a dance for radio examines how improvisation may be used as a means of documentation. a dance for radio evolves from my photographic investigations, which deal with the notion of disposability through the photographing and re-appropriating of found items of clothing. I identified areas of symbiosis, most notably that of recycling and documenting, in the treatment of movement in my improvisation and clothing in my photographic work. I have previously published a methodology for recycling improvisation (1998, 2000), but my aim here was to make those sometimes tacit knowledges and methodologies from the creative processes explicit through performance. Examining the work of key improvisers greatly informed this project and helped me locate my work in an international context. I interviewed, amongst others, Nichole Beutler, Meg Stuart and Xavier Le Roy about specific improvised pieces they had created. These findings both confirmed and expanded my existing ideas about improvisation and prompted me to rethink what documentation and memory might mean where improvised dance is concerned. a dance for radio explores through practice as research notions of recycling, documentation and memory. It tests the limits of existing paradigms about dance improvisation (in particular movement recall, strategies for structuring material and conscious awareness of decisions made) through the exploration of current performance theories (De Spain on improvisation, Burt on performative presence) and discourse about contemporary photographic practice (Crewdson on memory association, Karou’s reflexive construction of death in landscapes). By bringing these different discourses into relationship through my own practice-based research, a dance for radio aims to generate new kinds of embodied knowledge dealing particularly with self-reflexivity and memory in performance, and to investigate the clash between an ironic, self-reflective, semi-fictional / semi autobiographical mode of performing and the materiality of ordinary, task-based movement.