1. Jen Torrence, "Rethinking the Performer: Towards a Devising Performance Practice," VIS—Nordic Journal For Artistic Research, no. 0 (2018), accessed 7 January 2021, https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/391025/391476.
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- Études for the beginning of an online practice
In 2019, during the creation process for our piece “FEED,” I was able to clearly identify several advantages to working in the way I’m describing, where I treat my colleagues as devisers. I asked the group to help me create choreography for one section that had clear limitations in terms of space, concept, and duration. Devising here is defined in terms of agency and authorship. The idea is that the individuals generate feedback into the compositional process, affecting the piece and each other, and through their labour the group members are pulled into being co-creators.
Both agency and authorship function within the agreed terms where I am leading the process and requesting that we all devise a piece, which we are making for ourselves to perform in. It should be said that not only has collaboration produced a piece in this particular example but it has simultaneously enriched a collaborative practice.
Jen Torrence’s interpreter-adviser-deviser model illustrates this idea with a focus on the performer’s perspective.
In various collaborative situations the performer can assume the role of acting as an interpreter and executor of a score on behalf of the composer, as an adviser to the composer, and/or as an equal and co-creating deviser. These roles can be more than mere tasks taken up in a single generative process; they can, through repetition, represent the artistic practice of the performer.1
I would hasten to add that the same is true of the composer’s artistic practice and I’m certain Torrence would not refute that notion.
Notably, Torrence moots the use of score with this model: a score’s usage is also on a spectrum. We see “score is primary” where the roles are polarised (composer and performer as interpreter) and “score is secondary” where authorship is shared, at the deviser and co-creator pole. This is also my experience; when performers are asked to become devisers, to create and to embody, the score becomes less useful. I have found several features and advantages to devised work that aren’t so present in work where a composer composes and a performer interprets. Whilst I discovered these for myself creating choreography with the group for “FEED,” I’m certain they are applicable universally:
1. Memorisation came more easily when the material originated from the person who needed to memorise it.
2. Efficiency and speed increased because there were more people making the material.
3. Feedback was immediate because we could each see what the others were doing.
4. It looked better in the body because that body had created it—better meaning that it looked like the movement had originated from that body, that is was natural to that body, and so that body was better at it.
I later read about “Group Flow and Group Genius” by Keith Sawyer and was excited to see resonances between my experiences and his own list on the “Ten Conditions for Group Flow.” He is interested in whether a flow state is achievable as a group and how to achieve it. Sawyer summarises flow, quoting Csikszentmihalyi: “…extremely creative people are at their peak when they experience ‘a unified flowing from one moment to the next, in which we feel in control of our actions, and in which there is little distinction between self and environment; between stimulus and response; or between past, present, and future.’”2
Sawyer continues: “Flow researchers have spent a lot of time studying the individual creator, but people don’t play pickup ball because of individual flow—dribbling the basketball or honing their shots—after all, you could do those things by yourself. They play because they love the high that comes from group genius. In fact, Csikszentmihalyi found that the most common place people experienced flow was in conversation with others. At work, conversation with colleagues is one of the most flow-inducing activities; managers, in particular, are most likely to be in flow when they’re engaged in conversation…Conversation leads to flow, and flow leads to creativity. What happens, I wondered, when flow emerges in a group activity? Does the group itself enter a flow state? Might there be something like ‘group flow’? And what happens when everything comes together to help a group be in flow? The answers tell us how to foster group genius.”3
I realised that this state of group flow is something that I am often trying to reach with Bastard Assignments. From Sawyer’s list, “Being in Control” resonates with my own point that the choreography we each devise for ourselves looks better in our own bodies than the choreography which might be imposed on us. Csikszentmihalyi’s remark concerning experiencing flow in conversation before producing creativity is significant for me and perhaps offers a reason for my preference of orally transmitted information with my collaborators over using a written score, for example.
From his list, one point sticks out particularly: familiarity. Sawyer means here that there is a shared language and understanding of rules between participants of an activity: a tacit knowledge, be it basketball, driving, sex, or playing music together. But wouldn’t familiarity also describe the relatedness of the individuals and each individual’s understanding of another individual’s strengths in an activity because of the shared tacit knowledge? This idea speaks to my list as a whole in that my points would not have been revealed had I not been able to create a task for the group that was challenging enough and goal-oriented such that flow was achieved. By inviting my colleagues to devise their own parts for themselves within clear parameters, I demonstrate an understanding of them and their strengths, and of how I can use their creativity to create simple movement that looks good.