Flesh and Text: Devising Performance by Bodies in Flight

A critical analysis of UK performance company Bodies in Flight’s work and collaborative methodology, including archival images, text extracts, reflections by collaborators, arts professionals, performance scholars, providing a context for small-scale performance making and insights into devising methods and key questions.120 b&w, 14 col. illus. Bodies in Flight make performances where flesh utters and words move, challenging and re-energizing the relationship between audiences and performers, as well as audiences and place. An inspiration to emerging artists, this collection covers key themes for any maker of contemporary performance and includes selections of scripts and archival material from thirty years of making devised theatre and performance in the UK and internationally. 'This book reveals the wonderful particularities of the work of Bodies in Flight in an intimate sharing of their making processes, producing and thinking. Multiple voices and perspectives nestle, resonating with their contemporary performance practice, whilst remaining distinctive. Delightful.' Professor Vida Midgelow, Professor of Dance and Choreographic Practices, Dean of Doctoral School, University of the Arts, London 'The DNA of Bodies in Flight’s live performance soaks across the pages and seeps into the imagination of the reader, compelling, moving, provocative and inspiring. It will live in the hands of devisors for many years to come, in the way that Certain Fragments was never far from my own fingers or thoughts as a young experimental performance maker.' Dr Joanna Bucknall, Lecturer, University of Birmingham Simon Jones is a theatre director and writer. Simon is director of Bodies in Flight and Emeritus Professor of Performance at the University of Bristol, UK. Sara Giddens was a choreographer and theatre director. She was also Professor of Choreographic Practice at the University of Central Lancashire, UK. BODIES IN FLIGHT make performance where flesh utters and words move, challenging and re-energizing the relationship between audiences and performers, and audiences and place. Emerging from rigorous interdisciplinary and collaborative methods, often with new technologies in cutting-edge venues, we insist on the buzz of ideas, on philosophy and poetry, using words and images, movement and stillness, voices and bodies, through which they aim to move audiences emotionally and spiritually. Organized in a highly visual design, this volume is both a history and a workbook with selections of scripts and archival material from 30 years of making devised theatre and performance in the UK and internationally, plus texts by collaborators, arts professionals and scholars exploring the company’s collaborative working method, contextualizing it in the wider performance ecology and culture. Intended as an inspiration to emerging artists, the volume covers key questions for any maker of contemporary performance: the relationship of choreography and spoken word, the use of new technologies and multi-media, the role of original music and soundscapes, the differences between work presented in a theatre or gallery or sited in non-theatrical places, the persistence of theatre as an art-form in an increasingly digital culture.