Nigel Stewart

Lancaster University, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), Faculty Member

Followers

Following

Co-authors

Mentions

Public Views

Nigel Stewart is a dance artist and scholar. He is Senior Lecturer in the Institute for Contemporary Arts at Lancaster University, UK, and the Artistic Director of Sap Dance. His written publications follow two lines of inquiry. The first uses descriptive, existential and hermeneutic phenomenology to explore the relationship between choreography and the visual arts in twenty-first century contemporary dance. The second theorises environmental dance, including his own rural site-specific dance works, in terms of environmental aesthetics and values. He is co-editor of Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts (Peter Lang 2005). Nigel has danced and choreographed for various European companies.
Address: Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts (LICA), Lancaster University, Lancaster, LA1 4YW, UK

less

InterestsView All (17)

Uploads

Papers by Nigel Stewart

Moving in Medias Res:Towards a Phenomenological Hermeneutics of Dance Improvisation

This essay considers how dance improvisation involves processes of interpretation which are funda... more This essay considers how dance improvisation involves processes of interpretation which are fundamental to human experience. Particular attention is given to psychosomatic practices, that is, approaches to performance that depend on a relation between a ‘score’ of external actions and an ‘underscore’ of internal images. The essay first refers to several historically significant psychosomatic methods that promise a plenitude of self-presence, but then questions those methods through Paul Ricoeur’s critique of idealist phenomenology. However, the essay also argues that improvised dance in general, and the work of Marie-Gabriella Rotie and Jennifer Monson in particular, can offer an alternative psychosomatic approach which exemplifies the phenomenological hermeneutics of Ricoeur and Hans Georg Gadamer. Through exploration of concepts such as distanciation, appropriation, conversation, and occasion, the essay grasps dance improvisation as a unfinished practice in which the moving body unfolds the world—in particular the natural world—of which it is already a part by relating to it through a subtext that it interprets kinaesthetically.

Moving In Medias Res

Dance and the Event: John Jasperse’s Giant Empty and the Disclosure of Being

Routledge eBooks, Apr 17, 2013

The Actor as Refusenik: Theatre Anthropology, Semiotics, and the Paradoxical Work of the Body

Spectacle, world, environment, void

This essay makes a contribution to environmental dance in general by not only reflecting on examp... more This essay makes a contribution to environmental dance in general by not only reflecting on examples from the field of rural site-specific dance but also by mapping four epistemologies by which we can understand that field in the first place. The essay appears as a chapter in a publication that was the first to address the area of site-specific dance in general. Given the critical apparatus it uses to scope and reflect upon this area, it is twice as long as any other chapter in the book. I set out four different ways, or epistemes, in which we can understand how rural site-specific dance produces knowledge of nature. They are “spectacle”, “world”, “environment”, and “void”. In effect, these epistemes exist on a continuum between, at one extreme, aesthetic theories and dance practices that understand “nature” as merely a human construction to, at the other extreme, theories and practices that confront nature’s sheer alterity and unmasterable magnitudes. I define and exemplify each episteme in relation to the natural sciences, the aesthetics and ethics of nature, and the function of language in articulating nature. I also give examples of rural site-specific dance, putting, as I move along the continuum, more emphasis on methods of work than finished site-specific works. For the sake of comparison, I refer to works and practices concerned with birds, beaches and grasslands. Finally, at the behest of the editor I review the four epistemes and demonstrate the ways in which they can overlap through a discussion of two co-productions by Sap Dance and Louise Ann Wilson Company: the walking performance Jack Scout (2010), which is discussed by other contributors to the book, and the film Jack Scout Redux (2013).

To the Motion Itself

Routledge eBooks, Mar 3, 2023

The Connected Body?

New Theatre Quarterly, May 1, 1995

Eugenio Barba The Paper Canoe: a Guide to Theatre AnthropologyLondon; New York: Routledge, 1995. x, 187 p. ISBN 0-415-11674-0

New Theatre Quarterly, May 1, 1997

Dancing the Face of Place: Environmental dance and eco-phenomenology

Performance Research, Dec 1, 2010

Download

Actor as Refusenik: Semiotics, Theatre Anthropology, and the Work of the Body

New Theatre Quarterly, Nov 1, 1993

‘Theatre’, Eugenio Barba has said, ‘is a possibility of shaping revolt’. Barba touched upon this ... more ‘Theatre’, Eugenio Barba has said, ‘is a possibility of shaping revolt’. Barba touched upon this belief in NTQ16 (1988), and he professed it again with considerable passion at the conclusion of the seventh public session of the International School of Theatre Anthropology (ISTA) in April 1992. Directed by Barba and hosted by the Centre for Performance Research (CPR), the ‘Brecon ISTA’ was held in two parts – Working on Performances East and West, a practical exploration at Christ College, Brecon, from 4 to 10 April, being followed by a conference on 10 and 11 April at Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, on Fictive Bodies, Dilated Minds, Hidden Dances. In the following exploration of the particular possibilities which theatre anthropology creates for revolt, Nigel Stewart, Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Lancaster University, considers Barba&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s direction of work in progress at the Brecon ISTA in terms of Derrida&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s and Kristeva&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#39;s theories of the sign. Integral to this is an analysis of the relation between bios and logos – the ‘pre-expressive’ work of the body and the meanings which that work can produce – which is relevant to body-based performance theory and practice in general.

The weathering body : composition and decomposition in environmental dance and site-specific live art

With particular reference to eco-phenomenology, this chapter explores the different ways in which... more With particular reference to eco-phenomenology, this chapter explores the different ways in which Laban Movement Analysis (or LMA) can be integral to the creation, and not just the documentation, of environmental dance, and in doing so it considers the kind of ecological knowledge and values that can be generated by environmental dance in general. To do this, the chapter focuses on Still Life, a collaboration between Sap Dance and the Lou Wilson Company that was developed at Far Arnside, a stretch of coast between Lancashire and Cumbria overlooking Morecambe Bay, the largest intertidal area in the UK. Starting with a description of the work, the chapter looks at how LMA in particular, and indeed Still Life in general, fits what aesthetician Malcolm Budd terms the object model of environmental aesthetics in which we make the natural world comprehensible by cutting it up into knowable objects of description. The second half of the chapter, however, evolves a counter-argument by noting how in the show bodies "engage with and yield to the temporality of forces through which things arise and dissipate in an environment of which they are a part", and how, in particular, "the human body is pulled beyond itself by the gravitational force of an expansive, heterogeneous, unpredictable and ever-changing other-than-human world".

Lune:dancing as land surveying

Consisting of both a DVD and a catalogue entry, this contribution to the book Practice-as-Researc... more Consisting of both a DVD and a catalogue entry, this contribution to the book Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen demonstrates three systems of mapping environment that, in very different ways, bring to consciousness ‘spatiotemporal “shapes”’ embedded within our experience of the ‘intuitively given surrounding world’ (Husserl 1970: 25, 27). These very different systems are linked by the concept of ‘chains’:  Chain surveying – the use of steel chains to measure imaginary triangles between key features of a terrain (Garner et al. 1976, c. 2).  Choreutics – the analysis of the body’s choreutic chains, or spatiotemporal trace-forms (Laban 1966).  Bartenieff Fundamentals – the exploration of anatomical ‘kinetic chains’ which support the body’s mutating shapes (Hackney 2002: 47). The video excerpt on the DVD identifies links between the point early on in the creative process when the collaborators were sourcing material in situ, and the point at which the piece was premiered at Dance Cuts II at the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, on 13 November 2005. The catalogue entry explains the method of work in between those two points, viz., a method of ‘surveying’ the marsh land that utilized aspects of the three aforementioned systems and generated the finished work. This method involved a three-stage process: preparation, reconnaissance, and stations.

The Erotic Reduction: Crossed Flesh in Lea Anderson’s The Featherstonehaughs Draw on the Sketchbooks of Egon Schiele

This chapter is a case study of The Featherstonehaughs Draw on the Sketchbooks of Egon Schiele (A... more This chapter is a case study of The Featherstonehaughs Draw on the Sketchbooks of Egon Schiele (Anderson 2010a), a key work by leading British choreographer Lea Anderson (b. 1959). The show was originally developed in 1997, premiered in 1998, substantially revised with a new cast and musical score in 2010, and toured until 2011 when the all-male The Featherstonehaughs and their sister company, the all-female The Cholmondeleys, were disbanded. The Lost Works of Egon Schiele, a nine-minute film with new choreography conceived for the camera but reworking some motifs from the 1998 show, was broadcast in 2000. This chapter, though, focuses on the revised stage production of 2010 which I saw in 2011. It is part of a series of essays in which I combine compositional analysis with concepts from across the tradition of phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophy to explore the relationship between choreography and the visual arts in the recent work of midcareer choreographers from the USA and Europe. Indeed, at this pivotal

Download

A Theological Turn? French Postmodern Dance and Herman Diephuis’s D’Après J.-C

Palgrave Macmillan UK eBooks, 2011

Unlike other authors in this collection who have viewed French postmodern dance through the polit... more Unlike other authors in this collection who have viewed French postmodern dance through the political ideas of Jacques Ranciere and Guy Debord (see Bojana Cvejic (Chapter 14) and Augusto Corrieri (Chapter 16) in this volume), I intend to reflect on how it can embody and articulate the theological idea of grace as a gift given through the suffering of the flesh and the sensible intuition of life. I do this in the following stages. First, with reference to choreographic works by Jerome Bel and Mathilde Monnier, I explore French postmodern dance in terms of the distinction that Jacques Derrida makes between a ‘theological stage’ of representation and a ‘nontheological’ theatre of unrepresentable life. Second, I contest that distinction by reading D’apres J.-C. (After JC, 2004), a work by French-based choreographer Herman Diephuis, through Jean-Luc Marion’s phenomenology of revelation. Finally, I suggest that D’apres J.-C. reverberates with a much neglected Catholic tradition in French thought and theatre, and at the same time challenges French republican secularism not because of its differences from French postmodern dance, but rather because of what it has in common with the latter.

Lune

Lune was a dance work with digital scenography that explored the relationship between geometry in... more Lune was a dance work with digital scenography that explored the relationship between geometry in movement and land surveying. It was created from improvising, photographing and surveying marsh land by the river Lune near Lancaster. Excerpts from a film about the making and final performance of Lune, together with a catalogue entry, appear in the book and DVD Practice-as-Research in Performance and Screen. Lune was choreographed by Nigel Stewart, danced by Kate Mercer, designed by Kirk Woolford, lit by Steph Sims, and had a soundscape by Nigel Stewart and music by Arild Andersen (‘Invisible Sideman’ from Hyperborean). Produced by Sap Dance, the project was funded by the Research and Enterprise Fund of the Faculty of Arts and Social Science at Lancaster University, and was performed at the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster in November 2005

Dance and the event:John Jasperse’s Giant empty and The disclosure of being

Still Life

Final Cut Studio On the Spot, 2008

The Dusk Wood

by Nigel Stewart and Louise Ann Wilson

A solitary dancer traces the trees of a wood as it descends from daytime, through dusk, into nigh... more

Clever

Night Side

Night Side was a duet exploring Justinus Kerner’s ideas on mesmerism and the "nocturnal side... more Night Side was a duet exploring Justinus Kerner’s ideas on mesmerism and the "nocturnal side" of human experience. Choreographed by Nigel Stewart, the work was danced by Penny Collinson and Cath Sims to music by Robert Schumann (‘Andantino’ from Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor Op. 22), and was lit by Stephanie Sims. Night Side was produced by the Nuffield Theatre and was one of a number of short works funded through the Nuffield Theatre Lottery Live Wire Project, the Dance Northwest Extend Commission, the Regional Arts Lottery Programme (Northwest Arts), and the Lancaster University Small Grants Fund. The duet was performed at the Nuffield Theatre, Lancaster, on three occasions in 2001 (04/08, 29/11, 30/11), and again for a revised version in 2004 (07/02)