Against the background of personal, institutional and cultural trajectories, this book considers dance, opera, theatre and practice as research from a consciousness studies perspective. Highlights include a conversation with Barbara Sellers-Young on the nature of dance; an assessment of the work of International Opera Theater; a new perspective on liveness and livecasts; a reassessment, with Anita S. Hammer, of the concept of a universal language of the theatre; a discussion of two productions of new plays; the development of a new concept of theatre of the heart; a comparison of Western and Thai positions on the concept of beauty; and an examination of the role of conflict for theatre. The final chapter of the book is taken up by the author’s first novel, which launches the new genre of spiritual romance.

The essays collected in this volume were initially presented at the Fourth International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts, held at the University of Lincoln, May 28–30, 2011. The conference was organised on the basis of the success of its predecessors in 2005, 2007 and 2009, and on the basis of the success of the Rodopi book series Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, which has to date seen thirty volumes in print, with another twelve in press or in the process of being written. The 2011 conference and the book series highlight the continuing growth of interest within the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies, and in the distinct disciplines of theatre studies, literary studies, film studies, fine arts and music in the relationship between the object of these disciplines and human consciousness. Fifty-five delegates from twenty-eight countries across the world attended the May 2011 conference in Lincoln; their range of disciplines and approaches is reflected well in this book.

This volume of essays combines research from neuroscience, conscious studies, methods of training performers, modes of creating a staged narrative, Asian aesthetics, and post-modern theories of performance in an examination of the relationship between consciousness and performance.

The book relates to the study of spirit and spirituality; mind, intelligence, consciousness and epistemology; literature and theatre. From a basis in recorded experience it rethinks the nature of spirit and relates spirit to the human mind, and it questions the unprovable assumptions underlying contemporary objectivist and scientific approaches to intelligence, language and knowledge. It develops a model of the mind and extended states of consciousness and uses this to explore the rhythmical structures fundamental to literature and theatre.

This is a full length dissertation which explores the role of the arts in the transformation of consciousness. First the author researched the principles of the new sciences with regard to how shifts in consciousness are understood to happen. She then applied the concepts to herself as she immersed in a program of fine arts studying acting for film and television. Using an organic research design which explicitly engaged spirit in the process, she explored shifts in her own consciousness as well as how the performing arts act as a transformative tool for others. Devoted to a path of assisting the shift in consciousness to a worldview which honors spirit, the researcher explores and describes her lived experiencing of the topic with the intention of inspiring transformative changes of heart in her readers.

The essays collected in this volume were initially presented at the Third International Conference on Consciousness, Theatre, Literature and the Arts, held at the University of Lincoln, May 16-18, 2009. The conference was organised on the basis of the success of its predecessors in 2005 and 2007, and on the basis of the success of the Rodopi book series Consciousness, Literature and the Arts, which has to date seen twenty-one volumes in print, with another twelve in press or in the process of being written. The 2009 conference and the book series highlight the continuing growth of interest within the interdisciplinary field of consciousness studies, and in the distinct disciplines of theatre studies, literary studies, film studies, fine arts and music in the relationship between the object of these disciplines and human consciousness. Fifty-six delegates from twenty-one countries across the world attended the May 2009 conference in Lincoln; their range of disciplines and approaches is reflected well in this book.

In the words of Ezra Talmor: To deal with European Culture in a Changing World is to deal, in fact, with the reciprocal relation between Politics and Economics on the one hand, and Culture on the other. In an era when economic forces are pushing towards European Economic Unity or towards the Globalisation of National Markets it is rather difficult to demarcate the role of Culture. While the European Narrative may have been written by Monnet, De Gaulle, and Adenauer, the Global Narrative is written by an unknown author or rather by Adam Smithâ (TM)s Invisible Hand. On the one hand the postmodernist claim that the Grand Narrative is dead is given the lie. A Grand Narrative is now being written not by Philosophers but by Managers of Multinationals. The Foucauldian â oeça parleâ (it speaks) is instantiated by the anonymous authors of the Global Narrative. The question to be asked is: What will happen to the rich mosaic of National European Cultures? The answer to this question is not only a matter of National Memory and National Identity, it is also a matter of the sources of cultural creativity. Lâ (TM)Europe de nations may have been the theatre of endless national wars but it was also the cradle of a very rich mosaic of national cultures. The point is: how will creative genius adapt to the two new trends - European Unification and Globalism? This volume brings together essays by leading scholars in a myriad of disciplines, all of which attempt to shed light on these issues. Contributions by: Nicholas Perdikis, Shari L. Boyd, William A Kerr, Sylvia MacPhee, Marcela Cristi, Anu Randveer, Martti Randveer, Viljar Jaamu, Vello Vensel, Anatoly Zotov, Warren Breckman, Douglas Moggach, Malgorzata Bogunia-Borowska, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Eric W. Ruckh, Avron Kulak, Kevin P. Spicer, Bernard Zelechow, Dorothy M. Betz, Robert Stanley, Rosemary Gray, Jean-François Thibault, John Danvers, Ewa Macura, William A. Everett, Armand Singer, Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe

The Aesthetic Mind breaks new ground in bringing together empirical sciences and philosophy to enhance our understanding of art and the aesthetic. An eminent international team of experts explores the roles of emotion, imagination, empathy, and beauty in this realm of human experience, discussing visual and literary art, music, and dance.

Are the performing arts really supposed to be so radical that, as John Cage once said in the context of music, “there is no noise, only sound,” since “he argued that any sounds we can hear can be music”? (WK 2007a; D. Harwood 1976) This radical tradition in performing arts, with music as an example here, can be contrasted with an opposing view in the older days, when “Greek philosophers and medieval theorists in music defined music as tones ordered horizontally as melodies, and vertically as harmonies. Music theory, within this realm, is studied with the presupposition that music is orderly and often pleasant to hear.” (WK 2007a) Contrary to these opposing traditions (and other views as will be discussed in the book), performing arts, in relation to both the body and its presence, is neither possible nor desirable to the extent that the respective ideologues on different sides would like us to believe. Needless to say, the challenge to these opposing traditions in performing arts does not imply that performing arts are worthless human endeavors, or that those fields of study related to performing arts like aesthetics, acoustics, communication studies, psychology, culture studies, sociology, religion, morality, and so on should be rejected too. Of course, neither of these extreme views is reasonable. Instead, this book provides an alternative, better way of understanding the future of performing arts, especially in the dialectic context of the body and its presence—while learning from different approaches in the literature but without favoring any one of them or integrating them, since they are not necessarily compatible with each other. In other words, this book offers a new theory (that is, the transdisiciplinary theory of performing arts) to go beyond the existing approaches in a novel way. If successful, this seminal project will fundamentally change the way that we think about performing arts, from the combined perspectives of the mind, nature, society, and culture, with enormous implications for the human future and what the author originally called its “post-human” fate.

The Natyasastra is the deep repository of Indian performance studies. It embodies centuries of performance knowledge developed in South Asia on a range of conceptual issues and practical methodologies of the body. The composition of the Natyasastra is attributed to Sage Bharatha, and dates back to between 200 BC and AD 200. Written in Sanskrit, the text contains 6000 verse stanzas integrated in 36 chapters discussing a wide range of issues in theatre arts, including dramatic composition; construction of the playhouse; detailed analysis of the musical scales; body movements; various types of acting; directing; division of stage space; costumes; make-up; properties and musical instruments. As a discourse on performance, the Natyasastra is an extensive documentation of terminologies, concepts and methodologies. This book presents 14 scholarly essays exploring the Natyasastra from the multiple perspectives of Indian performance studies--epistemological, aesthetic, scientific, religious, ethnological and practical.