Output details

FIve Men Dancing (an interconnected series of improvised movement-based performances)

Five Men Dancing (5MD) is the shared title of an interconnected series of movement-based performances, an informal collective of artists (including Adam Benjamin, Thomas Mettler, Rick Nodine, Jordi Cortés, Christian Panouillot and Dan Watson), and a longitudinal practice-as-research study into the artistic and technical challenges of unstructured improvisation. Although 5MD was initiated by Mettler in Switzerland in 2006, each performance outcome is inherently and necessarily unique. Benjamin has convened, coordinated and performed in all of 5MD’s UK events and this submission focuses on those performances made at The Place, London (2008) and in Plymouth (2008 and 2010). Rather than improvising within pre-formulated structures and scores, these performances attempt to fully engage with the memories, proxemics and poetic possibilities that a specific space might offer to performers for and with an audience. For Benjamin, this research interrogates how kinaesthetic patterns unfold through chance, spontaneity, and the practice of “deep listening”. The latter, developed from his work in integrated dance, relies upon the making of open responses to unfamiliar and “other” bodies, in dialogue with sound and light artists as well as other performers on stage. It is a performance practice that interrogates Bachelard’s statement that “all values must remain vulnerable and those that do not are dead.” Benjamin’s research with 5MD is extended through performance work outside the collective with individual members (e.g. Nodine, 2009 and 2013) and other artists such as Chieko Matsumura (Japan, 2008, 2010 and 2013), Takugi Oyamada (Japan, 2010) and Kirstie Simson (Plymouth, 2010 and 2011; Norway, 2012). Reflecting on this on-going body of improvisation work in post-show discussions and interviews (e.g. with Cecilia Olsson in Trondheim, 2012), conference papers, and an article for Choreographic Practices (2013), Benjamin has begun to propose pedagogic and performance strategies which blur art and life by embracing altruism and fallibility.