 Hello everybody, welcome to the second panel of Networks 2020 Conference, the Doctoral Theater Students Association annual conference. That was interesting. And the second panel is entitled, I'm sorry about that. Welcome again to the second panel of the day. It's titled Visibility and Invisibility of Labor in Performance. And my name is Eylül Fidela Kıncı. I'm a doctoral candidate in theater and performance program at the Graduate Center CUNY. And it's such an honor and pleasure to be part of this conference. And I want to congratulate the organizers of this conference once again for all their efforts because as someone who have organized the first two iterations. The first two iterations of this conference, I know how much labor and effort and love it takes to put together this amazing organization. And for everybody, I would like to thank for joining us today from all over the world. And I'm hailing you from Turkey at the moment. I have three speakers in this panel and I would like to introduce them and present their short biographies before moving on to their papers. And we will go through papers one by one. And at the end of it, we will have a question and answer session. I welcome and encourage all of you to send questions to us through online channels. One of them will be through Twitter with the hashtag networks 2020. And the other way of sending us questions is through the Facebook page of our program. It is PhD theater grad center CUNY. I believe that the link is provided on the page that you are viewing this video. So I would like to start with the introducing our speakers today. Christie Honore will join us from the University of Hawaii Manoa, and her paper is entitled navigating non-neutral the hidden labor of disabled performers. Christie is a graduate student at the University of Hawaii studying composition and rhetoric. She received her BA from Wasar College in 2018, where she studied theater and British library literary history. Her work has been published in American Theater Magazine, and her main main areas of research include disability studies, performance studies and access to higher education. The second speaker will be Megan Frederick, and her paper is called the work is the work, language, power, choreography and the political in two dances by Sarah Michelson. Megan is a dance artist based in Philadelphia and a current MFA candidate at Temple University. Her choreography has been presented and supported by creative residencies throughout New York City and the northeastern United States. She teaches dance to children and adults at institutions throughout the northeast. And she was a member of the Brian Brooks Moving Company between 2008 and 2014, and has recently performed with Liz Lerman, Carla Lekerts, Maya Orchin, Catherine Galasso and Kendra Portier, and as a guest with Subcircle Dance Company. The last speaker in this panel will be George Khan with the paper called Wailing and Unwailing, The Manipulation of Labor's Invisibility and Relatability in Performance. George is an artist and writer from London. He's a regular dance critic for the Brooklyn Rail and teacher at the Irondale Theater in Brooklyn. His photography work is featured in Weiss Magazine. He holds an MA in performance studies at NYU and BA in History of Art, Cambridge. So without further ado, I would like to leave the screen to Christie. Thank you. Hi everyone. I'm presenting today on the topic of navigating non-neutral the hidden labor of disabled performers. So first, a few facts about me. As was previously mentioned, I'm a first year MA student in English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. I'm focusing on disability and performance studies, and I have a BA from Basser College in theater with a minor in British Literary History. So in the afterward to the 2008 edition of Konstantin Stanislavsky's book and actor's work, Antoni Smolensky writes, no one seriously concerned with teaching theater across the world can refuse to acknowledge Konstantin Stanislavsky's work. Just as no one interested in chemistry can refuse to acknowledge the periodic table created by Dmitri Mendelev. In her forward to yet another translation entitled An Actor Prepairs, Bella Merlin writes, there can barely be an acting school or a theater studies major that doesn't have an actor prepares on its reading list. There is no doubt that Stanislavsky's reputation with an actor training programs is pretty enormous. However, what is less discussed is his systems profound perpetuation of ableist approaches to actor training that still dominate the field of theater. In addition to sustaining the archaic practice of encouraging non disabled actors to creep up for disabled roles, his reliance on the widely adopted concept of neutral as a requirement of a successful actor is frequently used by gatekeepers to disenfranchise actors with disabilities, whose bodies and movements do not fit the non disabled norm. Derek Mcnish writes of the strong psychosocial meaning tied to the markers of disability on stage, which pre-inscribe an actor's real life disability with implied meanings regarding their characters interiority. Stanislavsky further reinforces this practice in one instance asking his sighted students to feel around a dark room before lecturing that quote, all this taken together adds up to blindness. It must be understood as an inner sense of a person, not merely an external deficit, what the spectator must have is the primary impact of blindness, not all the commentary, not all the literature on the subject, end quote. The continued veneration of Stanislavsky's system only reinforces the ableist frameworks with which his system has become synonymous. As disability studies caller Kerry Sandel concludes quote, ultimately unless training programs very foundations are rehabilitated current curriculum will dissuade actors with disabilities from pursuing training end quote. In this paper, I argue that in order to truly create an equitable learning environment for acting students with disabilities programs must stop perpetuating offensive and exclusionary acting pedagogies and instead design acting curricula and policies with students with disabilities in mind. So two theoretical frameworks within disability studies must be understood in order to fully grasp the unwarranted discrimination against actors with disabilities and actor training programs. The social model of disability and universal design for learning or UDL. Historically Western society has largely focused on the medical model of disability, which regards disability as a tragic individual problem which must be fixed through medical intervention in order to adopt the disabled individual to better function within society. Conversely, the social model of disability focus on focuses on society itself as the source of disability by restricting impaired individuals through a lack of accessibility and inclusion. According to the Rutledge handbook of disability studies, the union of the physically impaired against segregation defines disability under the social model as quote, the disadvantage of restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization, which takes no or little account of people who have physical impairments, and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities. Disability is something imposed on top of our impairments by the way we are unnecessarily isolated and excluded from society, end quote. In order to combat this universal design for learning attempts to make the classroom less disabling to students by attempting to construct policies and curriculums with all students possible students in mind, including students with a wide range of disabilities. Disability has the important added benefit of improving the learning environment for all students with disabilities, regardless of whether they self identify to the instructor as having a disability. Self identification would otherwise be necessary in order for a student to self advocate for individualized accommodations. The three core guidelines of universal design for learning encourage instructors to provide multiple means of representation, provide multiple means of action and expression, and provide multiple means of engagement. Contrary to these two beneficial frameworks, most modern actor training programs not only treat disability as a problem and transit to the individual, but also design courses and curriculums with only non disabled students in mind. Many actor training programs still hold the ignorant notion that an absence of disability is necessary to become a talented actor, and that actors with disabilities simply cannot succeed in a rigorous training program. In the politics of American actor training, Victoria and Lewis recounts the experience of an aspiring actor with a disability, who during their final audition for a prominent MFA acting program was confronted by a movement instructor who assumed a headstand position and asked, this is what we do in my class, can you do that. The student could not and though the student was not blocked from entering the program itself, the movement instructor barred them from enrolling in his classes. Almost any student with a disability who is attempted to navigate an actor training program will probably tell you a similar story, if not worse, of their experiences of blatant ableism. Lewis asserts that many disabled acting students are told by programs that quote, because of your disability, you will not work and because of your physical impairment, you will not be able to fulfill the requirements of our curriculum and quote. This pervasive discrimination is in part due to the theater field slow action and adopting new and progressive pedagogies. In his chapter training actors with disabilities, Derek Mcnish explains that quote, in practice biases are not uncommon. Studies in disability culture and identity are relatively young, which means that acting teachers are unlikely to have experience employing current and positive disability models and quote. However, in many acting methods, the idea of eliminating physical pain and struggle runs counter to the instructor's own rhetoric. In the posthumous work Stanislavsky's legacy, translated by Elizabeth Reynolds-Hapgood, Stanislavsky states that quote, the work of an actor and director as we understand it here is a painful process. It is one that requires enormous self mastery and often also great physical endurance and quote. There is also a much higher value placed on these revered and established methods, many of which are difficult to adapt to accommodate students with disabilities. Stanislavsky's core concept of neutrality opened a Pandora's box of ability charged rhetoric within actor training. First existing purely in oral form before it was finally published in 1936, Stanislavsky's system aims to train the actor to quote, switch off the brain entirely to become a blank sheet of paper and move into the unconscious in a neutral state and quote. Stanislavsky's followers as well as divergent theorists have further perpetuated the concept of neutral and solidified it as a core tenant of most actor training methods. Influential French acting coach, Jacques Lacocque pioneered the use of the neutral mask, which he cites as a central point of his teaching method. He describes the mask as a generic being and observes that quote, beneath the neutral mask, the actor's face disappears and his body becomes more noticeable and quote. Heather Corr won an MFA who practices the alternate pseudo medicine of Rolfing further elaborated on the modern ideal of the neutral actor, stating that an actor's quote neutral body is highly adaptable and aligned a body that employs economy of motion and is agile, with freedom to make new choices through motion and in moments impulse, and quote. For actors who neglect game control of their voice and body quote, by the time they become bored with the narrow spectrum of roles they're able to play, it is usually too late and quote. For actors with disabilities whose bodies maintain a state of constant conflict and thus diverge from the non disabled norm. The construct of neutral can be impossible to achieve. In his field wide problem in her essay, the tyranny of neutral disability and actor training, in which he states quote implicit in the various manifestations of the neutral metaphor is the assumption that a character cannot be built from a position of physical difference. Stanislavsky emphasize that the actors themselves should be as free as possible from physical from physical defect and quote. Not only does an insistence on neutrality preclude actors with disabilities from playing non disabled characters, but it also insists upon non disabled actors creeping up in order to play disabled roles. Many actors with disabilities who have found work playing either disabled or non disabled roles on screen and stage, acquire the disability only after receiving their training and establishing their careers, including Michael J. Sarah Bernhardt and Christopher Reeve theaters and art form has a long and fraught history of utilizing physical difference pain by non disabled actors to express internal character flaws. Petra cuppers acknowledges the pervasive attitude towards disability as a metaphor and asserts that quote to open up this world of deep and profound difference all a non disabled performer has to do is get handy with a wheelchair and quote. For form for formative disability use for dramatic effect banks on a non disabled audiences own feelings of pity and fear towards disability, in order to elicit an emotional reaction. Similarly, when used to clue the audience in on a character's interiority, the signifier of disability is rarely associated with admirable character traits. Take for example, villainous King Richard and Shakespeare's Richard the third fragile Laura and Tennessee Williams the glass So Stanislavsky system takes a similarly counterproductive attitude towards acting characters with disabilities and his personal opinions on the topic as evident in an actor prepares and Stanislavsky's legacy are highly reductive. Two notable exercises Stanislavsky's proxy character torta devises for his acting students which utilize stereotypical depictions of disability as a means of providing authentic performances in his students include the madman behind the door and the money thrown into the fire by the And the madman behind the door torta of attempts to give his students a quote deeper and more complicated and quote motivation by asking them quote, but suppose that in this apartment of Maria's there used to live a man that became violently insane. They took him away to a psychopathic ward. If he escaped from there and were behind that door what would you do and quote. So during this question the students begin hiding in various spaces within the apartment, arming themselves with heavy objects and planning how they might barricade the door. In the money thrown into the fire by the simple brother, the instructor attempts to distract his students from focusing on the audience by providing them with a scene that is quote, enough of a tragedy and quote. So Stan involves Vanya quote a low type of moron and quote, who after watching his brother in law through a paper wrappings into the fire imitates him by throwing several stacks of paper money into the fire. Upon seeing what he's done Vanya's brother in law throws him to the floor causing him to bleed. Considering these exercises from a contemporary perspective, the defensiveness of these characterizations may appear obvious. In the introduction to the 2014 Bloomsbury revelations edition of an actor prepares Bella Merlin and acting professor at University of California Riverside writes quote, even those illusions that may now seem old fashioned or specific to pre revolutionary Russia can appeal to the lively imagination and make their points succinctly. Behind the door, the money thrown into the fire by the simple brother, each image is vivid and has its purpose in unlocking the actor's craft and quote. In redesigning the acting classroom while keeping students with disabilities in mind. Some of the necessary changes also applied to any higher education course that wants to better accommodate these students. One of these major areas is strict attendance policies which as Melissa Nicholas writes quote, are premised on ableist assumptions of a normal student body and quote. These policies are often even more strict in courses that require daily physical participation such as acting. In January 1, 2018 and why use department of performance studies implemented a series of strict new policies regarding student attendance. The PDF document which is prominently featured on the department's website states that for both undergraduate and graduate students quote, absences due to health reasons justified by an appropriate medical note are considered not used but that reasonable accommodations do not negate requirements for successful completion of a program course or service or adherence to acceptable standards of behavior. It is important to note that some accommodations are not appropriate in all courses, and that non justified absences should have a negative impact on a student's final grade and quote. The harsh and accusatory tone of NY use policy further alienate students with disabilities, who frequently deal with doctors appointments medical emergencies and debilitating symptoms which might prevent them from attending class. Nicholas states that quote, having to be an exception asking for an exemption being a special case is not a desirable position to be in yet policies and pedagogies premised on ableism situate students with disabilities and precisely this position all of the time and quote. And subsequently more equitable attendance policies are a great place to start for any course regardless of its content for acting program specifically. There is no one instructional method that is guaranteed to perfectly accommodate every disability. Just as there is no one method that is most effective for every actor following universal design for learning, it's best to employ multiple means of engagement which means exploring multiple different voice and movement techniques within a single course. The factors with disabilities have found it decro's mime techniques and the Le Bon part a enough movement analysis effective in their training. Additionally, whenever specific bodily movements are described in exercise, it is helpful to instead focus on the overarching impression of the physical action so that students with disabilities are not excluded. Nicholas describes several useful examples quote, must a student walk like a cow or can the student move like a cow. Can the divine neutral be a personal place rather than a universal one. Can we send our energy upward if we're unable to stand straight and quote by adjusting the bodily rhetoric of these exercises actors with disabilities are automatically included in the instructions and are still able to make their own creative choices and how they execute these movements. One of the most important changes that can be made is to actively recruit students with disabilities to participate in acting courses and theater productions. Instructors must go beyond the bare minimum of accommodation and make conscious effort to engage and empower aspiring actors with disabilities in order to ensure that these talented performers finally reach a long overdue parity in the classroom and subsequently on stage. Some best practices for inclusive acting pedagogy include do not require a physical state of neutral instead allow the term to be individually interpreted by each actor. Avoid specific physical differentiations that contain exclusionary rhetoric like walk stand see or listen and instead up for more inclusive alternatives. Embrace an equitable attendance policy and allow students to access the information and assignments that they might miss during an absence. Plan alternate ways that students can make up performance based assessments if they are ill or injured, such as submitting a video of their monologues. When assigning text with problematic disabled representation lead a critical discussion of the material that addresses the ableism. When requiring students to attend a live performance and sure that the venue is accessible and whatever possible allows students to individually select from a variety of dates and times during the run. Include a variety of different movement and voice techniques within each course experiment with casting and don't be afraid to cast against type give students with disabilities the opportunity to take on both disabled and non disabled roles. Express confidence in each student's acting ability. Do not fall back on grading based on effort and dedication which can look vastly different from student to student instead focus on growth growth and the mastery of specific concepts. Never require any student to disclose their disability or disability status to you. Let the class know that you're open to making individual accommodations and always let students come to you if they need them. Allow actors with disabilities the same creative freedom that you would any other actor don't force an acting choice on them. Maintain a challenging standard for the course. The society may often have low expectations for performers with disabilities. These biases do not have to translate into the classroom. Ensure that rehearsal spaces in classrooms are consistent and accessible. Whenever unsure of how to best accommodate a student always ask. And finally actively recruit students with disabilities clearly state that they are welcome to join your class in the course description and any course advertisements bonus points if you make your syllabus available so students can see proof of your course's commitment to inclusion. Thank you. Thank you Christy, and we will have our Q&A session at the very end. So I would like to move on to Megan's presentation. Entitled the work is the work language power choreography and political in two dances by Sarah Mitchelson. Hello. Hi. Yes, I'm going to focus today on what was the first portion of my paper, which really looks at the mechanics at work within the first of the two dances of Sarah Mitchelson that I'm writing about. Sarah Mitchelson's dancers are working hard. It's 2015 and I'm wandering through the governor's Island ferry terminal in New York City. I'm watching a dance performance or at least I think it's a dance performance, but no one is dancing. The performers are sitting or standing still or changing from sitting to standing or walking from one area of the terminal to another to sit or stand somewhere else. The dancers are often and sometimes right on top of each other they yell. What they are yelling is barely intelligible but sounds like a non repeating series of letters and numbers uttered in short burst. These actions are deliberate, not casual. The dancers sit or stand straight up. Their eyes are fixed ahead. When they vocalize they vocalize crisply and cleanly. When they change locations they do so urgently. The energy of their bodies is palpable they are on. Whatever it is they are doing it is demanding a lot of them they are working hard. Today I will argue that this perception, the perception of the dancers labor is central to Mitchelson's project as an artist. I will propose that one of Mitchelson's recent dances river to river attempt to 2015 performed through the lower Manhattan cultural councils river to river festival represents primarily an insistence on making visible the work of the dancer. I will focus on what I see as a central choreographic techniques at work in this dance. First, the imposition through the enactment of physical and vocal queuing system of Mitchelson's own presence as choreographer into the live performance of the work. I will suggest that through this imposition Mitchelson makes visible the system of choreography as an interface, a live negotiation between the choreographer and her dancers, where in this interfacing is productive of what for Mitchelson is the heart of dancing, the work of the dancer. In river to river attempt to there are performers throughout the terminal. Mitchelson herself is there. She's moving through the space like the audience and the performers. She's acknowledging us she's talking she has a megaphone. She makes eye contact and smiles as she says quote the last thing we need is another well formed modern dance and quote. Mitchelson's behavior vacillates between pedestrian and wild. A male dancer follows her around the space. She yells as he attacks her climbing up her back she sends him off. I am at once overwhelmed and been used by the activity. Something and nothing is happening. Mitchelson seems like a gesture a mad clown but her dancers are tense. The audience begins to eye each other where really we are all confused. Somewhere well into the performance I realized that there is at least one level of intelligibility to what I'm watching. I noticed the cause and effect relationship between performers and between Mitchelson and her performers. I began to suspect that these actions and utterances are some sort of code through which Mitchelson is controlling her dancers. I try to figure out the pattern but it eludes me I try to figure out the goal what are they trying to do. But that also escapes me nothing will land that clearly enough for me to hold on to it. One female performer Madeline Wilcox situates herself on one of the exterior platforms of the terminal and begins a windmilling arm movement. Mitchelson follows her she sits down close and watches her she says good job and Madeline loves dance. Then all the performers get into a white car and drive away. The show is over. Again the analysis of this performance and Mitchelson's work in general I turn to the work of theorist Roland Bart. Bart in his essay the grain of the voice considers the performance of song music in relationship to Julia Chris Davis concepts of phenotex and genotex. Bart compares performances live and recorded a vocal music that either on the one hand quote give him a little thrill and quote or on the other quote fit well with the demands of an average culture and quote and are therefore uninteresting. In the essay Bart wants to discover how these performances can either produce or not produce this thrill, as well as the nature of the thrill itself. He suggests that his thrill is Chris Davis through Lacan's jouissance, the transgressive pleasure of the breaking apart reconstituting or otherwise destabilizing of the subject in language. Bart goes on to suggest that this destabilizing pleasure is produced in him as a listener when one can hear the grain of the voice in performance, where the grain of the voice is the presence of the body itself in language, quote the materiality of the body speaking He borrows from Chris Davis to say quote, the phenosong covers all the phenomena all the features which belong to the structure of language being some everything in the performance, which is in the service of communication representation expression, which forms a tissue of cultural values and quote, whereas quote the genome song is a volume of the singing and speaking voice, the space where significations germinate from within language and in its very materiality, where the melody really works at the language and identifies with that work and quote. For Bart then within every performance there exists these two texts, the phenotext that stays within and supports the integrity of the continuity of the symbolic language normative cultural values, and the genotext that engages materially with that language through the work of the body on or in language itself. Bart values performances of some music in which the genotext is present as that which opens up the space of Jouissance, and in so doing also creates the possibility for new significations beyond the stable system of cultural values. I believe that Mitchelson shares Bart's interest in this thrilling potential of performance, and that she too believes that this potential resides in the body's engagement with the text or language of that performance. Like Bart, Mitchelson is interested in performances that evidence the body working materially with choreography as language. In a 2015 Artist Talk with Walker Arts Center curator Philip Beider currently available on YouTube, Mitchelson and Beider discuss issues at stake in Mitchelson's body of work. They use words like energy activity and intensity to describe her dances. Beider brings up a phenomenon about which he has heard Mitchelson speak, reconstructions of the work of Merce Cunningham who passed away in 2009, and with whom Mitchelson studies. Beider suggests that Mitchelson has spoken critically about this practice of reconstruction, which is also how I remember her speaking in a 2015 workshop. But Mitchelson makes an effort to articulate her feelings as an opinion strongly situated in her personal values as an artist rather than statements meant to cover the value or lack thereof of artistic practice in general. However, what I'm interested in here is exactly Mitchelson's particular values as a choreographer, how they are articulated and how they produce her work. Beider quote, you know that Cunningham is gone and there's sometimes reconstructions of his work and quote Mitchelson quote interesting you would go there and quote. Beider quote, and sometimes they work and sometimes they they don't from certain perspectives and you had mentioned once that it's not so much about getting the steps right or the vocabulary right, but it's about a kind of again maybe it's a kind of energy of commitment or a focus that you always felt from the Cunningham when they were there when Merce was alive. And when that was, is that kind of related to what you're talking about here with regard to aiming to get that kind of intense that kind of you just feel it as an audience member and quote. Mitchelson quote, mostly what I think is present in the reconstruction is composition, composition of the work then, but then so is the composition of the, so then the composition of the work is representing the work. And it's okay so then what is the work, where's the work, and I have those questions for myself because I'm and quote by their quote, because the work is not just composition and quote Mitchelson quote for me. No, and quote. In the above Mitchelson and Beider identify vocabulary of dance movements, dance steps and composition, as only some aspects of a dance work in contrast to energy commitment focus and a mysterious kind of intensity that one just feels as an audience member as other aspects of that same work for Mitchelson the performer is not the work for clarity of our clarity of our argument. I want to take the opportunity to here suggest that this first cluster of aspects that which is most commonly thought of as choreography in a traditional sense, the arrangement or composition in space and time of steps or dance movements that the dancers execute in the live performance, so that we can rename the binary that Mitchelson and Beider are discussing as choreography versus in 10 energy energy commitment intensity. So, if for Mitchelson choreography is not the work, then what is the work. I want to thank you Mitchelson states that she undertakes quote, a honing of a certain kind of energetic principles that work structurally that work in relationship to those choreographic tasks and close and quote, my real attention and intention is in the dancers themselves and their body and what they have to do and what they're doing and what it takes them to do what they're doing and quote. Therefore, I think we can deduct that from Mitchelson where choreography itself is not the work. The work is in fact this energy which exists structurally between the body of the dancer and the tasks of choreography or in other words, the performance of the dancers body mind in engagement with choreography. And here's where I hear the echoes of bark distinction between performances of some music that are just music and language and performances of some music that in fact show the body working materially with that language. It is clear that Mitchelson is also interested in the latter, just in the form of dance instead of music. In fact, I would go so far as to use the word thrill to describe what one feels in witnessing the frictioning aliveness of Mitchelson dancers in the movement. Yes, she sounds the vibration of the present body in negotiation, never lapsing into the complacency of stability never resorting to communication, never even simply doing the dance, but held taught an engagement with the task of choreography itself. To simplify, it is helpful to make a certain distinction and difference between bark thinking and Mitchelson. Bart writes about the body of the singer in engagement with the materiality of language as produced by that body. However, as Mitchelson states in the 2015 interview, she is concerned with a more complex entity than the body, i.e. the dancers body mind. The body is not just the body but rather a thinking body which holds and in fact is also the dancer's mental as well as physical activity, her thought, her attention and her emotion. The facets of the body mind are visibly present in the two dances I am describing here, the one dance today. In fact, much of the energy intensity and commitment visible in the work are visible in the dancers attention and focus ideas most commonly associated with mental activity but which are inextricably tied to and visible through physicality. The way that the dancers are on the way that they use their eyes directly the way that they hold their bodies with tension, the way that they show that they are listening, the way that they change positions in their bodies or in space with urgency. This season her work is an insistence on choreography as a system with which the dancer must necessarily engage her body mind in live time. I want to move on to a discussion of Mitchelson's work within the lens of Michelle Foucault's theories of the productive nature of systems of discipline and power. For Foucault, systems of power not only have the power to repress, to keep people from doing things, doing thinking or making things, but also have the power to produce. In a published interview with the editorial collective of Calcour, Foucault states, quote, power would be a fragile thing if its only function were to repress. If, on the contrary, power is strong, this is because as we are beginning to realize, it produces effects and quote. These effects include dimensions previously thought of as ontologically pre-existent power, such as truth, knowledge, the subject's desire, and most interestingly for dance studies, the body. In the following Foucault in his essay, choreo police and choreo politics, Andre Lepecki writes, quote, historically and disciplinarily the concept and the practice of choreography implements needs, produces and reproduces what William Forsythe has called an art of command. The meaning of choreography obviously implies that as with any system of command, choreography also implement needs, produces and reproduces whole systems of obedience. I agree that choreography can certainly be thought of as a system of command discipline or power that produces systems of obedience. What I want to add is that when speaking about traditional performances of choreographed dances, the system of command is acting in time. In other words, one must consider the aspect of time when thinking about how the commands of choreography produce the bodies of performance. In most traditional situations, the commands of choreography have been given, learned and rehearsed prior to the instance of performance. Then in performance, the dancer's task is to obey these past commands in the present tense. The dancer is not only following commands in the present tense, but reproducing these commands in the present tense in order to obey them. I argue that while the identity of choreography as a system of command is present in these traditional situations of which I speak, the system of command and its relationship to time, because of its relationship to time, is rendered invisible within the space of the performance. While dance scholars such as LaPeki have worked to describe choreography as a system of command, in most traditional performances, the reality is in fact actively hidden. What one is meant to see is the command obeyed and materialized as action rather than the command given. The given nature of the command, the nature of the existence prior to the performance of the work, is hidden by the performance of the work. On the other hand, Michelson, by inserting herself as choreographer through these physical and vocal queuing systems, by commanding her dancers within the performance as a live structuring presence in the present tense of the work, actually makes visible the full reality of choreography as a productive system of discipline and power. Choreography as a system of command becomes an experiential aspect of the live work. Thereby, the visibility of choreography as a system of command reveals the dancer laboring at her choreographic task, which is actually the space of the body working materially with choreography as language, the space of juifant. Thank you. Thank you Megan. And I would like to move on to the last paper, and I look forward to discussing your paper. And now we will listen to Georgia's presentation entitled wailing and unveiling the manipulation of labor's invisibility and relatability in performance and before George begins I just want to remind our audiences to post their questions through Twitter or Facebook. And I believe the links and the hashtags are on the page that you're viewing this video. Thank you and the floor is yours George. Hey, thank you so much and thank you to Christie and Megan for your papers and I'm very glad to follow you because I think there is plenty of similarity in relations what we're talking about. So my paper is veiling and unveiling the manipulation of labors invisibility and relatability and performance. I want to talk about two examples, one where labor is veiled and another where labor is unveiled. The examples are very different but they're linked, I think in their use of labor for strategic relatability specifically in the use of personal stories and narratives. Both of these examples focus on the London audience. One is a dance slash artwork from the very prominent contemporary artist and the other is an advertising campaign. I'd like to start with the latter. In 2017, the West End production of Lion King released a series of digital campaign videos for selling tickets. They each followed a specific cast member from the musical and told a kind of personal story of their journey. And I'm going to show you a story now, if I can share my screen. And I'm going to read out some quotes while it plays. So, Owen's story went, my name is Owen. I'm from Malawi in Africa. Singing for me is a way of communicating your story and your background. You need to understand where you're coming from. My fellow cast members have been such a support. You need to believe and feel the love and support of the company. Shots of Owen walking up to the Lyceum Theatre in London, his backpack on and gazing up at the Lion King sign. It's the cliche of the wannabe city in the big city, imagining their name up in lights. Another space for this is further shots of Owen in the rehearsal room, singing, dancing and warming up. The emphasis is on athleticism and training. In many of the videos such as those of Nicholas Athawa, Deborah from Nigeria, or Rotendo from Zimbabwe, the actors talk of the hardship. Rotendo emphasizes, I quote, I haven't reached my potential yet as a dancer, so I have to keep fighting. One of these adverts to receive the actors on stage, gone are the sweeping cinematic shots of the production, gone are the complex sets and elaborate costumes, all the elements usually synonymous with the Lion King. What this campaign did, their maneuver is to make this switch, where they focus entirely on the labor of the performer. It is what Shannon Jackson might call an aesthetics of support, rather than focusing on that dematerialized theatrical production on the characters that story. The new story we are told is the very material story of the actors, the performers, and specifically their labor. What is normally left invisible is now made visible. Part of I think of what is going on here is the decision to only focus on the performance of color, with many of them opening by announcing the various countries they have come from. There's an illusion to their immigrant status. Does the Lion King provide some kind of support network for these foreign actors of color? Is this a model immigrant journey, an arc for migrant labor? It is left vague. This was in the very particular political and social climate of the post Brexit London, when the imagery of possible immigrant acts of color emphasizing the strain involved in securing their roles is significant. The video suggests the Lyceum Theatre's work to extend beyond the work of the performers and stay chanced towards a broader social work, a kind of relational dynamic, a political work and making visible of certain performing bodies. The advert, they cleverly ties a kind of political visibility to a cultural product which may not otherwise have these associations. It does this by a means of a rags to riches story. The advert was targeted to Facebook users most likely use activity suggesting interest in theater or politics. In the wake of Facebook having been mobilized by momentum for the Labour Party campaign that year to huge success. Its algorithms are re-harnessed here to alter its users perceptions of the popular West End production. Furthermore, the young audience it seeks are those who view themselves as potential participants in the unveiled work. The rags to riches theme is the narrative used by reality TV. It asks aspiring theater actors to imagine themselves joining the ranks. These personal narratives appeal to the viewer in such a way as to indulge them in imagining that this could be you. That with your hard work, this is possible and thus monetize this desire in the set of tickets. I want to turn now somewhat abruptly, I realize, but time is short to a work by Tina Seagal for the tape modern in 2012. It's a piece called These Associations and I hope it offers a kind of asymmetrical foil. For here in Seagal's work, the labour of the performers is continually veiled and the performers themselves are rather than highlighted made invisible. I'm going to try and share a bit of that too. Approaching his piece, These Associations, it is not clear whether work begins or ends. The work was created specifically for the tape modern Turbine Hall, an enormous industrial looking atrium space. As with a lot of Seagal's work it's specifically constructed without a beginning or end, so we merely find the piece occurring almost autonomously in the museum space. There aren't even any placards on the walls. This is an artwork when a performer utters, this is a work by Tina Seagal. We may see a group of people walking around intermingling. They may slow to a stop or they may suddenly break out and sprint down the length of the hall. They may run past you and around you. It is immediately clear what is not clear, namely that you don't know who is part of the work and who is just another museum visitor. The plain-clothed performers blend into the crowd making them invisible. A woman standing next to you, unnoticed until now, breaks into a run and joins the quiet frenzy of movement. A man approaches you and starts telling a story, something about his girlfriend getting lost, being reunited. It's immediate, sudden and deeply personal. He listens for your response but after a brief conversation he moves away and dissolves into the group. Seagal in fact explicitly doesn't call his performers performers. He prefers the term interpreters. On the one hand interpreter seems to value the inclusion of a unique and personal interpretation, yet at the same time it reaffirms that position as a vessel or a medium for the work itself which is presumably distinct from their interpretation. Seagal though using dance and performance is foremost a conceptual artist and here we see already the way in which the work not only makes the performers invisible but moves their labor to the background, separating it from the foregrounded work of Seagal himself, that is the work of art. In an interview Seagal reveals the dream and I quote, I would like to do a solo show in a totally empty museum which would at the same time be full, empty and full, there would be no objects whatsoever. We see this manifested in this performance of invisible interpreters yet what is veiled here in their making invisible. Writing on Seagal authors Tony Pape, Noemi Solomon and Alana Tain pose the key question, what bodies and skills are exposed and welcomed and what remains hidden and on the outside. Art historian Claire Bishop writes that his situations allow for a quote, individual variation and a quotient aesthetic end quote, yet it appears individual variation of the participants is only within certain norms. The invisibility of the interpreters is dependent on them looking normal in the eyes of the visitors. On the turbine hall the interpreters can in fact be differentiated. They are the ones with no bags, no shopping, no strollers, no wheelchairs, and they're all wearing sneakers. As Bishop observes Seagal's functional aesthetic is reminiscent of the Judson dance groups. Yvonne Rayner in 1968 claimed that dance is hard to see. Yet, it would appear it's only visible at all in certain bodies and certain conditions. The making invisible of the dancer's body is a dangerous historical trope in dance ideology with a long history that lingers here. Philosopher Alan Badu, for instance, invokes this belief when writing that the dancer's body is never someone. It is abstract. The dancer's own body is replaced with a kind of abstract body in the eye of the audience. The absence of the dancer's body is only made possible by the labor and skill of the performer and by the body's compliance with aesthetic norms. Furthermore, the interpreters' invisibility here is dependent on their ability to visually mirror the visitors in the museum. But which bodies do we see in the museum in the first place? Echoed in the interpreters, therefore, is the same visitor demographic of gallery going, educated, primarily middle class, white and able bodies. Agnesca Grazza, who was one of these interpreters, explained that being able-bodied was simply presumed during recruitment. Rightly or not, it was assumed we could sing with stand-high levels of physical activity and move in a coordinated fashion, she says. This work took place during the summer of 2012, the year London hosted the Olympic Games, and the city announced a sprawling arts programme to stage the cultural diversity and energy of the city. For Asad Raza, the show's producer at the work, quote, shows London to itself. Meanwhile, the then take director, Chris Durkin, asserted that the selected interpreters for Segal's piece represented, and I quote, complete diversity. What kind of intervention seeks to claim complete diversity? Their selection had to be able-bodied and non-diverse enough to blend into the surrounding crowd of gallery going visitors. However, perhaps be cynical, it also had to be diverse enough to perform a certain kind of diversity that offered this crowd a believable image, a mirage of the diverse city of London they see themselves a part of. In Segal's empty and full museum, in his showing of London to itself, many bodies and contributions are veiled. Invisible and absent bodies vanish alongside their labour, leaving just the presence of performative affect. Indeed, one of the most effective parts was when interpreters engage the visitors in conversation, sharing personal stories. As Graza, the interpreter notes, this is where Segal relinquished the most directorial control. He didn't specify or rehearse the stories, just provided prompts. Interpreters may talk about losing partners, strange encounters, secret desires. These narratives were, by nature, heartfelt. It is here that the work engages most directly with the relational and aesthetic dimension. Graza explains, we had been chosen in workshops and by other recruitment methods for certain qualities of openness, subtlety and curiosity toward the other. Despite the depth and quality of the labour here, she nonetheless attests and I quote, there is a sense in which Segal's name stood for all of our creative efforts on his behalf, not least the visitors own. I think of this as she recalls a month after the performance had begun, being approached by someone at Liverpool train station in London. A man who had remembered seeing these associations and remembered their exchange during it. Continuing where they left off, it is if the parameters of Segal's artwork have followed them out beyond the museum. The blurring between interpreter and visitor that occurs within the confines in the museum seems to spread outward into both their respective lives. The artwork appears to hitchhike onto the life of both the performer and the audience member. Here, I think of Segal's preference to refer to his performances as situations, thus dissolving an audience participant distinction and opening up the confines of the work of the situation that is to include those of the visitor. While rendering the bodies themselves invisible, Segal manages to create a system that subsumes relations, exchanges and labour, harnessing the interactions of others and replaying them as part of the Tina Segal artwork. The title of this piece, These Associations, further seems to suggest that even our own mental associations stirred in us, part of his. In this way, Segal creates a piece where the visitor effectively works for him. What we see in both these examples is an attempt to turn a kind of warped mirror to London, both using personal narratives and stories to effectively appeal to the audience. While one exploits the stories by unveiling their labour, making them hyper visible, the other veils the labour involved by the making invisible of the performing bodies. One aestheticizes labour and another uses an aesthetics that makes it vanish. While one asks the audience to imagine their involvement, the other harnesses the visitor's involvement as part of the work at large. And both the manipulation of labour's visibility provides a tool for staging relationality and relatability. Thank you. Thank you George for this very interesting juxtaposition of these two performances and thank you to all for your great interventions. I think it is time for you to unmute yourselves also so that we can begin a discussion without waiting further, although we will be waiting and encouraging questions from our listeners. And they can use the hashtag networks 2020 on Twitter to do so. But before moving on to our audience questions I do have reflections and maybe questions for all three of you. I feel that there's a running thread across these papers which seems to me the peripheral labour somehow and I thought of it because in Christie's case I was constantly drawn to thinking the labour of pedagogues who would facilitate students with disabilities inside the classroom and what kind of labour that would require on top of the labour of the actor with disability. And in Megan's case I was thinking whether that performance also can be read as a theatricalization of the labour of the choreographer which is peripheral to the performance event in a regular sense. And in George's case whether the audience's labour is a peripheral labour through which we can read these performances. Both Tino Segas obviously you mentioned the audience, invoked the audience, they encountered the variant but also I was thinking all those audience members to the advertisements as the potential audiences and also potential performance to Lion King or any West Ends production. And I'm wondering if there's a way to understand the power structure as you're all problematizing in your papers through these peripheries. I don't know if that resonates with you but it's interesting for me to hear what you would make up with it. Yeah, definitely. I think that one of the first objections anyone raises to the idea of trying to include actors with disabilities is how much additional time will the instructor have to take to design this course, how much extra labour is going to go into making this course accessible but one of the great things about universal design for learning is you can design the course. And of course you can factor in every single possible type of accessibility needs someone might have, but you can factor in a great deal of different accessibility needs into your original design of the course, which I think in the long term would reduce the amount of labour on the part of the instructor, as opposed to having to sit down with every single student who needs an excuse absence who needs you know any sort of small accommodation, you know on a case by case basis I think case by case tends to add up to even more additional sort of unseen labour than just factoring into the original design of the course, a lot of possible accessibility needs. And in a way actually any pedagogy requires a certain degree of tailoring in to specific needs of the students it's disability or non disability. Yeah. Megan go ahead. I just, I can apply what you said to later on in the paper. I try to make the point that actually Mitchelson isn't isn't only interested in the labour of the dancer as you said, she's interested in labour as a relationship between the choreographer and the dancer. She, she is putting herself within within the dance because she is interested. Why does this dancer do what I'm asking her to do. I think that's something that Andre LaTecchi wrote about another of Mitchelson's work. He tries to make the argument that she kind of by the by the choice of the title that she uses, which is devotion. She characterizes the dancers labour as a devotion to dance as this sort of like autonomous anonymous practice of labour, but but I'm saying what you're saying which is that no she's actually, she's interested in labour as a dancer for asking a dancer to do X, Y or Z as a task that gets enacted in the performance like she's very much there. I was thinking of devotion study as well because that piece very virtuosically performs the labour of the dancer in a way, and it's almost like a counterpoint to what she's doing in the performance you're telling us about. And I mean, in your description is an audience member I'm getting some affect a personal investment or disinvestment on your part and I would I would love to hear more about that experience component of your spectatorship but before maybe getting further into that I would like to hear from George as well. Yeah, I mean I think I'm thinking across all our papers and and your question which is a great question I think there is the kind of pattern is that it seems that there are, you know, certain certain labours that are kind of staged or given greater value or prioritised in some way and I think even Christie's it's almost like the labour of the of the able bodied actor is kind of prioritised or like or put on a pedestal as you know in the whole pedagogy in the structure and in Megan's paper that specific labour that you talk about that she's interested between choreographer and between the choreographer and the dancer that is the labour that's kind of used as the one focused on the one kind of performed or heightened and I think there's that I think that's that's that's an interesting pattern I see in our papers in terms of there's of this kind of hierarchy of labours almost or then maybe again as a general question do you think that the audience do you think that the and I think empathy comes up in your paper George. Do you think it. Is it a deliberate components of these performances to make the audience think about that labour component of the performance and I'm asking it to all of you I mean I guess the answer is yes but maybe let's explore a little bit further that do you think these the makers of these performance or the designers choreographers on and so forth or want the audience empathise with the effort and investment and immaterial investment even not only bodily but also like spiritually and intellectual investment of the performers and if yes, maybe talk about the political implications of this and if no, then perhaps I mean, obviously if they are not thinking about it and it's obviously a problem but yeah. Go ahead, Christie. I was just going to say I think yeah I think that definitely resonates in sort of the issue of casting disabled actors who have visit visible disabilities or who use mobility aids. So in the history of sort of disabled characters in theater. The use of mobility aids or any sort of visible physical difference has often been linked again as I mentioned to traits of the personality of the character so I feel like a lot of especially more old school directors might be hesitant to cast somebody with that visible physical difference if they don't want that particular character. And that's one of the issues to, you know, in some way interact with that if they don't want that to be a part of the characters interiority. And that's one of the issues for a lot of visibly disabled actors is that that it's even though it's not a choice for them to say use a wheelchair it's always interpreted as a choice. And I think that sort of going playing off of what George has mentioned about sort of aesthetic labor and veiling labor through aesthetics. There's a certain type of you know the the labor of the actor that is very much venerated and it's definitely not what the type of labor that would typically be enacted by a disabled actor or the obstacles that they would face in the rehearsal room that's not what the audience you know would typically think of when you think of oh these actors are being prepared, you know, so so much for this performance and I think that's one of the reasons that able bodied actors continue to be cast in disabled roles that they must creep up for is because they audiences are fascinated with the traditional work of you know the actor did you do in order to embody this character and it's always the traditional work of the able bodied actor behind that. So I just find that like a very interesting dilemma that is still sort of in play today. Let me just point out a reverse scenario. Hey, are you familiar with Jerome Bell's performance disabled theater. Have you heard about it or it sounds very familiar I definitely haven't seen I don't think any. It's a performance with an disabled ensemble, and in a way they are performing about the fact of being disabled and dancing. And I'm wondering if that visibility of their labor within a certain frame. Demands or automatically gains the empathy from the audience that hyper visibility almost of their performance and what the political implications of that would be because I personally have a very uneasy relationship with that hyper visibility of the labor of the disabled performer. For reasons I can't quite maybe explain yet but because your scenario is the complete opposite of you know this abled actor for standing in and hiding the labor, or being applauded for the labor of this leap of imagination, let's say. But what would be the implications of hypervisibilizing the disabled disabled bodies later on stage. Definitely, I think in a lot of instances where the disability, they try to highlight sort of an actor's disability or you know, as you described you sort of a company of all disabled actors Oh look at what they're overcoming this disability and that sort of notion of like inspiration porn that can sort of commodify that labor of the disabled individual and sort of, and again sort of like play on that empathy of the audience and therefore that's why I think a lot of audiences might originally have low expectations for disabled performers because when their disabilities are highlighted. It's done so in such a, let's all applaud them, you know, so inspirational look at all this, you know, effort, you know they're such fighters and all this rhetoric, you know that inspiration porn rhetoric that surrounds it. So I think that what really needs to happen more is for just disabled individuals to be more represented. You know, as I would be in society that about 20% of society has some form of disability. And I think they just need to be included in more in the norm and sort of like as George was mentioning with that piece of performance art. In you know what you would assume a crowd in London would look like well in a normal crowd in London 20% of the people would have a disability so I think just just expanding that notion of norm to include just individuals going about their day with disabilities instead of either having to hide it or make it some form of inspiration really I think is sort of the biggest hurdle yet to be accomplished. And in a way in both of your cases there's a gatekeeping structure to these institutions because it's like museum is infamously a place where yeah it's open to everybody but not everybody can go. And same as in schools in a way. And speaking of which there's a question to you George. Let me read it to you. The question comes from clear younger who is a former student in our program and she's now completing her PhD in UK. And she asks whether you could talk a bit more about the lion king ads and their employment of the migrant worker. Was this posed as a means of distinguishing London as a more accepting and diverse place than the rest of the UK post Brexit referendum. Also, is there striving to reach their potential artistically used to paint them as worthy migrant workers as opposed to unworthy migrants interested in the respectability politics at work in this campaign. Well, I mean, it is a this is my reading of the advert says I've seen not just to clarify so there's not explicit what the advert is doing. You know that when that Brexit referendum. Decision was announced there was like a mean that whole. I'm sure you're all aware that the whole campaign was really kind of leave it on the placement of immigrants due to the immigration crisis that was called at that time and there were lots of posters and campaigns that you know talked about this influx of immigrants and how Brexit was going to supposedly solve this problem. So I think that the, for me the the lion king campaigns, which, you know, were kind of timed so closely in a way, I think that it may not be so much about making London appear like a diverse place but for me it was kind of implying somehow that the light that the lyceum theater and the lion king were, you know, on the on the good side if you like, they were the they were welcoming immigrant workers they were showing you that you know immigrant workers were actors and performers were taking part were involved in this sort of social structure of care and support and enhancing each other. I think, and I think that was for me that's what the, that's the kind of tone of the campaign and the question of worthy or unworthy. That's a very loaded word but I do think that there is this kind of sense of the the actors who are working really hard are kind of. Yeah, they're kind of giving value to what they do and we're kind of, we're kind of, I think, for me it's more about this, this advert kind of getting in there showing you behind the scenes are all the lion king that you might have, you know, maybe thought was just this Disney musical is actually doing social work, basically, and kind of using the migrant story as a means to attest to the, the kind of moral value of the work they were doing that's my reading and if that makes sense. Absolutely and kind of this, this simply resonates with that. What was the term you use Christie. Empathy, no. Oh, inspiration porn. Yeah, inspiration. Yes, yes. Kind of like a reality TV. Yeah, yeah, in that sense. And this, we ever, we are about to wrap up but there's one more question, which is from Alex, one of our organizers, which might take us to different realm apparently. She is wondering if you have any thoughts on social choreographies happening these days all over the world. She was thinking on Megan's definition of choreography as a system of command one we are following obediently, some more than others, following Georgia starts she's thinking on the ways we are aestheticizing our current mobility or rather in mobility. I think I would love to hear Megan address it first because it's, it's very interesting indeed that question of choreography as a piece of comment, or as a relation of reasons. I mean, I, yeah, I'm so where I'm in Philadelphia and there is a suggestion to wear a mask outside. Whenever you leave your house. And I have to confess that I am not one of these people wearing a mask when I go outside, mostly because I have a young child, and I can't get her to wear a mask and I can't communicate well with her when I'm wearing a mask. And I see how that is affecting my physical relationship with other people that I encounter in my daily life when I'm outside. Nicholas just wrote an article for the New York Times, kind of on the social choreography that we're all undertaking spatial awareness, the idea that some of us are actually more able to perform what we're being asked to do. And she names dancers as the ones that are that have that skill. You know, I think that we're all we're all relating to these requests tasks command demands on our lives and our physical bodies in, in very different ways I mean I think that is a perfect example of choreography as a system of command but because we don't we live in the United States we're in a democracy, we still have some sort of choice in terms of how we, we just for instance. Yeah, and I, and I, and I feel badly I feel badly that I'm one of the people that that's not. I feel guilty for not obeying. I have I have my reasons to I guess you know. Christie would you. I mean I was also thinking about when you said posting video assignments. I was thinking how it became a necessity right now for everybody, a lot of my colleagues who teach acting had to continue the semester and basically that's what they asked from their students and suddenly I mean obviously there's this discourse about the corona being the great equalizer but actually no it's not so and so forth, but when it comes to training in studio. In that sense definitely there's a leveling of the playing field for now and yeah. I'm thinking what the ramifications of that would be for pedagogy oriented to being more inclusive for differing levels of abilities. Definitely and I've seen a lot of conversations happening now about how it took a global pandemic in order to have more accessibility as far as working from home you know Skyping into meetings things like that. I think there's there's sort of a lot of. I guess irony that it took such a such a large scale crisis in order to make these changes happen, as opposed to, you know disability activists having been asking for these same, you know, reasonable accommodations for years and years now. And I think also with sort of the social choreography happening now it's an interesting dynamic where the, the ones that are going to probably most benefit from it you know the, the vulnerable people, as they're called and in certain places I believe I've seen that used by politicians and things, you know and immunocompromise people people with reduced lung capacity etc, are going to benefit most from the, that social distancing choreography of, you know so many able bodied people out there and I think it's a very, the motivating factor is very interesting in seeing who does and does not I guess be, I guess mindful of other people's personal spaces and things like that and a lot of the rhetoric are going around now of underlying conditions is oh well they had underlying conditions that's different, you know I don't have underlying conditions or whatever people might rationalize in their heads. Yeah, so there's there's a lot of very, I think the very interesting situations to be navigated I guess, in regards to that. I mean let's hope that this weird vacuum will be reclaimed for more diversity and also equality in a way, and which it can I think I want to be. I think we are over time a little bit. So, I have to wrap up this panel and I would like to thank all of you for your amazing contributions to this conference, and to these ideas, obviously, from your bedrooms. I would like to thank all of our audiences to who followed us and who sent us questions. There's some questions that I couldn't read due to time constraints, please forgive us. And, I guess that's it. Check back for the panel number three. Thank you. Thank you so much thank you. Thank you. I guess that's it.