Event overview
The Performance Research Forum hosts a range of events, talks and presentations by established and early-career researchers and practitioners in theatre and performance.
Dr Philippa Burt: ‘Embodying the Past and Imagining the Future in Complicité’s 'everything that rises must dance'’
Abstract:
In October 2018, 200 women gathered in the courtyard of Somerset House in London to celebrate female movement across time and space. The project, titled 'everything that rises must dance' and created by Sasha Milavic Davies and Lucy Railton for Complicité, saw participants of different ages and abilities reproduce the minute everyday performances of women they had observed in and around the capital on a specific date – 18 September 2018 – to create an embodied movement archive. In this paper, I reflect on this project from my dual position as participant and performance researcher to examine how it offers an alternative and performative way of capturing and remembering the often overlooked moments of the past and brings them into dialogue with historical sites of power. I also consider the social and political importance of foregrounding these typically forgotten and undocumented histories. Regarding the personal, I discuss the particular significance that this project had for me, given that 18 September 2018 was also the day my mother died. Finally, I consider how such work offers a way of imagining an alternative future rooted in collaboration, the transcendence of binaries and dialogue.
Speaker Bio:
Philippa Burt is a Lecturer in Theatre and Performance Theory at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research examines the intersections of performance, politics, history and social groups, with a particular focus on the pioneers of ensemble work in Britain in the twentieth century. Her recent publications include ‘American Invasions’ in The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and ‘‘The Best Thing I Ever Did on the Stage’: Edward Gordon Craig and the Purcell Operatic Society’ (New Theatre Quarterly, 38.1, August 2022). She is currently completing her monograph, Director-led Ensemble Theatre in Twentieth-century Britain (University of Exeter Press, forthcoming) and she is the Assistant Editor of New Theatre Quarterly.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Dec 2024 | 6:00pm - 8:00pm |
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