Moving Between Cuteness and Violence

: A Choreographic Investigation

Abstract

This practice research investigates the dynamic range between cuteness and violence, working with choreography as a mode of inquiry. While cuteness is often understood as an aesthetic category that evokes affection and a desire to touch, squeeze, hold, or possess, it also has a multifaceted nature: being at once diminutive and subordinate, yet sensuous and powerful; tactical in self-defence; and expressive of violence. This research examines the interplay between cuteness and violence, particularly within structures that traditionally signify stability, safety, and home. It reveals their metastable relationship, poised for oscillation and reorganisation.
By investigating choreography as both a method and a conceptual framework, this research engages with movement, drawing, video, textiles, objects, and scores to explore the metastable relationship between cuteness and violence. It aligns with choreographic practices that generate problems and think through movement, incorporating vignettes as an autochoreographic method—a choreographic response that integrates personal perspectives and foregrounds interpersonal and social dimensions. The research is further supported by feminist and decolonial perspectives, which make it possible to examine the socio-political implications of this relationship and to develop a method of critique through choreographic response.
Metastability is identified as a key characteristic of the cuteness–violence relationship, where this dynamic remains in constant readiness to shift rather than settle into fixed states. Using autotextual and poetic writing, choreographic vignettes, and artistic and cultural discourses, the study critiques and uncovers cuteness as both an affective and political force capable of provoking, subverting, and complicating its assumed innocence, highlighting its entangled relationship with violence.
In doing so, this investigation advances discourse in choreographic practice by demonstrating how movement-based inquiry can critically engage with affective and political problems beyond studio practice. The study offers insights into the metastable nature of choreography, contributing to broader conversations in dance, cultural studies, choreography, and interdisciplinary artistic research.

Date of Award	Sept 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Coventry University
Supervisor	Jonathan Burrows (Supervisor), Victoria Thoms (Supervisor), Hetty Blades (Supervisor) & Susanne Foellmer (Supervisor)