We would like to dedicate this Issue and indeed the whole volume to the memory of Veenapani Chawla, the life and heart of Adishkati Theatre, who died suddenly in late November 2014. In this issue we are publishing an obituary written by critic and chronicler of her extraordinary work, Shanta Gokhale, so here we would simply like to celebrate her life, regretting deeply that we cannot thank her in person for her spirited advocacy of the journal as one of our editorial board. I only had the pleasure of meeting her once – for a two-day symposium on intercultural laboratories I organised in 2006 – but remember her warmth and gentle mentoring of the group as we discussed an international networks bid. Her lightness of touch combined with such a depth of experience has remained with me ever since. As Sanjna Kapoor has written recently about Veenapani, she was ‘a demure powerhouse’, leaving behind her a legacy of rigorous research in performer training as vital as any in the world.
In terms of the first question, since Volume 3 in 2012, we have punctuated our generic issues with special issues focusing either on a key practitioner or on a more overarching training concern or theme. Indeed our summer edition this year (6.2) follows that pattern, with a very full and exciting collection of essays, interviews, reviews and reflections on the contribution Moshe Feldenkrais has made to the world of performance training. These gold-coated special issues provide a welcome relief from the signature red of the journal on my shelf, even though they seem impossible to keep in date order, as I so often find myself going back to earlier issues and reviewing their contents. What should, in the best tradition of domestic librarianship, be a series of uniform gold stripes amongst the other issues, is much more often a haphazard clustering of colours. Given the increased interest we are now receiving from would-be guest editors to produce special issues across a wide range of training practices, that jumbled mixture of red and gold is set to grow in messiness! And here is the question we are chewing on as an editorial team in relation to the specialness of the special issue. Should we stick to the rhythm of each middle issue being themed or allow ourselves the flexibility to respond to requests for popular theatre, immersive performance, intercultural training, and training representations – and if we do does that mean a planning cycle leading up to 2020? We are obviously aware that such an offer is anything but attractive to colleagues wanting to curate a TDPT special edition with any level of urgency and have therefore made a decision that in Volume 7 there will be two special issues – one already with a call for papers widely distributed on Showing and Writing Training, edited by Mary Patterson, and the other on intercultural performer training, edited by Phillip Zarrilli, T. Sasitharan and Anuradha Kapur (with a call for papers imminent). This is a small but important shift for the journal and we are very determined to keep the appropriate balance between TDPT's generic and themed issues. We would, in the light of these developments, renew our request for potential editors and co-editors to approach us with ideas for special issues and should not now need to keep you waiting until 2020 for an answer!
The second question relates to the virtues and challenges of extending our presence beyond both the hard and virtual covers of the journal and into the blogosphere. This, we hope, is not just jumping on a digital bandwagon, but a real attempt to extend the potential impact of the current journal's offerings and to draw in a much wider range of voices and audiences. As part of our thinking through of these issues, we have been in discussion with many other journal editors. There are some impressive stories of increased readership, of diversifying writing styles and genuine dialogue afforded by colleagues’ companion blogs and we would hope to learn from these as we develop our own blog, under the leadership of Dr Laura Bissell, one of our new Associate Editors. One key element of this, we believe strongly, will be the sharing of training practices and a much wider dissemination of studio approaches. Our ultimate aim is for the blog to be usable in other training contexts and for it profitably to develop debates and innovations within the training world. That may be some way off but is definitely our proposed direction of travel.
Whilst there are several alluring qualities to the special issue – thematic focus and specialist editorial input to name two – the eclecticism achievable in our generic issues is nevertheless still to be welcomed and this issue is typical of the genre. Nicole Bugeja's essay on core practitioners Lindh and Bausch and Vladimir Mirodan's detailed introduction to the Laban–Malgrem system rub shoulders with Kent Sjöström's much more sweeping assessment of the modernist body in education and training and Frank Camilleri's problematisation of the teacher–student relationship in the postmodern digital age. In very different ways Mark Seton and Ross Prior alongside Munjulika Rahman reflect on the cultural conditions surrounding vocational performer training, the former in a western conservatoire context, the latter in classical dance cultures across Bangladesh and India. Threading metaphorically through all of these contributions is Simon's series of micro-essays, Keywords in Performer Training, extending the work referred to in my last editorial (for 5.1) on contentious training terminologies and their etymologies. Whilst it is only a metaphorical ‘threading through’, we would like to invite readers not to approach this essay in linear terms but perhaps literally to drop in and out of this set of reflections – on Creativity, Depth, Rigour and Skill, for instance – to construct your own set of unique ‘rubbings against’ the grain of the other essays.
It is instructive to look at the backstories of these articles themselves, two of which were papers originally produced at the International Performer Training Platform in Helsinki last January and two of which (at least in the dim and distant past) have a connection back to the Theatre and Performance Research Association (TaPRA) Performer Training working group. After its inaugural meeting, the former is now placing itself on an annual footing, led this year by one of our editorial board members from Zurich University of the Arts, Anton Rey. The latter is now co-convened by two of our associate editors, Mark Evans and Libby Worth (alongside Konstantinos Thomaidis). Such working groups and platforms are essential to the good health of our discipline and it is of tangible value for this journal to be so closely associated with them. These interwoven connections between TDPT and the various worlds of performer training are, we hope, a sign of health, diversity and a generative multiplicity. There's always a danger, however, that such interweavings become ‘exclusive’ and close down even wider links. We hope that you, ‘dear reader’, will rapidly alert us if you begin to sense we are heading in this dangerous direction!