McCartney, E., 2015.

Movement as Dialogue

Between 2015-17 she worked as a Leverhulme funded Artist in Residence in the Department of Applied Linguistics, Birkbeck, University of London. During this time she investigated processes of communication that go beyond spoken and written languages. She began working with two professional dancers to explore how a series of static images could be translated and embodied into movements. This series of images presented in Movement as Dialogue show the dancers performing different phrases of the choreography. Each time the piece is performed the sequence of the dance changes. At the beginning of the piece the poses are performed slowly, their bodies articulate each phrase clearly. As the dancers become more familiar with each pose their movements get faster and include improvised sections until the piece is entirely embodied.
Ella McCartney has written about the process of making the dance piece in the book chapter 'Movement as Translation: Dancers in Dialogue' in Translating across Sensory and Linguistic Borders: Intersemiotic Journeys between Media, published in 2019. Ed. Dr Madeleine Campbell and Dr Ricarda Vidal, (London: Palgrave and McMillian).