Al Meggs

My work investigates the intersections of hauntology, queering, and place & community, within cabaret, theatre, and dance histories. Through autoethnography and storytelling, I explore performance as both subject and methodology, integrating embodied practice with critical analysis. Drawing on a long career in live performance, I combine a dancer's discipline with an archivist's precision, to bridge creative and scholarly methodologies. My research practice is rooted in hauntology, queering, and place-based investigation, centring on autoethnographic and narrative approaches as methods for exploring community, memory and performance. By using diaries, interviews, and letters, I became an unofficial archivist, and representation of, the dancers I worked with during my years in a small touring cabaret dance company in Italy. These personal records formed the foundation of my doctoral research, illuminating disremembered histories of performance and emboldiment. 

Autoethnography. Hauntology. Queer(ing). Magical Realism. Dance. Cabaret.