Efva Lilja

By early 2006, choreographer and Professor of Choreography at the University College of Dance in Stockholm, Efva Lilja, will have completed her artistic research project “The Memory of the Body.“ To Lilja, human memory is a re-construction that is constantly changing as a consequence of the dynamic mental processes that create accumulated memory. As she puts it, “The longer I live, the more changed I must be by my own experience. This assumption made it interesting for me to work with elderly people in the form of an artistic research project.

The participating dancers are between 65 and 90 years old. I would like to see the results of my project as practically generated knowledge, experience made tangible, knowledge that is different but just as significant.“
The aim of the research project is to use the choreographic process to enable the participants to act out their embodied memory in movements. Artistic research is a controversial issue and Lilja realises that her own investigations have to meet the same standards as scientific research in order to be regarded as scientifically legitimate. But to give legitimacy to knowledge that is not based on words is a challenge. To do ...