The political promise of choreography in performance and/as research: First Physical Theatre Company’s manifesto and repertory, 1993-2015
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Choreography -- Political aspects , Dance -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Dance -- Political aspects , Performance art -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Performance art -- History and criticism , Performance art -- Research , Performance art -- Study and teaching , Performance art -- Philosophy , Experimental theater -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Experimental theater -- History and criticism , Political art -- South Africa -- Makhanda , First Physical Theatre Company , First Physical Theatre Company -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149373 , vital:38844
- Description: This study redefines the political in dance by drawing on the scholarly concept of the “choreopolitical” (André Lepecki) and extending it into analysing related concepts such as the “postdramatic” (Hans-Thies Lehmann), performance and/as research, among others from Performance Studies scholarship as well as from First Physical Theatre Company’s pioneering legacy of production, pedagogy and research in making Phyical Theatre performance. Following from the notion that performance is both a site and a method of study/knowing, the research invites a rethinking of the relationship between art (performance), epistemology and the political, in the sense that performance becomes a way, not of simply re-presenting the political but, as its own way of knowing, actively questioning the very categories on which the political is premised. The argument for Physical Theatre as having nascent potential to invoke what I call “the power of the small” is analysed as a choreopolitical method and community of practice that has a generative capacity to produce the “intimate revolts” (Julia Kristeva) or body of questions that can perform the imaginative curiosities/forms required to create provocative, subversive, ethical, reflexive and charged performance. My argument is supported by critical commentary, insight, choreological analysis and reflection on the dramaturgical strategies and choreopolitics of selected commissioned choreographers and dance forms that extended FPTC’s manifesto and production between 1993 and 2015. My project has the following three goals: (i) to contextualise, conceptualise and identify key issues in the identity, pedagogy and performance ethos of Physical Theatre as a performance philosophy and form; (ii) to engage critically with the praxis of Physical Theatre within the contextual, cultural, historical and political relationships between Physical Theatre and other performance practices in South Africa; and (iii) to document, analyse and interpret selected claims, works and performance processes from the archive of FPTC’s repertory and training manifesto from 1993 to 2015. The research evaluates the political significance and consequence of FPTC’s heritage and legacy problematising constraints, possibilities, tensions, failures and proposing the hope of imaginative entanglements with practising freedoms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2020
- Subjects: Choreography -- Political aspects , Dance -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Dance -- Political aspects , Performance art -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Performance art -- History and criticism , Performance art -- Research , Performance art -- Study and teaching , Performance art -- Philosophy , Experimental theater -- South Africa -- Makhanda , Experimental theater -- History and criticism , Political art -- South Africa -- Makhanda , First Physical Theatre Company , First Physical Theatre Company -- History and criticism
- Language: English
- Type: Thesis , Doctoral , PhD
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/149373 , vital:38844
- Description: This study redefines the political in dance by drawing on the scholarly concept of the “choreopolitical” (André Lepecki) and extending it into analysing related concepts such as the “postdramatic” (Hans-Thies Lehmann), performance and/as research, among others from Performance Studies scholarship as well as from First Physical Theatre Company’s pioneering legacy of production, pedagogy and research in making Phyical Theatre performance. Following from the notion that performance is both a site and a method of study/knowing, the research invites a rethinking of the relationship between art (performance), epistemology and the political, in the sense that performance becomes a way, not of simply re-presenting the political but, as its own way of knowing, actively questioning the very categories on which the political is premised. The argument for Physical Theatre as having nascent potential to invoke what I call “the power of the small” is analysed as a choreopolitical method and community of practice that has a generative capacity to produce the “intimate revolts” (Julia Kristeva) or body of questions that can perform the imaginative curiosities/forms required to create provocative, subversive, ethical, reflexive and charged performance. My argument is supported by critical commentary, insight, choreological analysis and reflection on the dramaturgical strategies and choreopolitics of selected commissioned choreographers and dance forms that extended FPTC’s manifesto and production between 1993 and 2015. My project has the following three goals: (i) to contextualise, conceptualise and identify key issues in the identity, pedagogy and performance ethos of Physical Theatre as a performance philosophy and form; (ii) to engage critically with the praxis of Physical Theatre within the contextual, cultural, historical and political relationships between Physical Theatre and other performance practices in South Africa; and (iii) to document, analyse and interpret selected claims, works and performance processes from the archive of FPTC’s repertory and training manifesto from 1993 to 2015. The research evaluates the political significance and consequence of FPTC’s heritage and legacy problematising constraints, possibilities, tensions, failures and proposing the hope of imaginative entanglements with practising freedoms.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2020
Body of questions, book of changes: Event-texts from the butoh performance work Ama-no-gawa
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468562 , vital:77090 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2010.9687934
- Description: Frauke (Caroline Lundblad), Swedish butoh choreographer and performer,and an exponent of Ankoku Butoh, has arrived to commence rehearsals for hercollaboration with First Physical Theatre Company. She will be creating an original butohwork with these particular 8 African bodies. Although some of us have encountered theform theoretically, none have embarked on a butoh performance process. I am to observerehearsal so that I can document and research the choreographic process. After a fewdays of watching, a quiet but persistent hunger begins to unsettle me: my body doesn’t want this distance ... my body wants to experience this ‘butoh-tai’, this butoh space-time.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468562 , vital:77090 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2010.9687934
- Description: Frauke (Caroline Lundblad), Swedish butoh choreographer and performer,and an exponent of Ankoku Butoh, has arrived to commence rehearsals for hercollaboration with First Physical Theatre Company. She will be creating an original butohwork with these particular 8 African bodies. Although some of us have encountered theform theoretically, none have embarked on a butoh performance process. I am to observerehearsal so that I can document and research the choreographic process. After a fewdays of watching, a quiet but persistent hunger begins to unsettle me: my body doesn’t want this distance ... my body wants to experience this ‘butoh-tai’, this butoh space-time.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
Intimate revolts: Some approaches towards pedagogy and performer training in Physical Theatre: In conversation with First Physical Theatre Company’s Artistic Director: Gary Gordon
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468573 , vital:77091 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2010.9687920
- Description: Gary Gordon’s reputation has assured him legendary status in South African dance, physical theatre and choreography. He has been called the ‘father of Physical Theatre’ (Zingi Mkefa: BASA Newsflash Podcast: 7 March 2010 Interview), the ‘guru of the innovative’ (Claire Bezuidenhout, Independent On Saturday) and the ‘doyen of physical theatre training and stage creation in South Africa’ (Guy Willoughby, Mail and Guardian). He has the reputation of having nurtured and trained top theatre makers and choreographic innovators in the country. The country’s most prominent dance critic, Ms Adrienne Sichel, has called the choreographic and theatrical work produced by Gordon’s First Physical Theatre Company a ‘living South African artistic heritage in the truest sense’ (The Star: Tonight: 11 February 2005).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2010
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468573 , vital:77091 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2010.9687920
- Description: Gary Gordon’s reputation has assured him legendary status in South African dance, physical theatre and choreography. He has been called the ‘father of Physical Theatre’ (Zingi Mkefa: BASA Newsflash Podcast: 7 March 2010 Interview), the ‘guru of the innovative’ (Claire Bezuidenhout, Independent On Saturday) and the ‘doyen of physical theatre training and stage creation in South Africa’ (Guy Willoughby, Mail and Guardian). He has the reputation of having nurtured and trained top theatre makers and choreographic innovators in the country. The country’s most prominent dance critic, Ms Adrienne Sichel, has called the choreographic and theatrical work produced by Gordon’s First Physical Theatre Company a ‘living South African artistic heritage in the truest sense’ (The Star: Tonight: 11 February 2005).
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2010
Reflective (a)musings on 16 kinds of emptiness…: re-framing research for practice
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468584 , vital:77092 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2007.9687863
- Description: This paper would like to offer a personal account of my experiences as a practitioner coming to question notions of research through my involvement with the practice as research initiative in South Africa. This PaR project was a national initiative set up by university drama departments in consultation with the NRF (National Research Foundation in South Africa) to conduct a pilot project of peer review for live performance. The first of its kind in South Africa, this call for case studies seemed to present a unique opportunity to engage actively, and with some agency, towards shifting the status and perception of research in the performing arts within the academy and the profession. It also presented a space within which to experiment and extend my own understandings of practice as research. 16 kinds of emptiness… became one of the 6 pilot projects selected for this peer review process.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
- Authors: Finestone-Praeg, Juanita
- Date: 2007
- Subjects: To be catalogued
- Language: English
- Type: text , article
- Identifier: http://hdl.handle.net/10962/468584 , vital:77092 , https://doi.org/10.1080/10137548.2007.9687863
- Description: This paper would like to offer a personal account of my experiences as a practitioner coming to question notions of research through my involvement with the practice as research initiative in South Africa. This PaR project was a national initiative set up by university drama departments in consultation with the NRF (National Research Foundation in South Africa) to conduct a pilot project of peer review for live performance. The first of its kind in South Africa, this call for case studies seemed to present a unique opportunity to engage actively, and with some agency, towards shifting the status and perception of research in the performing arts within the academy and the profession. It also presented a space within which to experiment and extend my own understandings of practice as research. 16 kinds of emptiness… became one of the 6 pilot projects selected for this peer review process.
- Full Text:
- Date Issued: 2007
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