Welcome to the Training Grounds section for this issue, packed with rich practitioner voices and scholarly reflections across our following four sections.
In our Answer the Question section we continued to invite practitioners to contribute their cross-disciplinary perspectives on the question: ‘What are your/the tools of training?’ Ben Duke draws on his dance and actor training and cites body‒mind awareness, vulnerability and being taken to a place of discomfort as his tools for training. In Maria Kapsali’s response we see the importance of props such as belts, wooden bricks or foam pads as enabling tools for achieving embodiment in yoga training. Matthias Sperling expresses his discomfort with the word ‘training’ and instead embraces notions of practice and research. These words, according to Sperling, imply an open-ended process and not a predetermined end that one reaches via training. He champions, as tools for his practice, watching others’ practices, ‘muddling through a process’, and note-making.
Our Postcards section in this issue invites responses to the theme of ‘Training and Craft’. An elusive concept that has been written about extensively, craft remains fundamental to discussions of performance training. Joyce Henderson compares a performer’s initial training in her craft to an artist’s initial reliance on a toolkit and an instruction manual. She goes on to emphasise the moment when neither the manual nor the kit is useful, once the artist has embodied, through repetition, the skill to be inventive, and starts going ‘beyond the page’. In a multimedia performance context, Andy Lavender calls for performers to embrace the camera as a collaborator and asks them to attain a balance between their inner intentions and their technical training. He also asks designers to keep in mind the importance of interactivity between space, time and the human body. For Dave Kerry, it is more valuable to emphasise learning over training, as he champions the importance of making mistakes in a safe and protected environment. Marcos Martinez talks of the importance of stillness, of ‘being’, as a mode of movement in which we discover larger-than-life creative possibilities. Finally, Michael Hulls echoes Dave Kerry’s call for embracing mistakes as part of any training. Additionally, for him, the most important aspects of learning a craft is one’s will and determination to push through the challenges that present themselves to performers. Together, these responses highlight the importance of self-belief, open-mindedness and tenacity as prerequisites for training in any craft.
In this issue we have two co-authored reflective Essais. The first, by Grant Peterson and Broderick Chow, is an analysis of their own pedagogic practices deployed in training musical theatre students undertaking the Theatre BA at Brunel University London. Peterson and Chow identify the specific set of challenges that accompany training a culturally diverse group of university students to sing, and summarise the methodologies they have devised together to overcome these in order to ‘democratise’ singing. The second essai is by Helen Lannaghan and Joseph Seelig and constitutes a historically contextualised and reflective dialogue between these joint artistic directors on the 2015 London International Mime Festival.
We conclude Training Grounds for this issue with five reviews. In his review of Dartington College of Arts: Learning by Doing – A Biography of a College by Sam Richards, Phil Smith recognises the ambitious breadth of the project in its attempts to contextualise the institution’s pedagogic, political and social affiliations. Smith situates Richards’ narrative of Dartington vis-à-vis ideas of experimental social reform, explorations of communitarian ideals and self-governing communities.
Janet O’Shea reviews Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism by Royona Mitra, in which O’Shea highlights the accessible nature of Mitra’s writing and the usefulness of this text across dance studies, theatre studies and cultural studies. O’Shea recognises the significant contribution this text makes, not simply to an understanding of Akram Khan’s work, but to the key concept that drives this text of ‘new interculturalism’. This is timely and signals this journal’s future special issue (7.3) on interculturalism and performance training later in this volume.
Over recent months the Live Art Development Agency has hosted its annual DIY projects, whereby a series of artist-led workshops take place up and down the UK. Katie Etheridge and Simon Persighetti contribute a photo essay capturing their experiences of leading DIY 12: University of DIY, a four-day intensive workshop exploring DIY approaches to innovative Live Art education. Their claim of an unfolding crisis in Live Art education in the context of rising tuition fees is provocative and timely.
Tim Casson, former course leader and founder of JV2, the Professional Development Certificate Course delivered by Jasmin Vardimon Company, reviews the fundamental principles of the dance-theatre training programme. He summarises the key stages that participants go through: skills, creation and touring, and provides an insightful reflection from the inside of what each stage requires from the participants and, indeed, offers to them.
Finally, Dick McCaw writes an evocative review of the Yoga and Actor Training DVD and accompanying booklet, filmed and edited by Peter Hulton, and authored by Dorinda Hulton and Maria Kapsali respectively. McCaw champions its pedagogic sensitivity, its conscientious contextualisation of yoga as a somatic practice, and the benefits of yoga practice within actor training.
Training Grounds continues to be a rich and interdisciplinary space to bring forth practitioner voices within the context of an academic journal, and as editors our relationship with our contributors always remains rewarding and insightful. We are always looking to find new dialogues and continue to invite submissions from across disciplines. Please get in touch with any of the Training Grounds editorial team if you would like to contribute.