In What a Body Can Do, Ben Spatz develops, for the first time, a rigorous theory of embodied technique as knowledge. He argues that viewing technique as both training and research has much to offer current debates over the role of practice in the university, including the debates around "practice as research."
Drawing on critical perspectives from the sociology of knowledge, phenomenology, dance studies, enactive cognition, and other areas, Spatz argues that technique is a major area of historical and ongoing research in physical culture, performing arts, and everyday life.
Table of Contents:
CONTENTS
Foreword ix
JOSEPH ROACH
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction: What Can a Body Do? 1
A body can … 1
Five stories 5
From performance to practice 9
Embodiment and sustainability 11
Methodology and chapters 14
1 An epistemology of practice 23
Which epistemology? 23
A selective genealogy of technique 26
The structure of practice 38
Branches and pathways 44
Linguistic peninsulas 48
Sedimented agency 50
The trope of excess 56
Research in embodied technique 60
The problem of the substrate 64
2 The invention of postural yoga 73
Yoga and physical culture 73
A royal success 75
The yoga wars 80
Healthism and “performance” 83
Two studios in the East Village 86
The gendering of yoga 92
Between athletics and somatics 95
A therapeutic turn 100
What is physical education? 104
3 Actors without a theatre 113
Craft and presence 113
Beyond “actor training” 117
Stanislavski’s threshold 122
The method of physical actions 129
Grotowski’s legacy 132
Songs and other epistemic objects 136
A research culture in acting 147
Interdisciplinarities 153
Laboratories 163
4 Gender as technique 171
How to slice a cheese 171
Research in everyday life 175
The problem of sexual difference 179
Fracturing the feminine 186
Masculinities 191
Identity and inertia 197
Current research in gender 203
New paradigms 209
5 Embodied research in the university 217
Blue skies? 217
The epistemic impulse 221
“Practice as Research” 225
The archive and epistemic distance 234
Research design and methodology 242
The fourth division 247
Bibliography 253
Index 275
About the Author :
Ben Spatz is Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield. He holds a PhD in Theatre from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and has been a member of the Performance as Research working groups of both IFTR and ASTR. Ben is founder and artistic director of Urban Research Theater since 2004.
Review :
"Ben Spatz’ examination of concepts of technique and practice in embodied knowledge is a richly rewarding read, both for its rigorous discussion and clarification of ideas which can often be confused and confusing, and for its thought-provoking analysis of a range of examples." --Susie Crow, Oxford Dance Writers
