What a Body Can Do

Ben Spatz is Lecturer in Drama, Theatre and Performance at the University of Huddersfield. He holds a PhD in Theatre from The Graduate Center, CUNY, and has been a member of the Performance as Research working groups of both IFTR and ASTR. Ben is founder and artistic director of Urban Research Theater since 2004.

"Ben Spatz’ examination of concepts of technique and practice in embodied knowledge is a richly rewarding read, both for its rigorous discussion and clarification of ideas which can often be confused and confusing, and for its thought-provoking analysis of a range of examples." --Susie Crow, Oxford Dance Writers

• CONTENTSForeword ixJOSEPH ROACHAcknowledgements xiIntroduction: What Can a Body Do? 1A body can … 1Five stories 5From performance to practice 9Embodiment and sustainability 11Methodology and chapters 141 An epistemology of practice 23Which epistemology? 23A selective genealogy of technique 26The structure of practice 38Branches and pathways 44Linguistic peninsulas 48Sedimented agency 50The trope of excess 56Research in embodied technique 60The problem of the substrate 642 The invention of postural yoga 73Yoga and physical culture 73A royal success 75The yoga wars 80Healthism and “performance” 83Two studios in the East Village 86The gendering of yoga 92Between athletics and somatics 95A therapeutic turn 100What is physical education? 1043 Actors without a theatre 113Craft and presence 113Beyond “actor training” 117Stanislavski’s threshold 122The method of physical actions 129Grotowski’s legacy 132Songs and other epistemic objects 136A research culture in acting 147Interdisciplinarities 153Laboratories 1634 Gender as technique 171How to slice a cheese 171Research in everyday life 175The problem of sexual difference 179Fracturing the feminine 186Masculinities 191Identity and inertia 197Current research in gender 203New paradigms 2095 Embodied research in the university 217Blue skies? 217The epistemic impulse 221“Practice as Research” 225The archive and epistemic distance 234Research design and methodology 242The fourth division 247Bibliography 253Index 275