The many lives of the CAT

A presentation analysing the collaborative processes of the Creative Arts Team of Opencov

Jonathan PitchesLi RuruDiane Myers

Methods and Outcomes

• Process observations and recordings: Shanghai (Jan 2009), Leeds (April 2009), Bregenz (August 2009), Shanghai (April 2010)• Interviews• Final Presentation recordings (and their sharing)• Production of a documentary• Simple website/digital repository• Publication of a version of this collective paper in the

forthcoming book: Orientations Trilogy - Theatre, Gender, Asia, edited by Michael Walling and with a foreword by Peter Sellars

Project Aims

• To look ‘beyond the exchange of superficial cultural images or artistic techniques towards a more difficult, equal and rewarding encounter of complex artistic forms embedded in two long and divergent histories’

Project Aims

• To avoid ‘an easy ‘hybridisation’ and to search for ‘a more difficult and mutual exchange which respects the real differences of the two traditions’.

Project Aims• Not an academic

exchange but an exploration of ‘how far professionals can enter into another’s tradition at the level of artistic discipline, emotion and bodily movement’.

Claire GlaskinSo on the one hand having the diverse range of styles and material available is an advantage, but on the other hand yesterday when I started to work with Li Yen in the studio and I was looking at ways of responding to her movement style; then I realised I had to make a decision – am I copying her, if I’m not copying her, if I’m responding in my way, which of my ways am I responding in? I found that quite hard, also I was tending to follow her line of movement and her tempo and the quality of it, so then I’m not sure, am I actually producing my feeling response to this or am I just echoing, that would be a very gradual process and I’m not really sure which it is I want to move on anyway.

Zhang Song

Quite a lot, for example the most difficult part was the thing at the table, I was never trained to do naturalistic movements so I couldn’t find a way to carry out the story in my training, according to my training.

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Zhang Song

For example when Jess was trying to get onto the stage she was doing this movement and at first I was thinking, if my teacher was watching me doing that, I would be sworn out, yes, I’d be told off. But then later I begin to understand, maybe in the West that is your way of expressing stuff on stage like a normal teenage child, he or she might be walking around like this at home; it’s perfectly real.

Yan MaeI think when these two types of music come together there is definitely conflict and then when we’ve decided what to do, we have to decide what to choose and what to abandon. We have to make compromise alongside when we’re trying to create something new. Compromise is quite important and maybe sometimes one particular type of music would dominate that particular thing and the other would accompany and then the next part would be the reverse.

Jess Walker• “Something

between two cultures that didn’t exist before.”