Performance Matters 1 performance Lineage

1. Personal Artistic Lineage
Liam Gordon

2. Picture credits: Helen Newall Crimson Lake & Geof Atwell My works criteria…
• The work use theatrical and performative
devices, such as the body as text and
biographical versus autobiographical
accounts, to tell stories and accumulate
narrative.
• The work explores the definition and ideas
of ‘Queer’ and/or ‘Gender’ and does this
through per formative devices.
• The work uses numerous performative and
theatrical devices, marrying different
techniques; examining through
collaboration the correlation, oscillation or
even colliding effects of interdisciplinary
performance.
• The work is intermedial; using the body as a
singular media, the audience as a secondary
media and visual elements as multimedial
devices. Work which then blurs the
boundaries between these media.
• The work explores movement in
performance.

3. 1. Pina Bausch
2. Judson Dance Company
3. X6 Dance Collective
4. Philippe Decouflé
5. Lea Anderson
6. Claude Brumachon
7. DV8/ Stan Wont Dance
8. Leigh Bowery & Michael Clark
9. Mark Murphy & V-TOL Company
10.Anne Bogart
11.Batsheva
12.Hofesh Schecter
13.Theatre Ad Infinitum
14.Retina Dance Company
15.Earthfall
16.Imitating The Dog
17.2Faced Dance
18.Joseph Mercier
19.Nigel Charnock
20.Jasmin Vardimon Company
20 Influencing practitioners…

4. Anne Bogart
• Anne Bogart is a revolutionary theatre maker and practitioner,
renown for her development of the 9 viewpoints (Kinaesthetic
Response, Repetition, Spatial Relationship, Tempo , Duration,
Topography (floor pattern), Shape, Gesture, Architecture), an
improvisational ensemble-building method, derived and developed
from collaborator and mentor Mary Overlie.
• Overlie began by creating the 6 viewpoints of dance (Space, Shape,
Time, Emotion, Movement, and Story), which was developed and
evolved into Bogart’s 9 viewpoints. Bogart’s methods are strongly
influenced by intense physical acting, Tadashi Suzuki’s method of
physical training and Butoah. From her collaboration with Suzuki,
Bogart formed SITI (Saratoga International Theatre Institute) in
1992, a company with a mission to create new work, to train young
theatre artists and to encourage international collaboration.
According to the company website, SITI believes that contemporary
American theatre must incorporate artists from around the world and
learn from the resulting cross-cultural exchange of dance, music, art,
and performance experiences. Interdisciplinary practice and
collaboration is key.
• The work Bogart creates with SITI use many classical pieces of text,
plays and even musicals to be adapted to contemporary
performances. In the past the company has deconstructed Greek
Tragedy’s, Shakespeare, Alice in Wonderland and War of The
Worlds; using these stories and narrative as a stimulus to create.
• The company relies heavily on the rehearsal process, both as a
method for training and a sharing of ideas (the cross-cultural
exchange of ideologies and embodied experiences).
• Each piece created by the company strives to stand alone from one
another; finding new ways and theatrical devices to explore ideas,
themes and narrative differently. Whether through the use of
movement, dialogue, method of deliverance, visual elements or
design elements.

5. Theatre Ad Infinitum
• Theatre Ad Infinitum is an Lecoq-trained ensemble theatre
who creates new and original pieces of theatre for multi-cultural
audiences. It was founded by artistic directors
George Mann, Nir Paldi and Amy Nostbakken and made a
name for their selves in 2008 at the Edinburgh Fringe
Festival with ‘Behind The Mirror’.
“We all share a passion for innovative theatre making that
speaks to a global community, and create performances that
harness the universal language of the body. Drawing on our
differences in culture, nationality, and language we produce a
unique and engaging form of theatre unified by our commitment
to the audience. That you may be moved, challenged and
inspired by our work is our first priority.” ( [30/09/14])
• Theatre Ad Infinitum uses different theatrical techniques
and skills to find new and innovated ways to express
narrative, themes and emotions we as humans can all relate
to. Using techniques such as mime, mask work, movement
and gestural motions to create a universal language, telling
stories that any person from any culture can understand
and relate to.
• Translunar Paradise collaborated with designers to create
elderly masks representing the characters present selves,
enabling them through movement to transition between
their past selves and presents selves revealing moments of
love, loss and the journey of life and death. The piece also
collaborated with a live accordion as its only form of
compliment and aural element, allowing both art forms to
work alongside and correlate with each other during the
performance.
• Recent work, such as Ballad of The Burning Star, has delved
into the discussion of gender identity in performance.
Delving into the world of drag cabaret and using the semi
autobiographical accounts of co-artistic director Nir Paldi,
the piece spectates on a tragic and explosive journey of the
on going war between Israel and Palestine; thus exploring
the themes of identity, religion and politics. The piece
utilises new and experimentryways to tell stories, that the
company have never used before to surprise the audiences
expectations of the show.

6. Earthfall
• Earthfall was formed in 1989 by Jessica Cohen and Jim Ennis
with the want to create work which pushes the boundaries of
choreography, collaboration with live music and collaboration
with live artists and visual artists. Their work captures the feel
and essences of times gone by and faded locations to bring
audiences into the depths of the minds connected to these
worlds. Through live media, dialogue, multimedia and dance
theatre, the company explores narrative and tells the stories of
these times.
• ‘At Swim, Two Boys’ tells the story of developing love between
two teenage boys mirrored in the set as it slowly fills with
water, colliding and splashing with excitement and doubt till
the water has settled for the boys to swim off together. The
story unfolds to the backdrop of Easter Rising Ireland in 1916,
juxtaposing their love affair with political turmoil and Irelands
dream of national independence with the gay lovers yearning
for personal freedom. The piece uses live running water in a
slowly filling pool on the stage, extreme physicality, live
original musical scores, film and dialogue of the performers
own events woven with dialogue from the book the piece is
based from.
• ‘The Factory’ uses simple set and design elements to enable
the audience to fill in the blanks and create the entirety of
Andy Warhol’s Silver Factory in East 47 street. Using a live band
playing late 50s/ 60s New York street music and
autobiographical account of Warhol and his superstars, we are
transported to that time and place without the need for
elaborate sets. The pieces marries the use of live cameras with
dialogue to create Warhol’s cinematic style of art making. The
piece even humorously uses a whole section dedicated to tap
dancing as Andy famously wrote how he longed to be to tap
dance.
• Throughout this piece, the audience become a media through
which the narration develops and encapsulates. As an audience
member you become embedded in the action and see yourself
as a superstar through seeing yourself in their live broadcast on
the stage.
• Their dance content derives from high energy, adrenaline
movements, to moments of simplicity and gestural fluidity,
contact work and inhibitual moments of freedom and
improvisation. The company focuses heavily on the creation
process, allowing each performers repertoire and embodied
knowledge contribute to the creation of the work.

7. Joseph Mercier
• Joseph Mercier is a performance-maker working
across disciplines, including dance, live art and
contemporary theatre. He collaborates with other
artists with his company PanicLab, as a group
using ‘the personal’ as a starting point to create
dance theatre work.
• One of Mercier’s biggest influences are hidden
histories and contemporary politics. His work in
its simplest form is storytelling through minor
histories and counter narratives.
• Mercier draws influence from queer theory,
feminist and subcultural archives to create work
which questions the issues around bodies,
subjectivity and political agency.
• Mercier creates work which deconstructs the
regulations of dance and draws influences from
physical forms of theatre, material arts, pro
wrestling and taekwondo to form a new language
of the body beyond dance. The us of ‘masculine’
forms of movement through fighting and
feminine movement through dance creates
interesting colliding effects in his work,
questioning gender in performance.
• Mercier embraces the use of David Zambrano’s
Flying Low/Passing Through techniques in the
creation process. The flying low ability is to focus
on the performers relationship with the floor,
through the use of simple movement patterns,
breath, speed and release of energy to create an
inert perception of the skeletal structure to
maintain a centred state. Passing Through is being
able to find the already accessible spirals leading
to and from the floor to give the performer a third
eye perception of the space all around them.
Activating the spirals through their centre and
moving all joints from this centre.

8. Jasmin Vardimon Company
• Jasmin Vardimon Company combines the
disciplines of physical theatre, quirky
characterisation, innovative technologies, text and
dance to create pieces which observes human
behaviour.
• With sharp instincts and provocative daring,
Vardimon has developed an individual
choreographic voice, distinguished by her
beautifully detailed movement, insightful humour
and engaging drama.
• The company’s works are widely accessible
through their exposure of human experience,
social relevance, high quality, passion, skill and
commitment.
• The pieces created within the company explores
the human condition through the use of artistic
devices; the marrying of live art with movement
and design to create a spectacle for all the senses.
• More recent work such as ‘Park’ uses the urban
setting of a park, creating narratives based around
the movement of play and the interactions of
characters in an audience familiar setting. “In this
playground of relationships, young lovers wrestle
in a historic fountain, a graffiti artist sprays his
story, a busker finds his only appreciative audience
in a bag lady and a flag-waving bully rants worn
out political beliefs. Their stories intertwine
creating a modern day fairytale that is alternately
sharp, funny and cruel.”
(http://jasminvardimon.com/productions/park/
[30/09/14])]

9. Picture references
• Slide 4 - image 1.
http://siti.groupsite.com/uploads/files/x/000/080/1e6/Anne%20Bogart%20H
eadshot%202012%20-%20Craig%20Schwartz.jpg 2.
http://americanrepertorytheater.org/sites/default/files/styles/event_wide/pu
blic/shows/images/Bobrauschenberg_wide.jpg?itok=K4LYVfNp 3.
http://www.artsjournal.com/dancebeat/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/AJ-Bard-
A-Rite-1.jpg 4. http://siti.org/sites/default/files/imagecache/content-main/
30HFHotelCassiopeia05.JPG 5. http://newcitystage.com/wp-content/
uploads/2008/11/macbeth_horiz_4785.jpg 6.
http://cdn.evbuc.com/eventlogos/5696130/1461347931-2.jpg
• Slide 5 - image 1. http://studenttimes.org/sites/default/files/styles/img-article-main/
public/articles/images/BalladoftheBurningStarTheatreAdInfinitumcredi
tAlexBrunner.jpg?itok=bzsgZfmk 2.
http://www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk/productions/the-big-smoke/ 3.
http://www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk/productions/odyssey/ 4.
http://www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk/productions/translunar-paradise/ 5.
http://www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk/light-2014/
• Slide 6 – image 1, 4 & 5 http://www.earthfall.org.uk/archive/production-archive/
at-swim-two-boys-2011-2012/ 2 & 3.
http://www.earthfall.org.uk/archive/production-archive/chelsea-hotel/ 6.
http://www.earthfall.org.uk/archive/production-archive/the-factory/
• Slide 7 – image 1.. http://www.josephmercier.com/wp-content/
uploads/2011/09/balkean-3.jpg 2.
http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/reviews/images/cruising_clubbing.jpg 3.
http://www.idmn.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Joseph-Mercier-
Giselle-or-Im-Too-Horny-to-be-a-Prince.jpg 4.
http://i1.chroniclelive.co.uk/incoming/article1381954.ece/alternates/s2197/te
aser-joseph-mercier-s-take-on-the-ballet-classic-giselle-11594479.jpg 5.
http://www.josephmercier.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/10.jpg 6.
http://www.josephmercier.com/balkaen
• Slide 8 – image 1.
http://londondance.com/files/images/pageimage/21309.e023a38c/485x485.fi
tandcrop.jpg 2. http://jasminvardimon.com/wp-content/
uploads/2013/08/0058.jpg 3.
http://payload284.cargocollective.com/1/16/521644/7999847/6353662817828
85857-034f7ba2-9620b7d822b3_960_Raw_905.jpg 4.
http://jasminvardimon.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/jvc26.jpg 5.
http://www.culturelink.com.sg/wp-content/
uploads/2012/09/Jasmin_Vardimon.jpg 6.
http://www.ballet.co.uk/images/jasmin_vardimon/bh-justitia-air-5-seated-
1_500.jpg 7.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02407/JasminVardimon_2407833
c.jpg

10. Biography
• Bales, Melanie & Nettl-Fiol, Rebecca (2008) The Body Eclectic: Evolving Practices in Dance Training. Chicago: University of Illinois Press
• Bogart, Anne. (2001). A Director Prepares: Seven Essays on Art and Theatre. London: Routledge
• Bogart, Anne. (2007). And Then, You Act: Making Art in an Unpredictable World. London: Routledge
• Bogart, Anne and Tina Landau. (2005). The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition. New York: Theatre
Communications Group
• Hampton, Claire. Dance Theatre: An Anti-Discursive Illustration of an Embodied Existence, University of Wolverhampton.
• Marcus, Sharon (2005). Queer Theory for Everyone: A Review Essay"'. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
• Reinelt, Janelle G. & Roach, Josepf R. (2007) Critical Theory and Performance. Michigan: The University of Michigan Press
• Simpson, Penny. Earthfall: Performance, Development and Methodology (2013)
• Tadashi, Suzuki, The Way of Acting: The Theatre Writings of Tadashi Suzuki, Theatre Communications Group, (1993)
• Wilson, E Scott. Dissertation – At Swim Two Boys (2005)
• Text from the film “Conversations with choreographers – David Zambrano” by Krishan Hukam, Amsterdam, (2009).
• Body Mapping in Jasmin Vardimon Company’s Yesterday. Abstract for TaPRA Annual Conference 2009. Performance and the Body Working
Group. September 7-9, 2009 University of Plymouth.
• Interview with Jasmin Vardimon for Haaretz, Israel News By Elad Samorzik, 4 May 2012
• http://jasminvardimon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Justitia-Education-Pack-2013.pdf
• http://www.earthfall.org.uk/
• http://www.earthfall.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/press-full-coverage.pdf
• http://www.theatreadinfinitum.co.uk/
• http://www.josephmercier.com