Research

Fiona’s technical approach as an artist comes from engagement in a diversity of movement, somatic, compositional and performance practices

Fiona’s research approach as an artist comes from engagement in a diversity of classical and contemporary dance, somatic, compositional and performance practices both locally and internationally, spanning more than two decades. Her Bachelor of Dance, Post Graduate Diploma in Choreography and Masters at the Victorian College of the Arts including study of Ideokinesis, Feldenkrais, Skinner Releasing and Pilates techniques created a deep passion for the study of the human body and movement. This was coupled with engagement of Heuristic research techniques and focused study of art philosophy, in particular that of the early 1960’s Judson Dance Theatre period. She studied at the prestigious School for F.M. Alexander Studies to undertake her full three-year teacher training qualification as an Alexander Technique teacher and from here she became a teacher and author, established her private practice and lectured at the Victorian College of the Arts. 

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Fiona performance
One students writes:

“Alexander technique is a very enabling practice it has created major shifts in my body. It asks for a reduction of action that frees the body to experience and inhabit our surroundings. The attention to the body’s anatomical form and our inherent capacities and functions allowed me to acknowledge and respect the physical intelligence within my body. It offers me the time and support to begin to unblock the habits that interfere with my body’s own intelligence.  As a dancer Alexander Technique has been a rich source of information, it has given me a structure through which I am able to practice embodiment in a diverse range of contexts. I have become more patient and attentive to listen to my body. I am beginning to feel how spacious and available my body can become. My identification and association of alignment has become much more personal. Alexander technique has encouraged me to relax into the home of my body.”
(Chloe Chignell, Dancer & Pilates Instructor)

Fiona’s approach to choreography and performance is informed by her work with and study of international artists Deborah Hay, Ros Warby, Lily Kiara, Maria Hassabi and Australian’s Nat Cursio and Jude Walton. She creates both conventional and traditional dance works but equally feels at home with more unconventional actions and installations. This rare versatility and capacity for creating disorientating performance experiences has led to exceptional performance and research reviews:

“I’ve saved Fiona’s work until last here, even though it seemed a bit of a centrepiece. It’s just that Bryant is such an exciting choreographer, it’s difficult to do her work justice in words. I first saw her short piece MAX in last year’s Fringe and was wowed – her piece for Small Spaces was equally brilliant. … I am aware she has trained with Deborah Hay’s company and she really takes it in directions nobody else is charting in Melbourne today.”
(John Bailey, Capital Idea 2009)

Fiona is undoubtedly one of Melbourne’s most interesting young choreographers. When she and collaborator Lucy Farmer approached the Festival with a simple yet incredibly difficult premise – to be inspired by disaster – I had instant butterflies. The merciless forces of nature have seemed at their most ungenerous in recent years; pummeling us with messages about the urgency of changing our behaviour. Or else. That Fiona and Lucy have been brave enough to tackle these magnitudinous ideas is impressive; that they’re willing to rigorously examine them in the context of performance is something else…”
(Emily Sexton, Next Wave’s former Artistic Director 2012)

“…One had the strong feeling that she had no idea what was coming, that the horizon of oncoming movement was completely obscure. This is an incredible thing to sustain on stage with a pile of people staring at you. There was no ostentation in Bryant’s performance, no flourish, no demonstration of resident technique nor impressive gesture. She had the courage to simply stick to whatever was required from moment to moment. As a result, we saw a modest range of activities, lacking in pattern, eschewing recognition, jumping across the void again and again.”
(Philipa Rothfield, RealTime Arts 2010)

Dialogical Dancing: illuminating dimensionality in solo dance practice is a practice-oriented research work and primarily utilizes the processes of dance and writing with which to inquire. At the time of inception, Fiona was interested in understanding the phenomena wherein having returned to the ‘home’ of the self (following years of formal dance training), she found a ‘house’; a conglomerate of unintegrated parts not yet exuding their collective potential. Not only did she desire to understand the nature of this phenomena, but moreover sought to discover just how the self and all its dimensions could be enlivened and integrated through the processes of practicing, making and performing solo dance. For this reason, Dialogical Dancing came to be envisaged as a process of inquiry toward illuminating dimensionality in solo dance practice. A heuristic model of research is used to guide, enliven and validate personal experience toward the presentation of creative and scientific outcomes visible and useful for individuals both within and outside of the field of dance.

(Masters of Choreography, Victorian College of the Arts – University of Melbourne AUS 2010)

Choreographing the Choreography: an investigation into processes of perceiving, scoring and performing extant choreography, extends from the premise that the choreographers’ artistic materials or palette (the body and its relationship to space and time) are imbued with extant choreography. The research inquires, how does the choreographer choreograph the choreography? How does the choreographer (who in this case is also the performer) become aware of and in turn handle this extant choreography?  A specific combination of somatic (Alexander Technique), improvisational dance and performances techniques are engaged in order to materially explicate, develop, present and examine a folio of choreographic work. This process is toward the illumination of a personal choreographic methodology through which a previously little studied interrelationship between choreography and somatic practices may be demonstrated.

(Doctor of Philosophy (Choreography), Victorian College of the Arts – University of Melbourne AUS 2014)