Output details

Survival tactics: performance lecture

Aggiss’s research for ‘Survival Tactics’ examines and blurs the boundaries between lecture and performance, and how these two archetypes are presented in academic and public contexts. Building on previous work examining ‘performance’ and ‘lecture’ (Hi Jinx, 1996-2010), ‘Survival Tactics’ is a ‘performance lecture’ set within a theatrical context, deliberately and knowingly transgressing the conventional personas of both academic and performer. Fusing dance, text and film, and compressing her 40-year career into three minutes, Aggiss both creates expert witness and unmasks theatrical devices and artifice that stimulate and unsettle the audience. The ‘performance lecture’ also raises questions about dance education and the future of British contemporary dance.

Aggiss’s choreographic research employs an intertwining of personal and historical narratives, memory and ephemera, and examines the relationship between archive and repertoire, to explore the fictionalising of histories and to demonstrate the role of narrative in eroding the distinction between what is conceived and perceived as fact or fiction. Her performance is inspired by Ausdruckstanz, with particular reference to Mary Wigman, grotesque dance and British music hall. Aggiss weaves together personal performance narratives with historical reference and archival materials, using both as a means to communicate across social and cultural boundaries, to engage diverse audiences, and to challenge expectations about ‘what the ageing dancing body should be doing, why she should be doing it and where it should be done’.

The research questions the boundaries of body as subject and object, of the expectations of the audience, and of superficial beauty. The performance exemplifies ways in which dance can communicate and embody complex contemporary ideas. ‘Survival Tactics’ has toured nationally and internationally, and been shown both in academic and public art venues including British Dance Edition, Birmingham; National Review of Live Art; and the City of Women festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia. SEE DIGITAL OUTPUT.