Performing Arts
artmaking as embodied enquiry
What can a fold be? Virtually anything and everything.
For centuries folds/folding has captured the world’s imagination. Folds readily appear in revivals of the ancient craft of origamithe simplest acts of pedestrian life in art design architecture performing arts linguistics the philosophical turnings of the mind and last but not the least in the many ingenious computations of (bio)engineering and technology. What awaits our understanding is how deeply the fold roots into embodiment into our very impulse to create.
This book is about folding as a vibrant stimulus for trans-disciplinary artistic research – whether for the performative for product realization or simply to enliven body mind and spirit. Conceived as art-made-differently Susan and Glenna share the abundance of their decade-long collaboration in developing their approach to practice research in the fold. In addition to their own insights they invite eight of their collaborators to contribute each a veteran artist. The fold is destined for artmaking – for making any art. Etching into the very fabric of embodiment the fold practice reaches outside the constraints of disciplinary silos into niche areas that embrace the unknown with all its underlying tensions and ambiguities.
Reflecting on a current and unique somatic oriented arts research practice and pedagogy with an intriguing blend of interdisciplinary concern and theory practice and includes a wide variety of practice samples and images.
In Smithereens
What happens to contemporary dance costumes when the show is over and their surrounding legacy slips from view? How might costumes be mobilised towards representational repair post-performance? Located within Lea Anderson’s choreographic archive this book charts a series of hands-on interventions with the fabric remains of her companies The Cholmondeleys and The Featherstonehaughs. Centred on practices of Disintegration Preservation Transaction and Display they offer provocative modes of engaging with the physical leftovers of performance the degrading of memory and legacy around pre-digital theatre work and the temporal material transitions of artefacts enduring outside of traditional museological contexts.
How might we regard these mercurial items? As precious relics to be protected in museum holdings ghostly harbingers of residual performance histories or inconvenient detritus? The book travels from props-makers’ studios to auction houses and galleries incorporating film-making artefact handling and curation along the way in lively dialogue with perspectives from dance history material culture sociology and performance studies. The choreographic archive is envisioned as repository of the awkward scattered remains of legacy blown apart into fragments. Smithereens which can if we allow them demand an alternative after-life that disrupts the vanishing inflicted on these costumes and the companies who danced in them.
Obsessions of a Showwoman
Explores ‘showwomanry’ tracing a trajectory of incredible weird women at work: women who were stone eaters fire walkers women who hypnotized alligators or presented crucifixion shows; women in entertainment who worked for themselves; women that were often referred to as showgirls despite their extraordinary skill and artistry.
Carnesky continues an important lineage of performing women with bombastic theatrical flair and an extraordinary skill that ‘do not work for the management or the man. Showwomen work for themselves and other people work for them”. Carnesky has been a central figure in performance and live art during the last thirty years; her practice as a showwoman promotes alternative visions of matriarchal entertainment utopias and a new relationship to women’s position to power and politics.
The term showwoman introduces a new identity a new kind of performer who does not control or exploit others but opens up a possibility for collaboration that enables ‘shared experiences of visceral euphoria applause loss shape abjection hustle and struggle marginalisation and the fight against patriarchal injustices’ (Carnesky
2019 53). The book will use Carnesky’s work to showcase women working in radical ways treading the margins of cabaret and live art disrupting normative ideologies through the spectacular and opening new lines of feminist enquiry through weirdness absurdity provocation in live art and popular culture.
Consent Practices in Performing Arts Education
This book explores consent as a foundational principle to guide practices and policies in university level performing arts education. It includes descriptions of the structural power dynamics present in educational spaces as well as tools for defusing them. It adapts the consent-forward protocols that are foundational to intimacy training in order to apply them to classroom and rehearsal spaces across performing arts disciplines.
This includes opening lines of communication actively discussing personal boundaries and modeling behavior that respects those boundaries. Additionally the book uses experiential reflections to address the real-world challenges that teachers face as they work to reshape their teaching habits and processes to include consent practices.
Digital Embodiment and the Arts
A timely examination of the use of emerging technologies in the arts in recent decades from the first wave of Virtual Reality through to the current use of Mixed Augmented and Extended Realities. It highlights the necessity of understanding technological experiences through the assumption that all experience is embodied. An explosion of digital culture and experience has most certainly given artists and creative practitioners new ways of exploring a hybridisation of creative practices with access to technological tools only previously dreamt of. Further there are a number of threads around digital embodiment and its centrality to the digital experience.
The book is divided into 3: Section 1 explores the whole notion of embodied experience through a study of space and virtuality imagination and technology. Section 2 lays the ground for a more explicit understanding of the role the body has in our engagement with the digital technologies focussing on three distinct bodies: the gravitational body the virtual body and finally the hybrid body. Section 3 is split into three chronological chapters in terms of technological developments that of VR Virtual Worlds and Augmented Mixed and Extended Realities.
While individual aspects and themes covered here can be found in some recent books there is little that places digital embodiment within the arts in the way this book does. A unique synthesis.
Somatics in Dance, Ecology, and Ethics
This book of highly original essays addresses the field of movement-based and dance somatics through lenses of ethics and ecology. It is based in methods of phenomenology.
A new collection of essays previously published with Intellect as journal articles with the addition of new essays and editorial material. The text considers body-based somatic education relative to values virtues gender fluidity lived experience environmental awareness fairness and collective well-being. In delineating interdependent values of soma ecology and human movement that are newly in progress the collection conceives links between personal development of subjective knowledge and cultural critical and environmental positionality.
The text raises questions about defining somatics and self gender dynamics movement preferences normative body conceptions attention to feelings inclusiveness ethics of touch and emotional intelligence in somatics contexts. I include these crucial concerns of somatics and ethics as relational globally complex and ongoing.
Like much of Sondra Fraleigh’s writing these essays utilize phenomenology as a method to investigate embodied relationships—often through lenses of ethics and aesthetics. In providing some examples the text explores specific values of gratitude listening and emotional intelligence in somatic bodywork and learning environments.
Performing Maternities
Performing Maternities is a collection of essays creative work images and scripts which emerged out of an online international symposium held at Brighton University in November 2020. Collectively the contributors challenge celebrate and share the normative the queer the transgressive the joy and the pain of performing maternity. The book asks key questions about the construction of maternal identities and mythologies in the contemporary world the ways these impact on indivduals in different social economic and sexual identities and the ways in which - as mothers writers artists parents and grandparents -we can challenge and address those identities.
Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective
Taking as its starting point the first-ever retrospective exhibition (2021) of Canadian performance artist Jess Dobkin the book reflects on the internationally acclaimed artist’s playful and provocative practice as performer activist curator and community leader. At the same time it grapples with a question that is vital for art and performance studies: How do archives perform?
More than a discrete showing of a single artist’s work the exhibition including its new staging in book form is a large-scale research experiment in performance curation investigating what it might mean for art institutions to take seriously the embodied and communal nature of performance art in their practices of archiving and museological display.
In Jess Dobkin’s Wetrospective a cast of renowned international performance theorists and artists dive into this exploration alongside Dobkin curator Emelie Chhangur and performance theorist and dramaturg Laura Levin. These contributions appear alongside a riot of full colour photographs providing access to Dobkin’s celebrated artistic productions from the last 25 years.
From Broadway to The Bronx
The depiction of New York City in song across a variety of different genres focusing on jazz genres as well as the work of both New York born artists like Billy Joel or Lin-Manuel Miranda and artists living most of their life in New York City like Shinehead or Debbie Harry that are intimately connected with the city.
The book analyzes songs written about New York City and engage with the depiction of the city within them but mainly use it as a way to deal with several musical genres that the city has been home to and instrumental in developing. These include the musical theatre scene on Broadway and beyond but also early 20th century sheet music hip hop disco punk dancehall jazz swing rock or pop music. The collection includes essays from authors with a cultural studies media studies cultural history or musicology background making possible a far-ranging treatment of the interconnection of the city space and its musical history.
Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.
Designing and Conducting Practice-Based Research Projects
This is a textbook aimed primarily at upper undergraduate and Master’s students undertaking practice-based research in the arts and includes practical guidance examples exercises and further resources.
The book offers definitions and a brief background to practice-related research in the arts contextualization of practice-based methods within that frame a step-by-step approach to designing practice-based research projects chapter summaries examples of practice-related research exercises for progressing methods design and evaluating research approach and lists for further reading. This textbook can serve as the foundation for a wider online “living” textbook for practice-related research in the arts.
Socially Engaged Creative Practice
This is the second book in the Performance and Communities series. An edited collection from academics and artists engages with both these notions of performance – that of identities in and through time and space - and of more formal instances of specific time-limited performances; textual embodied visual and communal.
Each chapter focuses on an individual or group’s mode of working and methodological practice of performance across a range of modes disciplines and media – from community opera to online queer performance from anti-racist class-room pedagogy to 1980s cabaret in nightclubs from community art projects in schools to community writing projects in transport interchanges the performers writers and creators represented here all engage and grapple with contemporary performance as a situated practice and as a problematic.
The personal perspective of each performer – directors librettists producers writers performers – is explicitly located in a community and the book offers a series of case studies detailing socially engaged work that aligns with concepts of performance and community.
Performing with the Dead
Proposes a methodology for incorporating concepts drawn from ancestor trance in Afrolatinx ritual for actors trained in Western methods. Danowski created four new works of theatrical performance writing the play texts and incorporating acting exercises from Afrolatinx rituals adapted for non–practitioners. Working toward a phenomenological understanding of what is happening when a performer incorporates a character drawing on the ritual knowledge of trance possession in Lukumí and Palo Monte to examine how ontologies might speak to each other.
Constructing a methodology called kanga (from the Bantu for tying and untying) using three methods based on aspects of Afrolatinx ritual and modified for performance contexts: spell charm and trance. This methodology enacts and complicates distinctions between performance and ritual serving as a contribution to respectful and responsible intercultural performance practices.
The methodology is bricoleur drawing from ethnography psychoanalytic theory and phenomenology. Kanga in practice leads to a state of consciousness that Danowski calls hauntological. This borrows from Derrida but is redefined to refer to the study of haunted states of consciousness where reality is co–constituted by the living and the dead where ancestral spirits are invoked to do the work once reserved for characters.
The Drama Therapy Decision Tree, 2nd Edition
This substantially revised and expanded edition of the The Drama Therapy Decision Tree provides an integrated model for therapeutic decision-making by uniting drama therapy interventions with diagnostic information individual and group processes psychological distance the drama therapy pie and global outcomes.
This book is a practical guide in four sections not a checklist. Rather than using a standardized protocol that makes the decisions for the therapist drama therapy is based on dynamic embodied creative action with participants in the here and now. Conscious planning on the part of the drama therapist before the session supports spontaneity and creativity preparing them to make good therapeutic decisions in the moment during the session.
The opening section guides readers through the foundational principles leading readers into Section Two The Decision Tree which is a series of questions for early career drama therapists to ask themselves as they prepare treatment plans for clients. Diversity Equity and Ethics are covered in Section Three from the point of view of creative arts therapy practitioners. Section Four looks at Integrating the Five Phases of Treatment with the Drama Therapy Pie following different populations (diagnosis) of clients through the five phases of group therapy in order to illustrate how the Decision Tree supports intervention choice in the different phases of treatment.
The authors strive to provide a common language for communicating what drama therapists do and how they do it in order to demystify drama therapy for other mental health and medical professionals. Using the decision tree as a guide early career drama therapists can move forward confidently and ground their work with participants in an integrated system.
An online searchable database of drama therapy interventions provides descriptions therapeutic outcomes addressed and other useful information provides a wealth of additional supporting material. There is also a separate online resource of deroling activities.
The online resources can also be an asset for non-drama therapists who are wanting to incorporate a more active and embodied component safely into their work particularly in terms of warm-ups closure and deroling.
The Drama Therapy Decision Tree, 2nd Edition
This substantially revised and expanded edition of the The Drama Therapy Decision Tree provides an integrated model for therapeutic decision-making by uniting drama therapy interventions with diagnostic information individual and group processes psychological distance the drama therapy pie and global outcomes.
This book is a practical guide in four sections not a checklist. Rather than using a standardized protocol that makes the decisions for the therapist drama therapy is based on dynamic embodied creative action with participants in the here and now. Conscious planning on the part of the drama therapist before the session supports spontaneity and creativity preparing them to make good therapeutic decisions in the moment during the session.
The opening section guides readers through the foundational principles leading readers into Section Two The Decision Tree which is a series of questions for early career drama therapists to ask themselves as they prepare treatment plans for clients. Diversity Equity and Ethics are covered in Section Three from the point of view of creative arts therapy practitioners. Section Four looks at Integrating the Five Phases of Treatment with the Drama Therapy Pie following different populations (diagnosis) of clients through the five phases of group therapy in order to illustrate how the Decision Tree supports intervention choice in the different phases of treatment.
The authors strive to provide a common language for communicating what drama therapists do and how they do it in order to demystify drama therapy for other mental health and medical professionals. Using the decision tree as a guide early career drama therapists can move forward confidently and ground their work with participants in an integrated system.
An online searchable database of drama therapy interventions provides descriptions therapeutic outcomes addressed and other useful information provides a wealth of additional supporting material. There is also a separate online resource of deroling activities.
The online resources can also be an asset for non-drama therapists who are wanting to incorporate a more active and embodied component safely into their work particularly in terms of warm-ups closure and deroling.
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.
An Introduction to the Phenomenology of Performance Art
This original and unique new book takes an integrated approach to interrogating the experience and location of the self/s within the context of performance art practice. In its framing and execution of practical exercises and focused snapshots of internationally recognized performance practice Bacon situates their argument within the boundaries of specialism in the critical curation of performance art praxis as well as contemporary phenomenological scholarship.
Introducing the study and application of performance art through phenomenology for radical artists educators and practitioner-researchers; this exciting new book invites readers to take part explore contemporary performance art and activate their own practices.
Applying a queer phenomenology to unpack the importance of a multiplicity of Self/s the book guides readers to be academically rigorous when capturing embodied experiences featuring exercises to activate their practices and clear introductory definitions to key phenomenological terms. Includes interviews and insights from some of the best examples of transgressive performance art practice of this century help to help unpack the application of phenomenology as Bacon calls for a queer reimagining of Heidegger’s ‘The Origin of the Work of Art.’
This is an important contribution to the field and will be welcomed by performance artists and academics interested in performance. It may also appeal to those teaching concepts of phenomenology.
It will be relevant to students of performance as well as to artists audiences and museum goers. The approachable layout and clear authorial voice will add to the appeal for students early career researchers and mean that it has strong potential for inclusion in undergraduate and postgraduate syllabi within the field.
Gender, Sex, and Sexuality in Musical Theatre
Critics and fans alike often mistake theatrical song and dance as evoking a sweeping sense of simplicity heteronormativity and traditionalism. Nothing drove home this cultural misunderstanding for Kelly Kessler as when a relative insisted she watch the Clint Eastwood-Lee Marvin cinematic transfer of Paddy Chayefsky’s Paint Your Wagon (1969) with a young niece and nephew because it was a ‘sweet movie.’ In the relative’s memory good old-fashioned singing and dancing—matched with the power of an assumed hegemonic embrace of social norms—far outweighed the whoremongering alcoholism wife-selling and what appears to be narratively sanctioned polyamory.
This collection seeks to trouble such an over-idealized impression of musical theatre. Tackling Rockettes divas and chorus boys; hit shows such as Hamilton and Spring Awakening; and lesser-known but ground-breaking gems like Erin Markey’s A Ride on The Irish Cream and Kirsten Childs’s Bella: An American Tall Tale.
Gender Sex and Sexuality in Musical Theatre: He/She/They Could Have Danced All Night takes a broad look at musical theatre across a range of intersecting lenses such as race nation form dance casting marketing pedagogy industry platform-specificity stardom politics and so on. This collection assembles an amazing group of established and emergent musical theatre scholars to wrestle with the complexities of the gendered and sexualized musical theatre form. Gender and desire have long been at the heart of the musical whether because ‘birds and bees’ (and educated fleas’) were doing it a farm girl simply couldn’t ‘say no’ or one’s ‘tits and ass’ were preventing them from landing the part.
An exciting and vibrant collection of articles from the archives of Studies in Musical Theatre with contributions from Ryan Donovan Michele Dvoskin Sherrill Gow Jiyoon Jung David Haldane Lawrence Stephanie Lim Dustyn Martinich Adrienne Gibbons Oehlers Deborah Paredez Alejandro Postigo George Rodosthenous Janet Werther Stacy Wolf Elizabeth L. Wollman Bryan Vandevender and Kelly Kessler brought together with a newly commissioned piece by Jordan Ealey. All set against the backdrop of Kelly Kessler’s scene-setting introduction.
Excellent potential for classroom and course use on undergraduate and graduate courses in theatre studies musical studies women’s and gender studies.
Performance Art in Practice
Performance Art in practice – pedagogical approaches opens up a variety of philosophies that explore explain and challenge Performance art and introduces a range of practices used in higher level education.
The book is a collection of nine independent essays. All the writers have several years of practice as artists curators teachers professors researchers and in establishing performance art education in Finland. The essays explain challenge and deconstruct performance art from various angles: the body as a tool and a base of identity self as material pedagogic acts of dissidence challenging societal questions without politicing art building sustainable artwork based on emotions intuition and research using Fluxus scores in contemporary practices etc. are all topics dealt by the writers of Performance Art in practice – pedagogical approaches.
The essays are written from a practical point of view: how do we concretely teach performance art why have we chosen these ways and what are the outcomes. Teaching the experimental art form that doesn’t wear a uniform and relies on ever changing time and space isn’t all evident. Deconstructing performance art and reconstructing pedagogy springs out ideas that are relevant also elsewhere in the contemporary society.
The book challenges art school institutions: Individuality bound to collegiality fruitful dialogue that bases on trust and sharing with a sociologically and politically challenging curricula come out in texts written by Aapo Korkeaoja Eero Yli-Vakkuri Jussi Matilainen Pia Lindy and Tuomas Laitinen that refer to the remote countryside campus of SAMK Kankaanpää school of art. More urban perspective with philosophies research interests and pedagogic practices at The University of Arts Helsinki are opened up by Tero Nauha Annette Arlander Pilvi Porkola and Leena Kela in their essays.