Robert Hylton
all things dance
Investigar | PhD
Robert Hylton (BA, MA)
Currently studying for a PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) at Centre for Dance Research: C-DaRE, Coventry University - to be completed in July, 2025. The PhD is fully funded by C-DaRE. My research investigates mediated and lived cultural transmission in popping and Black British social experience
In 2020 I was commissioned to write a dance image archive book Dancing in Time: The History of Moving and Shaking by The British Library published in autumn, 2022
My ongoing research
My research interests focus on streetdance and its relationship with the African diaspora as archive and practice. My main research is popping improvisation as a somatic form.
Related study UK Jazzdance, hip hop, migration, otherness, film, performance, and speculative future.
Researching the presence of African diaspora street dance in both the UK and US to enable a broader access and understanding to an often hidden or unspoken representation of black performance and dance over the past 200+ years in Britain. With the aim to enhance and promote the visibility and presence of African diaspora street dance through a British perspective and UK Jazzdance pre and post hip hop in education, academia, performance and research.
The research will help develop a future exhibition and performance work, which focuses on the autonomy of African diaspora street dance as performance in the 21st Century! A presentation based on the research and workshops for community, professional or academic discourse will also be available.
For more information or questions please get in touch
Memberships
PoP Moves UK committee member: an international research group for popular dance and performance. (On a Break)
Former Associate Research Fellow in the School of Arts at (Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre), University of London, 2019-2023
Former Visiting Fellow at The Eccles Centre, British Library, 2019
ABK Research: My research focuses on street and hip hop dance and their relationship with the African diaspora, as an embodied practice of living archive, past, present, future, and now–doing—in how cultural transmission transfers knowledge between bodies and places. Based on my PhD on Black British Popping through the concepts I call the bit before in Active Bodily Knowledge – Talking-Sensation into Cultural Identifiers (CIs) and ABK Research methodology—a practice-based approach to examine the temporal-realtime interrelation between consciousness (Talking-Sensation) and interior sensation (Cultural Identifiers) in popping improvisation. In doing so, I developed ABK Research symbology (i - +): (i) consciousness, (-) interior sensation, and skin (+)-visible movement-expression. Importantly, I identified the time and space of what I call (i -) the bit before—to isolate (i) consciousness and (-) interior sensation into (i -) as a time-based illustrative framework-methodology to explore popping—as an embodied practice-based approach: to learning, teaching, studying, and doing dance improvisation. In turn, I define (i -) the bit before as part of the real-time millisecond experience and pre-active temporality of Active Bodily Knowledge (i - +) to describe the living experience of—doing popping improvisation. Further examined through film, and what I call haptic editing—as a tool to develop theory-based creative work—around the theme of doing: cultural exchange, memory, human experience and innovation. A presentation
Dr Robert Hylton
PhD C-DaRE (Centre for Dance Research), Coventry University (fully funded by Coventry University)