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There are recurring themes in Zarrilli's long career of writing about the processes of performance, and his most recent book (Toward) A Phenomenology of Acting (2020) brings together these concerns in what could be seen as a culmination of his life's work – dissolving the boundaries between the studio, the stage and the theorization of these processes. We could look briefly over the entirety of his written contribution to theatre research – from his meticulous studies of kalaripayattu and kathakali dance drama, to his groundbreaking edited collection Acting (Re)considered and the innovative co-authored Theatre Histories to his monograph Psychophysical Acting (which won the ATHE Outstanding Book of the Year Award), as well as numerous other reflections on training and performance.

Image: Courtesy of The Dartington Hall Trust Archive.I am … I am … I am … a piece of weight … which is gradually more and more me, and a human body, and it is all there. And I can especially concen...

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Intellect via the DOI in this record.

Rebecca Loukes contextualises the work of dancer and body awareness practitioner Gertrud-Falke Heller as an introduction to Falke-Heller's previously unpublished reflections on her three years teaching movement to dance students at the Jooss-Leeder school at Dartington Hall, UK. Loukes also discusses the questions Falke-Heller's work raises about the interpretation of primary source material on training away from its original cultural and historical context. The source material itself addresses key principles in Falke-Heller's work, heavily influenced by the practice of German body awareness pioneer Elsa Gindler (1885–1961) including breathing, the relationship between relaxation and tension and the body in space.

when a real animal appears on stage, it is ‘deadly’ as Robert Bresson claimed, because we cannot take our eyes off it. And if we cannot take our eyes off it, is it not great acting? (Matthew Goulis...

Explaining this work is like trying to explain how a strawberry tastes to someonewho has never tasted a strawberry.Gertrud Falke-Heller 1980This statement may resonate with many who practice, teach, or write about dance and movement training and performance, but it is particularly apt in relation to the work of Gertrud Falke-Heller (1891–1984). Her extraordinary career spanned almost sixty years, and she worked with some of the most influential figures in European modern dance and performance, including Rudolph Laban, Mary Wigman, and Kurt Jooss. The training she developed, based mainly on the work of German body awareness pioneer Elsa Gindler (1885–1961), did not have a name, and little documentation about it exists. After an early career as a performer in Hamburg, Falke-Heller taught this form of training for Ballet Jooss at Dartington Hall in the 1930s. She developed her work after World War II with psychiatric patients in a variety of hospitals in England and Scotland and died at her home in London in 1984. In an interview given four years before her death, Falke-Heller lists the following questions and concerns that underpinned her work in the many different contexts to which it has been applied:The body awareness in the sitting, standing, walking, lying down in all human functioning. What is expressive movement? Where does it start to be really interesting? And where is it empty? Then also the space—the dynamic in the room. That's what I was always interested in from the beginning. (Falke-Heller 1980)

In this article Rebecca Loukes explores the practice of German psychophysical awareness practitioner Elsa Gindler (1885–1961), whose work influenced twentieth-century performance in a range of ways, but has not previously been documented in this context. Loukes situates Gindler's training and early work amongst key early twentieth-century Gymnastik practitioners before tracing developments in her life and work, drawing from Gindler's 1926 article, her unpublished class notes, and her students' memories. She discusses what Gindler meant by cultivating a state of ‘concentration’, and how this related to breathing, tension, and relaxation, both in the studio and daily life. She then indicates how this can usefully be applied to contemporary pre-performance training or work on the ‘beginning state of the actor’. Rebecca Loukes is a practitioner, performer, and researcher in the area of actor training and psychophysical awareness. She has been training in practices derived from Gindler's work for over ten years. Her recent writing includes ‘Body Awareness in Performer Training: the Hidden Legacy of Gertrud Falke-Heller (1891–1984)’ for Dance Research Journal (in press). She is Lecturer in Performance Practice at the University of Exeter.