Akram Khan and English National Ballet

This chapter examines the development of Akram Khan’s choreographic pathway as an aggregate of diverse influences, primarily experienced through issues of identity, otherness, and interculturalism. Beginning with the early confusion of juxtaposing classical dance training in kathak and a fascination with Michael Jackson, Khan’s career has progressed, largely through an instinctive opportunism—absorbed from the “formless hunch” philosophy of early mentor, Peter Brook—and an ongoing fascination with the exploratory possibilities of collaboration through the hybrid mixing of dance disciplines to create his own style of mood movement. This process has taken Khan from the classical world of kathak, through contemporary dance, and back into another classical discipline, ballet, with detours along the way into flamenco, the Olympics, and text-based physical theater. The chapter describes the impact of all these experiences on Khan’s contribution to modern ballet, particularly in his association with English National Ballet.

Tracing Choreography

Chapter 1 contextualizes choreography as integral to, yet invisibilized within, immersive performance. The chapter's focus is the thematic concerns of choreography in Western dance history, specifically the intentionality with which it is created, the portability of its concepts outside of the realm of formal dance, and its resulting ubiquity across domains in the twenty-first century. Deployed by European aristocrats in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as a practice for reinforcing structures of ritual and power when assigning societal roles, choreography as a term emerged alongside the professionalization of dance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the mid-twentieth century, choreography became a tacitly borrowed resource for creators of physical theater. In the twenty-first century, choreography is seen as an expanded practice, having surged beyond the bounds of dance to the point that it can be used to organize the behavior of spectators such that they perceive themselves to be immersed.

Haptic Thinking and Experience through Collective Artistic Research

This article offers a theoretical reflection and practical proposals from the HeterotRópico artistic laboratory, a nomadic laboratory - where we are investigating dance, performance, physical theater, in conjunction with other diverse social technologies. They bring tools to activate collective practices developed within open creative processes. We will focus on the seminar lab I have proposed at the Masters in Arts Practice and Visual Culture 2018-2019 in Madrid, bringing together an intercultural group of artists and thinkers of around practices of trans-disciplinary arts. Artistic laboratories, in the diverse formats that they are defined today, aim to activate a field of subjectivities and corporeality, explored and co-produced in their uniqueness during the artistic process.

“A Delightful Measure or a Dance”

This chapter considers work created by the Synetic Theater Company in the Washington, DC, area. Since its inception in 2002, Synetic has produced an award-winning series of “physical theater.” Under the co-direction of Paata and Irina Tsikurishvili, both of whom were trained professionally in the Republic of Georgia, Synetic has created over a dozen “wordless” Shakespeare performances that have received numerous awards. They recently remounted their original production, Hamlet: The Rest Is Silence, although they have offered a wide range of successful, though surprisingly diverse, Shakespearean adaptations, including Antony and Cleopatra, The Tempest, King Lear, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado about Nothing. According to their website, “Synetic” reflects the company’s artistic goal of combining “synthesis,” or the “coming together of distinct elements to form a whole,” and “Kinetic: pertaining to or imparting motion, active, dynamic” to create Synetic: a dynamic synthesis of the arts.” They state their ambition to become “the premier American physical theater . . . fusing dynamic art forms—such as text, drama, movement, acrobatics, dance, and music.” Synetic labels itself as “physical theater,” not as dance, but dance theory provides a relevant framework through which to discuss their creations. This chapter discusses the theoretical and practical implications of presenting Shakespeare through movement and music rather than spoken language.

Incorporating the Text

This chapter considers two works, Pericles Redux and The Tempest Replica, created by Not Man Apart (NMA) Physical Theatre Ensemble and Kidd Pivot, respectively. It argues that the cross-over genres of physical theater and dance theater are well suited to Shakespeare adaptations, and that these two works succeed because, in keeping with Shakespeare’s own dramatic art, they mingle comic and tragic, classical and vernacular, and “pivot” among different media, movement styles, and registers of performance. Through humor, movement, and physical risk-taking, they surprise traditional audiences with visceral energy and engage audiences who not might not otherwise seek out Shakespeare. NMA and Kidd Pivot combine dance and storytelling so as to make movement the medium, not the servant, of the story. They demonstrate that movement-based adaptations of Shakespeare can speak to the bodies, minds, and emotions of audiences as profoundly as works of pure theater or pure movement.

Shakespeare and L.O.V.E.

This chapter explores Volcano Theatre Company’s radical interpretation of Shakespeare’s Sonnets through their award-winning physical theater production, L.O.V.E. (1992). Drawing on literary analysis and sociological readings, the chapter considers current and historical perspectives on what many consider to be Shakespeare’s most intimate work, and notably the implications of the poetry’s homoerotic focus. The chapter then explores Volcano’s adaptation of this nontheatrical work into narratively driven performance material, focusing on analysis of the company’s choreographic and aesthetic responses to the textual stimulus. The author’s decade-long experience of performing in L.O.V.E. is augmented through interviews with key members of the production’s original cast and creative collaborators. Finally, the chapter reflects on the critical impact of L.O.V.E. through analysis of its cultural and political reception both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

Very Complex Matter: Collaborations in Art and Geobiology

Geobiologist Dawn Sumner, known for her research on early life in Antarctica, her contributions to the Mars Curiosity science team, and for co-founding KeckCAVES at the University of California Davis, has also spent the past decade working in collaboration with artists. This paper addresses the relevance of these art/science collaborations to her scientific practice through an analysis of four of her projects: Collapse (suddenly falling down) with Sideshow Physical Theater; Dream Vortex with Meredith Tromble; Life Extreme with Philip Alden Benn; and The Vortex with Donna Sternberg and Meredith Tromble. The experiences gained by Sumner and her collaborators show that there are many different ways in which artists and scientists can learn from each other. Echoing throughout the collaborations is the realisation that turning ideas into form yields a result that can stimulate the next cycle of creativity.