© Middlesex University Press Book Details ResCen Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing Arts Graham Watts dance reviews

But my initial impressions were wrong and perseverance paid dividends. This is not a book to be read from beginning to end (which was my early mistake) but one that rewards a random sampling of each article in no particular sequence. Taken in this way, it’s a book that will open up the mind to the multifarious processes of creating performance art. It is the product of a five-year research programme conducted by ResCen (the Centre for Research into Creation in the Performing Arts) and supported by NESTA (the National Endowment of Science, Technology and the Arts). The project brought together some fifteen contributors who are established practitioners in several branches of contemporary performing arts (including dance, music, video installation and film) and their related academic communities. The publication, it is claimed, is thus one of the first of its kind to bring together ‘academic research and the artist’s voice’. Of particular interest to a dance audience is the participation of two choreographers, Shobana Jeyasingh and Rosemary Lee.

There is much in the book that will give long-term food for thought to influence and encourage any aspiring choreographer and any other potential creator of performance art. There are far too many nuggets to exhibit here but there are excellent passages that describe the processes leading to innovative and creative thought: how to deal with being “stuck”; what to do when the creative impetus takes off at the end of the day; how to gain enhanced and maximum value from collaboration; the importance of visualization; how a project lives (and sometimes dies – and there is an interesting dialectical discussion on the ‘ritual death’ of a performance); but above all this book is about the journey of creation and the summary of this content is aptly described in the book’s title since all of the contributors – in different ways – clearly have little idea of where they are headed at the outset of any project.
 

The quirkiest section comprises the often aggressive exchanges between Richard Layzell and Tania Koswycz, two artists who frequently work together, having extreme and often opposing views of how to achieve their art (these differences are particularly exposed in their discussions about commissioned work). Their dialogue is laid out as a film script which begins curiously in relation to their strained collaborative relationship but takes on a particularly bizarre aspect when, firstly, the ghost of the Cuban-American Performance Artist, Ana Mendieta (who died tragically in 1985 after falling from her apartment) and then the repressed intellectual ramblings of one, Davida Pendleton. I was completely lost by the end of the first sentence but its absurdity drove my inquisitiveness on.

The article by Jeyasingh and Susan Melrose (Professor of Performance Arts at Middlesex University) on ‘Geo-Choreographies: Self as Site’ is a very interesting auto-biographical account of the chief influences in Jeyasingh’s work, which I found to be fascinating and returned to again and again. I liked her metaphor of the windscreen-wiper to describe the non-linear process of capturing the dynamic of dance and there is also a thought-provoking discourse on making an exit in performance.

This is not a book to be read by anyone with a casual interest in performance art, although they would certainly enjoy its visual appeal, but it is an invaluable resource for any person who contemplates an involvement in the creation of performance art. ‘Being stuck’ is an occupational side-effect that many of the contributors have suffered: ‘Navigating the Unknown’ should reside not on the ‘Bookshelf of no return’ nor on the coffee table (although it is certainly an attractive book to flick through): rather it belongs in the metaphorical ‘medicine cabinet’ for any budding choreographer, since a couple of pages a day will certainly keep creative inertia at bay.