Dancer: Maria Nikol
Choreodramaturg: Paul Sadot
All The Tears Of My Body (ATTOMB)
ATTOMB takes textile sculpture as a starting point through which to explore and unearth the movement that is housed and hidden within the creation story of the sculpture.
The collaboration began in December 2021 with a chance encounter between Emmanuelle and Paul when he was visiting the small town of Morlaix in France and he entered her workshop. Intrigued and viscerally moved by the sculptures and the process of their creation Paul brought one of them back to the UK and began to gather CUT collective members for this new project.
For more information about the project visit: http://www.paulsadot.com/attomb
Call Out for current responses: Movement(s) of Freedom and Covid 19
This video (below) is a very important statement (13/01/22) about what we are witnessing in countries throughout the world at this moment. I have experienced some of these things first hand.
Extreme censorship and coercive forced vaccination via excluding people from space(s), including travel, health social and work is creeping all too easily into our social/communal fabric.
Technocratic tyranny is dominant and it is important to speak out and not to pretend this is not happening.
I will not remain silent.
As, in my original post I want to state that I am an advocate of pro-choice when it comes to medical procedures and the bodily autonomy of the individual.
I am absolutely amazed by what I am (not)seeing on academic forums, at a time when this is an important threat to democracy worldwide.
Dance and theatre appear to be content to carry on engaging with anything but this ‘hot’ topic.
Is it fear? Or the coercive framework(s) of the modern campus, where political voices must align with the dominant administrative one that renders academics and practitioners mute?
Dance/Theatre academics are often keen to talk about acknowledging and respecting the rights of the First Nation people(s) whose lands they sit upon, yet the majority remain silent as the First Nation people of Australia are interned and coercively force vaccinated.
Canadians are not allowed to travel on trains and planes unless vaccinated and France is aiming to introduce the same discriminatory measures. Is this not worthy of discussion? Are academics not at all concerned? I have a friend in the Human Rights Departments at a top UK university and they are scared to even mention the topic at their institution for fear of shaming and marginalisation: in fact they dare not mention their own ‘unvaccinated status’.
Last September I was shamed and aggressively bullied on the SCUDD forum for suggesting that these draconian and worrying measures were creeping in. I was called ‘anti-vaxx’ for merely raising the matter: a term that was orchestrated by the TNI (Trusted News Initiative) to denigrate and silence anyone who questions governmental, pharmaceutical and tech narratives surrounding COVID 19.
Do my colleagues read sources such as the official Vaers and Yellow Card Scheme data? If so, do they consider that freedom of choice is vital when catastrophic injury or death is a possibility of a medical procedure?
Are my colleagues aware of the tens of thousands of UK doctors (many more worldwide) who oppose vaccine mandates and question the vaccines efficacy? These are health care professionals who consider mandating medical procedures as a violation of ethics and Human Rights.
https://nhs100k.com
Yet, some UK universities only allow fully vaccinated students to live ‘on campus’ (though the definition of ‘fully’ is in flux’) with no recognition that this is coercive behaviour at an institutional level. Other UK universities offer prize draw entries for ‘fully vaccinated’ students only. Is this ethical behaviour?
I would be interested to see how my colleagues on SCUDD, who denigrated me for my post about Dr Julie Ponesse in September 2022, now engage with, or ignore, this fight for freedom. Do they debate and research or continue to ‘silence’ the discourse?
Will they stand up, step out, speak out and fight for democracy, liberty, freedom of speech and community? Or will they remain silent? Are they forced to remain silent? Is political (non)discourse surrounding COVID a part of creative work in dance and theatre and does it link to pedagogical practices on campus?
Will the link to this post be censored by SCUDD and will they receive calls for my removal and to silence the discourse once again? Will it be called irrelevant to the nature of the list?
CALL OUT: for ongoing research project.
I would like to call for personal statements (anonymous if individuals wish ) regarding this rapidly shifting socio-political-pharmaceutical landscape; your experience of it’s shifting (or not); your experiences of (non)censorship of the discourse on campus; has it affected you freedom of movement(s) as a practitioner/academic? Do you consider your campus, students and colleagues as achieving a ‘back to normal’, as was anticipated? How do you view the coming year and what might evolve with regard to free movement(s)?
Of course, there are many other lenses you can apply to your statement.
Please do not include links to lots of unsubstantiated claims that you feel I may not have already read. I am interested in your experience as a practitioner/pedagog. Thank you.I will be at the the UK manifestation of the World Wide Rally For Freedom and hope to see some of you there.
Merry Christmas 2021 (Card)
UPDATE: The bullying, shaming treatment on the SCUDD forum
UPDATE 26/12/21
In light of the events of the past months (vaccination mandates, exposures of Governmental corruption, demonisation of the unvaccinated, fear campaigns, NHS doctors and nurses speaking out against coercive forced vaccination, media and corporate corruption exposed, vaccine deaths and injuries officially recorded) the person who sent me this terribly researched and badly conceived rant has been proved wrong on so many points.
Moreover, the aggressive attempts to shame and cancel my free speech on the SCUDD thread where I originally shared Dr Julie Ponesse’ statement, sharing her ethical concerns over encroaching forced vaccination (via exclusion from space(s) of work, travel, social, education), are also being shown for what they were. Though, strangely, I have received no apology, anonymously or otherwise.
As time passes and more is revealed on this highly contentious subject, the anonymous letter and appalling treatment I received - shaming, bullying and abuse - on the SCUDD list, from dance and theatre academics worldwide, will become a telling historical document and a valuable resource through which to view the terrible and compromised state of free speech within academia and on campuses that now seem more geared towards profit and corporate incentives than knowledge, ethics and open debate.
The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies - Out April 11th 2022.
I have pleasure in announcing the publishing date for this groundbreaking new book.
The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-handbook-of-hip-hop-dance-studies-9780190247867?cc=ca&lang=en&
Engaging with a broad range of research and performance genres, The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies offers the most comprehensive research on Hip Hop dance to date. Filling a lacuna in both Hip Hop and dance studies, the Handbook places practitioners' voices at the forefront and in dialogue with theoretical insights, rooted in critical race theory, anticolonialism, intersectional feminism, and more. Volume editors Mary Fogarty and Imani Kai Johnson have included influential dancers and scholars from around the world: from B-Boys Ken Swift, YNOT, and Storm, to practitioners of locking, waacking and House dance styles such as E. Moncell Durden, Terry Bright Kweku Ofosu, Fly Lady Di, and Leah McFly, and innovative academic work on Hip Hop dance by the most prominent researchers in the field. Throughout the Handbook contributors address individual and social histories of dance, Afrodiasporic and global lineages, the contribution of B-Girls from Honey Rockwell to Rokafella, the "studio-fication" of Hip Hop styles, and moves into theatre, TV, and the digital/social media space.
I am grateful to have my chapter included alongside a host of other practitioners/authors whom I have long admired.
Part IV. Breaking with Convention
23. Negotiating the Metaspace: Hip Hop Dance Artists in the Space of UK Dance/Theatre
Please share with anyone you think may be interested.
Bombastic, Bullying Letter from SCUDD List member
I received this anonymous letter from a SCUDD list member:
Point 4 in the letter has obviously been disproved by President Trudeau’s recent announcement, thus highlighting the smugness of ‘anonymous’s’ comment as naive and under-researched. Canada has now introduced mandatory vaccination for many work places and anyone over 12 to be able to travel: some would say this is both worrying, unethical and a step towards totalitarianism.
Trying to threaten/intimidate me with their brilliant ‘Peer Review skills and connections?’
They imply that SCUDD encouraged them to contact me (anonymously) off list via my agents office.
If that is the case you must please make it clear to members that they cannot do that and that if they wish to contact me my email is available on my website and also off list via SCUDD.
Perhaps, upon reading it, some members may recognise the tone of this bombastic, dogmatic and sarcastic hand. I pity their poor students if they dare to disagree with this bully.
I cannot be bothered devoting any time to their obsessive point making, most of which is totally inaccurate and unsubstantiated and obsessed with Dr Ponesse and belittling her experience.
I reiterate that I am neither pro- or anti- vaccine, I am pro-choice and feel an individuals medical status is a personal matter.
A few points for the anonymous individual:
They must have missed the recent reading of the COVID-19 Vaccine Damage Bill in UK parliament and the figures shared of those who have been injured (not fake news but factual data). Or, President Trudeau announcing that anyone over 12 years old will not be able to travel in Canada without being vaccinated.
Maybe they have not unpicked the conflicts of interest at the MHRA?
Or, perhaps their research does not extend to examining the pharmaceutical companies and their documented past fines for unethical behaviour and corruption?
This is all fact, not fiction or ‘fake news’ and to deem this not worthy of ethical debate is truly ignorant. Some are calling it surreptitious forced vaccination via excluding people from space(s) and that can reasonably be argued and discussed, but not ignored.
Or perhaps they missed some BLM members stating openly that the mandating of vaccines is particularly discriminatory towards African Americans. Here it is in Instagram form, which if you read the letters finale, Dr Anonymous indicates they prefer as a medium of communication:
If you read on this topic you may understand the reluctance given the long and well documented history of medical experimentation imposed upon African Americans See: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/114192.Medical_Apartheid
Maybe they haven’t watched the award winning film TrustWHO : https://www.amazon.co.uk/TrustWHO-Lilian-Franck/dp/B079XRLSCK and actually believe the Pharmaceutical complex has no history of corruption and non-compliance with ethical behaviour or indeed the law. Maybe they do not ask why this documentary film was recently removed from YouTube via ‘Google’ censorship. You can research and view the pharmaceutical industry in depth should you wish, including past documented fines for such behaviours.
If this is the level of research that this academic undertakes before sending bombastic attempts at debate to my door, it is a sad state of affairs. I need more than research that only looks at the Guardian, The Independent, the BBC or any other compromised outlet. There are actually well researched books out there about this very subject, yet this individual obviously seems to feel they can comment without undertaking an engaged literature review. Absolutely appalling and arrogant approach to (non)debate.
That they pursue this anonymously and ask me, at the end, to respond via Instagram or Twitter is laughable and a reflection of their own fear and lack of confidence in their argument. Additionally, it is a reflection of where they get their ‘factual’ data from and highlights that they obviously prefer to have pseudo names on discredited ‘fake news’ platforms rather than take an ‘ethical’ approach of owning their own bombast.
SCUDD please inform members that anonymous letter writing to a persons work address is not acceptable and totally unethical. It is, in fact sinister and tantamount to harassment.
Dr Julie Ponesse professor of Ethics dismissed for not accepting forced medical procedure
Dr Julie Ponesse of University of Western Ontario, Canada giving a clear lesson in ethics.
I am posting this in FULL SUPPORT of her video and her reaction towards the ‘forced medical procedure’ that her university attempted to impose upon her.
She articulates the situation very well. It is extremely upsetting to witness the discrimination that Dr Ponesse is being exposed to.
Colliding with Beckett: Sunday Times (Malta) article
New Digital Transitions: Bespoke Specialist Workshops for Performers, Lecturers and Students.
I would like to share an update and the positive outcomes of the Digital Transitions workshops, now further developed as 'New Digital Transitions'. Their reception and success has been truly fantastic.
Firstly, you can view some of the workshop outcomes here: http://www.paulsadot.com/workshops
New Digital Transitions
Working with Performers Online
Bespoke Specialist Workshops for Performers, Lecturers and Students.
Emerging from the pandemic lockdown scenarios, these unique performer training workshops are the culmination of Paul Sadot's in-depth practical development of DIY digital performances with students and professionals online.
New Digital Transitions draws on Paul’s extensive professional experience in devising for film, theatre and dance where he has worked as an actor, director, choreographer, and movement director with artists and companies such as Shane Meadows, Ultima Vez, Gucci, Kenzo, Sadler’s Wells Breakin’ Convention, Nike, BBC, Channel Four and many more.
These practical workshops introduce new ideas of agency, access, perspective, proximity, and virtuosity, and have inspired excitement and empowerment amongst graduate and post-graduate students of dance and acting.
Using ubiquitous remote technology, the work shares new digital performance methodologies and pedagogies that respond to the shifts in the structures that will make up many post-pandemic performance environments. The work is being recognised as an essential and powerful addition to performer training, offering new skill sets that develop the performers’ reach, autonomy, agency, and transferable skills: such as editing, marketing, and self-taping.
As part of their career development, previous students have successfully utilised the high-quality material generated within the process to further their social media performer profiles, recognising that casting increasingly takes place through these digital spaces.
New Digital Transitions has so far been used in several contexts:
To mediate national and international collaborations between universities and students.
To expand creative networks and develop professional opportunities for artists emerging from educational contexts.
To take courses online.
To create specialist workshops and performances with professional theatre and dance companies.
This workshop, series of workshops, or more extensive course can stand alone or act in collaboration with existing educational formats and pedagogues as a complementary and essential arm to support and nurture our culture’s creative vocabulary as we emerge into post-pandemic modes of expression.
The feedback has been tremendous:
“Paul worked with our Masters level students to produce an innovative and experimental performance work, hosted online via Zoom. The performance outcome was outstanding, very affective, and emotionally engaging. The work employed the technology platform well as an intrinsic part of the creative process and illustrated the potential of dance-making and performing in this way.”
— Dr. Victoria Hunter (Reader in Site-Dance and Choreography, University of Chichester
“Paul Sadot’s workshop introduced students to concepts on liveness, digi-corporeality, and ephemerality through detailed techniques in Zoom. He shared his practice with over 140 students in two workshops which were excellent and helped the students formulate practical ideas for staging their plays. I cannot recommend his workshop enough! I was very impressed with the filmed examples he used as well as the inviting atmosphere he created in an online seminar!”
— Dr Kara Reilly (Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of Exeter)
Watch the film '(dis)location' by University of Chichester MA Dance students
A Digital Transitions Film
Made during a four day intensive with University of Chichester Dance MA students.
Premiere of '(dis)location': 'lockdown' dance in a digital space
You are warmly invited to attend the online premiere of '(dis)location’ on Friday 19th February at 7pm (UK time).
‘(dis)location’ is emerging through a five day online intensive collaboration between University of Chichester MA dance students (New Media & Performance) and ‘Digital Transitions’ workshops led by Director & Choreodramaturg Paul Sadot.
INSTRUCTIONS TO WATCH: In order to join us please just write or cut and paste University of Chichester Dance into YouTube search and click on the link for '(dis)location’ - The link will be available after 6pm (UK time)
The film examines the experience of lockdown through movement and digital practices developed from the ubiquitous technologies available to students at home: exploring the lockdown and post-pandemic performative landscape and the potential of what Sadot calls ‘DIY Digi-corporeality’.
DIY Digi-corporeal practices are questioning perceived notions of agency, access and ‘liveness’ in theatre. It is implicitly a choreopolitical movement, where rapidly developing ubiquitous technology is demonstrably questioning ideas about proximity, perspective, agency, virtuosity, access and mobility, both in theatrical settings and beyond.
Digital Transitions uses a novel choreographic lens to examine how the pandemic has changed performance practice and to articulate the lasting legacy of these re-imagined spatial practices. In doing so, the work asks why, how, when and where performance takes place, who is granted access to it and under what conditions
For more information about Digital Transitions: http://www.paulsadot.com/workshops
For more information about DIY Digi-corporeality: http://www.paulsadot.com/digicorporeality
'Lockdown' - Journal extract
An extract from my practice research journal 20/03/2020
Lockdown restrictions involuntarily thrust into a ‘place of suspension’, a term used by choreographer Rosemary Lee to denote a spatial–temporal link where the choreographer is between two places, where they have been and where they might be going, where they want to catch a glimpse of what is beyond, but perhaps do not want to leave what they know behind (2006 168). When Lee articulated the existential nature of the choreographer’s predicament, she could never have imagined the situation we now find ourselves in. COVID-19 lockdown rules had imposed a new space and it is both existentially and physically challenging. This new unchosen space suddenly became a multitude of isolated studios. As performers we need to reflexively engage with the potentiality of this new performance architecture, this new spatiality. We now find ourselves between two places, in limbo, negotiating the space between home and studio, and re-imagining the home as the studio.
Rather than vaccinate against paradigmatic changes so that we can ‘return to normal’, my practice research explores how we might employ turbulence and precarity (the unsteady state condition)todisturb the dominant processes andstructuresthat inform performance making. In this way, the work engages with ideas of liminality by exploring ‘separation’ from ordinary social and performative lives that existed before COVID-19. It examines a spatial setting wherein COVID-19 has placed performative models in limbo, between past and present modes of daily existence and creation.
Lee, R. (2006) ‘Expectant Waiting’, in Bannerman, C., Sofaer, J., and Watt, J. (eds) Navigating the Unknown: The Creative Process in Contemporary Performing Arts. London: Middlesex University Press, pp. 158–185.
Sadot, P. (2020) Lockdown, The Unsteady State Condition. Available at: https://paul-sadot.squarespace.com/blog-native/2021/1/18/lockdown-journal-extract (Accessed: 18 January 2021).
MACBETH Projeto #6: CIPA Birmingham Royal Conservatoire & Os Satyros (Brazil)
http://macbethprojeto.co.uk/cycle-6/ for more information
Macbeth Brazil
Date: December 2020
Location: Zoom online digital platform/ Host: Teatro Os Satyros (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
Format: live Zoom Digital Theatre
Participants: Aleksandar Dundjerovic, Stephen Simms, Paul Sadot, Maria Sanchez, Centre for Interdisciplinary Performing Arts (CIPA) and Teatro Os Satyros (www.satyros.com.br)
External Funding: Satyrianas Festival / Ministry of Culture Brazil/SESC Brazil
Description:
Cycle Six developed over four weeks as a bilingual English and Portuguese performance. It was facilitated through technology and it was digital theatre in its entirety. The concept put forward by Rodolpho Garcia Vazquez, artistic director of Os Satyros and co-director of Macbeth #6 ‘ is tele-co-presence’ as a principal of digital theatre. It refers to actors and physical audience being present at the same time, but on screen, using a technological extension, to do live encounters. The online platform used for the live performance was Zoom. The rehearsals were online with actors in their location (homes or studios) in different countries (UK, USA and Brazil) and time zones.
Research enquiry:
How to create a live performance using digital theatre within different cultural contexts? What is our collaborative strategy with Brazilian partner and their work method, which is different from our practices, particularly as they have extensive experience within digital theatre? Aleksandar Dundjerovic’s directing experience is with live theatre performance and multimedia contexts. CIPA has been exploring video art/performance, which was pre-recorded. Directing and devising Cycle # 6 demanded critical interrogation of the rehearsal collaboration and interdisciplinary creative strategies.
Research background:
Teatro Os Satyros has been researching and experimenting with cyber theatre since 2009. They moved into creating live digital theatre once C19 forced all theatres and public life in Sao Paulo to close. The starting idea was to investigate the connection of theatre with the technological digital revolution. The platform used was Zoom, which allowed live performance to take place. CIPA had previously experimented with video art/performance and recorded devised performance. Paul Sadot, who worked as a video art editor on Macbeth, had extensive experience with this art form.
Methodology:
This is an experimental performance that uses an interdisciplinary methodology consisting of exploration of cross-cultural and bi-lingual live digital performance and a recorded video art collaboration devised by an international cast. Fundamentally, we had three years of experience to draw on while Os Satyros worked within the online live platform that they championed.
Outcomes and evaluation:
The live performance was followed by 146 devices and approximately 300 people globally. It created a new understanding and knowledge of a novel way of making live theatre. A post-production Q&A discussion was followed by approximately 90 devices. The audience engaged positively with a range of questions about the creative process and performance narrative. It was pointed out that this model of work can be applied in performing arts, creative industry and education. The Q&A was recorded and will play an essential part in the future development of the performance. The plan is to develop the performance further, so that it is performed within Teatro Os Satyros’ digital theatre repertoire.
'Once Upon A Time In Wigan': short documentary (the original production of the play 2002-2005)
Many people have confused the legendary original production by Paul Sadot and Urban Expansions (Manchester) with productions of the same title that followed, but there was only one sell-out, award nominated, version.
This short documentary captures the Director/Choreographer/Producer personal account of the development of the Urban Expansions Production of ‘Once Upon A Time In Wigan’.
It was originally commissioned by Paul Sadot’s company Urban Expansions Limited and CONTACT Theatre Manchester and first produced, choreographed and staged in 2002-2005 by Paul Sadot
Following the end of the 2005 tour of the play, Paul moved on to other performance projects. The play underwent minor re-writes, and sometimes major transformations, under various directors and still continues to be staged.
All copyright to the footage used in this film is owned by Paul Sadot and documents his personal work staging, choreographing and directing the play. No dialogue from the play is included.
Contact: http://www.paulsadot.com/contact
Commissioned, Produced, Directed and Choreographed by: Paul Sadot
Written by: Mick Martin
Original Urban Expansions Staging Concept by: Paul Sadot
Set Design by Giuseppe & Emma Belli
Musical Score Complied by: Paul Sadot
The original production was generously supported by Arts Council funding awarded to Urban Expansions Limited
Macbeth Projeto/cycle-6: Centre for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts
http://macbethprojeto.co.uk/cycle-6/
A project that I have been very excited to take part in my role as Visiting Research Fellow at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire: Centre for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts.
The project explores new performance practices via Zoom Digital Theatre in a collaboration with Brazilian Company http://satyros.com.br/os-satyros/
Trailer for Macbeth: Os Satyros & CIPA
Recorded version of the LIVE Zoom Digital Theatre Performance of Macbeth
Look At Your Soul - A New Listening Project has just launched!
Please look, listen and share. Some amazing sets to share on this new listening project.
www.lookatyoursoul.org
I’ve been working on creating this site, with Kristen Neilson, over the past few months - and we are finally ready to set it free!!
Look At Your Soul is an active listening platform. As some of you will know - I have collected and danced to rare northern soul and funk 45s for most of my life. The music has had an incredible, positive, and deep impact on my ‘life’, it has been ‘life’ giving. It was responsible for starting me along a ‘life’ long path of dancing and movement that began at the age of 15, when I went to my first all nighter, and danced.
Following the terrible murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery earlier this year - I found myself having challenging discussions about racism in the UK, and it became clear to me that we all have a duty to actively fight against this in our everyday lives.
Kristen and I got talking online (we hadn’t ever met before) about how some aspects of the UK rare and Northern Soul scene are blatantly racist - and shared stories of what we had witnessed over the years.
This is an underground scene which is based ENTIRELY around a love of rare Black American soul records from the 60s and 70s.
So you see the sad irony.
So we got our heads together and decided to do something - our small contribution to opening up a conversation, actively listening to these records again with these issues in mind, asking rare soul collectors from across the globe (of which there are a few!) to revisit their music, revisit their records and the artists, to create a set of “Soul With a Message” to share on our platform.
This is just the beginning and I am excited to see how this will develop over the next few months/years!
First incredible set is by collector, Dj and music historian Tommy Sovik (Norway)
Thanks to Sarah Raine, Tim Wall and Liam Quinn for the inspiring talks and support for the project!
Soul With A Message (SWAM) - a term coined by music historian Tommy Sovik (Norway)
'(dis)integration' chosen for SOIFF International Short Film Festival
Great to have the film we made at the beginning of lockdown - ‘(dis)integration’ - selected as one of the final 64 (from over 400 entries, from 22 countries) to be shown as part of the:
En cuarentena’ de la Soria International Short Film Festival (SOIFF)
They will be screened via Vimeo between November 12 -22nd
Director/ Choreodramaturg: me @industryart
Dance Artist: @killthekat_
DOP: @robbakerashton
Editor: @alice_underwood_films
Soundscape: @icyaudiovisual
You can watch (dis)integration below:
"Free, white and 21"
“Free, white, and 21” appeared in dozens of movies in the ‘30s and ‘40s, a proud assertion that positioned white privilege as the ultimate argument-stopper. It was a catchphrase of the decade, as blandly ubiquitous as any modern meme: a way for white America to check its own privilege and feel exhilarated rather than finding fault.
