Camera-as-Collaborator:
Research-Practice in Embodied Documentation
2015–2026 (ongoing)
Overview
Over ten years of documenting live dance and theater performances (2015-2026), I have developed a sustained research-practice investigating how documentation can function as embodied collaboration rather than extractive archiving. Using professional two-camera systems, I have filmed 200+ performances spanning contemporary dance, hip hop, ballet, theater, flamenco, bharatanatyam, site-specific work, and experimental performance.
This body of work serves as a longitudinal case study in the somatic, ethical, and aesthetic dimensions of filming moving bodies in real-time. Treating each documentation session as a research site, I investigate camera-body relationships, consensual filming protocols, and how frame-making operates as a choreographic partnership. This practice directly informs my screendance work, pedagogical approaches to teaching Media for Dance, and theoretical inquiry into documentation as generative rather than archival practice.
Research Questions
How does the documentarian's embodied presence and somatic awareness shape what and how movement is captured?
What protocols support consensual, collaborative documentation that centers performing artists' agency and vision?
How do real-time framing decisions function as choreographic choices, reframing documentation as creative practice?
What somatic practices support sustained attention, kinesthetic empathy, and responsive decision-making during live filming?
What ethical frameworks guide documentation of diverse bodies, particularly where representation, consent, and power dynamics are central concerns?
Methods & Approach
This research-practice employs professional two-camera documentation systems with pre-performance consultations establishing filming intentions, priorities, and boundaries with choreographers. Real-time somatic awareness practices during filming include breath regulation, spatial orientation, kinesthetic empathy, and anticipatory sensing. Post-performance reflection and footage review with artists integrates feedback into future approaches.
The methodology has been applied and tested through extensive documentation work including Sol Power Hip Hop Festival (3 consecutive years), ASU Dance Department performances (2 consecutive years), Third Space Dance Project (3 consecutive years), Dansense-Nrtyabodha (5 consecutive years), Liz Lerman (1 year), Convergence Theatre Collective (3 years), The Yard (1 year), the AZ Dance Experience (3 years) professional choreographers, and community dance projects.
Contribution
This decade-long research-practice contributes to screendance and dance documentation discourse by positioning documentation as embodied research methodology requiring somatic skill, ethical attention, and choreographic thinking. While documentation is often treated as technical service work or extractive capturing, this research demonstrates how sustained documentation practice generates knowledge about camera-body relationships, collaborative filming ethics, real-time compositional decision-making, and the politics of framing moving bodies.
The work bridges professional documentation practice, screendance theory, and somatic inquiry, offering a model for how technical expertise serves artistic research. By centering consent, collaboration, and the documentarian's embodied presence, the research challenges extractive models and proposes frameworks where camera operators function as collaborative witnesses rather than invisible technicians. The longitudinal scope (10 years, 200+ projects) provides empirical depth rarely available in screendance scholarship, which often focuses on finished works rather than documentation processes.
Practically, this research informs pedagogy (teaching students to document dance with somatic awareness and ethical care), professional practice (modeling collaborative relationships between documentarians and artists), and screendance creation (applying documentation methodologies to choreographed camera work). The work is particularly relevant to discussions of whose bodies are centered in dance media, how platform algorithms shape visibility, and how emerging technologies impact creative labor and representation.
Pedagogical Applications
Methodology applied in Media for Dance course (ASU, 3 sections, 2023–2024); workshop facilitation including "Dance Filmmaking Best Practices" (Arizona Dance Educators Association, 2025), "Documenting Your Creative Work" (Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture, 2024–2025), "Camera + Movement Scores Play Lab" (Cahokia Art Tech, 2024), and "Dance on Camera Workshop" (American College Dance Association, 2020).
Scale
200+ live dance and theater performances documented across 10 years; multiple geographic locations across the USA, genres, venues, and collaborating artists
200+ live dance and theater performances documented across 10 years; multiple geographic locations across the USA, genres, venues, and collaborating artists