This article was downloaded by: [George Mason University]On: 21 December 2014, At: 14:56Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office:Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Theatre, Dance and Performance TrainingPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscriptioninformation:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rtdp20

‘Dear Participant’ – training, rehearsaland response in the work of Goat Islandperformance group and Francis AlÿsSara Jane BailesPublished online: 16 Apr 2013.

To cite this article: Sara Jane Bailes (2013) ‘Dear Participant’ – training, rehearsal and response in the workof Goat Island performance group and Francis Alÿs, Theatre, Dance and Performance Training, 4:1, 4-29, DOI:10.1080/19443927.2012.761644

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2012.761644

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”)contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and ourlicensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, orsuitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publicationare the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor &Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independentlyverified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for anylosses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilitieswhatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to orarising out of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantialor systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, ordistribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and usecan be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

‘Dear Participant’ – training, rehearsaland response in the work of Goat Islandperformance group and Francis Alys

Sara Jane Bailes*

Within the realms of collaborative performance practice, ‘devising’ has become a commonly used

term, yet it tells us little more than that an often original process of invention has been elaborated

in order to make and rehearse newly composed work. How might we begin to articulate and

organise this unmarked and often purposefully a-systematic terrain, one that values the individual

yet emphasises collaboration, response and participation as fundamental to a more ethical

approach to theatre-making? And how might such processes encourage us to rethink the term

‘training’? Written in two parts, including a scripted collaborative ‘performed dialogue’ (co-

authored with ex-Goat Island member, Karen Christopher), this article speculates on questions

of training, rehearsal and approaches to collaborative composition examined through the

performances and Summer Schools of the now-disbanded Chicago performance group, Goat

Island, and thewriting and works of Belgian-born artist, Francis Alys. Rehearsal, suggests Alys – a

process that aims to preserve uncertainty and deliberation – defines a condition of art practice

that certain artists and groups gravitate towards for political, economic, social and aesthetic

reasons. Rehearsal can propose a resistant state, reminding us of the world before it settles and

the potentiality of conditions that are immanent. Performance itself is the enactment of the dream

of a present moment, repeated. Part essay, part conversation, this two-part article considers

some of the implications and digressions of such interests.

Keywords: training, Goat Island, rehearsal, Francis Alys, creative response,participation

Part 1

(1) Preparing the ground

In an earlier issue of this journal, theatre historian Noel Witts responded tothe provocation, ‘What is the problem with training?’, by suggesting thefollowing: ‘The problem with the notion of training for twenty-first century

q 2013 Taylor & Francis

* Though I am author of this article, Part 2 comprises a written dialogue originallycomposed for performance from a series of conversations (spoken and written) withKaren Christopher.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training

Vol. 4(1), 2013, 4–29, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19443927.2012.761644

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

performance is that it presupposes a kind of performance which may not yetexist’ (Witts 2010, pp. 231–236). Witts raises an intriguing point thatgestures towards a significant shift not only in the style and forms of theatreproduced but in the very processes of intention involved in makingperformance – its craft, its techniques and the understanding of practice thateach performance chooses to engage with. Teaching, making and writingabout contemporary experimental theatre performance, in particular certainensemble and collaborative methods of composition that have proliferatedsince the 1980s, I am often struck by the difficulty that arises, in eitherworkshop or discussion, when one tries to articulate what might be involvedin making performance that self-consciously distances itself from realism,character-led drama and mimesis as a principal practical and conceptualframework. Developments in recent compositional practices that areitinerant and consistently variable often aim to move beyond existing formalconventions, resisting what might be perceived as the ‘doctrine’ that systemsof training might establish (regardless of how progressive or alternative thosesystems might be).1 Alternatives to a replicable system or regimen of practicecan prove difficult to document, as such approaches tend to resist formula andrepetition. A process might begin with little more than a partially articulatedcollection of thoughts in an informal discussion, or a range of disparatesources (video clips, passages of writing, a book, documentary characters or ahistorical or fictional figure, etc.), likes and dislikes, throwing on some lightsand lining up a few chairs. It might commence with one or several images,a formal problem, a piece of music, playing around with designating text,or something that caught someone’s attention until it became a quietobsession. In the domain of collaborative theatre-making, devising has becomeusual, yet that term (devising) reveals little more than that a process ofinvention has been elaborated in order to create material from scratch as analternative to commencing a working/rehearsal process. (This replacesbeginning with a playtext or a fixed character on the first day of rehearsals.)Viewed externally, the processes of making devised shows can appear to thriveon randomness and an absence of rigour. Yet such approaches are oftenconditioned by a finely tuned, shared sensibility that knows precisely what it islooking for, but only when it discovers it, and only in retrospect and by virtue ofthat discovery. Part of my concern here is to consider how we might begin toarticulate this unmarked and often purposefully a-systematic terrain thatexpands our understanding of what theatre can do and the way in which itsrange of practices extend the way we might think about training forperformance in the twenty-first century. My primary focus will be the SummerSchools and performance-making strategies of the now disbanded perform-ance group, Goat Island (1987–2009), and later the work of Francis Alys.It seems apposite to open a discussion concerning the condition and place

of training in Goat Island’s work by referring back to Witt’s perceptiveobservation, since to do so allows me to introduce two key notions relevantto the company’s work. First, the idea of response as an ethos that underpinsall creative practice, practical or otherwise (my own to Witts’ suggestion, forexample, and Witts’ response to the original question). Second, theunderstanding that there are many kinds of performance ‘which may not yetexist’. Unlike theatre that begins with a playtext or a prescribed system orapproach to a text, newer modes of performance often do not yet know what

1. By ‘doctrine’ I mean thatin many areas oftwentieth-centurytheatre practice and itsteaching/training, thetransmission of a specificapproach to both theproduction of material(situation, character,plot, etc.) and its deliverygenerally relies upon anupheld set ofconventions, principlesand instructive tools thatare taught by a teacher(or ‘expert’) to anapprentice or student.Such systems includeMethod (Stanislavski/Strasberg), Lecoq,Meisner Technique,Grotowski, Forumtheatre (Boal),Viewpoints (Overlie/Bogart), and so on.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 5

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

they want to be, never mind what they are looking for. On such occasions,latency can become a condition of possibility. To approach certain objectiveswithin theatre-making using established methods of training might therefore,in such cases, define an exclusionary approach that prevents rather thanfacilitates formal invention. But that, of course, depends entirely upon whatone understands by the term ‘training’. Further, Witts’ comment suggests wemight do well to dwell upon what precisely enables us to distinguish one ‘kindof performance’ from another, and to question the way in which taxonomy,order and the imperative to organise performance practice(s) into a teachablediscipline might be in tension with less codified and under-articulatedbehaviours of practice. The problem of regulating practice of any kind in orderto render it ‘teachable’ forms part of a broader set of issues thathistoricisation and its operations of recording, documenting and legitimatingproduce in order to materialise any given ‘history’ through the formation ofdisciplines. If one cannot repeat something, it almost certainly remains of little‘value’ or is lost to a discourse education might be able to reproduce.Performance training forms a necessary, if problematic, constituent in howone learns to practise, but it also invites us to reconsider the way in whichpractice can teach us how to learn.

This beginning also allows me to frame a co-authored conversation withtheatre artist Karen Christopher, former member of Goat Islandperformance group (from 1989 to 2009), whom I invited into this discussion.2

The conversation (which follows as Part 2 of this essay and was originallyconceived as a live performed dialogue) was inspired by several terms that weplaced under consideration in order to develop our conversation into aperformance. Three terms – ‘participation’, ‘rehearsal’ and ‘training’ –became a focus as a result of reflecting upon our respective practices andpedagogy as theatre-makers, writers and educators. We also reflected uponour position as spectators to different categories of performance. Ourdialogue meandered around practices in performance, dance, film and visualart, the nature of Goat Island’s work in relation to this, and the work of otherartists of relevant interest (including Francis Alys, Rosas, Pina Bausch, RobertWilson, Merce Cunningham, Forced Entertainment and Chantal Ackerman).In 2003 I began to record our exchanges and our dialogue has developedsince, mediated in various ways, at different times, and in a number oflocations. In this sense it is both a peripatetic and palimpsestic dialogue,preserving the layers of many different iterations and the drift anddevelopment of thought that comes about as a result of allowing time toenter into the process of collaboration. Anchoring this two-part essay areseveral interconnected questions that have become significant to my ownpractice of writing about and making theatre performance. Central to this isthe ongoing attempt to understand what constitutes ‘training’ within certainrecent ecologies of performance practice that have, over time, shifted farbeyond the usual objectives and definitions that the term implies. Despite thediversity of new approaches to making performance and its constantreinvention through these approaches, some aspect of ‘discipline’ remains keyin developing and sustaining a practice. For without a practice of some kind,developing any kind of performance beyond an initial concept or idea remainsa limited exercise. Later, I will return to the relation between art practiceand idea.

2. Christopher currentlyinitiates, makes andperforms as Haranczak/Navarre PerformanceProjects. See http://www.haranczaknavarre.co.uk.

6 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

My investigation is influenced by several things: my own history as atheatre-maker and performer (primarily between 1986 and 1996); anextended process of observing Goat Island and other collaborative theatreartists making work (between 1999 and 2009, in the US and the UK)3 and theexperience of participating in one, and later teaching in two, Goat IslandSummer Schools (1999, 2006 and 2007). Questions that begin to articulatemy enquiry are as follows:

How does one teach the composition of a performance one has yet to imagine?

How does composition ‘speak’? That is, how does it negotiate its own terms? What

language does it need in order for it to be shared rather than imposed, discovered

rather than taught?

How might one teach a young artist the ability to imagine and produce material from

the imagination (or, as an artist, how does one learn to ‘train’ one’s imaginative faculty

without the imposition of formal techniques)?

How might one learn to translate an image-thought into a performative moment that

can be shared, taught and repeated?

What facilitates ‘discovery’, and can certain criteria and conditions be established in

order that more elusive and ephemeral methods of production expand the terms and

conditions of what we understand by the term ‘training’?

One might summarise by asking: to what extent is it still relevant – usefuleven – to consider training as a prerequisite for theatre-making andperforming today? Do we need different terms and turns of phrase?As importantly, what is at stake if the answer to such a question suggeststhat training is neither fundamental nor always constitutional to theatre craft?If we argue for the necessity of training, recalling Witts’ statement, wepresume to already know what is yet to be imagined. Thus we are in danger offoreclosing the event that might occur. When Richard Sennett discusses theuse and application of tools in The Craftsman, he observes: ‘Hume argued thatthe mind enlarges its frame of reference by ‘stumbling’ on the unexpected, theunforeseen; imagination happens to us’ (2008, p. 209). But the mind of thecraftsman, Sennett goes on to suggest, works differently than Hume imaginedbecause specific practices and skills prepare the ground upon which peoplemight stumble. ‘Intuition begins with the sense that what isn’t yet could be’(ibid., p. 209). Intuition and preparation are coeval in the production ofcreative labour, and operate in dialectical tension with one another. We mightbegin to think about the idea of ‘prepared intuition’ as an importantdevelopment in training for performance. So let me circle back to mybeginning and come at this once again with these thoughts in mind. Think ofthis as preparing the ground.

(2) Creative response

Inviting Witts into this discussion I begin with a response: that is to say I amalready in conversation before writing begins. My thinking commences,associates and dissociates in relation toWitts’ observation (whether I chooseto foreground this fact or not) so that meaning emerges between the figures

3. These include ForcedEntertainment (UK),Elevator Repair Service(US), New York CityPlayers (US) and TheSpecial Guests (UK).

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 7

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

and thoughts brought together, as between reader and written/read text.Meaning-making as part of creative intention is always, to some extent,a plural, social act. The first thing one learns in any encounter with the work ofGoat Island, arguably nowhere more overtly than when one is a participant intheir Summer Schools, is the profound significance of response in thecompany’s methodology and approach to creating performance. ‘Response’ isunderstood by company members as a methodical and often planned meansof exchange through which material can be generated and sharedinterdependently; that is to say, it is not simply a critical, self-authored orindependent riposte. It can function as a precondition for practical ormetaphysical enquiry, articulating the willingness to be in an encounter withsomeone or something else. In this sense it is a gesture that makes practicalsense of the idea of ‘community’ as an active, collaborative endeavour thatgenerates an ongoing, fluid process of decision-making and negotiation.A participant in a Goat Island Summer School might be asked to bring in a‘creative response’ to a previously given instruction or a fieldwork exerciseand perform it for the other participants (the contents of the performanceand its methods of execution vary considerably, though usually a precise, brieftime limit is issued as part of the instruction). Another participant respondsthe following day (arbitrarily assigned) by bringing in another creativeresponse to the previous day’s performed response; another two, three orfour individuals might then be given the responsibility of responding to the(second) response so that duets and quartets develop, the work itselfproliferates and so on.

As a dynamic unit of instruction which, alongside other methods ofcollaboration, guides the learning practitioner’s creative work and facilitatesexpansion in an inclusive manner, the method of creative response asks thatwe understand practice as fundamentally interactive and ‘a-singular’. Itarticulates a form of listening-to and attention-giving in order that one mightexpand one’s expressive limits rather than perceive creative acts as producedby and from a fixed, individual subjectivity working in isolation. In the lexiconof critical terms that define Goat Island’s process and the broader provenanceof their commitment to egalitarian ways of being socially responsible, ‘creativeresponse’ might be understood as an ethical mode of operation that underpinsthe production of thought, action and event both in and beyond performance-making. It frames but does not condition invention within that frame. It facilitatesrather than constrains what might be immanent, recalling a distinction Frenchphilosopher, Gilles Deleuze, makes between ethics and morality (referring toFoucault’s ‘styles of life’). While morality ‘presents us with a set of constrainingrules’, Deleuze argues that ethics provides ‘a set of optional rules that assesswhatwe do, what we say, in relation to the ways of existing involved’ (1995, p. 100).Ethics invites us tounderstand the ‘self’ as being in an active state of production, asbeing produced. What and how one ‘becomes’ (devenir) – through acts,intentions, thoughts and behaviours –produces modes of subjectification andnew relations. This distinction between the moral and the ethical might be of usein thewaywe reconsider the function and potentiality of training for performancein the twenty-first century. For training might be considered as that whichimagines the conditions for a performance and seeks to arrange a context for itsproduction, rather than that which establishes and stands guard over itsambitions.

8 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

To return now to the ‘problem’ of training in relation to Goat Island, forundoubtedly the term sits somewhat awkwardly and at odds with the way inwhich the group pursued both their own performance-making as well aspedagogical exchange. In what ways does their work propose alternatives toan understanding of training that help to expand its definition? If trainingoccurred within Goat Island’s work it is perhaps most clearly evidencedthrough the intricate mapping of directives and instructions its membersissued for one another when making each of their nine collaborativeperformance works between 1987 and 2009. This method for generatingmaterial was applied and further elaborated in the intensive but temporarySummer Schools (usually between one and three weeks long with theexception of one four-week School in Glasgow in 1996). Directives, oftenissued in the form of short poetic instructions, stand independently as micro-creative acts prior to the work of interpretation by the respondent, and theycan inform speed, duration, intention and body parts. Thus time itselfbecomes a material in making work. It shapes the work, alters its formalpossibilities and defines the experience of its effects for both performer andspectator. Once issued, directives are taken away (by performers/participants) to prepare for the next day, rehearsal or a designated futuredate. They provide a way of generating material that can be presented orelaborated (to include more members/participants, in pairs, trios and so onbut also objects, locations, etc.). Performed ideas are developed to formloosely composed blocks of material that might follow the structural methodsof composers (such as Conlon Nancarrow or Morton Feldman) and artists, orpatterns such as the canon as a form, a mathematical sequence (the Fibonaccisequence in When will the September roses bloom . . . , for example), theskeleton of a botanical plant, a haiku, an architectural map of a building (theHagia Sophia basilica, now a museum, incorporated and developed into acollaboratively performed gestural sequence in The Lastmaker) and so on. LinHixson, founder member and artistic director of the group, refers to what isessentially the creation of a particular environment rather than the invention ofa series of exercises or techniques, where the practitioner-participant is able‘to hold distraction and attention together; to use an arising galaxy of forms,multiple histories, multiple bodies, and multiple ways of knowing; to keep thelocality of site and remote vistas in the same room; to allow a constellation ofsituationally arising units, bound to time, accident and circumstance’ (Hixsonin Bottoms and Goulish 2007, p. 175). Thus time, space, memory andimagination combine to construct the materiality of performance as an event.In what ways can such an apparently open and inclusive method for

generating material constitute a system of training? Where does such a‘system’ begin and end? To a certain extent, these instructions andpreparatory methods resist taxonomy and the repetition implied by‘technique’ or ‘method’, or at least alter an understanding of what trainingfor performance could be and what it might demand from those engaged withthinking about and teaching practice. Rather than the taught repetition andmastery of more rigidly defined skills to be honed, copied or absorbed as aphysical or emotional blueprint according to a specific code of practiceinvented by one or several individuals, training might be better understood asthe construction of multiple frameworks that facilitate invention withinspecific yet undetermined limits. Directives, instructions for writing, carefully

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 9

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

designed fieldtrips accompanied by solitary or collaborative observationaltasks and responses proliferated throughout Goat Island Summer Schools anddevising processes when working on each of their performances. Theseactivities for preparation guided the practical work generated amongstparticipants (and, when making shows, company members), no matter whattheir background or disciplinary focus (whether they were architects,designers, mathematicians, writers, painters, sculptors or performers).‘Creative response’, as the company named this process that sought toextend or amplify units of material amongst any given group, helped to definean entire approach towards art practice and the individual’s being in relationto the world of other objects, thoughts, occurrences and people. It proposeswhat might be called an ‘open’ technique.

In Goat Island’s performance-making as in their teaching, the creativeresponse offered a way of first generating (individually) and then composing(collectively) material that was often composite and usually ‘found’ in theeveryday world. Performative moments were copied or drawn throughobservation into translated expressions of the world beyond the workshopor performance space, from site visits to an urban co-operative bike shop, forexample, or a museum, a quarry, or a particular street. Locations wereproposed by company members who taught the Schools in rotation together,usually three members at a time (depending on variables such as the size ofthe ‘School’ cohort, availability of each member and location). Many activitieswere implicitly pluralistic (though solo assignments and individual reflectionformed an equally critical part of the process), designed to inform behaviourand devising methods so that a performed ‘moment’ discovered by oneperson could easily adjust to include variations and input from otherparticipants. In other words, each performative moment shared amongstparticipants is adaptable enough to accommodate the expression andsensibility of all involved as well as the diverse mediums participants preferredto work in, including painting, sculpture, live action, spoken text, movementand so on. Repetition plays a key part in this process – any performativeexample created must be able to be repeated.

In my experience as both a Summer School participant and Visiting Artist (allthree experiences in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute), the invitationto actively contribute and participate as part of a temporary community ofartists occurred by virtue of being (re)positioned in response to an existingproposition: a short performance by another individual, or several workingtogether, or the entire cohort. In such a way, the work one generatedconstituted a shared practice whatever its occasion or mode of transmission(live performance, installation, visual document, writing, etc.). As participants,one’s practice arose as the result of an ongoing process of generating andnegotiating each activity in response to specific instruction, learning throughrepetition to perform an idea, and returning to refine elements that enabled itsdelivery. In such a context, each participant teaches others incremental units of,say, a performed gesture or delivery of a phrase or a series of sounds,encouraging material to develop into a small performance, though of coursethis expansion is notwithout difficulty and adjustment.Collective responsibilityremained fundamental to the act of participation for ‘student’ and ‘teacher’.In the case of the latter, one of the tasks assigned the Visiting Artist each year,alongside a lecture or presentation of one’s choice, was to bring in a prepared

10 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

response to a series of group performances produced by the participants onthe previous day. In some sense one’s practice is therefore always a reflection ofwhat remains of another’s gestures and imaginative acts. Thus one can thinkof ‘creative response’ as a way of refining or even restoring an implicitrelationality embedded within the social relations of the everyday world whichunderstands social being as fundamentally interdependent and in a state ofconstant dynamic renegotiation.Too often, however, the artificial (not to mention pressurised) conditions of

teaching practice and training for performance, and the ideal of the virtuosicimplicit within the very notion of accomplished learning, displaces the actualityof collaborative deed and doing. This is underscored by certain imperatives ineducation that demand regulation and standardisation. Further, the necessity ofattributing individual authorship of material to creative acts (whether painting,writing, composing, directing, performing, etc.) forms part of the condition thatmakes the circulation of art and its commodification possible. Here I amalluding to a specific history (and understanding of history) that educationcolludes with where the increasingly aggressive, mercantile trajectory of artpractices have shifted across centuries from localised, collective ecologiesconstituted locally through the form of guilds, craftwork and patronage,to individualised and alienated production of the art object within acompetitive, global, capitalist economy. The nature of exchange engenderedthrough creative response reveals a potential and practical logic of organic co-operation inclusive of resistance and difference; negotiation usually involvescompromise, though not necessarily assimilation. Through the attention ofsharing, it orients each participant towards the inclusion of others’ practicalefforts and towards broader democratic principles in the undertaking ofcreative labour as part of daily life and social interaction. What ‘counts’ asperformance – one’s idea of what a performance might be – is frequentlychallenged by such methods while what remains (rather than being edited out)does so often by virtue of chance rather than through evaluative judgement.The creative response invites structures of arbitrariness and the aleatory

into its method of production, acknowledging the challenges laid down byearlier and contemporary European and (mainly) US avant-garde artists whoengaged in interdisciplinary art practice and the conscious aspiration andidealisation of ‘self-less’ egalitarian compositional models during the post-warperiod. These range from Marcel Duchamp, John Cage, Merce Cunningham,Yvonne Rainer and Trisha Brown, to the Fluxus works of George Macunias,Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and Alison Knowles, to the language cut-ups andcontrived, provocative plagiarism of William Burroughs and, more recently,experimental writer and feminist punk-poet, Kathy Acker. Often workingacross disciplinary distinctions, the methods invented to generate materialwere adopted in part to displace the idea of ‘good’ or ‘bad’ technique/skillwhile discovering ways to counter the individual responsibility involved incompositional decision-making. The power and will of the individual creatorwas often diffused, replaced by collective and/or chance processes ofauthorship and execution. The apparent arbitrariness of systems such as theI Ching (commonly associated with Cage’s methods for musical composition,for example) or mathematical systems of random sequencing, or plagiaristiccut-ups adhering to a set of given rules used to intertwine diverse ‘stolen’texts, were deployed as principles guiding inclusion/exclusion of material and

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 11

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

its ordering. They challenge the very idea that a coherent, singular, original‘author’ is possible or necessary for art production, and the logic this affirms:that there is a right or wrong way to do something. To some extent, GoatIsland’s development of creative response and the use of the directive ascompositional methods that ‘train’ the participant to be able to generatematerial (or at least facilitate the conditions for its production) belong to thishistory of contrived yet arbitrary ‘preparation’ that leads to an open and insome sense unpredictable encounter. The notion of encounter as I intend it tobe understood here is described by Deleuze, through his use of the phrase tobe ‘on the lookout’ (2011).

(3) ‘On the lookout’

Within certain cultures of practice, training might be considered redundant,unable to maintain the flexibility required in order to respond to formalinnovation, or simply ‘not elastic enough’, to borrow a phrase from theatrecritic Kenneth Tynan, in his review written for the Observer (7 August 1955)upon seeing Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (Tynan in Bradby 2001, p. 73).Here Tynan refers to Beckett’s committed engagement with the rules ofdrama (in particular the forms of music-hall and parable) and the playwright’sefforts to expand what theatre could do so that upon seeing Godot as aspectator, Tynan himself felt compelled to re-examine the rules that had‘hitherto governed the drama’ (Tynan in Bradby 2001, p. 73). Certainly, muchperformance-making of the last two or three decades strives to remain aheadof us: immanent, to be discovered though not necessarily ‘knowable’ orfamiliar in terms of its formal objectives. In this regard such work differs fromthe example of a playwright such as Beckett who laboured meticulously withinthe formal conventions of the play in order to expand the potentiality of thepre-written, scripted or ‘fixed’ stage work and our understanding of, forexample, character. Recent (theatre) performance, on the other hand, which,as I have already noted, often dispenses with the playtext (or else uses it as anobject to be reinvented, quoted from or sampled, as in the productions of theWooster Group, for example), can seem poorly served by predeterminingmethods and techniques that current systems of training offer and preserve.(Witts’ observation reminds us that training that one already knows what oneis looking for.) This might suit many different kinds of theatre performancethat fall within the popular category of realism (relying as it often does uponthe development of a coherent character) and the resultant lineage of actortraining that continues to dominate much theatre pedagogy in the West. Inactuality, if one looks to the margins or even not so far from what we mightcall ‘mainstream’, such objectives have long been refuted or at the very leastradically destabilised by countless, diverse, devising processes andinterdisciplinary performance practices of the last 50 or more years (atleast since the mid-twentieth century). Perhaps our understanding of whattraining can be and how it functions within the organisation and disciplinaryinculcation of new performance practices (in related pedagogical environ-ments) now calls for an expanded and indeed more elastic definition. Equally,the modes of critical writing that apprehend these shifts need to respond tosuch a call. Part of that reconsideration calls for an incisive shift in thinking

12 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

away from the location of the (physical) body and the individuatedpsychological subject as central or even foundational in training for theatreperformance and the diversity of practices that now includes. Instead, aspectssuch as space, objects, architecture, the incorporation of multiple and oftenunrelated sources, intermediality, repetition and temporality (as constitutiveof or intrinsic to how ‘body’ might be conceived of) can also be deployed asmaterials amongst and through which ideas are defined and then ordered.Deleuze’s elaboration of the meaning of ‘idea’ brings duration and the

creative act together to redefine the way these two terms inform oneanother. One of the purposes of art, he suggests, is to ‘outlive’ the experienceof the artist who produces and constructs aggregates out of the perceptionsand sensations that constitute ideas and expression (Deleuze and Parnet2011). Concerning the domain of art, Deleuze uses the term ‘percept’ todistinguish between what artists create and philosophers produce(‘concepts’). The function of art is to give ‘a duration or an eternity to thiscomplex web of associations’ (the idea or percept), after the artist/writer dies(ibid.). A percept refers to the sensations that outlive the artist/writer whoexperiences and expresses them; in art practice, as in writing, the ideaachieves radical independence from its creator, just as a new concept inphilosophy presents us with ‘a habit of thought that is completely new’ whichoutlives the philosopher who produces it (ibid.). Duration, then, is no longersimply the extent to which a work of art occupies time; it is, rather, thematerial and practical realisation of ideas beyond their time of inception. It isthe way in which art ‘lives’.Continuing with Deleuze, I want to return to the question of ethics,

training and the work of Goat Island. In the group’s practice the notion oftraining might be reformulated thus: as the dynamic formulation of anapproach or an ethical predisposition that aims to bring the participant into astate of prepared intuition (recalling Sennett’s earlier discussion of the craftworker and my conclusion in the opening section of this article). Such a stateis characterised by Deleuze in conversation with Claire Parnet as being ‘onthe lookout’ (2011). This state, revisited several times during his eight-hourfilmed dialogue-interview with Parnet, From A To Z (Abecedaire), arises first inhis response to the term ‘culture’. Here he proposes the phrase in order tocharacterise a way in which one might practise culture or more generallyengage with art. He draws a distinction between this and the notion of simplybeing ‘one who is cultivated’ for which the archetype he proposes is theintellectual – that is, one who claims to ‘know everything . . . can talk abouteverything’. Distancing himself with clear disdain from this ‘type’, Deleuzeprefers a kind of investment he describes as being on the lookout. ‘I don’tbelieve in culture – I believe in encounters’. Encounters, he continues, do notoccur with people – they occur with things: with a painting, a piece of music,literature. ‘When I go out, it’s to see whether there might be material for anencounter, in a film, in a painting . . . I am “on the lookout”, searching for apainting or a film that might touch me’ (ibid.). He describes, then, a state ofreceptivity that is also apprehensive in the older, Latin sense of that term,apprehendere – to seize or grasp. The development of a performance cultureand its training might easily be conceived of in such a way as is clearlyevidenced through the Goat Island Summer Schools. For Deleuze, it is only inthe best circumstances that one ‘risks having an encounter with an idea’ and

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 13

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

this, above all – to be overwhelmed with ideas – is where the practice ofinvention through exchange, artistic or otherwise, begins (ibid.). With theabove discussion and proposals in mind, I offer a companion piece to the firstpart of this essay, and one that proposes a different mode of thinking.

Part 2

The following ‘dialogue’ with Karen Christopher is adapted here for the pageand composed from different exchanges and writing that took place between2003 and 2012. Some began as informal interviews, others as solo writings Iworked on in response to various trains of thought that Karen and myself hadset inmotion, or elsewere triggered by the practices of other artists in collisionwith our thoughts. This culminated in a performance at the PSI #18 conferencein Leeds (Performance Culture Industry), June 2012.We called the piece ‘DearParticipant’. Themethod for producing thewritten texts that formed the scriptwas roughly as follows.

In spring2012weestablishedparameters for a seriesofwritings tobedeliveredto one another on a number of designated dates between March and theconference at the endof June.Wesentwriting toone another (via email) on thoseappointed days in response to the following instructions and in this order:

(1) Compose a response to the term/ideaof ‘Participation’ and send toother.(2) Compose a ‘write-in’ (literallywriting into) to the response sent to you by

the other person and send back.(3) Compose a response to the term/idea of ‘Rehearsal’.(4) Compose a ‘write-in’ to the response sent to you by theother person and

send back.(5) Compose a response to the term/idea of ‘Training’.(6) Compose a ‘write-in’ to the response sent to you by the other person.

At the end of this period we shared a total of 12 texts, 6 of these ‘original’responses and 6 additional compositions developed from the originalresponse with material written into it: a response to the response.

Considering how to use this material to compose a dialogue that could beperformed in a theatre space at PSi (but which might also be adapted forpublication here), I began by revisiting this series of 12 texts and an earlierpiece of writing connected to this topic on the artworks of Belgian artistFrancis Alys, as well as transcripts from two interviews with Karen in 2004(Chicago) and 2009 (London). Karen and I met once throughout the process.The remaining composition was completed remotely and independently.

The script is structured as a composite of all of the above.4 In editing andaggregating sections, we agreed that all of the material was ‘shared’ in thesense that in dialogue one is always already speaking ‘with’, ‘to’ or ‘as’ another.In this final composition, material is not always assigned to its original author.Thus the allocation of text that follows does not adhere to a logic wherebyeach speaker reads her own words (so at times Karen speaks my writing/thoughts and vice versa). Our interests were in part to explore the wayindividual voice shifts, often imperceptibly, through collaboration, and the wayin which performance can relieve us of certain binds related to ownership of

4. A special thanks to SusieSokol for listening to afirst draft of the editedcomposition ‘forperformance,’ and forexcellent advice andfeedback on its opacityand coherence.

14 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

ideas in away that writing still struggles to achieve.Wewere aware of how themovement between texts contributed a way of constructing meaning thatemerged amongst the voices and the associations they liberate. That back-and-forth layering and way of (dis)inhabiting text became intrinsic to ourprocess as a way of performatively examining the act of collaboration.By collaborating through constraints, it becomes easier to divide material andto share (many) voice(s). The four sections in the performance were asfollows:

(1) On Participation(2) Rehearsal(3) From The Interviews and Francis Alys(4) Train of Thought – to learn by heart

‘DEAR PARTICIPANT’5

(1) ON PARTICIPATION

Sara Jane: Why participate?

Karen: Let’s give ourselves a habit and benefit from that habit.

Let’s agree tea will sort our problems out.

Why not stay here and watch what happens over there?

Let’s agree to wave flags at the Queen.

Figure 1 Photo: C J Mitchell.

5. The italicized font in thefollowing dialogueindicates alternationbetween speakers (assignified by eachspeaker’s name at thebeginning of sections).Sections in capitalsindicate both speakingtogether. Theperformance includedtwo series of projectedimages with specific timeintervals per image.Some images reproducedhere were used in theperformance. Wheretext is quoted fromadditional sources, theauthor’s name only isreferenced. I have chosento preserve theinformality of the originalexchange.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 15

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Or send each other a photo of ourselves doing the dishes; or each could agreeto perform the simple act of sitting in front of a window at the sameappointed time each day, recording the first thing that comes into her head asshe looks out.

Goat Island. Summer Schools. Dear Participant. Welcome. An environment thatmakes possible the actual enactment of these rules

To engage with a work requires a willingness to be intrigued or challenged

by its implicit and explicit rules of behaviour. When these are violated, the

responsibility of the participants is dramatically exposed. A participatory work thus

needs an environment that makes possible the actual enactment of these rules.

(Frieling 2008)

It was a conscious decision, arrivedat throughdiscussion, not accident, to call peoplewhotook our workshops ‘participants’. In the first instance it was the need not to call them‘students’. There are a few reasons for this. Some of the people taking ourworkshopsweknew would not be thinking of themselves as our students but as colleagues present foran experience we were leading. Also, while ‘student’ is not a dirty word or a fouloccupation, it implies a dependence we were hoping to avoid. ‘Participant’ evokes a kindof agency, a kind of active engagement, a pivotal role. The fully vested student wouldhave this engagement anyway but we wanted to signal it with our choice of word.‘Participant’ signals engagement.

Warning: ‘Perception Requires Involvement.’ (Antoni Muntadas, 1999)

That’s participation.

(2) REHEARSAL

Sara Jane: I spend all day every day and evening with them, and usually,during this two-week intensive lead-up to their performanceproject, I see nobody else apart from them. I go to work at 9am;I remain in the black box studio all day, except for breaks forfood and general physical maintenance, and I arrive home eachnight at around 11pm.

Karen: ‘Happy Birthday Karen, I miss your careful steps.’

I wonder about this method of immersion, this tough love of completeabandon of all others. It is, of course, a demonstration of devotion ofcommitment and a deep soak in the material, in the action of creating. It causes asupersaturation and it dissolves the difference between individual and project,the two layers are hard to separate as they bleed together and press themselvesinto each other. The exhaustion it brings breaks down barriers and causescollisions of sense and sensation, reason and emotion, the imagined and thepossible.

Rehearsal ¼ hears real – an accident my fidgety finger made with the mouse when Itried to move the word rehearsal or to cut and paste it somewhere else

16 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Hear and re-hear and hear realUnderstanding – getting it in our feet

We were rarely paid for rehearsals, we just did them, rain or shine.

‘One ought to write carefully enough so that a piece would need at least threereadings before its full beauty could be appreciated.’ (Henry David Thoreau,in Sher)

Folds in time and understanding bring new perception to the creation process andthose who would never agree finally acquiesce because in the end the only thing thatmatters is the project being brought to completion.

Like a pilgrimage the immersive-project-development-rehearsal replaceshabitual life for a time; it is an ordeal.

In the early days of my theatre-making life I thrived in this kind of process,I thrived in the breakdown. That I survived it made me feel resilient. This kindof process puts a magnifier on the central action of any rehearsal processregardless of whether it is the kind that takes over your life for a relativelyshort period or one that is an integral part of normal life in an ongoing way butlasting over more than a year’s time.

It is easier to see what happens in this rush of immersion, easier to see the hybridizationthat takes over the body of the team until many become one regardless of theirdiversity, until my ideas become the ideas of the material we are working with, until IDREAM IT, DRINK IT, SIP, SMOKE, EAT, STAND, SIT, SLEEP AND BREATHE IT as anall-consuming part of the fabric of life and it is then that the fibres of it are understoodand under skin and smelling of each other and the purpose and until we truly believe itto be the most important thing to do at this moment.

Figure 2 Rehearsal for a devised collaborative performance, Description of a Struggle, based onKafka’s short stories. University of Sussex, 2012. Photo: Stuart Robinson.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 17

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

It is IN THE REPETITION that we begin to consume it as food. It is INTHE REPETITION that we begin to know it. It is IN THE REPETITION that itgathers speed and takes shape and begins to write itself. The piece, I mean thepiece that we work on, the piece that we think we are making, the bitsthat are repeated, influences us and draws us in and spells us out and blooms inour dreams and makes us hungry for a different taste this time and more. If wejust slip out a new thing from brain to stage and never live in it and give it achance to teach us by inhabiting our bodies, then we are living in the one level,that one tone, and it may be a penthouse or a gloomy lagoon but it is amonotone. A multi-layered, multi-vocal work requires some steeping in the juices.The lived-in suit with character as opposed to the one just off the rack, perfectlypressed.

How do we bring events into experience that are not already familiar? Wheredoes the movement of an idea come from?

A task is a structure inside which you can place your impulses.

Which reminds me of a passage in Franz Kafka’s story, Description of a Struggle:

‘Madame,’ I said, ‘I must play now because– –’ As I had forgotten the reason

I abruptly sat down at the piano. And then I remembered again. The pianist

stood up and stepped tactfully over the bench, for I was blocking his way.

‘Please turn out the light, I can only play in the dark.’ (in The Complete

Short Stories)

Figure 3 Participants in a Goat Island Summer School, Chicago, 2000. Photo: Bryan Saner.

18 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

We need to see it to feel it not because we can’t imagine it but because a thing in thehead is so much different from a thing in the world. Though our own particularitiesconfine or determine what we can imagine or envision within the structure of our ownminds, the outside world is constrained by a set of physical properties we have no handin constructing. In addition the work that external events perform or provoke in themind of the spectator is acted upon by the landscape of the individual mind itencounters. Each two of us sees the same event and makes an individual differentiatedmess of it. ‘Mess’ because the incoming information or sensation blends or sits next toother details swimming in the micro-climate of the moment of contact.

Residue of breakfast, allusions to a past history, a sense of well-being or not asa result of temperature or hunger or wakefulness, associations provoked bythe information itself.

We bring our conditions to each moment and this is the soup to which theperformed event is added. Talking about it is one thing, having it manifest intime and space is quite another.

It is the difference between a description of a knife and the appearance of the knifeitself before us.

So just as in performance, rehearsal requires the real thing manifest in realtime and real space. Real as in actually taking place. Not real as inverisimilitude nor as in faking an alternate reality; that is something else.

I made a work once with an artist who worked with sound as well as painting anddrawing and who was in a band that played improvisational music. He was notprepared to do anything more than once. Therefore rehearsals made no sense to

Figure 4 Participants in a Goat Island Summer School, Chicago, 2000. Photo: Bryan Saner.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 19

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

him. First idea, best idea, or throw it out. The point of doing anything in a roomwithout an audience was lost on him. If we had done it once, we had burned it.

I remember my friend B once saying that the experience of watching theatreperformance could be likened to observing a pile of ash.

The only way to make a rehearsal happen was to do it for camera. That way it was itsend product. The document was its purpose.

Rehearsal is, as performance is, a way of manifesting thought in something other thana linear language, stretched out in grammar, spoken aloud or written on a page. It isthought rendered as thought happens in themind, with simultaneity and contradictionand missed connections and places where it gets caught, and quickening rhythms anddeadening voids and loops and above all repetitions that sometimes eventually bringclarity. Performance is a way of ‘doing’ thinking.

(3) FROM THE INTERVIEWS AND FRANCIS ALYS

Karen: I remember the feeling but not the details.

Sara Jane: 3 November 2010, Karen’s house, Bethnal Green, East London.Recording.

‘You said something to me about technique and training and the difficultyof applying those terms to the process of what Goat Island does. Why is that?’

I remember the feeling but not the details.

‘How did you learn to work together?What was evident?What was never spoken but assumed?’

Time was always really important – time to make things outside of the room andbring it in. Time is one of the materials we have to work with.

Figure 5 The ending of The Lastmaker, Goat Island, Battersea Arts Centre, 2008. Photo: HugoGlendinning.

20 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Goat Island – it’s not economical – five people doing the work of one. It’s a companythat was firmly set against the idea of economy. It’s an ecosystem: we areuneconomical in our practice.

Summer, 2010, Tate Modern. I am at the retrospective of Francis Alys,a Belgian-born artist based in Mexico City. Certain pieces in the exhibitionresonate with other artists I write about, particularly the work of Goat Islandperformance group. Alys contemplates the condition produced by rehearsalprocesses in relation to the imperatives of Western Modernity, and writes thefollowing: ‘Rehearsal refers to an economy where minimal reforms are achieved byhuge collective efforts in an infinite period of time’ (Alys in Bailes 2010). I write thingsdown in my notebook inspired by the encounter with his artworks. I follow myown train of thought by chasing his. Rehearsal delays the moment of executionby insisting upon the persistence of an indeterminate sphere of action. Alys’practice intervenes in what he describes as ‘the underlying logic of the peripheraleconomies of the South’, referring to the economic and social conditions of LatinAmerica (and Mexico in particular) where the development of the individual andthe social body are expected to respond to the expectations and culturaldomination of the North. Often taking the form of extended walks and performedactions through the streets and plazas of different cities, Alys’ works deal with theincremental change or alteration that might be enacted by the individual within theapparent inertia of broader political contexts, their geographies, social divisions andboundaries that would seem to deny the potentiality of subversion or resistance. Inmany of these works, careful structures of in-built failure release what Alys calls‘a tentative epic of effort’, such as in one of his most famous allegorical works,When Faith Moves Mountains (2002). In this colossal collaborative event, 500volunteers equipped with shovels formed a single line in order to displace by10 cm a 500m long sand-dune from its original position on the outskirts of Lima.The underlying motto of this piece – MAXIMUM EFFORT, MINIMUM RESULT –inverts the principles of efficiency that underlie capitalism, and the emptypromises upon which its logic is founded, the mirage under which so muchlabour operates.

Figure 6 An image from Francis Alys’ work,When Faith Moves Mountains (2002). Photo: KarenChristopher.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 21

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

The tension established through these performances fascinates me. Fordespite the monumental efforts of these documented events, Alys’ art worksare often transient, transformative in minimal ways, or else they leave notrace. Are these performances, then, that refuse to exist or seek to existwithin alternative ecologies of time, spatial articulation and a givenunderstanding of efficiency? They build temporary communities that bindstrangers through a collective purpose, and then as quickly they dissolve.Disappearance and its effects are structured into the practical logic andoutcome of each event – they are non-productive yet they deliver change,they alter. Drawings, painting, video, written texts, extended collectiveperformed actions or once-performed solo events, these are almost alwaysfilmed or documented with friend and long-time collaborator, Rafael Ortega,and art critic Cuauhtemoc Medina. Often they involve strangers, passers-by,and other participants drawn from the everyday contexts in which Alyslocates his practice. They are often participatory works that include non-participants or participants who participate without belonging.

Writing tasks are not always something on paper – they can be composed on yourfeet.

Alys’ comments on the idea of the rehearsal linger as I wander around theexhibition and I return two weeks later in order to encounter the work again,in particular two video pieces: Politics of Rehearsal, a 30-minute video filmed on17 November 2005, in the Lower East Side, New York City, and Rehearsal 1,a 29-minute video filmed in Tijuana. The latter shows a red Volkswagen beetlerepeatedly trying to ascend a steep dusty hill without succeeding . . .

We were concerned with a poetics for constructing constructions

Figure 7 Participants from the Goat Island Summer School, Chicago 2007. Photo: Bryan Saner.

22 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

. . . while the soundtrack of a Mariachi band rehearsing is played. Thedriver of the VW Beetle listens to the recording of the rehearsal. Asthe musicians play, the VW ascends the hill, and as the music they arelearning to play breaks down, the car stops. As the musicians tune theirinstruments, pause and chat, the car once again rolls back down the hill,and so on, ascending and descending, in repetition and caught in theattempt. The VW is never able to reach the top and remain there. Thetension Alys’ work articulates – the idea of effort without result and thespace between the promise of achievement or change and itsdisappointment – spikes my attention, concerned as the work is withthe rhetoric of development and progress and the way in which such termsremain unquestioned, despite the inevitability of economic crisis produced by theseimperatives. The tentative hope proposed by Alys’ works for both thoughtand action, without the reward of capital accumulation, instead refocuseseffort towards small, sometimes epic, detailed alterations and adjustments.This, I come to realise, is what reminds me of the processes and precisionof Goat Island performance group.

Invent an arrivalInvent a disappearance – that was the way we made our second beginning ofHow Dear to Me the Hour When Daylight Dies.

In his works, indeterminacy and effort are presented as allegorical strategiesthat comment upon the ways in which he perceives Mexico’s resistance tomodernity, where, as he states, ‘SOMETIMES to make something is really tomake nothing; and paradoxically, SOMETIMES to make nothing is to makesomething’.

We go to dinner at their house – that was the beginning of Jonny – Lin gave us eacha piece of paper that said:

Bring in an event of terrorBring in an event of bliss

And something to do with arms and hands and feet and legs . . .

Perhaps it is simply the implied allegory of these works that is useful. FrancisAlys understands rehearsal as constitutive of a counter-capitalist operation indistinctive ways that articulate the situation thus: often, nothing happens; littlecomes about; nothing is determined for extended periods of time, but thisindeterminacy exists as a wilful resistance to determining anything. What isrealised instead is a process of working towards an always-deferred result thatresists the climax of a conclusion or, in the case of Latin America, theimposition of Western economic practices and the West’s definition of a so-called ‘developed’ world.

As much as it offers its participants preparation and practice, the intention of‘the rehearsal’ as a designated space of operation is that it defends an often-extended period of unproductive effort and labour; it can support, for example,the aching spaces of inertia and allow for the dull, often-demoralising condition

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 23

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

of inoperativeness, of getting stuck and of finding no way forwards. Yet itprolongs the possibility of things not happening in order to allow for thegeneration of something-yet-to-be-determined or made. It defines a spaceand temporality within which action without consequence or effect occurs,an anticipatory space in which little happens except for the preparation forwhat is yet to come, the pre-condition for the ‘now’ that will neverhappen.

First day of rehearsal we bring it in as a spoken thing – what is the event?And you are demonstrating the event with feet, legs, and so on.Separated.A short, repeatable gesture.

We perform these and we give that information.I brought in the idea of infanticide.I can’t remember what my ‘bliss’ was.Matthew brought in mail, the receiving of post.

1999, a letter arrives at my apartment in New York, dated January 9th:

‘Dear Potential Participant’ the letter from Goat Island began. ‘Thank you for yourinterest in the Goat Island Summer School.’ It continued:

‘We use the term participant deliberately, because we also believe inblurring the distinction between teacher and student. The participants will forma collaborative body of individuals, with a range of interests, skills, backgroundsand experiences, who will learn from and teach one another through theseries of participatory assignments, tasks, or problems that we will organizeand present.’ This was a beginning, then, and one which emphasised theindividual as part of a collaborative participatory body. The letter offeredthe idea of ‘school’ as an environment in which each individual wouldcontribute equally to the outcome of events alongside Goat Islandcompany members.

When we talked at my house that day, we pondered over the question:

WHAT IS ‘ACCEPTANCE’ AND ‘REFUSAL’ IN AN EXCHANGE?

We were talking about the difficulties and pleasures of collaboration, of finding newcreative partners and people you discover you can work with.

I quoted you something another friend had written to me from an essayshe was writing at the time about collaboration, in which she suggests thatit is ‘ethics that runs through the history of collaboration’s engagementwith power, authority; its way of mapping the space between “you” and“I”’. Yet we tend to think of collaboration as a way of dissolving differences.But as she goes on to state: ‘Collaboration connects, it does not andcannot resolve. It is the question, rather than the answer.’6 And thenyou said:

6. From a draft version of‘All Together Now:Performance andCollaboration’ by ClaireMacDonald in D. Heddonand J. Klein, eds. Historiesand Practices of Live Art.Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.Thanks to the author forallowing me to cite froman early draft of heressay.

24 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

‘I balance against a person.’

And we spoke about knitting language.

We realised through talking about these things that connecting doesn’t meananything but connecting, which surprised us with its mundane clarity. Connectingonly creates or constructs a meeting place but it doesn’t necessarily make anythinghappen in that place of convergence.

In Goat Island, taking responsibility for being each other’s audience was the way weunderstood rehearsal and that became the model for the Summer School.Everybody takes the instructions and has a different response to them. Response isprismatic – it refracts. You learn a lot about what other people are doing and youneed to see a bunch of people responding to a single instigation.

You can all do the same exercises but come up with different styles.People who live to tight structure, people who look like they’re hardly awake, people

who seem not to have heard, there are many kinds of difference. One is from Latvia;another is from the US. One is the mother of Albert who is two years old andwhose somewhat surprising conception halted her degree at the age of 42. Oneis prone to panic attacks and these have a serious effect on her ability to carry onwhatever she’s doing. Another barely speaks at all.

Another comments after almost everything that takes place in the room,like a running banter, remarking on how she does or doesn’t ‘get it,’ howshe can’t wear boots because her heels are thin because she walked on tip-toes when she was little so has misshapen feet, how she dislikes the soundof a broom sweeping the floor or the feeling of leather, how she’s lovingthe process, how her younger brother will arrive this evening, how she

Figure 8 Participants from the Goat Island Summer School performing quartets. Chicago 2007.Photo: Bryan Saner.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 25

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

puts pasta in plastic bags instead of containers to bring in to eat for herlunch . . .

I propose that one day you extract three actions from your hardest day of work and usethem to compose a dance; that you remember your hardest day ofwork, rememberwhatsomeone said on that day, remember the name of the street on which it occurred, thatyou say the name of the street, that you perform the dance, and that you repeatwhat youheard someone say. In this way your hardest day of work becomes a dance.

You just set people in motion – a demonstration that teaches by itself.

How do I wake this up? How do I cause some kind of development to happen whileI’m doing X?That’s a by-product of having an action without knowing why – without objective.We would try to relieve the person of the logic.

Goat Island’s first Summer School: Glasgow, 1996.

Goat Island’s final performance: Studio 6, Swain Hall, University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill, February 28, 2009, 8.00pm.

How can we prepare ourselves to act with intelligence?

(4) TRAIN OF THOUGHT – TO LEARN BY HEART

Karen: Training: This discussion scares me, or, If I don’t show my frailty how can Iimpress you with my effort.

reasons training makes some people in performance nervous:

it is used to hide the means of production

Sara Jane: or, more recently, to try to expose them

the point of it is often to make something difficult look easy

Figure 9 Participants responding to a writing prompt, Goat Island Summer School, Chicago2007. Photo: Bryan Saner.

26 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

(it hides labour)

or, to make something easy look difficult in the reverse-trend days we live in

it determines a correct method and a model for comparison

which makes one start out with the feeling that one cannot do something

or cannot do something according to a proposed but often implicit set of

criteria.

Let’s not even get started with the problem of whether or not an exercise regimeconstitutes ‘training’. Or, let’s do get started with that.

Let’s do.

Is training something that prepares the body or mind or is training something thatculminates in a new skill? Or is that distinction even important?

Is training something close or akin to skill, or simply a reference to the teaching(through repetition) of skills, methods or ways of doing according to a system ororder of preparation, and usually according to the criteria of one or severalpeople?

Let’s say that it is. Let’s say that there are two strains within the concept of training.One is the kind of training that conditions the body or mind of the subject in anongoing way. This kind of training may progress but never culminates in an endresult. It is a constant upkeep kind of activity.

Is skill or the acquisition of skill required in order that one can become trainedto do something, or trained ‘in’ something? To be trained in martial arts, forexample, or in Butoh, or epidemiology. Or mechanical engineering?

The second kind of training is one in which a skill is learned and once the skill is learnedthe training is over and the real event begins. The real event is the purpose of thetraining: for example, balancing a pencil on one’s upturned chin. Once the trainee hasmastered the different aspects of pencil balancing, the pencil balancing can begin. Itmay be part of a larger task or set of tasks or it may be a performative act but whateverits purpose, the training is over and the pencil balancing commences in earnest. Trainingin this case occupies a transitional phase, which ends when a successful objective hasbeen achieved.

How can we prepare ourselves to act with intelligence?

My muscles developed, my breathing altered. I did it.And I did it again.And then I did it again.

educationinternbachelordisciplineexerciseknuckleheadaccomplished

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 27

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

Hezbollahcheckout R.O.T.C.preceptorresidentpotty

train – verb – instruct, discipline, teach. 1540s from train, probably from earliersense of ‘draw out and manipulate in order to bring a desired form’ (late fourteenthcentury), specifically the growth of branches, vines, etc. from mid-fifteenth century.The meaning ‘to travel by railway’ is recorded from 1856.

exerciseobediencerudimentTai chisensitivitysimulatorcultivatesimulatekriegspielseminaryjoglureterrainencyclopaediaacademyliberalspring

A group of firemen entered a building in which a fire had been reported. They could notsee a fire but there was some small amount of smoke visible. The captain and his menwere in the room for a very short time, less than a minute. Suddenly he ordered themout of the room because it didn’t feel right and then the floor collapsed. There wereresearchers following the men because they were studying decision making underpressure. Questions were asked, the captain said he’d no real idea why he’d ordered themen from the room. He acted on impulse. All he could say was something felt wrong.Later the researchers, having composed a series of probing questions, finally got towhat they believed was the answer to this conundrum. They asked him to place himselfback in the room and describe it, describe what he saw and felt. After following hisrecollection through to the point of decision they realised that he’d made a deductionbased on actual logic: the room was too hot for how quiet it was. Normally a room thathot was loud with flame. But this train of thought was not conscious. It came by intuitionbuilt from past experience and this intuition worked faster than thought because ittapped a still deeper skill: survival instinct.

Helen Cixous says something like this in her conversation with AdrianHeathfield (2011): to learn something by heart – it belongs to the heart,comes out of the heart and returns to it.

In searching for the origins of that phrase – to learn by heart – I discover thatit came about through an error made by the ancient Greeks who mistook theanatomical function of the heart as the seat of thought. Thus came about the

28 S.J. Bailes

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014

saying ‘learn by heart’ instead of ‘learn by head’. But of course, it’s the kind oferror that seems to correct our own developed sense of humanmisunderstanding. Because there are things we learn by heart that indicateto us that the heart understands the way in which thought performs its workbetter than the mind ever could.

Perception Requires Involvement

That’s participation.

LET THE PENCIL BALANCING BEGIN.

References

Bailes, S.J., 2010. Rehearsal/interview notebook.Biesenbach, K. and Godfrey, M., eds, 2010. Francis Alys: A Story of Deception. London: Tate

Publishing.Bottoms, S. and Goulish, M., 2007. Small Acts of Repair: Performance, Ecology and Goat Island.

London: Routledge.Bradby, D., 2001. Beckett: Waiting for Godot. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Cixous, H. and Heathfield, A., 2011. Writing Not Yet Thought [DVD]. Directed by

H. Glendinning. UK: Performance Matters.Deleuze, G., 1995. Negotiations. New York: Columbia University Press.Deleuze, G. with Parnet, C., 2011. From A to Z [DVD]. Directed by P. A. Boutang.

Massachusetts: Semiotext(e), MIT Press.Ferguson, R. and Philbin, A., eds, 2007. Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal. London: Steidl.Frieling, R., and Groys, B. eds., 2008. ‘Toward Participation in Art’, 40. In: R. Frieling and

B. Groys, eds. The Art of Participation: 1950 to Now. London: Thames and Hudson.Kafka, Franz. 2005. The Complete Short Stories (ed. Nahum N. Glatzer). London: Vintage

Books.MacDonald, C. ‘All Together Now: Performance and Collaboration.’ in D. Heddon and

J. Klein, eds. 2012. Histories and Practices of Live Art. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Muntadas, Antoni. On Translation. 1995. (Helsinki, ongoing interdisciplinary multimedia

project). http://www.adaweb.com/influx/muntadas/ and http://www.pavementgallery.org/?p=52 accessed June 16, 2012.

Thoreau, H. D., in Sher, G., 1999. One Continuous Mistake. Putnam: NY: Penguin.Sennett, R., 2009. The Craftsman. London: Penguin.Witts, N., 2010. ‘What is the Problem with Training?’ Theatre, Dance and Performance

Training, 1 (2), 231–236.

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training 29

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Geo

rge

Mas

on U

nive

rsity

] at

14:

56 2

1 D

ecem

ber

2014