Thinking through Nicola Elliott’s Bruising (2014)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the notion of performance as a form of knowledge (philosophy) through an analysis of Nicola Elliott’s Bruising (2014), first performed at the National Arts Festival in South Africa. This notion of performance as a form of philosophy acknowledges that performance creates forms of knowing that can only be derived from the experience of performance. This knowledge is related to ‘living meaning’ or affect which explains the liminal quality of how meaning arises through performance and that this knowledge/sense is not absolute but singular and subjective for the audience member. Bruising deals with the concepts of living through loss, but does not present one with any prescribed messages or overt meanings. Instead, the work reveals the ambiguity of love and the process of making meaning. I pay specific attention to how Bruising created a shift in my experience of time and space through movement (dance) and argue that this kind of shift challenges ‘kinetic complicity’ via Andrè Lepecki’s theory of a slow ontology. The experiential aspect of viewership informs the observations and conclusions drawn from this research. Alongside this interpretative research methodology is a qualitative engagement with theories related to performance and choreography.