Choreographing in the Borderland: identity and positionality in an immersive practice
Stanton, Thea (2025) Choreographing in the Borderland: identity and positionality in an immersive practice. In: Practitioner perspectives on dance research. Routledge, London, pp. 1-14. ISBN 9781032566795
![[img]](https://theplace.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/style/images/fileicons/text.png) |
Text (This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Practitioner perspectives on dance research on 13 October 2025, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Practitioner-Perspectives-on-Dance-Research/Harman/p/book/9781032566795)
19_ChoreographingBorderland_TS.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only until 12 April 2027. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (353kB) |
Abstract
This chapter explores the intersections of identity, positionality, and responsibility within choreographic immersive practice, drawing on Borderland theory, Indigenous research ethics, and relational accountability. Reflecting on my own experience as an Indigenous Chilean British artist, I situate the body as a living borderland and use this liminal positionality as both a methodological and ethical framework. Through the lens of Gloria Anzaldúa’s Nepantla and the figure of La Nepantlera, I reimagine immersion not as an escape from the real, but as a reflexive and relational space of becoming-with others. Challenging dominant immersive paradigms that seek to sever the immersive world from lived reality, I argue instead for an “immersion of the here and now”—one that invites participants to enter as themselves and be witnessed in their full embodied complexity. This chapter contributes to wider conversations around decolonising immersive methodologies, proposing that by centring relational accountability, we can reconfigure immersive spaces as ethical, inclusive, and transformative sites of co-existence and co-creation.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | Borderland theory, Indigenous research ethics, identity, positionality, practice research, Mestiza theory, Nepantlera, immersive art, |
| Depositing User: | Karen Smith |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Jul 2026 14:01 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Jul 2026 14:01 |
| URI: | https://theplace.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/19 |
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit Item |