Kind of like magic: Embodied agency explored through dance practice

This thesis thinks about agency through dancing. It is also a text that senses into power, choice-making, vulnerability, care, and knowledge as they emerge in both agency and dancing. I use the notion of scores, specifically improvisation scores, as a theoretical and methodological framework to implicate the relationship between structure and agency alongside the sensation of movement (kinesthesia). Drawing on conversations with six local dance artists and my own dance practice, I consider how improvisation generates knowledge that is relevant to developing more nuanced accounts of agency. I posit that agency is a site of excess, something that exceeds the bounds of its score or structure, and that improvisation is an embodied modality that accesses this excess in meaningful ways.