Tandem Dances: Choreographing Immersive Performance

by Julia M. Ritter

Overview

Tandem Dances: Choreographing Immersive Performance is the first book to propose dance and choreography as frames through which to examine immersive theatre, more broadly known as immersive performance. Indicative of a larger renaissance in storytelling during the digital age, immersive performance is influenced by emerging computer technologies, such as virtual reality and advances in video-gaming, as well as increased interest in new forms of experiential entertainment. The idea of tandemness — suggesting motion that is achieved by two bodies working together and acting in conjunction with one another — is critical throughout the book. Author Julia M. Ritter persuasively argues that practitioners of immersive productions deploy choreography as a structural mechanism to mobilize the bodies of cast and audience members to perform together. Furthermore, choreography is contextualized as an effective tool for facilitating audience participation towards immersion as an affect. Through a focus on Western dance histories, theories, and practices, Ritter's close choreographic analysis of immersive productions, along with unique insights from choreographers, directors, performers, and spectators, enlivens discourse across dramaturgy, kinesthesia, affect, and co-authorship. By foregrounding the choreographic in order to examine its specific impact on the evolution of immersive theater, Tandem Dances explores choreography as a discursive domain that is fundamentally related to creative practice, agendas of power and control, and concomitant issues of freedom and agency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190051310
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	11/01/2020
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	9.40(w) x 6.40(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Dr. Julia M. Ritter serves as the Dean of the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. Tracing Choreography

2. Designing Differently With Dance

3. Elicitive Dramaturgy: Third Rail Projects' Then She Fell

4. Insider Dynamics & Extended Audiencing: Punchdrunk's Sleep No More

5. Coauthorality: bluemouth inc.'s Dance Marathon

6. Speculative Futures

References

Index

Editorial Reviews

"Ritter opens up new territory for performance studies in her fascinating discussion of 'extended audiencing', which drives SNM into a spectator-controlled digital sphere of blog posts, discussion boards, fan art and the like." — Alison D'Amato, Performance Research

"Tandem Dances is an essential book for those invested in immersive performance or, broader yet, any body-based performance that incorporates the audience's participation and physicality as core elements to the production itself." — Mara Mandradjieff, Dance Research Journal

"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." — S. E. Friedler, CHOICE

"Tandem Dances makes a welcome intervention in a field that has marginalised the perspectives and insights of dance scholars, dancers, choreographers, and choreographed audiences. It prompts reconsideration of how audiences are immersed in contemporary performance by centring on choreography, kinesthesia, and improvisatory engagement as key elements underpinning the design and experience of immersive environments, and offers a helpful means of conceptualising and analysing audience immersion in ways that I'm sure will inspire fresh consideration of the political in immersive performance." — Adam Alston, Goldsmiths, University of London

"While dance is integral to so much immersive theatre, its contribution remains relatively covert. Ritter has written a much-needed book to work through the production and reception of choreography within this contemporary performance form." — Kate Elswit, author of Theatre & Dance and Watching Weimar Dance

From the Publisher