research
performance
Blue Sky
Past Phases
I've been working with Blue Sky as a performance laboratory format for several years now. Below is a research exposition of the most substantial past phase (and the first to be archived as such), conducted in Berlin throughout 2021. This exposition includes 78 video excerpts from that process, which also detail the ways in which each practice session was formed. At the bottom of the page are several short essays I wrote from the laboratory, as well as a brief bibliography.
This phase was about openly experimenting with a range of practices I was curious about, more-or-less focused through the relation of visualization and movement, or otherwise imagination and dance. Eventually, this experimentation articulated a certain body and performativity, as well as an ecology of practices which supported it, which laid the ground for the creation process of Azathoth.
This phase also yielded two specialized workshops, which you can access here:
An invitation into the studio.
Essays
Bibliography
The process is informed by practitioners such as Eugenio Barba, Jerzy Grotowski, Mary Starks Whitehouse, Michael Chekhov, and Sanford Meisner; and the psychoanalytic theory of Donald Winnicott and Carl G. Jung.
The methodology at the catalogue's heart is informed by the rigorous theory of embodied research developed by Ben Spatz; and the "The Songwork Catalogue", by Nazlıhan Eda Erçin, Agnieszka Mendel, and Ben Spatz.
Barba, Eugenio, and Nicola Savarese. A Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology: The Secret Art of the Performer. Routledge, 2005.
Chekhov, Michael. To the Actor: On the Technique of Acting. Routledge, 2002.
Grotowski, Jerzy. Towards a Poor Theatre. Ed. Eugenio Barba. Routledge, 2002.
Jung, Carl G. Jung on Active Imagination. Ed. Joan Chodorow, Princeton University Press, 1997.
Meisner, Sanford, and Dennis Longwell. Sanford Meisner on Acting. Vintage; 1st Edition, 1987.
Erçin, Nazlıhan Eda, Agnieszka Mendel, and Ben Spatz. "Songwork Catalogue." Urban Research Theater {www.urbanresearchtheater.com}, 2020.
Spatz, Ben. Making a Laboratory: Dynamic Configurations with Transversal Video. Advanced Methods, 2020.
Spatz, Ben. What a Body Can Do: Technique as Knowledge, Practice as Research. Routledge, 2015.
Whitehouse, Mary Starks, et al. Authentic Movement: Essays by Mary Starks Whitehouse, Janet Adler and Joan Chodorow. Ed. Patrizia Pallaro, Jessica Kingsley, 1999.
Winnicott, Donald Woods. Playing and Reality. Tavistock, 1971.