Melissa Pasut

I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Dance Research at Coventry and a recipient of the Arts and Humanities Research Council Mindlands4Cities Doctoral Studentship.  My research is examining the pointe shoe as the receptacle of multi-layered complexities existing within the western classical ballet.  Through the Japanese avant-garde dance form butoh, I am interrogating how the pointe shoe and its symbolic associations can be further exposed, reframed and re-contextualized.  For this research, butoh allows for the excavation of subject material through the body towards interrogation, transformation and integration offering a useful framework for devising methods to consider the pointe shoe’s complexity.  Situated beyond traditions of classical ballet this project is researching a radical new perspective within dance studies and practice/performance methodologies by developing a new conception of a decolonized interdisciplinary practice.