Intergenerational performance ecology: a practice-based approach

ABSTRACT

This article explores how intergenerational performance ecology might distinctively contribute to developing an ecological performance practice. It focuses on a practice-led research project, Wild Life – a collaboration with professional and nonprofessional child and adult performers. Drawing on critical perspectives in ecology and ecological performance and dance, the article explores the ecological potentials of directing and collaboration in the context of intergenerational performance ecology. Through critically reflecting on examples from the Wild Life devising process, an approach is proposed called the agency of practice, which focuses on how human and nonhuman agency can emerge in the creative devising process.

KEYWORDS:

• Directing
• agency
• performance
• ecology
• intergenerational

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Sarah Hopfinger is a practitioner-researcher and lecturer. Research areas include: ecological performance; intergenerational practice; directing; and, collaboration. She directs movement-based performances in collaboration with professional and nonprofessional performers and dancers, children and adults, and disabled and non-disabled people. Her practice combines live art, choreography and contemporary performance.

Notes

1. See Allen and Preece 2015; Heddon and Mackey 2012; Bottoms, Franks, and Kramer 2012; Arons and May 2011; Kershaw 2007.

2. I created Wild Life as part of my PhD research, which was a collaborative doctoral award with the University of Glasgow and the leading UK-based children’s theatre company, Catherine Wheels.

3. Goat Island, which disbanded in 2008, was a Chicago-based collaborative performance company made up of six core artists including the artistic director Lin Hixson. The company created performances that involved ‘a personal vocabulary of movement, both dance-like and pedestrian, that often [made] extreme physical demands on the performers’ (http://www.goatislandperformance.org/goatisland.htm#, no date).

4. Personal journal, 10 September 2014.

5. Personal journal, 26 October 2014.

6. Personal journal, 1 November 2014.

7. Personal journal, 15 October 2014.