Dancing habitus: the formation of a group (dance)

This article discusses how six individual dancers came to belong, stylistically, to a group, in a project that did not aim explicitly to create or bring about that belonging. The studio-based research project tested the creation of a group improvised dance through practising over a significant period of time with ‘scores’ or verbal propositions, usually relating to physical, bodily or movement notions such as tangling and untangling or being subject to gravity. This article looks at one question within the research: namely, whether the dancing individuals came, over time, to belong to a group, and if so, what enabled that belonging and what made the dance a group dance? The project did not centre on an objective to direct the creation of a ‘groupness’ or stylistic consistency but, rather, it supported the investigation of how this ‘groupness’ might come about.