International Federation for Theatre Research Conference
Organiser: Shanghai Theatre Academy
Embodied Research Working Group

Tittle: An embodied encounter with stillness, space/place and the imagination

Abstract
How does the body move within a space, and how do images take its shape?
In this interactive proposal, I am exploring how a body moves within the space and ask what the various images that are taking shape through the body are.  Expanding on the idea of divestiture particularly that on stillness, I begin to explore one’s regular set of movement versus one’s reluctance to move in any systematic manner.

These embodied images conjured in the two manners raise questions of what is a habitual body and from where do these set of movement come. What if the body refuses to move in its usual manner and play with the concept of imbalance and falling? What does it mean for the body to be imbalanced? Playing with the concept of falling and imbalance can provide a kind of transitional phase for how the body moves between and through the space encountered and perhaps articulate a different set of movement?

However, what if the body gives in to this disequilibrium and fall, this sense of falling will require the body to let go, to lose control and so open up this sensation of fragility and in this opening, perhaps the body can reclaim itself? In this reclaiming, I am suggesting a process of decolonisalisation, because, this falling/imbalance, finds the body to be more in a state of stillness and yet moving, yet experiencing.

Organiser: Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia)

Tittle: CASE STUDY: The Phoenix with Seven Tales: a collaborative trans/disciplinary performance in a community. (Co-presentation of paper (Emylia Safian)

Abstract
This participatory presentation will examine the processes in realising the performance of The Phoenix with Seven Tales through the themes of embodied practices and imagery at the intersections of theatre and art therapy processes.  Notions central to this collaborative trans/disciplinary practice are the sensory-kinesthetic and perceptual-affective qualitative and subjective dimensions of experiences in image and performance making.

 The nature of embodied images in art therapy (Schaverien, 1992) suggests that the eyes are not merely visual agents but also the conduit for contemplation.  The visual expression is in a symbiotic relationship with the body, further reinforced by Jullien’s (2018) position on the two different ways of looking.  Beneath the suggestion that one can either look with the eyes or to look through the eyes is the implication of two pathways towards cognition.   The latter, which leads to discoveries of inward significance, involves intimately looking at the existing borderlines between subjectivity and objectivity, and the process of exchange and interaction between self and the other. 

The notion of embodiment in performance making articulates that the body is the site of knowledge and meaning-making (Shusterman, 2012). It is through the body that we make sense of who we are and where we are, through which we embodied space, and share a lived-experience.

Looking through our eyes to view a collaborative community arts project, this participatory presentation will also offer a snapshot of the role sensations and emotions as embedded in our mindbody and inner life through a group image making process, expanding on ways through which art practices can shift the shared lived-experience in performances with a case vignette.

References:

Jullien, F. (2018). Living off landscape: Or the unthought-of in reason (P. Rodriguez, Trans.).  London: Rowman & Littlefield International.  (Original work published 2018).

Schaverien, J. (1992). The revealing image: Analytic art psychotherapy in theory and practice. London: Tavistock/Routledge.

Shusterman, R. (2012). Thinking through the body: Essays in somaesthetics. Cambridge University Press.

Organiser : School of Performing Arts, University Of Malta, under the auspices of Performance 21: Twenty-First Century Studies in Performance.

Title: Case Study: Paper Boat – an embodied response to sites/places and memories (Co-presentation with Shelly Quick)

Abstract
Paper Boat is a site-responsive performance that was inspired by an essay of Juhani Pallasamaa: ‘Space, Place, Memory and Imagination: The Temporal Dimension of Existential Space’. Paper Boat travelled to a variety of cities in different states of change, all moving at different speeds of ‘experiential reality’, some seemingly more in danger of what Pallasma has described as ‘cultural amnesia’ than others. These countries were Myanmar, Singapore, Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Germany. The performances took place over a six-year period from 2008 to 2013. Throughout, the performance was constantly evolving and changing in its design and approach as it travelled to the various countries. My collaborator and I treated the core structure of the work, a physical score, and certain objects with which we worked, as a site of negotiation, a hybrid place in which to graft, to interweave, the site and culture of the country that was hosting us.

 The performance was interactive and attempted to open a still, contemplative space for the audience (and ourselves), a space in which to slow down and excavate the parts of us lost in Pallasamaa’s ‘dizzying acceleration of the velocity of time today’. Paper Boat combined an evolving choreographic score with site-responsive elements, and opportunities for the audience to have a voice through recordings and pieces of writing that were part of the narrative interwoven into each performance. It was a hybrid of pre-existing structure and audience and culture driven design.

 This presentation will outline some of the cross-cultural processes and choices we had to make, as well as attempt to articulate the issues faced in each environment. Each cross-cultural encounter created different possibilities, demonstrating the necessity for such performances to continuously evolve in response to the environment in which they are performed.

Supported By: “Judaica: Embodied Laboratory for Songwogrk” (AHRC Leadership Fellowship 2016-2018)
The Research Centre for Performance Practices (ReCePP) at University of Huddersfield

Tittle: Embodied through frames and edits

Abstract
The presentation will discuss the process of framing and editing the video article The Lion and the Breath: Combining Kalaripayattu and Fitzmaurice Voicework techniques towards a new cross-cultural methodology for actor training for the Journal of Embodied Research. The presentation argues the video of the practice can provide a way of looking and witnessing the practice in the studio, articulating that through the process of editing, embodied experience, has a big stake in terms of remembering, reliving.

In the process of the framing and editing the video, my collaborators and I became aware of challenges of what is epistemological viable versus an aesthetic choice. What do we need to put in place, in order to create this sense of embodied experiential witnessing of the practice within the studio?

To create a sense of embodiment through the mediated experience of a video article, my collaborators and I had to made decisions on:

1. Where to place the camera in the studio?

2. What footages to use? Can they be used?

3. What sort of framing? Wide-angle shot/ close up?

4. How are the frames edited in order to show the process and then the actual research outcomes?   

Editing Process:

As my collaborators and I view the footages, we begin to relive the experience of remembering the practice while editing. There is a realisation that a connection between our body in the editing room and the body in the image is evident, making the editing room an extension of the studio.  This remembering allowed us to explore with multi-layers of sounds-bites and inter-cutting of the various footages. These explorations, raise and highlighted the potentiality of this audio-visual body as an extension of the experience in the studio that can help frame the studio work, the fieldwork and the findings, affecting our experience of a lived embodiment.   

International Federation for Theatre Research
Regional Conference 2018
Asian Theatre Working Group

Organiser: University of the Philippines Diliman

Workshop: The Body-as-Medium and Energy; An embodied enquiry of intentionality, presence-ing and articulation. (Co facilitated with Dr. Alex Boyd)

Description: Investigation into the physical, the emotional and creative.
This workshop is an emergence of space that becomes a kind of percept, and embodiment of an internal articulation of the being and becoming. The articulation of intentionality and presence-ing.

Organiser: www.pasdedieux.com

Abstract
Project of Training, Research, and Devising for actors/dancers/singers/musicians

Lecture/demonstration: Kalarippayattu – technique and artistic creation led by Elizabeth de Roza

How the training (esp that of Kalaripayattu) leads to the embodiment of physical awareness of an actor. Investigating ‘ the point of resonance’ that is akin to ‘presence’. Through this investigation, the actor develops a physical score that works on 5 basic rules of the body-in-space (soft fireworks). This active visceral response paired with the intellectually vivid physical vocabulary of Kalaripayattu retrained the actor’s body awakened to the creation of the body in performance (image-actions).