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Performers creators and audience: co-participants in an interconnected model of performance and creative process

Pauline Brooks*

Dance Department, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK

(Received 1 December 2012; final version received 30 January 2014)

This article reflects upon the process of creating dance in an intermedial telemat- ic dance setting with university students. Some contextualisation is made of five telematic dance projects (the Phillypool Projects 2007–2012) that have taken place between two universities, one in the UK and one in the US. It will explore some of the challenges presented to student performers when performing with technology in such a distinct performance environment. It will discuss how per- formers, creators and audience have been brought together as co-participants in the creative process for critical and reflective dialogue during that process and post-performance. Finally, it will present a representation of the interconnected creative and pedagogical process that has emerged from the practice-led research experiences of the five telematic creative and performance projects.

Keywords: interconnected model of performance; creative process; collaborative performance process; telematic dance performance

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to introduce a model, or visual representation of the interconnected creative and performance process that has emerged from the practice- led research and strategies employed in five telematic dance projects. Between 2007 and 2012, videoconferencing technology has linked students (and audiences) between two universities, Liverpool John Moores University in the UK and Temple University in Philadelphia in the US. The nature of the creative and performance processes has been a collaborative one; it has consciously involved the choreogra- phers (tutors), performers (students) and audience members as co-participants (Goffman 1959). We were not working from a view that choreographers create while performers perform and the audience appreciates, we had in fact what Preston-Dunlop and Sanchez-Colberg describe as ‘co-authorship’ (2002, 14) and Butterworth (2004, 55) terms ‘shared authorship’ or collaboration. The student danc- ers/performers (hereafter called students) have shared the creative and dance-making process as well as the embodying process. Equally, collaboration occurs where the choreographers are expected not only to create, or have the beginning ideas for the creative process, but are expected to be as aware of the performing element as the creative one. At key points in the performance process, they need to become the audience and consider that view (or appreciation) of the work from the multiple audience viewpoints. In Projects 3 and 5, we also invited audience members to be a

*Email: [email protected]

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

Research in Dance Education, 2014 Vol. 15, No. 2, 120–137, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2014.891846

part of the creative process by engaging them in discussion that helped in the fine- tuning and re-shaping of material at two points of the process.

The aims of each of the five projects have been varied but all have included exploring aspects of choreography, pedagogy and synchronous performance in Higher Education (HE) between distributed groups using videoconferencing webcam technology. Creating art work using videoconferencing networked links has been explored by a number of artists, perhaps most famously in the early 1990s by Paul Sermon who termed his installations ‘telematic art’. Since then, alternative names have been suggested by those involved in dance and performance such as ‘distrib- uted choreography’ by Naugle (1998), ‘networked performance’ by Birringer et al. (2001) and ‘cyberformance’ by Jamieson (2001). At that period, few educators were involved in these types of creative collaborations because of the technical complex- ity of the equipment required and the demands placed upon less experienced per- formers (Popat 2006). Early explorations with links to HE came from Company in Space who performed Escape Velocity at the 1999 International Dance and Technol- ogy Conference at Arizona State University (Birringer 2002). While in the UK, Popat (2001) investigated interactive dance-making via the World Wide Web (1999– 2000), working with undergraduate dance students at the University of Leeds and with participants from anywhere in the world on the Internet. She developed the model in the Triad Project (Popat 2002) in which three groups of young people from Portugal, UK and USA were linked using videoconferencing (among other technologies), to bring the distributed groups together. Also in 2002, the Universities of Warwick, Kent, Exeter and Leicester De Montfort (DMU) formed a consortium, the Annie Project, to explore how teaching might be delivered from distant loca- tions. Susan Kozel delivered workshops in improvisation and composition to dance students at DMU and theatre students at Warwick using webcam technology (Band 2002; Kozel 2007). More recently, between 2005 and 2007, the American universi- ties of Bradley (Illinois), Central Florida and Waterloo (Canada) collaborated to share the performance of an Elmer Rice play. Although not dance, it is pertinent because they used Internet2 in America and the CANARIE network in Canada to link their separate sites. While outlining some of their perceived shortcomings of the telematic drama project in their paper, Brown and Hauck more positively conclude that teleconferenced theatre performance ‘challenges old ways of performing [because] it deconstructs conventions, and leaves us with the joyous wonderment of how it all comes together as an affective experience’ (2008, 116). One of the aims of the Phillypool Projects has been to explore the realm of performance in HE in telematic settings.

Advances in technology that have brought faster broadband connections which along with better management of institutional firewall systems have enabled further explorations in telematic performance between universities. For example, Miklavcic and Miklavcic (2007) have been involved in various collaborative digital perfor- mance events at multiple university sites throughout the world. Giges and Warburton (2010) have experimented in a live telematic performance linking East and West Coast America that added digital manipulation of the streamed video projection. Finally, the e-Culture Working Group joined with teams in three continents and four sites in Thailand, Spain, Brazil and Korea to present a live interactive dance and music performance (Howard et al. 2012). The ongoing work of the Phillypool Pro- jects (2007–2012) has added to the telematic performance explorations between international institutions in HE.

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One of the key aspects of the pedagogical study on collaborative processes of performance was to engage the students in reflection and to think critically about their performance work from the view of the audience, critic, performer and [dance] maker because to do so is crucial to the ‘development of knowledge and skill in dance’ (Warburton 2004, 72). Cherry, Fournier, and Stevens (2003), Lavender (1996), Leijen (2008) and Leijen et al. (2009) all support the idea that critical reflec- tion in dance education is important, because ‘It stimulates students’ awareness of their body and movement experiences … Moreover, reflection is essential for stu- dents to learn how the audience may perceive their performance’ (Leijen et al. 2009, 169). Equally, Doughty et al. advocate that ‘reflective thought and judgement are central to the artistic process and are established features of art pedagogy’ (2008, 136). In Projects 3 and 5, the focus was on how all of the co-participants, (students, tutors and observers) could be brought into the practice of reflection and what effect that might have on the performers.

Area of enquiry

The research enquiry addressed in this article was two-fold. Firstly, to examine the interrelations between all of the co-participants, and secondly to consider the pedagogical implications that their shared reflections and feedback had on the crea- tive and performance process – especially for the performers, all of whom were university students.

Methodology

The research was situated in the Practice as Research paradigm (Barrett and Bolt 2010; Kershaw and Nicholson 2011; Nelson 2013, and Piccini and Kershaw 2004). The methodological approach has been one that has involved creative and pedagogi- cally based practice, and the research enquiry over the space of the five-year project has been fluid and emerging, resulting in a number of discoveries, but not all are pertinent to this article. The research approach is a ‘hybrid’ one because the approaches are interdisciplinary, diverse and often unfold, or emerge in response to the practice; it is personally situated but with its base in qualitative methods (Barrett and Bolt 2010). It is an approach that is open to mixed methods (Bryman 2012), or multi-model (Nelson 2013) research. Semi-structured post-project critical reflection and evaluation meetings were held to collect qualitative data on the artistic chal- lenges and difficulties presented to performers in intermedial and telematic situa- tions, especially on pedagogical issues for the teaching and learning of performance. Weekly reflection sessions were more open-ended and allowed for all participants to share thoughts and to respond to each other. Process and post-performance discus- sion sessions between audience/performers/creators were also led by the tutors and began with a general question and answer session for the audience, followed by a semi-structured question and discussion session. All discussions were recorded and annotated. All rehearsals and performances were video recorded. At the final perfor- mances of Projects 3 and 5, the UK audiences had the opportunity to participate in a written response. The questionnaires followed a mixed-methods approach because they contained closed and open questions to discover both quantitative information and qualitative perspectives from spectators. The questions were concerned with per- former-to-performer relationships and connections, performer-to-multiple audience

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relationships and, finally, perceptions of the effects of layering camera perspectives and choreography in live and virtual space. The projects have met the usual ethical requirements of the University for working with students as partners-in-research. For a number of the students, the projects formed the basis of their own undergraduate or postgraduate research.

Participants

There were eleven students involved in Project 3 and thirteen in Project 5, (for details see Table 1). Each theatre had a live audience at the time of performance which could see in the space the live dancers as well as the virtual dancers projected on the cyclorama. In Project 5, there was also an Internet-only audience, who watched the performance on their own computer in three different cities in the UK, two different cities in the US and one city in Greece. They all had the facility to join in audience/performer discussions via the chat window.

Contextualisation: two telematic dance projects

Project 3 Woven Space Across the Pond involved collaboration between three chore- ographers – Luke Kahlich and Pauline Brooks with Nathaniel Hancock – who worked closely together to create one cohesive dance, but each had designated responsibility for one of the three sections that the dance would be divided into. A non-metric environmental sound score was composed to help create an atmosphere to add to the themes of weather and the Atlantic sea that underpinned aspects of the choreography inspired by the fact that each group was situated on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Project 5, Bong, Bang, Bong! involved two directors, Luke Kahlich and Pauline Brooks, who worked from the stimulus of pinball machines using brightly coloured physio-balls as props to generate movement across the space as well as with the dancers. Again a non-metric sound score was used, where pinball sound effects (among others) were used to create an atmosphere and relationship with the stimulus. Adobe Connect Pro was the videoconferencing system used as the webcam technology to link the two companies separated by 3000 miles, because it is an affordable technology both for use in HE and a realistic tool for students who, when they graduate, may wish to continue to develop artistic ideas in telematic performance.

Table 1. Participants in Projects 3 and 5.

UK company US company

Project 3 2009–10 6 undergraduate dancers (no experience of dance & technology)

5 dancers: 3 postgraduate (two with some experience of dance & technology, one had been in Project 2) 2 undergraduate

Project 5 2011–12 7 undergraduate dancers (three had been in Project 4)

6 dancers: 3 postgraduate (one had been in Project 2) 3 undergraduate

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Codifying the space

To better aid communication between two ‘distributed’ or distanced groups, it became important to codify the space. The traditional studio theatre space had been ‘restructured’ by the intervention of the technology. Figure 1 illustrates both a photo- graphic and a representational view of the spatial zones of the performance site. Zones A1 and A2 are the ‘fifth wall’ (Spencer 2011) of the theatre created by the live video streaming from the webcams in each site. It is the cyclorama at the back of each networked theatre, on which and through which each live audience can view the projected digital images of the dancers and glimpses of the ‘other’ audience dur- ing performer/audience discussions. The Centre Line on the screen, created by the split screen representation of the webcam image from each site, creates a new ‘Zone of Virtual Interplay’. The photographic image of Figure 1 shows how the split screen creates the illusion that the two distanced companies share one large screen. The webcam is placed in the centre of the theatre, upstage next to the cyclorama. The lens of the camera creates a cone, which we have termed the ‘Cone of Capture’ (Zone B). Finally, the scenography created through the linking of two networked theatres and the videoconferencing system renders two spaces outside of the Cone invisible to the camera, Zones C. These are the ‘Live Zones’ visible only to the live audience in the same theatre as the live dancers, and invisible to those audience members seeing the work in the other distanced theatre, or viewing the performance on the Internet only and a computer screen.

One result of the categorising of the spatial zones has been to help the students appreciate that they are not working in a traditional theatre setting, but rather a site that is determined by the introduction of the technology.

Figure 1. Diagram of the spatial zones and performance site.

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Schechner’s functions of performance

The opportunity to collaborate in five projects between 2007 and 2012 with 60 dance students has meant that there has been time to identify performance skills required of the student performers in such telematic environments, and to trial strate- gies that would aid their learning and improve their creative and performance skills. All of the projects have met the notion of performance put forward by Schechner in that they were ‘framed, presented, highlighted, [and] displayed [as] a performance’ (2002, 2). Certainly, one of the intentions of the choreographers was that the dance performance should encapsulate the notion that the movement should create interac- tions and relationships between the performers (live and virtual), the performance environment (two studio theatres each with a ‘connected’ projector screen became a new, mutual place of performance, a live yet virtual studio theatre) and the two audi- ences – one live, one virtual. Such an intention echoes Schechner’s view that ‘per- formances exist only as actions, interactions and relationships’ (2002, 24). He lists as his Seven Functions of Performance (2002, 38): (1) to entertain; (2) to make something that is beautiful; (3) to mark or change identity; (4) to make or foster community; (5) to heal; (6) to teach, persuade or convince; and (7) to deal with the sacred and/or the demonic. Projects 3 and 5 contained aspects of Schechner’s func- tions 1, 2, 4 and 6. We sought to foster a community between all of the participants (function 4). There were elements of educating (teaching, function 6) the performers (formally as they were studying for credit) and the audience (informally). In addi- tion, there was education of the creators, too, during their pursuit of new creative experiences involving the interactivity and layering of perspectives in a networked (telematic) performance. (More about the aspect of the choreographic discoveries can be found in Brooks and Kahlich 2013). It was intended that at least some aspect of the performance would ‘entertain’ (function 1) or more explicitly engage some of the audience, and written audience evaluations were gathered to help inform the cre- ators as to how far their structuring of the work helped the audience to attend to the work and what aspects of the work attracted their attention and what elements were overpowering. Finally, in terms of Schechner’s function 2, ‘beauty’, it was intended that the work should have artistic and aesthetic coherence/balance between the digi- tal projection and the live dancers, as well as in the choreography in each of the three zones of the performance site (see Figure 1).

Collaborating with the spectators

In Projects 3 and 5 of the Phillypool series, audience volunteers were invited to join the projects as co-participants to view the work in open rehearsals and focus group discussion at two points during the 12-week creative process. In Project 3, this was in weeks five and eight and in Project 5 in week five with an Internet-only focus group audience and in week seven with a live audience in each theatre. Such interac- tion between the spectators and the creators was a means by which the choreogra- phers could discover if the slowly unfolding method of introducing movement in the zones and the split screen was working as an effective way to introduce the audience to the new performance environment. It would provide an opportunity to see if what was intended by the artist was ‘perceived’ by the audience (Wechsler 2006). Thus, the projects focused not only on how to work effectively with the technology in a distinct space for performance, but also on how dance audiences can be introduced

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to viewing and appreciating the new performance space. Reporting of these findings is the subject of another article. What is important here is that we discovered that the communication process with the audience was beneficial to the learning and development process of the students who were the performers in the project.

Demands on the performers

One of the early practical skills all of the students had to learn was assisting in the setting up of the performance environment each week. Importantly, this work involved calibrating the video camera so that the size of the projection image of both companies on the cyclorama (screen) was the same. It was always the intention that the virtual images should match each other for size and colour as much as possible, to give the visual impression of two other human companies in addition to each live company in each of the live theatres. Experimentation with size came only from the exploration with proximity to the camera by the live dancers (who were then pro- jected as just heads, faces or distant performers, for example).

For each of these two projects, the process to performance took 12 weeks in total, with one meeting per week of two hours’ duration. What we were asking of these student performers, these ‘techno-virgins’ (Povall 2001, 455), was immense. In 24 hours over 12 weeks, they were being asked to:

� Work with three different choreographers (Project 3), each experimenting with improvisation to a greater or lesser degree, two of whom were in the US and one in the UK (In Project 5, this was reduced to two directors, one in each space).

� Work with dancers (peers) in a live, visceral medium where they could see, sense and touch.

� Work with previously unknown dancers from a different country and culture (who they met only via the webcam projection in a virtual medium) – who they could see, but not touch, and so had to explore finding ways with which to sense and to connect.

� Embody movement in and with the physical (live) space of the studio theatre and the live performers.

� Embody movement in and with the virtual space created by the video camera, Cone of Capture and the projection screen. The latter is split into two halves: one half displays the US performers, the other the UK performers. All move- ment captured by the camera is reversed in the projection on the screen (So to move their digital [virtual] body to the centre of the screen in order to appear to connect in a virtual environment, dancers must physically move in the opposite direction in the live space).

� Work with a technology that had varied latency issues each week. � Work with a technology that often underwent digital fragmentation – where the image might distort, freeze, speed up or disappear.

� Contribute to the creative process. � Connect with a live audience in the shared theatre space and a virtual audience ‘beyond the screen’.

� Manipulate props in live and virtual spatial zones.

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The students had to be willing to work collaboratively as part of the devising process thereby being improvisers, performers, co-choreographers and critical evalu- ators (Butterworth 2004; Povall 2001). By the third project, it is fair to say that we were better able to explain to students beforehand the collaborative nature of the project and to give them some sense of the performance environment in which they would be working by showing them examples from Projects 1 and 2 (a few of them had seen those projects live). Nevertheless, we were aware that in Project 3, we intended to extend the performance environment into spatial Zones C (live space) as well as those of Zone A (split screen projection on the cyclorama) and Zone B (the Cone of Capture). Thus, the students in Project 3 were to be involved in creating a new performance environment at the same time as being challenged by all of the other demands that we and the technology were placing on them as performers.

As with many performance (and education) situations, there was not the luxury of time to allow the performers to immerse themselves in the project, the movement, nor the technology. Each project had to be completed in one semester, the time frame for a module. Pedagogically, we planned the process to be, as much as possi- ble, an unfolding one.

Performance skills for an intermedial telematic environment

From our experiences in Projects 1 and 2, we had discovered that, not surprisingly, the students needed to be introduced to and given time to become familiar with the new skills of working in the telematic environment and with the other half of their company presented as virtual performers on the screen. In the first three weeks of the projects, the students were led in explorations of the space(s) of the screen, with the camera, with each other, and in the dichotomy of being both a live and a virtual dancer. It was important that in a performance environment that was new to them, the student dancers were led through creative processes that helped them to under- stand the zones, especially the boundaries of the Cone of Capture and the playful Zone of Virtual Interplay (Centre Line or split screen). In Project 1, for example, dancers had explored how by placing themselves carefully on the line they could ‘join’ the torso of one dancer in the UK with the lower body of a dancer in the US. In Project 3, the challenge was to find ways in which to link two lengths of fabric, some 10 metres long, to create the impression of one length of fabric being stretched across the split screen (see Brooks 2010). In Project 5, the experiment became one of manipulating large physio-balls to give the illusion that they were being passed or thrown from one space to the other (see Brooks and Kahlich 2013). To achieve such results meant that the dancers had to be spatially familiar with the Zones, with their boundaries and the concept of working with a ‘virtual’ two-dimensional dancer on a screen. Reinforcement and repetition of these basic familiarisations of aspects of the ‘art and craft of performance’ (Koner 1993, 2) with the technology each week was gradually supplemented by improvisation tasks and/or choreographic directions to create the phrases, sections and the complete dance. Improvisation tasks were used both to devise new movement phrases, and to help the dancers to build the connections with both the live dancers in the same physical space and the digital dancers on the screen, and to reinforce basic skills of directionality of the live dancer in order to generate the desired movement direction of the projected dancer. Such regular improvisation tasks that demanded the dancers to make and change connec- tions with a live dancer and a digital dancer, for example, was important because the

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projection screen is large and dominates the space. It can easily lead to a situation where the dancer is fixated on the screen and forgets all about the dancers in the same physical space.

Interconnected Model of Performance and Creative Process

Schechner says (2002, 191) that the performance process is a Time-Space Sequence which he sees as being composed of three phases:

Proto performance

(1) Training (2) Workshop (3) Rehearsal

Performance

(4) Warm-up (5) Public performance (6) Events/contexts sustaining the public performance (this may be the event

with which the performance is involved, e.g. a festival or the venue itself, the audience or even the backstage life, etc.)

(7) Cool down

Aftermath

(8) Critical responses (9) Archives (10) Memories

While these phases do give common ground to many performance situations, we were consciously exploring changing the nature of the phases in two ways for peda- gogical and artistic reasons. We wanted to discover if audience feedback would be of value to the performers. We wanted to engage in discussion with the audience to learn their perspectives of the multiply layering of connections in and between the different zones. Firstly then, we asked the performers to share with an audience (per- form) a very early stage work-in-progress during the devising process. Secondly, we invited audience members to be a part of the creative process by engaging in the fine-tuning and re-shaping of material at two points of the devising process. In both instances, we were shifting performance and critical response into Schechner’s Proto performance phase, and then repeating the process following the final performance. It might be said that the critical responses then became both a part of the Perfor- mance Event and the Aftermath. We asked the audience such questions as: ‘What did you see that was effective?’, ‘Where was your eye drawn in this section?’, ‘Was it visually too challenging for you when …?’, ‘Did you see …?’ In response to questions and comments from the audience, performers reviewed their performance and the lead creators re-shaped the movement and/or structure. For example, some of the dancers said this critical interaction helped them to review their connection (or lack of it) to the audience when performing, or their over-attention on watching the screen. Also, on one early phrase in Project 3 with a linear grouping of dancers

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along the Centre Line of the screen, choreographers had struggled to engage the per- formers in ‘the sought after’ architecture of the group and with the quality of the movement. In seeking to ask the audience their views of this phrase, and at one point so that the US creator could see what the UK performers were presenting to the live audience, the line was moved from a vertical position near to and far from the camera (or in traditional terms upstage downstage) to a horizontal one across the Cone of Capture (or in traditional terms stage left to stage right) – (compare Figures 1 and 2). Immediately, all participants realised the significance of the re-positioning of the group. It created the sought-after effect, and had the additional bonus of link- ing the virtual dancers on the projection screen into one long line, making the first visual impression of a connected, ‘as-if’ touching, digital (virtual) company, fore- grounded by a line of live dancers. (See Figure 2).

In a process-feedback session with audiences in week seven of Project 5, it was helpful to hear the perspective from the audience of viewing the live dancers, the virtual dancers co-joined on the screen and balls coming in and out of the dance. It was important to learn just where the visual complexities passed into ‘overload’ so that adjustments could be made. These modifications included, for example, speed- ing up some of the running sections so that the visual image on the screen was dis- torted to create an even greater sense of speed, and the reverse, of contrasting stillness in Zones C at times, to help to focus on activity in Zone B, the Cone of Capture.

What the performance participants in these projects experienced as a creative and performance process was much more of an interlinked and overlapping model (see Figure 3) than a linear one. More akin to the cyclical Process of Creativity

Figure 2. Virtual dancers join across the screen.

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suggested by Abbs (1989), the interconnected model of performance and creative process that is being suggested here is a flexible one, and non-linear. In our experi- ence, the creative process has involved students in a combination of roles as contrib- utors, creators and co-owners (Butterworth 2004). Perhaps this development illustrates some of the ‘new rules’ needed for performance environments working with technology that Birringer calls for:

… classical attributes of choreography, composition and execution traditionally associ- ated with the stage cannot be applied to digital works. Clearly, computer-assisted dance must engage principles intrinsic to the new media: non-linear process, transformation, interaction and emergence. (2002, 91)

The importance of the interconnected model of performance and creative process proposed here is that the three parts intersect and overlap, responding to the more integrated nature of the collaborative devising method undertaken by all co-participants. Collaboration is an accepted part of the devising process, as outlined in Butterworth’s Didactic-Democratic Spectrum of Choreography (2004). Because collaboration is a democratic process, which Butterworth explains as a socially inter- active one, a linear model, in which key phases are seen as stages through time, one following another is not applicable. A collaborative process that brings people together to find a mutual solution to a common creative goal needs a flexible, inte- grated model. The interconnected model is comprised of three parts: Process, Perfor- mance and Critical Reflection.

Figure 3. Interconnected model of process.

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Process involves:

� Exploration � Experimentation � ‘Doing’ � Becoming familiar with (technology, performers, audience, movement, etc.) � Making connections/relationships with and between (performers, space, envi- ronment, audience, movement material, etc.)

� Rehearsal � Gradual moving from ‘doing’ to ‘being’ (embodiment)

Critical reflection involves:

� Discussion � Questioning/responding � Analysing (documentary resources of process e.g. video recordings) � Appreciating � Listening – to self – to other participants: choreographer performers audience

Performance involves:

� Performing � ‘Being’ � Interacting and connecting with others (environment/performance/audience) � Embodiment of movement material/performance environment – the self in relation to the technology

� Appreciation

Our endeavours to engage in what Preston-Dunlop and Sanchez-Colberg (2002, 125) describe as the four modes of enquiry – that is of ‘experiencing, experimenting, documenting and analysing’ our process – have enabled us to work with performers and audience in a collaborative manner. All co-participants were encouraged to reflect upon, analyse and share with each other what they saw, what they noticed, what they felt as part of the decision-making process. Projects 3 and 5 therefore did follow the Process 5 category of Butterworth’s Didactic-Democratic Spectrum (2004), though it is important to note that the audience members had only limited opportunities to be part of the collaboration because they were only included in two out of the 12 rehearsal weeks. The modes of enquiry are placed in the elements of the diagram that form the intersections of the three sets, and connect all the parts of this process model. For example, a student must have time in Process to explore and experiment, but can document those experiences by video and/or a reflective log book. Time provided for experimenting helps to inform the Performance, where the performer is seeking, among other things, to move from ‘doing’ to ‘being’. Equally, analysing the performance as part of Critical Reflection will help to develop knowl- edge and understanding of performance, and the experience of this will inform the next performance process. It is a flexible model, where the size of the sets (each cir- cle representing Performance, Process and Critical Reflection) may be altered in order to respond to the focus of the creative project, either for artistic or pedagogical reasons.

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Discussion

Students were constantly encouraged to engage in reflection and to think critically about their performance work from the view of the audience, critic, performer and [dance] maker as part of connecting them with the collaborative creative process. They were asked to keep reflective log books, to take part in informal end-of-rehear- sal reflections and in more formalised end-of-project evaluations.

Written self-evaluations by the UK students in their reflective journals of their effectiveness and journey as performers listed many shared frustrations and chal- lenges. These included:

� Being overwhelmed by working in a completely new performance environ- ment.

� Being confused by the reversal of movement on the projection screen. � Needing to take time to understand the principles of the Cone of Capture. � Learning to appreciate the location of multiple audiences (both a live and a virtual audience) with whom to communicate – resulting in the realisation that there was ‘no front’, and that they needed to learn to be ‘three dimensional performers’, aware of the space and connections all around them.

� Fixation with watching the screen – and forgetting the live dancers. � A constant concern for the visual projection and the split screen resulted in a reliance solely on sight rather than other senses in early rehearsals.

� An initial focus on oneself moving in space and on screen, rather than on embodying the space and the movement.

The students who engaged in the telematic dance projects for the very first time, and who were led through the performance process by this overlapping/intercon- nected model, made a number of observations either as part of a focus group, in weekly reflection sessions or in their evaluative assignments, as to what was helpful in their development as performers. In terms of the process, with regards to being performers in the telematic site, it is very evident that it does require the student per- formers to learn new skills. All of the UK dancers said in post-performance evalua- tion and wrote in their essays that it was important to have time to become familiar with the technology as a performer. One dancer from Project 5 wrote that: ‘I felt I had to re-learn to perform [in this environment]’. Her comments emphasise the importance of allocating a period at the beginning of a performance project to intro- duce new practical skills, as well as time to develop them throughout the project. Another student from Project 3 commented that while learning those new skills was hard work, they were valuable in her education as a performer because ‘I admit to being naive as to the challenge that lay ahead when embarking on the […] project; […] however, gaining understanding through actual experience has been a constant, yet rewarding, struggle’. For her, time in the process period of the performance model was aided and informed by the opportunity to develop her experience through critical reflection and analysis of her performance experiences. One student from Project 5 commented that once accustomed to the performance environment (because of sufficient time in the process), she was able to move into the perfor- mance aspect of the model and ‘think about where you are in the live space or the cone, which way were you facing, it makes it more exciting. You develop as an artist’.

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A number of the students expressed in their reflective journals and in discussion that the critical reflective sessions with the audience helped them to consider their performance experience from a different perspective, i.e. how it was ‘perceived’ by the spectator, rather than just on how it ‘felt’ as the performer, thus enriching their performance experience and deepening their performing. A student from Project 3 elaborated upon what she had gained from opportunities for discussion with the audience during the process: ‘Placing my focus on our intention in terms of audi- ence perspective lead me to discover an escape from being “bound to the technol- ogy”, [thus] entering a new realm of performance experience’. While one of the performers went as far as to write that she believed ‘the opportunity to gather audi- ence feedback has been a key element to my journey as a reflective performer’.

Video documentation of the devising and rehearsal process as well as the perfor- mance was an important part of the pedagogy to support the student performers’ development of their performance skills by enabling them to be able to analyse their self. Leijen et al. (2009) and Weir and Connor (2009) write about the importance of video documentation precisely for this purpose. All of the UK dancers in Project 3 agreed that opportunities to view and analyse documented rehearsal recordings from the live audience perspective helped to ‘awaken’ them to the fact that, until that point of recognition, they were only performing to the screen. As one student wrote in her reflective evaluation: ‘I had forgotten about the need to be “three dimen- sional” and to appreciate that my movement lacked intention, focus and extension’. Equally, another student from Project 5 commented on the importance of having access to video footage of the rehearsals/performance in order to improve her perfor- mance:

The video resources are valuable because when dancing you FEEL as if you are doing something correctly or in a certain way, but it is not until you have the visual feedback where you can SEE how you are actually dancing/performing can you really make cor- rections and readjust how it feels with how it should be.

At the heart of the Project has been the determined attempt to record the rehears- als, the evaluations, the discussions and the performances. Digital data gathering was a significant component of the methodological practice from the outset, partly because the project was a digital technology one and partly because there is too much evidence to demonstrate its effectiveness in supporting learning and teaching for it not to be used. Video provides a non-judgemental form of feedback, according to Weir and Connor (2009). Equally, Leijen et al. advocate that ‘dance students are most likely to benefit from video recordings; these can help them to develop a more realistic and rich description of their practice’ (2009, 170). Allen made ‘a rallying cry for electronic performance documentation in the digital age’ (2010, 68), and McDougall and Jones recognised that the capacity of technology ‘to enable record- ing and saving of stages in the development of an artefact enables collection of data providing much greater insight into the process of its development’ (2006, 355). Thus, documentation sits at the centre of the Interconnected Model of Performance and Creative Process.

In order to discover what it was that had been found during the process, all par- ticipants had to be involved in critical reflection, analysis and evaluation. All of stu- dents found the time allocated for critical reflection valuable. That included time together as well as time alone to reflect. One student from Project 3 wrote: ‘[We]

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would meet to discuss the piece and give opinions on how we were doing and what we could improve on. These sessions were very useful in critically analysing our development’. The students’ acknowledgement of the benefits of collaborative reflection echoes the work of Maor, who concluded from her research that ‘good teaching involves learners actively participating, reflectively thinking and collaborat- ing with one another’ (2001, 128).

Because of the difficulties at times of digital fragmentation, of audio latency and even of the screen ‘freezing’, it was important that the performers learnt to trust that the technology would ‘catch-up’. They also had to work with each other to clarify specific cues for those ‘difficult moments’, and to be aware of their partners in the visceral physical space as well as their partners in the virtual digital space of the screen. The dancers were clear that creating a Facebook group to build communica- tion in-between weekly rehearsals helped them to build their relationships. The application of the Model had been key in aiding the education of students in their understanding of themselves as performers, and when and how they could connect with each other (or perhaps more importantly, to learn when they were not connect- ing). With regards to connecting with others, a Project 3 student wrote of the insight she gained in terms of performance:

Our cues were from each other […] certain people and movements were our cues. This made me more aware of keeping the connection with all the dancers in the company […] This was very hard because of the time delay, as every time we rehearsed this cue could be at a different time and it meant that we would sometimes have to catch-up with each other, or wait for each other. It was here that I gained adaptability as a dan- cer, another skill essential in the role of a performer. I had to use all my senses when trying to connect with the dancers, but of course dancing with a company where half of us were in a different venue was difficult. My hearing became heightened.

A performer from Project 5 similarly noted a ‘heightened’ perception:

Towards the end of the project it was as if I had a revelation. As I danced I caught a glimpse of the screen (I had not specifically intended to look at it) and I got a shock, suddenly feeling as if the dancer next to my projected self on the screen was really next to me in the live space. I believe this was the first time I actually danced with the company as a whole. This level of sensing is one that I continue to work towards.

Such levels of sensing are certainly an avenue for further research. Another aspect of the research enquiry was to engage the audience in the process

to learn from them their perspectives of viewing the work as well as to provide them with the opportunity to learn more about the intermedial-telematic genre. Findings from this data will form part of another article. At this point, it is only pertinent to note that the process model being shared in this article is one that has arisen from work with student performers and audiences of varying dance experience in the UK, US and Greece.

Conclusion

As part of the creative and pedagogical research in the telematic projects, technology can be seen to be a partner in our exploration of live and virtual human bodies, space and movement. The technology has become an integral element in the work, mixing realities with the body, the choreography, space, time and the audience. It

134 P. Brooks

has been a key constituent of the pedagogical practice, and is situated at the heart of the performance and creative process model as a fundamental documenting tool. The three parts of the model are shown as overlapping, interrelating and intercon- necting, representing the changing and fluid nature of the collaborative performance process. Critical Reflection during the Process and subsequently of the Process and Performance by all co-participants has enabled each of them to develop a better understanding of this new genre. Specifically, it has helped performers to analyse and adjust their performance in relation to each other, to the technology and to the multiple audiences. It has helped them to deepen their understanding of the perfor- mance environment and the demands that it has placed upon them in terms of work- ing with multiple audiences and visceral and virtual performers. Pedagogically, it brings together work of a number of key authors in terms of the importance of criti- cal reflective practice in deepening understanding of performance and creative prac- tice. Furthermore, it leads the way to additional investigation on the role of the audience in the collaborative process, of the place of the ‘critical friend’ in the edu- cation of the performer, and the effectiveness of educating the audience through inclusion in the creative process.

Notes on contributor Pauline Brooks, PhD, MFA, is a senior lecturer in Dance at Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Her creative research in telematic dance involves collaboration with Dr Luke Kahlich, Professor Emeritus of Temple University in Philadelphia and adjunct professor at NSU, Florida, USA. Her work in the area of Technology-Enhanced Learning and semantic web tools has been with Professor Patrick Carmichael and the LJMU Ensemble Project. Cur- rently, she is involved in the Making Connections Project exploring devising and perfor- mance with dancers and musicians from LJMU, NSU and Edinburgh Napier University. Previously, she performed with Nexus Dance Theatre (Scotland), Springs Dance Company (England) and Ann Vachon/Dance Conduit and Sybil Dance Company (USA).

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