Collaborative Embodied Performance: Ecologies of Skill (Performance and Science: Interdisciplinary Dialogues) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1350197750 ISBN 13: 9781350197756

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2023

Synopsis

This book is about joint intelligence in action. It brings together scholarship in performance studies, cognitive science, sociology, literature, anthropology, psychology, architecture, philosophy and sport science to ask how tightly knit collaboration works. Contributors apply innovative methodologies to detailed case studies of martial arts, social interaction, freediving, site-specific artworks, Body Weather, human-AI music composition, Front-of-House at Shakespeare’s Globe, acrobatics and failing at handstands. In each investigation, performance and theory are mutually revealing, informative and captivating. Short chapters fall into thematic clusters exploring complex ecologies of skill, collaborative learning and the microstructure of embodied coordination, followed by commentaries from leading scholars in performance studies and cognitive science. Each contribution highlights unique features of the performance ecology, equipping performance makers, students and researchers with the theoretical, methodological and practical inspiration to delve deeper into their own embodied practices and critical thinking.

About this title

About the Authors

Kath Bicknell is a Research Fellow in the Discipline of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Australia. She has taught in performance studies at the University of Sydney and performance practices at Australia's National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), and is internationally recognised for her sports journalism. Her research draws on case studies from cycling and circus to investigate and describe relations between thinking and doing in live performance.

Amy Cook, Associate Professor of Theatre Arts and English at Stony Brook University, New York, USA, is the author of Shakespearean Neuroplay: Reinvigorating the Study of Dramatic Texts and Performance through Cognitive Science, (2010) and essays in, among others, Theatre Journal, TDR, SubStance, the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theatre, the Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (forthcoming). She was the co-chair of the Working Group in Cognitive Science and Performance for American Society for Theatre Research from 2010-2014.

John Sutton is Emeritus Professor in Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Macquarie University, Australia. John's research addresses memory and skill, across the cognitive sciences and the humanities. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and past President of the Australasian Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Nicola Shaughnessy is Professor of Performance at the University of Kent. She is Director of the Research Centre for Cognition, Kinesthetics and Performance and is leading the AHRC funded project 'Imagining Autism.'
She is the author of Applying Performance (2012), Gertrude Stein (2007) and co-editor of Margaret Woffington (2008).

Edition details

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1350197750
• ISBN 13: 9781350197756
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 260
• Editor: Bicknell Kath, Sutton John