 Hey everyone, my name is Sophia, a master's student from Dance Studies. Today I'm here to talk about my research, the absentee, a chorographic exploration of absence through presence. And I have two musicians and seven dancers participate, and I've listed their names on the screen, but unfortunately I've only got three dancers today. Before getting into my research question, I want to talk about the background of the research. I am conducting this research under the Master of Dance Studies at the University of Auckland for examination purpose, and this research will outcome in both academic writings and chorographic performance. The aims of my research are to find out meanings absence has to presence and to develop a chorography of absence. My research also aims to find out the relationships absence and presence may have so that I may build new conversations between the two. For achieving my research aims, I thought to use the theories of qualitative, practice late and post-positivism as the methodological paradigms. The reason for me to choose qualitative is because it values the ways of knowing. By using a qualitative paradigm, I can have chance to explore understandings and knowledge of human hands, and more importantly, by using a qualitative paradigm, I can promote more possibilities variations and new thoughts for my research. And a post-positivism paradigm emphasised on making meanings through the way of researching, and it can be linked to practice late research as they both look for making meanings along the process of the research. And a practice late research can be understood as subjective, emergent and interdisciplinary. It emphasises and indicates on knowing from the process of doing or making. As a dancer and choreographer, it seems natural or logical for me to make a dance pace as the way to explore my research query. The methods I use for this research is student practice, to which I will take my dancers with me to a dance studio, and I will also give them some choreographic tasks decided by me. And the choreographic task is basically like something related to my research questions, and I ask to my dancers, and instead of answering that, they will answer it in a dance way. For example, if you ask me, like, what's your name? I will not say my name is Xiaofeng Fu. I will answer it like sort of movement and to draw it with my body, and that's the choreographic process, task A. And I will observe my dancers doing the way of research, and I will also journal my thoughts along the whole research process. A dance performance is also part of my research method, to which this performance will show in a dance theater with audiences and my examiner, so that I can show them really a performance of absence. From my literature, I've been looking at ontology, drawing references on absence and presence. I also look at the choreographic process. Hontology can be divided into two parts to which the ontology of being in present is haunted. Hontology indicates something that happened before, slides into presence to which this before, or past, or absence is not over and waiting for a chance to return or to come back. So why is ontology meaningful for this research? For me, it is an announcement of the return of absence coming into presence. And I also look at the meanings absence and presence have, and by looking at the word, absence means a list of something, a nothing, or something which no longer exists. Presence on the other hand means to be here or being here. They're totally adverse concepts but they cannot be separated because without absence, presence will lose its meanings and vice versa. I've been looking at different artistic disciplines and I've been looking at what artists do by using the concept of absence and presence in their art practices. Visual artists, for example, have been using the concept of absence and presence to create an image of destroyed land or buildings or environment. As Woodhead stated, the disappearance or absence of material can possibly evoke or mark defecational presence. I also look at the choreography process so that I can make my choreography and it can give me clear idea of how to make a choreography of absence and how to structure it into the research. Here comes to my emerging ideas. To explore or to perform absence, we need to figure out what this absence is or what can be this absence. As said by Deirdre, we need to find out it by standing before it, standing before absence. So from my understanding, I think it's to find out weird absences by looking back to our past. I have given my dancers a choreography task. I ask them to write down the significant moment in their history in relation to absence right down to a piece of paper. And when I get a piece of paper, I ask them to create static positions out of the sentence they wrote. And when I got all the movement materials and I put them into a piece and I call them the history of absence. It's necessary to create a disorder time. It's necessary to let the past time to come to presence, possibly audiences, so that they can have a new thought on the concept. It also contributes to practice research as the new research approaches will be found along with the process of the research. Concept, absence, and presence. And I'm sure that there's still a lot of things waiting for me to discover. And thank you all for today and this is the end of my presentation. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask. Thank you for the performance and the presentation. That was fantastic. I'd like to know how you chose to use the space to convey your concept of absence. Yes, actually the first time when I tried to develop a piece of absence and presence is come to my personal experience. Because like I'm a dancer and I learned it in a really young time. And one time when my teachers stretched and made and I was passed out and at the time I felt like I am absent, but at the same time I'm still alive and I'm also present. So that came to my interest to make a piece of to perform absence through presence. If you answer your question. Thank you very much for that. So I'm also interested in absences and presences and hauntings in my own work. But in a very different way and explained through a kind of written medium rather than dance. I was kind of thinking about the differences. I guess almost the pros and cons of the different mediums in the sense that with dancing must be an enormous challenge to make present things that are not physically here that are absent to actually put them on stage. I'm curious about how you go about that. But also some of the benefits to dance. So that when I think about absences in my own life, they're very much felt I think of people that are no longer with me or far away. They're things that haunt me in a very emotional effective way. So I'm curious about what you think about dance as being able to kind of in life and point to that. I think because this is just part of my choreography. So and originally this piece has seven dancers. So maybe when all of them are here, the sense of absence and presence could be a bit more and could be a bit stronger. And I also have a saying of funeral. Yes, and to mark the actually absence. But actually even the one is that is show absence in our life. But we can still like remember her or him. And we can still remember the time when we were getting together with her or him. So which means it's like not all the memories are sad. It's sometimes like we have happy memories. So I think the absence is what makes us who we are today. Yes, so it's not about like the down or fall all the time. So I really much enjoyed how you integrated your narration there with your dancers. I thought that was quite different. I was wondering if you just told me the significance of that piece there and conveying your message of absenteeism. The dancers came over and interacted with you which is quite different from what I normally see narration being quite separate. Yes, because I think absence can mean potentially a lot of things. For example, if I'm talking and suddenly like I'm thinking other things. That's kind of absence. And if I'm presenting my presentation and suddenly I've been controlled or manipulated by others. It's also kind of absence because I'm not focused on the presentation anymore. Yes, so I think that just being one of the ways to play with the concept of absence and presence.