Dear All,
It was a tough session today for several reasons. I would still like to think that the session was appropriately timed and that the content delivered was vital in order for you to have a holistic engagement with the genre. It is also essential to remember and accept that theory and practice in this genre are inseparable.
We considered the influential roots of physical theatre. We looked at its features from 'theatre' and what it owes to 'dance'. We considered the notion of a hybrid performance language; a third entity that arises from the mixture of dance and theatre. We considered the practice of key practitioners and their creative approaches. We viewed clips ranging from the professional world to our own student archives; demonstrating where the work is at and where it is able to journey.
Questions for this week then:
1. What is the relationship between Physical Theatre and the theoretical frameworks of 'gender' and postmodernism'. Consider the overlaps between the study on Investigations 2 and the content we looked at today in P&P.
2. How is the history of changes in early 20th century western dance and theatre evident in the current practice of Physical Theatre. Please use key examples to answer this question.
Looking forward to your answers. Please remember these questions are designed to make you think intellectually about your practice and are also examples of questions you will be graded on in semester 2. Use quotes and reference them.
Let's all hope for a consistently positive journey beyond today's session with equal focus and commitment on both practice and intellectualising the practice.
Royona
Bahok, Akram Khan Dance Company
Exploring Liminality
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9 comments:
The relationship between physical theatre and gender has a great link together.
Although we may not realise it we all are performers even when we are not acting on stage. Society accepts that a man should act masculine and a woman should act feminine. If you do not act true to your gender then you are not classed as normal and could become a threat to society. Many people mistake gender for sex or sexuality. Sexuality means your sexual preference and sex refers to the anatomy of a male or female.
The work range between investigations 2 and process and performance and very similar and I can clearly see how the two link together and allow you to expand you knowledge greatly.
DV8 capture society's view on homosexuals very well through the style of their work. It is clear to see that they have a strong feeling about the subject which has always existed in society and in the theatre because it is portrayed largely through the oppressor’s eyes.
Changes in the 20th century have had a large change on the way we see physical theatre today.
In theatre many years ago the work was largely text based until the 20th century when they work began to shift from the text based work to body lead work. This is when we started to see the performer become the subject of the work carried out as opposed to the text/script. Much of the work that is featured in physical theatre is a representation of what each performer has been subjected too in certain parts of their life; this became a search for individuality and freedom.
American Modern dance focused on aesthetics, contact/release and fall/recovery, this was apparent in the works of Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey.
Over in Europe they focused heavily on exaggerating of pedestrian movements, integration of text and subjective experiences. Practitioners of today include DV8, Motion house, Vincent Dance Theatre and Akram Khan Company.
Lloyd Newson states "Content, rather than style drives DV8's work, which distinguishes it from a lot of other contemporary dance. Issues, rather than 'prettiness' or aesthetics, are important."
Lloyd states that much of physical theatre's work comes from issues in society today rather than creating something which looks pleasing on the eye which is what someone would expect to see when watching a dance show.
It is clear to see how the work has developed over the years and how physical/dance theatre has an unclear meaning because there are arguments against the traits which we expect to see in either.
1. Gender theory has a direct relationship with Physical Theatre, because as soon as you put a man and a woman together or a man and a man together on stage, the audience starts to decode what is happening based on their contextual, societal influences. Since gender is a socially constructed concept and the norms of this concept are around us constantly, even if the act on stage was not obviously making a point of conforming, that non-deliberate act is, in itself, part of gender theory.
Take DV8’s ‘Strange Fish’ for example that we watched in the lecture, it can be linked to a number of gender theories from just that one scene. Mark Fortier states that ‘patriarchal cultural visions often reduce woman to stereotypes e.g. virgin, whores etc’ and this is how the woman of DV8’s Strange Fish were presented. The woman at the beginning was clearly very drunk, trying to sleep with the man, the man having complete power and influence over her links back to these patriarchal gender theories and female stereotypes. Also in this scene, there were the two girls trying to seduce the man, which brings about another aspect of gender theory. Judith Butler says ‘Gender is contrived via a stylised repetition of acts’ and we saw examples of this happening with the two girls, by them twirling their hair in their fingers, slowly walking to exaggerate their feminine attributes, hips, long legs etc – all learnt behaviour from society.
2.From historical evidence it seems that dance and theatre in western society each reached a crisis point at relatively the same time and they both wanted a change, a new direction. In dance it was to move away from the marriage plot of ballet, and with theatre it was to move away from only performing the classics to the elite and bourgeois.
So in present day we have Physical Theatre, which is full of freedom, creation, something that is organic, full of emotional and physical contact and couldn’t be further away from what was on show in the early twentieth century, but how did it get there? Practitioners from both dance and theatre started to walk in this new direction previously mentioned, Bausch from dance for example began to give meaning behind a dance, stripping down the performer which now gave a new emotional depth to dance which had not been done before but is now highly evident in physical theatre today. Also, a sense of ‘aesthetic distance in the work’ (Chekov) seemed to be widespread throughout dance and theatre, moving away from what looked good to what impulses felt right. It didn’t matter if the movement wasn’t in time to the music or if the actor was in a grotesque shape onstage -something that Artaud influenced - the aesthetics became less important. Physical Theatre has almost fed off all of these changes, creating a new genre.
1. There is an evident relationship between Physical Theatre and the theoretical frameworks of ‘gender and postmodernism’. In Dance Theatre up until the turn of the twentieth century women were restricted in the arts as they were made to conform to the patriarchal rules of theatre and dance. A woman would never appear on stage barefoot, and the marriage plot of Ballet was always in place. Exploring gender and postmodernism in Investigations 2 gives us a wider understanding of why these ideas were in place.
Gender is a social construct, it is neither your biological sex or your sexuality, it is your performance within society. Society expects you to act within the conventions of what is seen as ‘normal’ and at the turn of the century some influential women began to break those moulds. It is seen that women should behave in a feminine manner and men should act in a masculine manner . However when those roles are reversed the person is presumed to be gay or lesbian as that what conforms to the stereotype, which is not always the case.
1. The term ‘Physical Theatre’ will always be surrounded by debate as it is a mixture of both dance and theatre creating a new genre. Theatre in the early 20th Century began to look at the non west for inspiration, while dance started break down the conventions of Ballet searching for individuality and freedom. Women in dance started working solo on stage which was a first for the time. They gave up the restrictions of shoes and began working barefoot. Doing the physical theatre work myself I can emphasise the importance of working barefoot, as a real connection and point of contact with the floor can be made.
Influential women of the time like Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey discovered and practiced two essential processes that we work with today. Martha Graham Discovered Contract and Release and Doris Humphrey also discovered Fall and Recovery which is regularly used in the modern practice of Physical theatre.
“Falling and recovering is the very stuff of movement, the constant flux which is going on in every living body, in all its tiniest parts, all the time." Humphrey ,D. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/dance_stage_beyond/71454
Freedom within the theatre began to grow, and pieces of theatre became more devised and personal, they would express the performers emotions and issues, the performer became more than just a tool to express a piece of scripted text.
“I only create when I have something to say, and the work is generally about issues that concern or affect my life at a given time. I’m interested in provoking myself, questioning my own and performers’ thoughts, motivations and assumptions. “ Newson, L.
Lloyd Newson the founder of DV8 Physical Theatre Company began to explore the relationships between men and women and the frustrations of the direction of dance. Forming a company which express their current issues, largely based on homosexuality , challenging society’s perception of sexuality and the way the individual deals with those obstacles.
Bibliography
Huphrey,D. http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/dance_stage_beyond/71454
Newson , L 7/7/04
There is a definite relationship between Physical Theatre with gender and postmodernism. Classic ballet dictates that a woman must be a woman and in a heterosexual relationship with her male partner. Due to the development of Modern Dance woman have been able to break free of this image and without having to represent their stereotypical traits of their sex they can represent themselves as individuals. This is also true of relationships as performers can perform as homosexual couples or individuals.
Examples of this can be found in DV8’s Enter Achilles which shows the homophobic attitude in society. In Matthew Bourne’s adaptation of Swan Lake he not only deals with homosexual relationships but mocks audience’s views of going to see ballet by inserting a meta-play where the woman depends on the male but ends up being the hero. Not only is this looking at gender but is using irony towards the audience’s expectations of ballet and dance theatre, which is postmodern too.
Without the changes in early 20th century western dance and theatre there would be no Physical Theatre. The majority of theatre was devoted to text based work dealing foremost with the cerebral rather than the body. It was deemed more important to mess with the audience’s head with psychological texts and block acting than to embrace physicality.
Practitioners such as Antonin Artaud and Grotowski started to draw upon eastern performance particularly on the physical training and the process a performer would take to get to the stage. The performer would become the key part of the performance reliving previous experiences true to themselves rather than portraying a character in a play. This is true in dance as the women were given freedom to move and express themselves. They were allowed to perform solo without the aid of the males.
American Modern Dance focusing on gravity, energy and aesthetics whilst European Modern Dance looked at pedestrian movement and expressionism. Both demanded intense commitment from dancers/actors to integrate the mind and the body and to un-learn all the social and cultural mannerisms that the performers embodied. Which I can imagine would be tough for those dancers who were strictly trained in ballet and wanted to go into modern dance.
Physical Theatre is a genre that is still being defined. Working on the process of the performer to express themselves and their issues and restrictions both emotional and physical.
“It is not how people move, but what moves them.”
Pina Bausch
Sarah
Firstly. I would just like to say that, this is a degree. We have to do theory. Last friday quite annoyed me. And it takes alot to annoy mikey. Guys, just be a little bit conciderate to those who do want to learn. Bit harsh I know but come on guys, I would love to have a really close nit 'family' in p&p but instead because of absence and people not putting all there effort in, especially last friday, we are not building the relationships we should be for this module.
Anyway, happy smiles.
1. Physical theatre can explore a wide range of theories and concepts. One of these could well indeed be gender. What better way to show gender and sex through the body. As the body is what we look at to make decisions over what gender you are. FOr example, in a steriotypical postmodernism world we live in, we would look at a male as being masculin and a female as being femenin.
DV8 explore the male body to a great extent in nearly all of there works. For example in 'Enter Achilles' the performers (all being male) move in a very masculine way and portray a masculine performance if you will. However, there is one performer (also male) who moves his body in a different way to the other performers. This suggests that he is maybe homosexual or that he just does not fit into this steriotypical view of male being masculin.
Lloyd Newson, the director and perfomer of DV8 physical theatre company is quoted, "There is a saying that the reasonable man adapts himself to the world but the unreasonable man tries to make the world adapt to him; therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man." This is extremely noticable in 'Enter Achilles'. When the other males do not except the individual males actions.
2.
Physical theatre is quite a new way of expression through the eyes of a performance. It is quite different to older types of performances such as 20th century western dance and theatre. Its so 'new' that we still dont really know how to define it. It is very much still a grey area. 20th century western dance and theatre however was not at all a grey area. It had set rules that would be followed. For example, ballet dancers would never arch their back etc. This started to change when the likes of Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey challenged these concepts. This could be said as to be maybe a start of a new era. The era of physical theatre.
Dear All,
Thank you for making an effort to reply to last week's post. It seems disheartening that only 5 out of a potential 41 posts have been made in relation to the theory session.
What is so positive however is the quality of the content of these 5 posts. It suggests that these 5 people are making the connections between Investigations 2 and P&P and exploring the overlaps between the modules. To truly grasp how theory and practice interact, this level of engagement is essential. Maybe others are making the connections too, but are clearly not making the effort to express this for the ensemble to read and share.
I am not sure what else we can do to make this blog more active. But I am grateful to those who do contribute each week.
Royona
I believe physical theatre has and unwritten bond with both gender and postmodernism. Physical theatre came about in the 20th century due to the changes in both theatre and dance, and these changes happened because people weren’t happy, people didn’t want to follow the status quo. And this is exactly what physical theatre is about; it’s about breaking the mould and creating something that certain groups of people (traditionalists) that disagree on. This is also applies to gender and postmodernism. Gender is a social construct its how people believe we have to behave, but is this true? And I believe physical theatre fits in with the idea of rebelling against society and going against what people think is the norm. The same can be said about Postmodernism, this was a movement where it went against the theory of believing that things had to happen because they do, it went with the notion of things happened by chance and this is exactly how physical theatre happens, when we undergo a task we don’t think this is what were going to end up with at the end of the session, we go in with a clear view and allow anything to happen.
The changes in the early 20th century allowed many practitioners in both dance and theatre to express how they truly feel, to not follow a set of rules, and because of this became physical theatre. In dance, they wanted break away from ballet and the almost regimented performance and to go into something more fluid like with the ability to express themselves more. The same applies to theatre they wanted to break away from text led work and more into body led work, so both areas were trying to achieve a more spiritual idea rather then an idea that has already been mapped out for them. This idea of wanting to step outside the box and break boundaries is clearly evident in what we know of physical theatre. Companies like DV8, Vincent Dance Theatre, Motion House Company have collaborated both ideas from dance and theatre to produce a genre that allows the performer to actually fully understand and digest what there performing rather then saying do this because I’ve told you to. It allows performers to do things that feel natural to them.
Sincere Apologise for the late post.
Physical Theatre and gender have a strong bond. This is because Physical Theatre is a predominantly movement based form of performance, so the performer have to express their gender via movements rather than word. This can be hard because if a man and woman are on stage the audience often decode these bodies as a man and a woman in terms of sex, and automatically place masculine and feminine on the relative counterparts. This can also be easy because, Physical theatre is a type of theatre that likes to push boundaries, so the performers can ‘take on’ any gender they wish to because they are blank canvases. In physical theatre gender is not behavioural, a sexual identity, or a classification. It is an emotion; it is a way of expression.
By the changes to dance and theatre in the early 20th Century, it has allowed Physical Theatre to be the strength and density it is today. By moving away from solely ballet and the aesthetics of dance; it has allowed that mergence with theatre to create the form that is Physical Theatre. The focus on body and mind is the focal point in the turning of the century, which has been the major factor in today’s practice Physical Theatre. There is a concentration on the physical and emotional contact, which is the basis of the works. Lecoq’s approach to Physical Theatre is very specific; he believes that it is ‘not the body, but the body in space. His most defining principle is that the essence of theatre is the body in space. So movement in itself is not the focus. The focus is the movement in space.’ (Fusetti, 2008) This is crucial to the movement of the 20th Century, because there is no longer a need for just aesthetics in performance, but the hows and the whys of performance.
1. In performances within the physical theatre genre it is very probable to find key elements of gender and postmodernism theories. The spectacles cross many theatrical barriers and deny established norms.
In terms of gender they analyse far more complicated relationships between men and women or between representatives of the same sex. It is the negation of, for example, ballet form of dance, where everything is generally obvious – heterosexual, a male is typically masculine and a female classically feminine. It refers as well to the stylisation of notions, dance – men represent masculine, sharp, strong movement and women’s configurations are more ethereal, light and svelte. And these moves are usually closed in strict, hermetic frames of choreography with rather no place for improvisation. Physical theatre blurs men’s and women’s obviousness and mixes their stereotypical features in the trail of analysing today’s complicated times and difficult relationships. (e.g. DV8’s ‘Strange Fish’ – the placement of a woman on a cross or varying affairs between performers and their sexes). Another example of the link between physical theatre and gender theory is this quote: ‘The German critic Manuel Brug sums up her [Pina Bausch’s] philosophy as "the interpretation of the soul and the battle of the sexes.”’ (2000, http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=208301273&blogID=381198629)
In terms of postmodernism, the feeling of rebellion against typical theatre is the most essential and most noticed in productions of this genre. Physical theatre lets performers’ bodies speak its own particular language. The creators of this department of theatre support improvisation generated by emotional side of human organisms. They negate mechanical repetition and the concept of strict choreography. That is why very often post-premiere shows may look a bit different every time. In my opinion a single gesture is very rarely exactly the same. Defragmentation of plot or its complete shortage, non-classical protagonists, a sense of irony or parody, a construction of collage are another traces of postmodernism that can be found in spectacles of physical theatre.
I think that the link between Investigations 2 and Process & Performance is obvious and inseparable. In my opinion, matching the knowledge from these two modules can be useful and helpful.
2. Stagnation, repetition, feeling of dying away of early 20th century western theatre (and its dance department) caused a crisis. There was a very fundamental need and call for fresh, different theatrical aspects. There were some particular, influential changes which through years led to the rise of the genre of physical theatre. I am going to shortly describe some of them below. First of all, the interest in a body’s concept has grown up. The creators started to turn away from textual structures and only verbal layers of spectacles. The performers of that time were being introduced to new physical trainings and were enlighten on the power of a body and its emotional side. The enthusiasts of the new techniques were inter alia Grotowski, Artaud and Lecoq who were continuing fresh physical techniques and were initiating their own new ones. They believed in body as a tool of expression and in on stage lived experience. Their training programmes were quite strict and demanding. They professed the rule of improvisation and creative freedom indissoluble with bodies. The idea of ballet and hermetic choreographies has been prevented. The creators of the genre which will have been later called ‘physical theatre’ turned to non-west part of theatre, leaving theatrical classics, obviousness and predictability in its western division. The influential and famous practitioners of those times of considerable changes, were Ruth St Denis, Isadora Duncan, Pina Bausch, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey and others.
All above theatrical alterations and endeavours of above creators and practitioners affected the origin of the contemporary, modern genre called physical theatre and its present artistic appearance. Many (in my opinion, even majority) of introduced in 20th century physical techniques are still in use and are being expanded today.
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