Paul Sadot
I am currently a Visiting Research Fellow in Performing Arts at (CIPA), Birmingham Royal Conservatoire. I am a practice researcher, a performance practitioner and a professional Movement Director working internationally across Dance, Theatre, Fashion and Film. My current practice research work with CIPA engages with the exploration of new pedagogies and choreographic responses in a post-pandemic environment. I use a novel choreographic lens to examine how political movements continue to change the way in which we perceive, conceive, live and move within our daily lives and our performance practice. The research examines anOther space(s) of performance, remodelling ideas of Third Space to re-imagine new spatial encounters. In doing so, the research asks, why, how, when and where performance takes place, who is granted access to it and under what conditions.
The Unsteady State Condition
Through the working processes of multiple entry point layering and processual accretion the choreodramaturg is positioned as a creator–facilitator, an agent of turbulence who instigates the ‘unsteady state condition’ out of which the movement emerges. The term ‘unsteady state condition’ is commonly used in the field of thermodynamics to describe the scientific principle of thermodynamic heat transfer in areas such as chemical and thermal engineering, where it is posited that the desirable ‘steady state condition’ cannot exist without the initial unsteady state condition when elements are in flux. Used as a metaphor, we might then view the steady state condition to signify a choreopoliced product, dominated by institutional paradigms of how movement(s) should circulate, wherein choreographic immobility is imposed through processes of supervision and mimesis. My research explores the possibility of a choreodramaturg constructing an unsteady state condition, and positioning dance artists as the creators of the movement vocabulary that emerges from such conditions. This processual approach is unsteady in that it is largely improvised and not concerned with choreographic output in the traditional sense. The material emerging from the unsteady state condition is subsequently formed into a performance work through negotiation with the choreodramaturg, who seeks and employs strategies to maintain the unsteady state condition in performance. The work remains in flux.
By deliberately pursuing and exploring methods of destabilisation in the studio, my praxis informs a process and outputs that are rendered unsteady through choice, as a means of both artistic revolt and artistic creation. In this context, as opposed to a positive position of stability and security inferred by the term, I am asserting that steady state conditions are a negative force. I argue that such conditions compromise the potentiality of the performers and the form through strategies that are attached to notions of power and domination, and that such an environment blockades potential technical and artistic transitions within the space. The steady state condition is closely linked to institutional and corporate strategies of marketisation and commodification, and I suggest that the processes within UK performance and training environments are driven by, and bound within, these cultural and creative ‘industry’ structures.
Centre For Interdisciplinary Performative Arts (CIPA)
The Centre for Interdisciplinary Performative Arts (CIPA) is a practice-led research centre for the study of innovative and multi-media performative practices, based in the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (Faculty of Arts, Design and Media at Birmingham City University, UK). CIPA aims to connect interdisciplinary performing arts, and to link students, staff, creative industries, research funders, partner institutions and universities at a regional, national and international level.
The research centre, led by Professor Aleksandar Saša Dundjerović, works across many areas of live performance, particularly theatre (acting and theatre making), sound design, dance, visual arts, multimedia, digital arts, scenography and installation. CIPA members are committed to making a significant contribution to Birmingham City University, Birmingham and the wider society, using their artistry and scholarship to produce new knowledge in interdisciplinary performative practice.
TRAINING
2019 PhD Dance, University of Chichester
2017 Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
1993 MA Theatre Arts, Goldsmiths College, University of London
1988-ongoing Professor de Capoeira, Associação de Capoeira Senzala, Santos, Brasil
1986 BA (Hons) Theatre Arts, Bretton Hall College, University of Leeds
For my work as a professional Movement Director visit: http://www.industryart.com/artists/paulsadot/
Photograph by Irven Lewis