Performance Studies in Motion offers multiple perspectives on the current field of performance studies and suggests its future directions. Featuring new essays by pioneers Richard Schechner and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, and by international scholars and practitioners, it shows how performance can offer a new way of seeing the world, and testifies to the dynamism of this discipline. Beginning with an overview of the development of performance studies, the essays offer new insights into: contemporary experimental and postdramatic theatre; participatory performance and museum exhibitions; the performance of politicians, political institutions and grassroots protest movements; theatricality at war and in contemporary religious rituals, and performative practices in therapy, education and life sciences. Employing original reflexive approaches to concrete case studies and situations, contributors introduce a variety of applications of performance studies methodologies to contemporary culture, art and society, creating new interdisciplinary links between the arts, humanities, and social and natural sciences. With studies from and about places as diverse as Austria, Belgium, China, France, Germany, Israel, Korea, Palestine, the Philippines, Poland, Rwanda and the USA, Performance Studies in Motion showcases the vitality and breadth of the field today.

This groundbreaking book moves beyond the conventional association of dramaturgy with plays to consider the substance and process of dramaturgy for dance and movement performance. Focusing on text and language, research, audience, movement, and interculturalism, the author provides vivid, practical examples from her collaboration with renowned choreographer Ralph Lemon.

On dance and culture

Focusing on visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, Perspectives in Motion explores the work of Adrienne L. Kaeppler, a pioneering researcher who has made a number of interdisciplinary contributions over five decades to dance and performance studies. Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, this edited collection offers new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.

Musicians tend to believe that the mystery of their art cannot be objectively studied, quantified, or explained. As a result, the term «motor learning» is rarely used in connection with musicians, and an empirical approach to musical performance is more the exception than the rule. Sports scientists, however, show a great interest in musicians because of their advanced skill level and the attentional and emotional demands of the concert stage. This work combines knowledge across disciplines. Advances toward an understanding of human behavior and cognition offer clues to strategies of motor learning and performance that promote the well-being of musicians and athletes. This book provides a forum for an interdisciplinary exchange of research, laying the groundwork for future projects.

Involuntary Motion contributes to the study of refugee flight by using movement as a lens to explore problems in refugee performance and understand the experience of bodies in motion. Drawing from somatics, movement analysis, and dance praxis, the chapters explore forces that set bodies in motion; the spaces in which forced movement occurs; the movement of refugee identity arcs; the monstrosity of refugee performance; and the relationship between writing and body culture. How does forced movement impact identity? What are the philosophical implications of robbing individuals of agency over motion? What performances does involuntary motion necessitate? These questions are important as the world confronts the threat of a return of the horrors of the twentieth century. Bringing together debates in migration studies and movement studies, the book argues that refugees are akin to dancers performing on disappearing stages not of their choosing. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of performance, dance, and politics.

Focusing on visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, Perspectives in Motion explores the work of Adrienne L. Kaeppler, a pioneering researcher who has made a number of interdisciplinary contributions over five decades to dance and performance studies. Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, this edited collection offers new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.

How can various technologies, from the more conventional to the very new, be used to archive, share and understand dance movement? How can they become part of new ways of creating dance? What does this tell us about the ways in which technology is part of how we make sense and think? Well-known choreographers and dance collectives including William Forsythe, Siohban Davis, Merce Cunningham, Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and BADco. have initiated projects to investigate these questions, and in so doing have inaugurated a new era for dance archives, education, research and creation. Their work draws attention to the intimate relationship between the technologies we use and the ways in which we think, perceive, and make sense. Transmission in Motion examines these extraordinary projects ‘from the inside’, presenting in-depth analyses by the practitioners, artists and collectives involved in their development. These studies are framed by scholarly reflection, illuminating the significance of these projects in the context of current debates on dance, the (multi-media) archive, immaterial cultural heritage and copyright, embodied cognition, education, media culture and the knowledge society.

Motion Capture in Performance explores the historical origins, properties and implications of Motion Capture. It introduces a new mode of performance for the commercial film, animation, and console gaming industries - 'Performance Capture', a distinct interdisciplinary discourse in the fields of theatre, animation, performance studies and film.

How do we define movement in performance? Who or what is being moved and how? And which movements are felt, observed, or studied, in theatre? Part of the Theory for Theatre Studies series which introduces core theoretical concepts that underpin the discipline, Movement provides the first overview of relevant critical theory for students and researchers in theatre and performance studies. Exploring areas such as vitality, plasticity, gesture, effort and rhythm, it opens up the study of theatrical production, live art, and intercultural performance to socio-political conceptions of movement as both practice and concept. It covers movement training systems and considers how they have been utilized in key works of the 20th and 21st centuries. The final section traces the convergence of movement in theatre with other media and digital technologies. A wide range of in-depth case studies helps to equip readers to explore new methodologies and approaches to movement as a performance concept. These include analysis of Satoshi Miyagi's production of Sophocles' Antigone (2017), Thomas Ostermeier's production of Ibsen's Hedda Gabler (2008), the Berliner Ensemble's Mother Courage (1949), The Constant Prince (1965) performed by Ryzsard Cieslak, and the National Theatre's production of War Horse (2007). The final section considers a suite of concepts that shape postdramatic and intermedial theatre from China, Germany-Bangladesh, Australia, the United States, and United Kingdom. The volume is supported by further online resources including video material, questions, and exercises.