Artistic Research in Theater for Early Years: Methodological Movements in Mum’s Dancing

Abstract

This article is based on the PhD project The Red Shoes, an artistic research project reflected through analyses and experiences of performance events, filmmaking, and theory. The project conducted three different performances for and with children under the age of three, about red shoes, dancing, music, and playing. Mum’s Dancing was the final performance and allowed the children full participation in an installation together with two dancers and a musician. The artistic research process itself, moving from a theater performance toward an installation concept and in the end an improvised dance concert, was challenging in terms of methodology. The multitude of perspectives, focuses, and shifting movements urged me as both director and researcher to search for new understandings of the whole event. With Henk Borgdorff’s theories on artistic research, I was able to move between an interpretive, an instrumental, and a performative research perspective.