The identity of hybrid dance artist-academics working across academia and the professional arts sector

This article reports on interim findings from an evolving research project that sets out to examine and document the experiences of hybrid dance artist-academics working across academia and the professional arts sector. Three round table events and an online conversation enabled the capturing of voices of those who operate in academia and the professional arts sector in response to the research project’s three main aims:

• To understand the experiences of the hybrid dance artist-academic

• To shed light upon the contextual factors that shape these experiences

• To offer recommendations that may support a productive, creative practice environment for the hybrid dance artist-academic.

This article further contextualizes commentaries within wider discourse on artistic practice and/or Practice as Research (PaR), such as those from Practice as Research in Performance (PARIP) and the Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing Arts (ResCen). The relationship between arts-making practices and neo-liberalist frameworks is explored. The emergent issues of hierarchies, dissidence and the epistemology of the hybrid dance artist-academic are presented and conceptions of agency and community are reconsidered.