Touching the ineffable: Collective creative collaboration, education and the secular-spiritual in performing arts

This article considers a range of spiritual, psychological and pedagogical writing to examine whether the contemporary notion of ‘secular-spirituality’ can move forward our understanding of collaborative working processes in the performing arts. With reference to Anttila, Bigger, Bini, Czikszentmihalyi, Lave and Wenger, James, Roff, and Van Ness, the article focuses on the rehearsal room interplay of life world and social world through three key notions. These are ‘embodied knowing’, ‘bodily intelligence’ and ‘belonging’ in relation to the individual in the wider collaborative process. Some working practices of Forced Entertainment – as discussed by Tim Etchells – are then considered as a concluding and practice-based referent.