaboration across four research/teaching institutions - Middlesex and Chichester Universities (United Kingdom), Stockholm University of the Arts (Sweden) and University of the Arts, Helsinki (Finland), in partnership with four leading professional arts organisations - Dance4 (United Kingdom), Kiasma Theatre - Museum of Contemporary Arts and Zodiak Centre for New Dance (Finland) and WELD (Sweden).
For more details contact v.midgelow@mdx.ac.uk
Vida Midgelow, Professor of Dance and Choreographic Practices at Middlesex University, contributes new insights to the field of practice-as-research (PaR) / Artistic Research (AR) with a particular emphasis on movement and choreography.
Midgelow’s impacts in this area have been generated through advocacy, publications and research practices, including two significant strands of research:
Artistic Doctorates in Europe (ADiE, 2016-19, Erasmus+ funded). ADiE undertook surveys and developed case studies, revealing shared concerns and gaps in doctoral provision. Addressing these gaps ADiE curated a series of events, encouraging a cross-sector approach by bringing together representatives from the academy and the cultural industries. This led to a series of publications, notably, ‘Reconsidering Research and Supervision as Creative Embodied Practice: Reflections from the Field’ (2019), which offers insights and guidance to candidates and supervisors, proposing a creative, co-relational, collective and networked process, incorporating partners beyond the academy in the development of third spaces for doctoral engagement. While the edited resource, ‘Research (in/as) Motion: A resource collection’ (2019, nivel.teak.fi/adie) includes contributions by an international group of 46 authors, revealing ways to work effectively with tacit knowings, attend to the complexities of situated knowledge and the centrality (but not unproblematic nature) of first person, enskilled, research. Through engagements with key stakeholders ADiE also produced the guidance report, ‘Recommendations for Action’ (2019), outlining best practices in doctoral provision and available in five languages.
‘Creative Articulations Process (CAP)’ (ACE funding). Co- developed with Emeritus Professor Jane Bacon, University of Chichester CAP offers methods and associated strategies for artist researchers to speak from (rather than about) dancing to foreground the intertwining of embodiment, experience and language. We first published this work in 2014, setting out the routes of the work in Somatics, Focusing and PaR. We have since developed CAP as a multi-layered and multifaceted process incorporating three areas of work, Preparations, a Ground Form and an Expanded Form, and six facets – outwarding, situating, delving, raising, anatomizing and outwarding. As a non-linear movement/writing process it offers insights into, and capacities for, embodied dual awareness, tracking, creative discernment and languaging, to inform creative practices and offer a method for PaR.
She has activated academic and arts sector intersections giving rise to (inter)national impacts in the following areas:
(a) Enhanced articulation capacities in creative practice for movement practitioners,
(b) Heightening awareness of embodiment and languaging for audiences and
(c) Enhancing understanding of, and provisions for, artistic research/research degrees in professional arts organisations and universities.
