Performing Arts
Between necessity and fragments of alternativity: DIY experiences in French roller derby
Between 1935 and 1970 roller derby was a co-ed North American sport practised on roller skates and played on a banked track. The 2000s marked its revival when a group of women decided to give it a new lease of life: roller derby is now exclusively for women and takes place on a flat track. Teams assert their independence from established institutions and follow a model of ‘do-it-yourself’ organization. According to some critics the roller derby revival is a continuation of the feminist Riot Grrrl movement. This article aims to understand how French roller derby players use the ‘alternative’ heritage of American women. By mobilizing the frameworks of Cultural Studies and Sport Subculture the article reflects on the ways in which the legacy of Riot Grrrl as a movement to challenge a dominant order enables derby teams to create alternatives to mainstream sports models. Through 90 interviews and participant observation conducted between January 2020 and the present day the study was able to show a use of the DIY ethos articulated between resourcefulness and a claim to independence. While Riot Grrrl radically defends the values of the punk movement against the prevailing economic and gender order French roller derby and its teams propose a hybrid sporting model articulated between reflections on a different way of looking at sport and a move away from the DIY model of the early days.
Family first: Yahritza y Su Esencia, family bands and the musical education of Mexican Americans
Beginning with a description of música Mexicana’s rising stars Yahritza y Su Esencia a ‘family band’ of young Mexican American musicians we suggest that school music educators become more informed of the musical interests involvements and learning styles of Mexican American students at home within their families and in the communities that surround them. Yahritza’s trademark sierreño style is described and contextualized in light of other notable genres such as mariachi música nortena son jarocho banda grupera and trap corridos. The phenomenon of family bands within Mexican American communities is explored as a means of children’s musical enculturation away from school juxtaposed with a history of exclusion of Mexican American students from school music opportunities. The article addresses limitations of the American model of school music programmes including (1) the need for opportunities for Mexican American (and other) populations to access meaningful musical education experiences and (2) the gap between the music genres offered within the curriculum and those that Mexican American (and other) students experience at home and within their communities. Even as we acknowledge and applaud the presence of family bands and other strong music community music practices among Mexican Americans we call for a national initiative among music educators to ensure that the music which students learn in school is at least germane to students’ home experiences.
Nihilism and the ‘death of God’ in the work of Siouxsie and the Banshees
This article locates Siouxsie and the Banshees within the philosophical tradition of existentialism specifically the work of Nietzsche and Heidegger. Aspects of 1970s British punk-rock share with Nietzsche a concern with the condition of ‘nihilism’. For Nietzsche with the western decline in the belief in God humankind no longer has an external source of authority within which meaning evaluation and morality are anchored. Nietzsche’s philosophical project can be read as an elaboration of the conditions under which the creation of new values may be possible to avoid nihilistic despair. Following Nietzsche’s retreat into the Self Heidegger is concerned with authentic existence: his philosophical project can be read as a call to an authentic life. The song ‘Israel’ by Siouxsie and the Banshees can be read as a commentary on the collective anxiety surrounding the ‘death of God’ nihilism and a preoccupation with authentic existence in the twentieth century.
Leaping into Dance Literacy through the Language of Dance®
The main aim of this book is to present the theory and purpose underpinning the approaches to dance literacy as explored by the Language of Dance® community in the USA and UK. Through their teacher training programs they are changing the face of dance-based dance literacy using motif notation.
Through their teacher training programs they are changing the face of dance-based dance literacy using motif notation. This book reveals how dance notation literacy has changed due to practices being focused on constructivist and constructionist pedagogy. Based on work by dance educator Ann Hutchinson Guest and expanded upon by her protégés this is the first book of its kind to bring together theory praxis original research outcomes taxonomies model lesson plans learning domain taxonomies of dance and voices of dance teachers who have explored using dance notation literacy. We are in a new era for educating with dance notation focusing on learners’ engagement by making connections between the learning domains using constructivist and constructionist learning approaches.
Arts-literate dancers can deepen their dance craft and transfer their arts knowledge capacities and skills to lifelong learning. Dance-based dance literacy practices using notation enhance learners’ flexibility adaptability self-direction initiative productivity responsibility leadership and cross-cultural skills.
The book will appeal to dance educators focusing on cognitive and metacognitive learning in dance using communication problem-solving and critical thinking.
Useful for preschool and primary teachers aiming to integrate dance into classroom experiences and for secondary teachers teaching dance and looking to upgrade their approach to dance literacy so students are able to achieve higher level cognitive learning problem solving and social skills in dance classrooms.
Choreographers and dance teachers will find new approaches to dance making and to expressing their craft using a system that is well codified and now augmented with examples to guide them with making their own projects and processes.
Anyone with an interest in the idea of dance literacy will find concrete examples of how to put their knowledge into practice to advance their teaching and dance making.
Applied Theatre, Third Edition
Applied Theatre was the first collection to assist practitioners and students in developing critical frameworks for their own community-based theatrical projects. The editors draw on thirty case studies in applied theatre from fifteen countries—covering a wide range of disciplines from theatre studies to education medicine and law—and collect essential readings to provide a comprehensive survey of the field.
Infused with a historical and theoretical overview of practical theatre Applied Theatre offers clear developmental approaches and models for practical application.
This third edition offers refreshed case studies from many countries worldwide that provide exemplars for the practice of applied theatre. The book will be useful to both instructors and students in its focus on providing clear introductory chapters that lay out the scope of the field dozens of case studies in all areas of the field and a new chapter on responses to the global pandemic of 2020.
Also includes a new section on representation in its final chapter looking at the issues of how we represent ourselves and others on stage.
‘I take them on as if facts in a book’: Sex educators’ cumulative witnessing of sexual trauma
Through a visual essay the author explores the intersection of trauma and sexual health education (SHE) using art-based expressions from an ethnographic exploration of novice educators’ embodied experiences of SHE training. In particular the author examines educators’ engagements with two forms of trauma: (1) self-trauma: trauma personally experienced by sex educators and (2) trauma transposition: other individuals’ disclosures of past harms to the educators. The author theorizes these engagements together as a form of cumulative witnessing – the collective excessive consumption of violence through direct and vicarious exposures. Inspired by palimpsest methods carbon tracing paper and photography were used to express the educators’ cumulative witnessing of sexual traumas via visually layering their words drawings and expressed feelings about the sexual traumas that thread through SHE. The inquiry highlights key implications for SHE pedagogical practices including acknowledging trauma dealing with trauma disclosures and learning from and with trauma.
Off Book
In the theatre world ‘off book’ signifies a deadline in the creative process: the date by which performers are to have memorised their lines and will no longer be allowed to carry their play script – the ‘book’ – on stage. As such Off Book makes a strangely appropriate title for a book about devised performance in higher education. In its usual context ‘off book’ captures the tension between ephemeral live performance and durable author-ized literature: in one sense the book – the written play – is the essential core the seed that gives the performance life and meaning. Yet the opposite could be equally true: an ‘on book’ performance would not really be a play at all and an actor reciting lines out of a script in hand is not really acting. A play is only realised in or through a performance. We cannot really learn or play our part until we can put the book down and enter the stage without it.
Devised performance might be described as ‘theatre without the book.’ Yet devisors also often use books – books like this one practical guidebooks and how-to manuals as well as a myriad of literature outside the discipline mined for inspiration. This is particularly manifest when devising in the context of higher education - a milieu like theatre wherein books traditionally signify authority status and meaning. So to the extent that theatres and campuses are places where one expects everything to be done ‘by the book’ devising on campuses is rebellious even sacrilegious. But on the other hand both the theatre and the university are expected to challenge tradition defy expectations and conduct experiments.
The book is presented in four sections reflecting the range of roles devising plays in higher education. The first section Devising Pedagogy: Teaching Transferable Tools examines how and why practitioners educators and programs conceptualise and plan for devising with adult learners in a range of higher education contexts. The second Devising Friction: Ensembles Individuals and the Institution shifts the discussion to the classroom where abstract pedagogical rubber meets the road of concrete reality. The third Devising (by) Degrees Practice-led postgraduate devising projects features contributions by emerging scholar-practitioners who engage with devising as both an object and method of creative scholarship. Finally the chapters in Devising Bridges: University-Community Engagement explore how devising connects higher education institutions with the public they are intended to serve — particularly in populations and communities that are marginalised within or even explicitly excluded from participating in higher education such as children and people with intellectual disabilities.
A valuable and unique resource for drama educators in universities university students in education drama and arts managements graduate students conducting research theatre historians practicing devised theatre artists.
Performing Institutions
Performing Institutions: Contested Sites and Structures of Care builds upon scholarly work rooted in the social and cultural histories of education self-organization activist practices performance design and artistic research (at)tending to the ways that institutions are necessarily political and performed.
By evoking the idea of Performing Institutions it foregrounds all kinds of ‘actors’ that engage with (re)imagining creative practices - social artistic and pedagogical - that critically interact with institutional frameworks and the broader local and global society of which these institutions are part.
With case studies and critical reflections from Denmark Ireland Finland the UK Canada the USA Chile Asia and Australasia contributors show how they envision or pursue performing artistic cultural social and educational practices as caring engagements with contested sites addressing the following questions. How do current institutions perform – academically spatially custodially and structurally? How might we stay engaged with the ways that institutions are inherently contested sites and what role do care and counter-hegemonic practices play in rearticulating other ways of performing institutions and how they perform on us?
These are the questions central to this book as it stages a productive tension between two main themes: structures of care (instituting otherwise) and sites of contestations (desiring change).
Some of the texts in this collection stage a productive tension between ideas about caring contestations and contestation as a caring engagement in practice with a view towards institutional transformation. Other contributors investigate the idea of caring contestations as a critical concept that draws attention to questions of power and to the exclusions produced and reproduced in and through specific institutional practices. As such this collection of writing puts forward caring contestations as a critical mode for (re)enacting institutional engagements. This also brings forward questions of agency and how for those of us who perform within institutional structures we care to engage and/or contest those institutional engagements.
It is primarily aimed at scholars educators research-practitioners and postgraduate students in the fields of performance studies theory creation and design those working at art institutions and art schools Also relevant to researchers working across various fields of organizational as well as educational approaches to performance culture.
Theatre for Lifelong Learning
Theatre for Lifelong Learning is a step-by-step guide for anyone interested in teaching theatre courses and creating theatre with older adults.
This book provides instructors with syllabi discussion questions classroom management strategies resource lists and activities to teach courses from beginning to end. Special topics include Playwriting Play Development Storytelling Theatre Appreciation Theatre Criticism Theatre History and Theatre Theory.
This book helps readers become confident informed instructors of older adult learners. Theatre for Lifelong Learning is a tool for anyone who wants to build theatrical communities and support the emotional well-being of older adults through education practice and experimentation while also having fun.
Theatre for Lifelong Learning is a complete guide to navigate the theatre classroom from beginning to end. Anyone can become a theatre expert and educator with practice. If you already have a background in performing arts this book provides strategies that are useful for you as well. If you have experience as an educator this book will enrich your current skill set with interdisciplinary approaches. Tips and examples throughout assist you in creating and maintaining an accessible environment and making courses your own.
So how can teaching and learning about theatre help us live in the moment? When we are not engaged it’s easy to forget that we are capable curious creative people who can expand our knowledge and experiences every day. Theatre encourages finding meaning in small things chance encounters and the tapestry of life. All the material provided in this book will motivate instructors and students to get involved.
It will be most useful for arts practitioners participatory practitioners institutional educators and community outreach officers independent theatre instructors. Of potential interest to scholars and researchers in age studies or in teaching and learning. May also be useful for community arts organizations regional theatres and non-profit organizations working with older adults.
The importance of teaching performance artistry
This article will explain the philosophy and methodology behind developing and teaching the performance artistry curriculum at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Students who study performance artistry are more prepared to work in the popular music industry/marketplace – personally artistically and professionally. They report being more widely informed about the business of their artistry having clearer goals owning their identities embracing communication with their audiences using a more honest voice on their social platforms and feeling freer to take risks. Success in this field is a combination of presentation forethought execution content strategy and effectiveness on top of talent. I will detail performance artistry assignments and illustrate their role in bringing out authenticity and excellence in a collegiate music major population. This curriculum contains valuable training tools in different educational configurations (lecture-style classes private instruction and workshop/masterclass settings) and all genres.