Conference

Changing Perspectives on Live Performance: Interrogating digital dimensions and new modes of engagement was an online international symposium for academics and practitioners hosted on 8-9 October 2021 by ARU.

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Celeste de Cis

 

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The previous year had brought changing circumstances to the performance scene. The impossibility of rehearsing and performing to live audiences forced artists to investigate new alternatives. This affected both the aesthetics of performance-making and the professional practices of performance-makers.

Changes in formats created new ways of reaching audiences, which more fully exploited an ever-increasing engagement with a wide variety of screen-based technology and digital platforms.

This significantly transformed live performances, which have adapted to new ways of working and resulted in resourceful and imaginative alternatives and variations.

Identifying the features of these changes highlights pioneering directions for the future of live performance. This involves developments in the relationship between dance, theatre and film, offering digital innovations within liveness that this symposium wished to identify and analyse.

We welcomed presentations, provocations, workshops, and performances as part of the proposals for participating in the symposium. The aim was to identify and analyse the transformations and generate new conversations among artists and theoreticians.

Keynote speakers:
Anne Bogart (Theatre director, SITI Company, USA)
Dr Mark Nicholls (University of Melbourne, Australia)
Prof Maria Shevtsova (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)
Wim Vandekeybus (Choreographer and theatre director, Ultima Vez, Belgium)

Roundtable discussion:
Dr Kasia Lech (Senior Lecturer in Performing Arts, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK)
João de Ricardo (Artistic director of Cia Espaço em Branco - Blank Space Company, Brazil)
Charlotte Vincent (Artistic Director of Vincent Dance Theatre, UK)

Open Workshops by:
Adrianna La Selva and Marije Nie, from Parliament of Practices
Chloe Payne, Alex Dault, Liam Karry and Stephen Atkins, Rehearsing in Virtual Reality