Play, game and interdisciplinarity: considerations from the floor towards a disciplinary synaesthesia

Abstract

This paper offers perspectives on the work of the performer taken from research engagement in dance theatre practice. Whilst dance theatre draws upon certain traditions of both dance and theatre, the particular demands placed upon the performer in the interdisciplinary context of dance theatre itself can be seen as possessing elements which are distinct from those practices occupying a significant focus of performer training. Towards highlighting the particular demands of interdisciplinary practice for the performer and the skillset required by such practice, the paper concentrates upon the following areas: the context of performance: working with(in) a constructed liminal meta-actuality; the practice and position of game and play within process and performance; and interdisciplinary working and the idea of ‘disciplinary synaesthesia’. To facilitate this discussion, this paper examines manifestations of play, game and interdisciplinarity in the work of Vincent Dance Theatre (VDT). VDT is used here as an exemplar of contemporary interdisciplinary practice. Reflecting on field research undertaken during the process and performance for VDT’s 2009 piece If We Go On, the paper draws out specific aspects and examples of the performer’s work in support of the points of discussion as noted above.

Keywords:

• dance
• theatre
• play
• performance
• interdisciplinary

Notes

¹ As an aside, I recognise that the critical labels of ‘dance theatre’ and ‘physical theatre’ cover a large spectrum of practices, which appear at first glance to resist exact categorisation. This is seen, for instance, in the emergence of DV8 Physical Theatre in the mid-1980s. The early work of this company held a performance aesthetic that at once demanded that the performer have significant training in dance and that they then also partially reject this training. The increased use of the term ‘physical theatre’ as an all-encompassing popular tag has also led to the use of the terms ‘dance theatre’ and ‘physical theatre’ becoming at times interchangeable depending on the situation. The propensity for this area of performance work to encompass a wide variety of sometimes conflicting forms, ideas and practices is acknowledged by Keefe and Murray in the title of their 2007 publication, Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader. They note: ‘We have been ruthlessly insistent on physical theatres with all their consequent implications for suggesting a diversity of forms built from both common and different roots and technical traditions’ (Keefe and Murray 2007, p. 3; emphasis original).

² Third Angel, founded by Rachel Walton and Alexander Kelly was formed in 1995; Point Blank, founded by Liz Tomlin and Steve Jackson in 1999; and perhaps most prominently, Forced Entertainment, founded in 1984.

³ As with VDT’s genealogical companions, the level of personal investment from Vincent and the performers requires an investigative self-scrutiny which is not suited to all. During the process for If We Go On, two non-core performers left the process, with only one being replaced for the eventual piece. Whilst these departures were amicable, they arose from tensions around the necessary mode of engagement required by Vincent and the size, content and themes of the piece.

⁴ Similarly to other companies within a wider dance theatre canon (Bausch, DV8) VDT’s performers present (facets of) themselves on stage. In Broken Chords, T.C. Howard, a long-time collaborator, stops the action at one point in the performance, declaring that she is sick of working with Vincent as Vincent is dealing with the process of divorce through the piece. ‘I’m happily married!’, Howard declares.

⁵ ‘The dark stretches before us. There are people waiting. We would like to show you something, but we are not sure how. We are going to tell you what it is like, doing and faking, and doing and not doing. The dark stretches before us, but here we are, faced with the question, how do we go on? If We Go On places the investigation of language at the centre of the work, and through miniature dances, stuttering songs and militant manifestos embraces uncertainty, hesitancy and not knowing’ (Vincent Dance Theatre 2009).

⁶ It is interesting to note that the safety net of having to ‘polish’ something for a paying audience was taken away by Vincent. She remarked during one discussion with the company that she would prefer to ‘pull the piece if it ends up being crap, and piss off a few theatres, rather than compromise the journey, or put out bad work’. Vincent, (2009)

⁷ Winnicott (1971) used this term to describe the transitional and developmental ‘space’ between mother and child, in which the child is free to play with emerging aspects of the self. ‘Playspace’ has also been used in the context of organisational settings to describe a space which gives rise to the opportunity for people to play with new ideas. I use it to describe the physical and phenomenal setting of the theatre stage or rehearsal studio.

⁸ We can see this understanding reflected in John Schikowski’s intimate description of the relationship between the foot of a dancer and the floor on which it dances; ‘the play between the floor and the sole of the foot varying in countless nuances. The sole kisses and caresses the floor. It plays, it jokes with it, it pushes it pointingly away, mistreats it with a punishing stamp’ (Schikowski, cited in Odom 1980, p. 87). Contained within this passage is the notion that the play contained within the act of doing the dance and the phenomenological experience of the moment of doing and playing is the stuff of the performance.

⁹ For instance it is possible to see an actual game of ‘tag’ in the section between Orlik and Howard in On The House (2003).

¹⁰ I am in part drawing and reappropriating elements of this term from Josephine Machon’s (2009) (Syn)aesthetics. Machon (2009, p. 13) uses this term to fuse an aesthetic appreciation and critical discourse with an understanding of the neurological condition of synaesthesia in which ‘one sense is stimulated which automatically and simultaneously causes a stimulation in another of the senses’.

¹¹ Several of her collaborators, most notably Alexandru Catona and Patrycja Kujawska, are skilled multi-disciplinarians with significant training and performance expertise in music. In the same event Vincent explained that, ‘VDT’s core collaborators, including Patrycja and Janusz, exemplify the kind of independent actors, dancers and musicians who work with individual intelligence in dance. They can multi-task and are multi-skilled’ (Vincent 2008).

¹² Loukes notes that the term ‘total’ theatre finds articulation in ‘the work of Appia, Craig, the Futurists and Artaud and it reflected the pre-occupation of Modernist theatre artists to find ways to connect, integrate and synthesize existing forms’ (Loukes, in Zarrilli et al. 2013, p. 275). The term also recognises a multiplicity of contemporary practices that lean towards the ‘innovative work within physical, visual and devised theatre, dance-theatre, mime/clown, contemporary circus, cabaret and new variety, puppetry and animation, street arts and outdoor performance, site-specific theatre, live art, hybrid arts/cross-artform performance’ (Loukes 2013a, n.p.).