Research Interests

BACKGROUND

Nigel Stewart is a dance artist and scholar. He has worked extensively as a director and choreographer, most notably with Theatre Nova and Triangle in the UK and Odin Teatret, Denmark, and was a director of Theatreworks Ltd. He has danced for Grace & Danger and Figure Ground, and for the German choreographer Thomas Lehmen, including Clever (UK tour 2001, 2003) and Stationen (Berlin Tanzfest 2003). Nigel has published many articles and chapters, and co-edited Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts (Peter Lang 2005). He is a member of the Choreography and Corporealities working group of the International Federation of Theatre Research, has taught dance and theatre at Wolverhampton University and many other UK HE and FE institutions, and is presently Lecturer and an Associate Director of the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts where he is responsible for postgraduate studies.

RESEARCH SPECIALISMS

Nigel has four main research areas in which he can also supervise written and practice-based postgraduate research:

• choreography and movement composition
• movement analysis and notation, including Dance Phenomenology, Laban Movement Analysis and Theatre Anthropology.
• landscape and environment performance, including both site-based performance and theatre performance which mediates the natural world.
• hermeneutic, phenomenological and environmental aesthetics in particular and critical theory in general.

CURRENT RESEARCH Nigel has recently choreographed The Saturated Moment, an exploration of Virginia Woolf's novel The Waves (1931), for Sap Dance UK. In Woolf's novel each character is a cluster of images and turns of phrase that register particular impressions of the natural world. This dance piece reveals the physical basis for those impressions, creating patterns of live action and recorded sound that distinguish between the six characters but also, in the manner of the novel, dissolve those characters into each other as a single event is seen cubistically from a number of different perspectives. Altogether, the piece suggests an understanding of time in which each person's present moment is 'saturated' by impressions of the wider world that others have experienced in the past and future. The piece was developed in 2006 under the Artists' Programme of Chisenhale Dance Space, and was premiered at the Bratislava in Movement Festival 2006. Sap Dance explores the relationship between live movement and digital technologies, and how both can disclose our lived experience of nature. The company's previous work includes Night Side, a duet based on somnambulism and mesmerism, and Lune, a solo arising from research into mapping marsh land, both at Dance Cuts (Nuffield Theatre 2004, 2005). Nigel is also the Principal Investigator of Re-Enchantment and Reclamation: New Perceptions of Morecambe Bay through Dance, Film and Sound, a Workshops and Network project funded under the Landscape and Environment Programme of the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For further information see Re-enchantment & Reclamation

Additional Information

Publications and Productions since 2001

EDITED BOOKS

(2005) Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, Berne: Peter Lang. Co-edited and introduced with Gabriella Giannachi. ISBN: 3 03910 557 4.

PRACTICE-AS-RESEARCH

(2006) The Saturated Moment. Venue: Bratislava in Movement Festival, Chisenhale Dance Space, Nuffield Theatre (Oct  Dec) Solo with original electro-acoustic sound track based on Virginia Woolf's The Waves (see above). Choreographer: Nigel Stewart. Dancer: Dominique Bulgin. Composer: Lisa Whistlecroft. Lighting: Steph Sims. Funding: Artists' Programme of Chisenhale Dance Space; FASS Research and Enterprise Fund.

(2006) Personal Text, Public Body Site-specific dance film on body, gender, sexuality, relationships. Director: Beatrice Allegranti. Dancers: Dominique Bulgin, Silvia Carderelli-Gronau, Tracey French, Jinji Garland, Valeria Sacchi, Nigel Stewart, Vaughan Titheridge, Matthew Trustman, Geoffery Unkovich. Funding: Arts Council England.

(2005) Lune. Venue: Nuffield Theatre (November 2005). Solo arising from methods of mapping mud flats near the River Lune that flood near full moon. Choreographer: Nigel Stewart. Dancer: Kate Mercer. Digital Scenography: Kirk Woolford. Lighting: Steph Sims. Soundscape: Nigel Stewart. Music: Arild Andersen (Hyperborean). Funding: FASS Research and Enterprise Fund.

(2003) Stations. Venue: Podewil Berlin, 19  23 August 2003. Tanztheater exploring Luhmann's systems theory. Choreography/Direction: Thomas Lehmen. Performers: Anke Eckardt, Felix Marchand, Irina Müller, Jochen Roller, Marc Rees, and Martin Nachbar, with Peter Stammer, Nigel Stewart and others. Dramaturgs: Franz Anton Crammer, Peter Stammer, Nigel Stewart. Funding: TanzWerkstatt Berlin, Podewil Berlin, Kaaitheater Brussels, Vooruit Gent.

(2001, 2004) Night Side. Venue: Nuffield Theatre (August, November 2001; February 2004). Duet exploring Justinus Kerner's ideas on somnambulism, mesmerism and the "nocturnal side" of human experience. Choreographer: Nigel Stewart. Dancers: Penny Collinson & Cath Sims. Lighting: Stephanie Sims. Music: Robert Schumann (Andantino from Piano Sonata No. 2 in G minor Op. 22). Funding: Nuffield Theatre Lottery Live Wire Project/Dance Northwest Extend Commission, Regional Arts Lottery Programme (Northwest Arts), Lancaster University Small Grants Fund.

(2001-2003) Clever. Tour: Northwest theatres (Summer 2001, Spring 2003). Dance Theatre exploring human functions. Director: Thomas Lehmen. Choreography: Thomas Lehmen & the dancers. Dancers: Penny Collinson, Ruth Jones, Lisi Perry, Cath Sims, Neil Simpson, Nigel Stewart. Funding: Nuffield Theatre Lottery Live Wire Project/Dance Northwest Extend Commission, Regional Arts Lottery Programme (Northwest Arts)

(2000-2001) Be/longings: The Art Of Us And Them. Tour: Northwest venues and London (Autumn 2000). Evocations of the longing to belong or not. Management: Figure Ground. Choreography: June Gersten and the dancers. Dancers: Lisa Dowler, Nigel Stewart, Amanda Williamson. Musician: Steve Lewis. Funding: Yorkshire & Humberside Arts (RALP), Bentham Arts Alliance.

CHAPTERS & ARTICLES

(2005) "Introduction: Spectacle, World, Environment, Void" in Gabriella Giannachi and Nigel Stewart (eds.) Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, pp. 19-62.

(2005) "Dancing the Time of Space: Fieldwork, Phenomenology and Nature's Choreography", in Gabriella Giannachi and Nigel Stewart (eds.) Performing Nature: Explorations in Ecology and the Arts, pp. 363-76.

(2005) "Understanding understanding: Phenomenological Hermeneutics in Thomas Lehmen's Clever", in Ravi Chaturvedi (ed.) Ethnicity and Identity: Global Performance, New Delhi: Rawat Publishers, pp. 65-77. ISBN: 81-7033-916-2.

(2003) "To and Fro and In-Between: the Ontology of the Image in Thomas Lehmen's Stations", in Sven-Thore Kramm (eds.) Stationen, 3, Berlin: Podewil/Thomas Lehmen, pp. 19-28 (Ger. trans.), 29-38 (Eng.). ISSN: 1612-7161.

(2003) "Round Table Discussion" with Franz Anton Cramer, Thomas Lehmen, Peter Stamer and Nigel Stewart, in Sven-Thore Kramm (eds.) Stationen, 5, Berlin: Podewil/Thomas Lehmen, pp. 3-39. ISSN: 1612-7161.

(2002) "The Actor as Refusenik: Theatre Anthropology, Semiotics, and the Paradoxical Work of the Body", in Ian Watson (ed.) Negotiating Cultures: Eugenio Barba and the Int-rcultural Debate, Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 4658. ISBN (hbk.): 0 7190 6169 5. ISBN (pbk.): 0 7190 6170 9.

(2002) "The Punctum of Performance: The Photographic Image vs. The Dance Image", in Rachel Duerden (ed.) Dance Theatre: An International Investigation, Alsager: Manchester Metropolitan University. ISBN: 1-870355-10-5.

CONFERENCE PAPERS

(2006) "The Saturated Moment: Choreographing Virginia Woolf's The Waves through Laban Movement Analysis", Laban for the Twenty-first Century, Bratislava: Bratislava in Movement Association/Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, 6-8 October 2006.

(2005) "The Chaining: Dancing as Land Surveying", paper given at: - Documentation of Fine Art: Processes and Practices, Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University, 2 December 2005. - PARIP International, Bretton: Bretton Hall Campus, University of Leeds, 29 June to 3 July 2005.

(2004) "To-And-Fro And In-Between: Language And The Ontology Of The Image In The Tanztheater Of Thomas Lehmen", paper given at The Director In The Theatre World, and to the Choreography and Corporealities working group at International Federation of Theatre Research Annual Conference, St. Petersburg, Russia, 21-27 May.

(2003) "Dancing the Truth We Never Wanted: Phenomenological Hermeneutics In Thomas Lehmen's Tanztheater", paper given at Ethnicity and Identity: Global Performance, and to the Choreography and Corporealities working group at International Federation of Theatre Research Annual Conference, Department of Dramatics, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India, 4-9 January.

(2000, 2002) "Dancing the Time of Space: Fieldwork, Phenomenology and the Choreography of Nature", paper given at: - Philosophies of Place, Institute for the Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy, Lancaster University, 2 November 2003. - Dance Knowledge: Cognitive Aspects of Dance, Nordic Forum for Dance Research, Trondheim: Norwegian University for Science and Technology, 10-13 January 2002. - Between Nature: Explorations in Ecology and Performance, Department of Theatre Studies and the Centre for the Study of Environmental Change, Lancaster University, 27-30 July 2000.