Search

In this article the author draws on their participation in a ten-day training in Action Theater led by its creator Ruth Zaporah in Tarbena, Spain, June 2014. This interdisciplinary improvisation form utilises silent movement, sound and movement, and speech to create improvisatory performance. It is argued here that Zaporah’s established pedagogical form takes improvisers through a process of dealing with language which can be viewed in evolutionary terms. Moving through silent movement and the vocalisation of sounds allows for a focus on sensation which gives rise to a greater awareness of what Zaporah refers to as ‘feeling states’. The content of improvisatory performance depends on staying in touch with feeling states such that it complicates issues to do with feeling and emotion in ways that become particularly challenging when an improviser is compelled to use speech or what Zaporah refers to as ‘physical narrative’. The author draws on Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenology to propose that we view Action Theater’s use of speech as ‘post-kinetic’ and thereby prioritise its somatic rather than semantic ground.

Artefacts is a multi-voiced collection of paraphernalia, documentation and reflection relating to a week-long event (July 2015) that revolved around the work of dancers and poets Julyen Hamilton (Spain) and Billie Hanne (Belgium). Hosted by Chisenhale Dance Space, London, and curated by dance-artist Antonio de la Fe and artist/scholar Robert Vesty, the Space and Words for Dancers event consisted of a six-day workshop for 25 dancers led by Hamilton and Hanne that focused on the use of space and words in performance; two solo performances by Hamilton (Play) and Hanne (Deep Brown Sea); an Evening Talk event with Hamilton and Hanne talking in-depth about their work and the making of poetry and dance; as well as an open-to-the-public Discussion Day that used Open Space Technology (OST) as an organizing tool to discuss the question ‘What skills are required of the dancer and poet to produce poetry and dance in performance?’. Artefacts is a collaboration with graphic designer Tomas Di Giovanni and includes Billie’s Outline, a rationale for bringing words and dance together in the workshop, written by Hanne; poetry by Hamilton and Hanne composed especially for this Words and Dance issue of Choreographic Practices; programme notes from Play and Deep Brown Sea; a reflective piece by Antonio de la Fe on the nature of work for the dance artist as performer entitled That You Took the Workshop Doesn’t Mean You Have Done the Work; a photo-essay by resident photographer Maria Andrews; extracts from the transcript of Evening Talk collated around the headings On Poetry and Dance, On Space, On Making Pieces, On Repeating Pieces and On How it Works; and finally, a nod to the discussion day. Overall, the aim of Artefacts is to pull together some coordinates of the different and multifarious strands of activity that went into and came out of the Space and Words for Dancers work-week, which inspired this special Words and Dance edition of Choreographic Practices, but to do so in a way tha