I direct performance work through Body Research Physical Theater and have been choreographing and directing experimental dance theater since the mid 1980s. My work is primarily postdramatic, meaning that the work is concerned with minimizing theatrical manipulation and representation in favor of exposing phenomena of the human psyche. As I sometimes explain to my scientific colleagues, I put live psychological, somatic, and social experiments on stage for people to watch and sometimes participate in. My work focuses on somatic psychology applied to both process and product in performance and on exploring human agency through participatory performance. The interactive work that I direct is unusual in giving wide scope for individual agency that is truly collaborative with audience members for performance outcome. The work is always research-oriented. In performances, audiences are invited into viewing or sometimes participating in ongoing psychological and artistic research practice.
I am interested in intersections of art and science and in the practice of theater anthropology. Experimental theater has much philosophically in common with the empirical approach of science, but with a different historical body and culture of knowledge and methods. While I have an interest in how theater can be used as a tool for conveying the findings of science, I am more interested in using theater as a place for rich somatic/psychological experimentation and as an interactive framework for community-based research. Theater Anthropology (ala Eugenio Barba) takes the starting premise that the intercultural study of theater necessitates a deep experience in the practice-based research of theater and thus is best performed via collaborative cross-cultural exchange and mutual study amongst theater artists, rather than by academic outsiders unable to access the somatic depths of these traditions themselves. To this end, I have an interest in intercultural exchange amongst ritual/theater practitioners, looking for common cores and differences amongst theater practitioners in different cultures.
I’ve shared my performance work around the globe, mostly in small-scale intimate venues.
I have also made a name for myself internationally teaching contact improvisation, an open ended physical exploration of bodies moving through contact that combines elements of martial arts, postmodern/contemporary dance, acrobatics, meditation, and somatic arts. I have been practicing and teaching contact improvisation and using explorations emerging from it for performance research since the 1980s. As part of this exploration, I have developed a set of exercises and frame of physical self-study, The Passive Sequencing work, which aims to cultivate finer detailed functional proprioceptive awareness of self, environment, and other in dynamic contexts for greater ease and intelligence in motion.
For more information, visit the Body Research website. Like a weedy garden, the site has organically grown a bit out-of-hand into a rather convoluted beast since it was first set up about 15 years ago. It’s due for some reshaping, but worth a view if you want to see some documentation of work and theories over the years.
Here are a few specific links
- Body Research Home Page
- Contact Improvisation and Passive Sequencing
- Performance works
- Publications, including my MFA thesis writings
- Calendar
Current/Near-Future Projects
- A triptych of short meditative films exploring the sensory experience of natural landscapes and seascapes
- An interactive performance work exploring touch and the physics, psychology, and sensation of quotidian and non-daily physical contact
- Teaching and event production for contact improvisation and somatic arts