KEYNOTE PRESENTATIONS
Michael Gordon
Composer, Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director, Bang on a Can
Making music with the Steiger Butte Drum on the top of a Mountain in Oregon
Natural History was commissioned by the Britt Music & Arts Festival in celebration of the 2016 National Park Service centennial.Writing the piece took me on a journey through Crater Lake National Park at the height of summer and dead of winter, and to Chiloquin, Oregon to work with the members of the Klamath Tribe’s Steiger Butte Drum. It led me to the naturalist writers Henry David Thoreau and John Muir, among others. This is not the first work in which I have focused on location. I have written pieces about New York (Gotham), Los Angeles (Dystopia), Miami Beach (El Sol Caliente), and Beijing (Beijing Harmony) – all urban settings. When the Britt Festival commissioned me to write a piece for Crater Lake I wasn’t quite sure where it was. The commission included an invitation, “You’ve got to come and see it.” In the summer of 2015, with conductor Teddy Abrams, I went to the site.
Superintendent (head ranger) Craig Ackerman was our guide.Ackerman talked about the lake in terms of ‘Deep Time’ — change happening over thousands of years. This sense of time was a great contrast to the “New York minute” back home. Crater Lake was created by an explosion — a volcano that blew up and then collapsed close to 8000 years ago. The rim of the caldera falls almost straight down two thousand feet to reach the purest, deepest, lake in the United States. That destructive act, which scientists say was more explosive than the world’s nuclear arsenal detonating all at once, wiped out all life for miles around, leaving a spectacular natural wonder.
What do people think about wilderness? This was a question I pondered and studied. The native people who lived at the lake at the time of the explosion still live there today. This place is sacred to them. The first white settlers who came upon the lake in the late 19th century understood that this remarkable place should remain untouched.Park Historian Steve Mark and local journalist Lee Juiller at were important guides to understanding the history.
With Teddy Abrams I circled the rim looking for the perfect spot for the performance. We chose Watchman Overlook for its natural “stage” of panoramic views. Through the course of the day we talked over the forces for the work — the orchestra, a chorus, 30 additional brass players and percussionists stationed out on the cliffs. The spatial setting was an important aspect of the work — sound coming from all sides and from different distances, sound moving through space. We discussed the importance of having the Klamath Tribe in this piece.
I returned to Crater Lake in the winter of January 2016 for 10 days in the desolate beauty of a completely white landscape — 16 feet of snow. Only the rangers were on site, with an occasional snowshoer up for a walk. This trip included a visit to the Klamath Tribe to hear the Steiger Butte Drum. The members of the Drum Group are a part of an extended family. They sit in a circle, beat loudly on one drum, and sing. The singing is a fast sophisticated syncopated yodeling. It is amazing. Though they had never played with classical instruments they were game for joining the orchestra. Taylor Tupper, the tribe’s representative, taught me about the Klamath Tribe’s relationship to the lake, which they call ‘Giiwas’. For the Klamath the lake is a house of worship. Tribal members go to the lake for spiritual purposes only.
On July 29th, at the premiere, the audience gathered around the rim. Elders from the Klamath Tribe came to listen. Afterwards Don Gentry, Chairman of the Klamath Tribe, said these emotional words: “I could almost envision the sounds of our ancestors reverberating through the ages.” The weaving of musical worlds and a shared love of the natural wonder inspired the writing of Natural History.
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Michael Gordon is known for his monumental and immersive works. Decasia, for 55 retuned spatially positioned instruments (with Bill Morrison’s accompanying cult-classic film) has been featured on the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Minimalist Jukebox Festival and at the Southbank Centre. Timber, a tour-de-force for percussion sextet played on amplified microtonal simantras has been performed on every continent, including by Slagwerk Den Haag at the Musikgebouw and Mantra Percussion at BAM. Natural History, a collaboration with the Steiger Butte Drum of the Klamath tribe, was premiered by the Britt Festival Orchestra and Chorus on the rim of Crater Lake (Oregon) by conductor Teddy Abrams and is the subject of the PBS documentary Symphony for Nature. Gordon’s vocal works include Travel Guide to Nicaragua, an autobiographical choral work for The Crossing; the opera What to wear with the legendary director Richard Foreman; and the film-opera Acquanetta with director Daniel Fish. Recent recordings include Clouded Yellow, Gordon’s complete string quartets performed by the Kronos Quartet.
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Johannes Kretz
The University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna
Survival of the friendliest – from transcultural comprovisation to sympoetic art practices
Electronic music performers engage in improvisation for diverse reasons. Central among these is the appeal of real-time challenge: responding instantaneously to sonic environments, maintaining constant exchange through rapid perception, idea development and (re-)action. Such performance demands intimate familiarity with one’s instrument—digital or acoustic—achieved through years, often decades, of practice minimising the gap between musical intention and technical execution. Equally it demands reflection in action, but also before and after performances. These demands even intensify in transcultural musical encounters, where performers are challenged to interact with unfamiliar aesthetic systems and collaborative frameworks. For artistic researchers conducting improvisation-based fieldwork, this performative competence becomes both methodological tool and research context. This keynote draws on experiences from multiple collaborative projects to examine how improvisatory practice shapes transcultural musical engagement. In consequence we might ask, what the next step should be, especially in times of climate change and ecological disaster: what might improvisatory listening and response mean beyond inter-human interaction? Could exploring possibilities for multi-species musical encounters provide a contribution to rethinking the demarcation line between nature and culture (Latour 2015) and diving into sympoietic practices of mutual benefit?
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Johannes Kretz, composer, electronics performer/improviser, artistic researcher. Teacher for computer music and composition at the university for music and performing arts Vienna (mdw), since 2009 associate professor. Head of the artistic research center (ARC) of mdw. Since 2023 member of the Research Advisory Council of Orpheus Institute, Ghent, Belgium. Since 2024 member of the executive bord of the Society for Artistic Research. Member of Janus ensemble and Max Brand Ensemble.
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PAPER PRESENTATIONS
Massimo Roberto Beato
University of Tuscia, Viterbo| Italy
From Viewpoints to Emplacement: Rethinking Improvisation Through Spatial and Technological Immersivity
This paper explores the intersection between Anne Bogart’s Viewpoints – with a particular focus on the category of Architecture – and Sarah Pink’s theory of emplacement, in order to critically investigate improvisational practices in technologically mediated environments. While the Viewpoints framework has been widely used in theatre training to attune performers to spatial, temporal, and relational dynamics, the concept of emplacement shifts attention to the relational assemblage of body, environment, and culture. By bringing these perspectives together, I argue that improvisation can be reconsidered as a situated negotiation between corporeality and spatial affordances, both physical and virtual. Drawing on recent research on immersive media and sociosemiotic approaches to performance, the paper discusses how improvisation emerges as a form of adaptive engagement, where performers and audiences co-create meaning through embodied interaction with environments. The proposed framework highlights improvisation not merely as spontaneous creation but as a process of attunement, resistance, and transformation, opening new possibilities for interdisciplinary artistic practices and for understanding creativity in the digital age. Keywords: improvisation, emplacement, immersive media, spatial practices, performance studies.
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Massimo Roberto Beato (PhD in Semiotics) is a researcher and practitioner in theatre and performance, focusing on immersive media and sociosemiotic approaches to contemporary theatre. He researches on XR environments, embodiment, and emplacement, in artistic practice and education. He currently develops interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of technology, creativity, and performance. He is also adjunct professor of Text Analysis at Accademia Nazionale d’Arte Drammatica “Silvio d’Amico”.
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Tom Blancarte
Danish National Academy of Music & Aalborg University | Denmark
Uncertainty, Agency, Choice – Towards a Model of Improvisation
This article proposes a theoretical model of improvisation, building on and critically reinterpreting George Lewis’ five conditions of improvisation: indeterminacy, agency, analysis, judgment, and choice. It replaces the ontological framing of indeterminacy with an epistemological focus on uncertainty, allowing for a more subjective and dynamic understanding of improvisation. Drawing from game studies—particularly theories of uncertainty by Costikyan and Skok—the model shifts away from the physicalist stance of earlier frameworks, such as Jeff Pressing’s, and towards a player/performer-centered perspective. The article also reconceptualizes agency, using Bodí’s multidimensional heuristic framework to show how improvisation functions within broader activity systems. This positioning not only aligns improvisation with composition but suggests that improvisation is an inevitable part of the realization of composed works. Finally, the article arranges these elements temporally: agency is the central condition of improvisation, constrained by uncertainty and actualized through choice. In this way, improvisation is modeled as a process governed by a single evolving condition—agency—shaped by uncertainty and culminating in choice. Keywords: improvisation, uncertainty, agency, choice, game-studies.
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Tom Blancarte is an experimental musician and artistic researcher based in Denmark. An integral part of the experimental music scene in New York City for over a decade, he has toured throughout the world with a variety of ensembles and has appeared on over 40 albums. In his research and musical practice, his focuses are improvisation, musical translation, and game design in music. He teaches artistic research at the Danish National Academy of Music and is a part-time lecturer at Aalborg University.
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Simona D’Agostino
University of Rome Tor Vergata | Italy
Improvisation within Tradition: Dance and Music in Southern Italy
Within the musical and dance traditions of Southern Italy, certain specific features emerge in relation to ceremonial contexts and modes of performance. How does individual creativity manifest itself within these ritual frameworks? What kind of “modelling” is enacted? And to what extent is the individual free to shape their own body, attitude, and community? This paper examines two case studies where individual creativity unfolds within the bounds of tradition. Musical variations and choreographic variants characterize two distinct dance forms found in Sicily and Calabria. The first case focuses on the countrydance of Balestrate (Sicily), where the caller directs the group by establishing the dance figures during the performance, creating new combinations each time and allowing space for improvisation. The second case presents the tarantella of Polsi and Conflenti (Calabria), in which each participant, in relation to their partner, introduces personal movements based on individual initiative, experience, and shared reference models. Similarly, musical performance involves melodic variations and ornamentation, giving each rendition a unique character and continually renewing the ritual spaces in which these practices are enacted and experienced. Keywords: tarantella, music, dance, ritual, creativity.
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Simona D’Agostino is a PhD Candidate on Ethnomusicology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy. She’s a MA in Piano at the Conservatoire “Santa Cecilia” of Rome, and she’s a MA in Musicology at the University of Palermo. She studied ballet and teached ballet from 2009 to 2019; she teaches piano to teenagers and kids. She’s also a teacher in a secondary school in Rome. She started her fieldworks in 2013 with research on the quadrilles in Sicily; the research was published on a book (linked at youtube videos) “La contraddanza in Sicilia. Una indagine nella provincia di Palermo” (Gangemi ed., 2020). The theme of her PhD project is “The tarantella in ceremonial contexts in Southern Italy”. She carried out field research in various regions of Italy, producing a substantial amount of sound and audiovisual documentation, a copy of which is now kept at the Ethnomusicology Archive (LADEM) of the University of Rome Tor Vergata.
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Echo Lee Davidson
University of Pittsburgh | United States
Crutch-Time: Disability, Improvisation, and the Sonic-Choreographic in Claire Cunningham’s The Way You Look (at me) Tonight
This paper examines how improvisation emerges as a relational, cross-sensory practice in Claire Cunningham and Jess Curtis’s The Way You Look (at me) Tonight (2016), a duet between a disabled dancer and a blind performer that blurs distinctions between music, movement, and conversation. As a former classical singer, Cunningham mobilizes her crutches as both prosthetic and percussive extensions of the body—generating rhythm, weight, and vibration in an improvised choreo-musical language. Through tactile cueing, shared pauses, and unscored sonic exchanges, the performers co-compose an embodied dialogue that unfolds in crip time: a temporality grounded in unpredictability, slowness, and mutual adaptation. Drawing on Petra Kuppers’s theory of disability culture, Raymond Knapp’s work on musical embodiment, and Alison Kafer’s concept of crip temporality, I argue that the work articulates a politics of access not only through staging but through the very conditions of improvisation. The sonic dimensions of the piece—crutch sounds, breath, vocal utterances, and ambient silence—are inseparable from its choreographic material. Music and dance here are co-constituted through interdependent bodies navigating an unstable terrain: negotiating balance, proximity, and the affordances of assistive technologies. Rather than treating music as an accompaniment to movement, The Way You Look… reveals how disabled bodies generate new musicalities through physical gesture, proximity, and shared risk. In foregrounding friction, failure, and the vibratory potential of assistive devices, Cunningham’s practice models improvisation as both an aesthetic strategy and a method of access—redefining what counts as musical performance in interdisciplinary and disability arts contexts.
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Echo Lee Davidson is a PhD student in musicology at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research explores disability, gender, and sonic embodiment in contemporary performance. She focuses on how artists reconfigure the boundaries of music and movement through practices of access, improvisation, and interdependence. Echo has presented her work at AMS, the Scriabin Society of America, and Iowa Musicology Day, and advocates for inclusive, community-based scholarship.
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Mia Heikkinen
University of the Arts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy | Finland
Sara Charlotta Wilén
Malmö Academy of Music / Lund University | Sweden
Playing with Values across the Baltic Sea, a collaborative study of collab-creative processes in Nordic opera improvisation
Playing with Values across the Baltic Sea, a collaborative study of collab-creative processes in Nordic opera improvisation Improvising within the framework of the Western operatic tradition is today rare from an international perspective. Inspired by the vibrant tradition of theatrical improvisation that has developed in various parts of the Western world since the 1980s, a few independent opera improvisation groups with professionally trained opera singers and instrumentalists have emerged. These include Improa in Finland (founded in 2005) and Operaimprovisatörerna in Sweden (founded in 2007), comprising professionally trained opera singers and instrumentalists. During the 2010s, the two ensembles, on either side of the Baltic Sea developed their own methods in opera improvisation, without meeting. Coincidentally, each ensemble includes an artistic researcher. Through comparative, qualitative study involving analytical and stimulated recall sessions, we examine how the ensembles improvise in Mozart and contemporary styles, and how they play with operatic and stage performance traditions. Mediated examples and auto ethnographical material will be shared. In opera improvisation, singers and musicians create new plots, texts, and music in spontaneous, music-dramatic collaborative processes, where the audience is often invited as co-creators. By comparing the ensembles’ work in improvised opera, the study offers insights into how this contemporary and playful genre with roots in historical performance traditions serves as a creative platform for classically trained performers, offering new collaborative tools in stage performance. Findings will be discussed in relation to the creative implications for the agency of future opera professionals, and perspectives on the evolving role of stage performance in democratic societies.Keywords: opera improvisation, collaboration, artistic research, performance traditions, creativity.
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Mia Heikkinen works at the Sibelius Academy as a part-time lecturer, voice teacher, and researcher, and pursues her artistic career as an opera singer and improviser, for example in the opera improvisation group Improa!, which she co-founded.
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Sara Charlotta Wilén is a classical singer, opera improviser, and senior lecturer in improvisation in Western Art Music at Malmö Academy of Music, teaching and researching in performance, opera improvisation, and artistic research courses. In her dissertation “Singing in action” (2017) she investigated creative and critical practices in operatic and vocal improvisation. Sara’s research focuses on collaborative, creative, and performative processes. Her vocal career includes soloist roles and original productions in opera improvisation across Swedish stage performance institutions.
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Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen
Royal Academy of Music, Aarhus | Denmark
Improvisation as a Pedagogical Methodology
Improvisation constitutes a heterogeneous field, encompassing diverse artistic and pedagogical approaches. My practice as performer, composer, and educator is situated within free improvisation, yet in recent years I have increasingly conceptualized improvisation as a methodological framework rather than a genre-specific practice. This framework emphasizes the unforeseen, but also foregrounds historical and aesthetic traditions as active agents in the creative process. In my teaching of composition, students are invited to engage with practices such as no wave, serialism, and fluxus, not as fixed models but as materials with which to improvise, reinterpret, and recontextualize. Thus, improvisation becomes a means of critically integrating history into contemporary practice, allowing artistic work to emerge from a dynamic negotiation between past and present. As such, improvisation operates simultaneously as a mode of creation and as a critical methodology that fosters both individual experimentation and collective artistic growth. Keywords: improvisation, history, contemporary practice, composition.
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Louise Dam Eckardt Jensen (DK/US) is a saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist rooted in jazz and improvisation. After years in Amsterdam, Berlin, and New York, she developed a distinctive voice blending noise, melody, and extended techniques. She leads ensembles including Bitter Banditry and Ablunder, with works performed by Wet Ink Ensemble and at the Rued Langgaard Festival. She has taught at Det Jyske and Det Rytmiske Musikkonservatorium, fostering innovation through improvisation.
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Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre | Lithuania
Director’s Performativity: A Creative Strategy for Dispersing Power in Performance-Making
In times of social, political, and ecological crises, coalition-building emerges as a vital strategy for addressing intersectional challenges. This paper, based on my case study as a part of my ongoing artistic research at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, explores how theatre can function as a socio-cultural framework for modelling non-hierarchical, adaptive structures that foster relational art-making. Central to this inquiry is the interplay between individual and collective agency and the ways in which directorial authority can shift fluidly among collaborators without disappearing entirely. Building on scholar’s Duška Radosavljević’s (2019) notion of the “heterarchical director,” I propose an original directorial strategy called “Director’s Performativity’’ as a practical tool for navigating distributed power in rehearsal processes. This approach frames the director as both co-creator and leader, balancing collaboration with cohesion, efficiency with creativity. Case study analysis reveals that the director’s conscious ability to shift power not only stimulates artistic innovation but also enables synergy across diverse perspectives, backgrounds, and methodologies. Such negotiation does more than generate creative outcomes; it establishes a dynamic framework for coalitional directorship. Director’s Performativity, as both a flexible and performative role, allows directors to sustain their presence while fostering shared agency, ultimately contributing to more sustainable and generative models of performance-making. Keywords: director’s performativity, power disperse, heterarchy, directorial strategy.
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Monika Klimaitė-Daunienė is a Lithuanian theatre director, researcher, and lecturer at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, where she is also pursuing a PhD in artistic research. She studied Theatre Directing at Klaipeda University and completed an MA in Performance Practices and Research at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London. Her research explores decentralization of power and the evolving role of the director in collective creation.
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Theodore Parker
Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre | Estonia
Improvisation and the Performance Space: Rethinking Interactions with the Audience
This presentation examines the project Modernized Salon, in which three collaborators from diverse musical backgrounds organized a series of events modeled on the 18th-century salon tradition. A salon was an intimate social gathering, distinct from the concert hall format in its informality, smaller scale, and emphasis on interaction and dialogue between performers and audiences. Central to this discussion is the role of improvisation as a structuring principle for the event as well as a format for presenting free improvised music. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which these salon-inspired formats foster novel approaches to audience engagement and contribute to the development of participants’ broader understanding of the musical field. Additionally, the presentation will include how preparations for presenting improvised music in salon type format modifies and/or changes the artistic practice.
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Theodore Parker is an improvising guitarist and electroacoustic musician who focuses on aspects of space and site specificity. Currently, he is active in Estonia’s first-ever live electronic ensemble EMA (Eesti Elektroonilise Muusika Seltsi Ansambel), which seeks to generate a new repertoire for the live performance of electronic music. Theodore is the founder of several improvisation ensembles, such as Punkt Nihu and Guerilla Impro, and currently lectures and teaches at the Estonian Academy of Music on topics concerning improvisation and artistic research.
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Estonian Academy of Arts | Estonia
Glitch in Site-Specific Performance
This research explores the concept of the glitch not as a technical malfunction, but as a creative strategy in site-specific performance-making—one that disrupts normative structures and rhythms. I approach glitch both as an artistic method and an artist position: a way of engaging with the world that questions form, function, and experience. As an artist, I sometimes perceive myself as a glitch in society—an unexpected shift within the system, like a gold tooth, a fracture, or a hiccup. In the context of my doctoral work, the glitch is not a flaw to be fixed, but a deliberately induced disruption of spatial, social, cultural, or performative structures. It becomes a tool for resistance, imagination, and playful exploration in performance-making. Like a parkour artist who turns obstacles into launch points, I use glitch to reimagine how we move through and make sense of the world. Glitch theorist Rosa Menkman defines glitch as a (real or simulated) interruption in communication systems that disturbs the expected flow of information and creates a perceptible error or accident. For Menkman, glitch is not just technological—it can occur in wider social contexts when functionality breaks down. These disruptions don’t always lead to chaos; they can also open space for new ideas and discoveries. I also see glitch as a potential form of resistance—a way to carve out temporary free zones, rhythms, and alternative spaces within standardized systems. Like parkour artists reimagining public space, or Legacy Russell’s Glitch Feminism, which calls for acting through failure to destabilize fixed notions of gender, glitch invites movement toward other ways of being. As an artist, I sometimes feel like a glitch in society—an unexpected act within the system. Not outside of it, but a shift happening from within. Glitch is not about repairing what was broken, but about dwelling in the uncertainty of the break, listening to what becomes possible in the distortion. In this way, glitch and improvisation share a kinship: both resist the scripted and the standardized, both embrace instability as fertile ground. Together they become strategies for reimagining, space of freedom, play, and resistance within the very structures they disrupt.
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Karolin Poska is a Tallinn-based artist, choreographer, performance artist, and a dancer. Her creative work is driven by an insatiable curiosity, a thirst for discovery, and a desire to explore what it means to be alive in a given moment. Poska is currently immersed in PhD research at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she is investigating the creative potential of glitch—not as a flaw, but as a deliberate strategy to open up unexpected pathways in artistic processes. Her performances For Your Nirvana (2020) and Untitled (2021) were both nominated for the Estonian Theatre Awards, and she was honored with the Best Young Artist Award for her MA in contemporary art.
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Darius Rabašauskas
Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre | Lithuania
Embodied Instability as a Creative Practice
The presentation introduces an artistic research project that explores time not as a fixed structure but as an active element within theatre. The research departs from the concept of performance as an event (Fischer-Lichte, Lehmann), in contrast to performance as a message, and examines the actor’s work across two imagined parallel temporalities: performance time and real time. Within this model, moments of disruption or “glitches” become focal points—unstable zones that generate conditions for improvisation. However, the term improvisation here requires reconsideration. In this context, improvisation diverges from its conventional meaning and becomes an ontological question concerning the actor’s existence within performance time. Improvisation acquires a tectonic dimension, resembling the shifting of underlying strata that destabilize the performance’s foundation. Through analogies with physics—particularly the mechanism of memory erasure in quantum systems—the study analyzes embodied forgetting: while actors retain surface elements (text, blocking), they must bodily forget the states they inhabit. This practice amplifies the eventfulness of performance and destabilizes its compositional hierarchy. Unconscious, intuitive choices emerge, reshaping relations between parts and opening new creative possibilities. The presentation thus investigates embodied unknowing and its impact on the collaborative processes of actors and directors, positioning instability as a fertile ground for performance-making. Keywords: performance as an event, embodied forgetting, ontology of the performance, instability.
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Darius Rabašauskas is a theatre director, lecturer, and doctoral researcher. He currently teaches and studies at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, while also directing productions as a freelance artist. His research and practice focus on theatre pedagogy, directing strategies, the director–actor collaboration, question of time within the performance, and performativity in theatre.
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AO Roberts
Toronto Metropolitan University | Canada
Crip Noise: On Improvisation and Disabled Sonic World Making
This creative-research paper investigates how improvisational sound practices can challenge technoableist elements of experimental electronic music culture. Developed through embodied feminist auto-theory, this work is in direct response to access barriers I experience in performance due to mobility impairment and anxiety. Using process-based research, I reframe these barriers as generative compositional methods to test improvisation’s potential as a form of crip technoscience – or form of disabled ingenuity developed in response to inaccessible systems and spaces. In particular this work critiques settler colonial notions of musical mastery and the exclusionary social dynamics of experimental music cultures, characterized by ableism and white-supremacy. This paper redefines sound performance goals away from mastery and in relationship to access aesthetics, positioning disabled improvisation as a form of social infrastructure and world making. Keywords: Crip Technoscience, Sonic Access, Improvisation, Technoableism, World-Making.
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AO Roberts is a scholar and multidisciplinary artist whose work builds worlds resonating with the unruly poetics of Disabled life. Unfolding across sculpture, sound, and digital realms, their work has been shared internationally at venues including Send + Receive Festival, SOMArts, and SOUND/IMAGE, Banff Centre, Pioneer Works, and Oolite Arts. A recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and Sobey Art Award long listee. Roberts performs experimental electronics as VOR and is a PhD student in Communications and Culture at Toronto Metropolitan and York Universities.
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Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, JAMU | Czech Republic
Testing Words Through the Body: On the Bodily Dimension of Playwriting
Topic „Between Composition and Improvisation“ may at first seem relevant mainly to acting and performance. I argue, however, that improvisation is equally integral to playwriting. Based on my own experience, I will show that the craft of the playwright has a bodily dimension: improvising with characters and situations —“testing words through the body”—is an essential part of writing for the stage. This can range from whispering lines to oneself, to family readings, to public staged readings. All suggest that playwriting is not purely literary but relies on an inner drive to act and perform. I will develop this general thesis with reference both to the theory of mirror neurons and to a key concept of Otakar Zich, the founding figure of Czech theatre theory, who in his Aesthetics of Dramatic Art (1931) speaks of the “inner tactile perception” experienced by both actor and spectator. I will then demonstrate how, in the process of creation, the playwright inevitably becomes both spectator and actor at once. This will be illustrated on the example of my own work on the romantic comedy Thirteen Times a Best Man, commissioned by Slovácké divadlo, one of the leading Czech regional repertory theatres. I have deliberately chosen a mainstream play to highlight that broad communicability does not preclude creativity, and that artistic research should not be confined solely to experimental works. Keywords: playwriting, improvisation, embodiment, inner tactile perception.
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Jan Šotkovský (b. 1982) is an Associate Professor at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, where he leads the Doctoral Studies Studio and teaches theatre history and theory. At Masaryk University he lectures on the theory and history of the musical. As dramaturg at Brno City Theatre, he has worked on over 70 productions, written five plays and co-authored more than ten others.
RESEARCH BASED TEACHING DEMONSTRATIONS
Barce-Martin Foundation (Fundación Barce-Martin) | Spain
Freedom under Dictatorship: Musical Improvisation in Spain during the 1960s
After a brutal civil war, Spain endured four decades of a fascist military dictatorship modeled on Nazism and Italian Fascism. The authoritarian imposition of state control over every aspect of citizens’ lives left its mark on several generations. The world of Art—and Music in particular—also suffered a process of persecution against styles associated with the avant-garde. A new generation of composers, educated during the 1950s under the dictatorship, began to take an interest in the musical innovations emerging from Darmstadt, Italy, and the United States. Although news and proposals arrived only in a limited way, these composers gradually incorporated avant-garde techniques into their works, giving rise to what came to be known as New Music. The arrival of Juan Hidalgo and Walter Marchetti in Spain after an important creative period in Italy marked the beginning of a different musical experience. Only Ramón Barce supported the proposal, forming Grupo Zaj. Performance and improvisation became an essential element in musical creation. How were censorship and control under the Dictatorship overcome? This proposal is based on Ramón Barce’s work. He composed several examples of conditioned improvisation, but his masterpiece was Coral Hablado (1966), a graphic score based on the creation of an unrepeatable polyphonic space in which three speakers and three questioners carry out an exceptional improvisational exercise. With Coral Hablado, Barce succeeded in making the sound event democratic, flexible, and new. This proposal, for the first time in Lithuania, will be represented and explained in this Congress. Keywords: Spain, Performance, Dictatorship, Barce.
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Juan Francisco de Dios is PhD Musicology, Universidad de Salamanca and Royal Holloway University (London), and Fulbright scholar in Carnegie Mellon University. He has been professor in Universidad Autónoma de Madrid from 2015. As a musicologist he has written several books (Alpuerto, ICCMU, Carnegie Mellon University Press…) and some of them has been translated (English, German or Catalan). He is author of more than a hundred papers. As a singer, he performs in numerous International Music Festivals in Brazil, England, Ireland, Germany and the most important places in Spain. He is member of the Academia de la Música de España and Secretary of Fundación Barce-Martín.
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Corinna Eikmeier
Musikhochschule Lübeck | Germany
Approaching improvisation through movement experiments
In a participatory format, I would like to explore the connection between intuition and the positive effects of improvisation on wellbeing. Dealing with the unknown and unpredictable in improvisation requires unconditional action in the present moment. As soon as control or other mental thoughts come into play, the improviser is no longer able to relate to the present moment. In my research (Eikmeier 2016), I show how perception holds improvisation together, enabling creativity and intuition in interaction. At the same time, this requires very free movements, which means that improvisation has a positive effect on the health of the musicians. In my dissertation project, I developed an experimental approach that is now being used to enable improvisational qualities. The following research questions are central:
• Which specific manners of action are significant for improvisation?
• What mutual effect is there between the specific improvisational manners of action and the quality of movement while playing music?
I will present my original research design, which is based on qualitative heuristics and artistic research and shows the possibilities that arise in the experimental settings for improvisational performances. Based on this I will invite the audience to try out some of my experiments. Keywords: improvisation, experiments, wellbeing, movement quality.
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Prof. Dr. Corinna Eikmeier studied Violoncello, Contemporary Music and Improvisation. Her main interest is improvisation as well as in her artistic work and in pedagogy. She did her PHD project at Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien from 2010-2016 about Movement quality and improvisation. Since 2020 she is professor for instrumental- and singing pedagogy at university of music Lübeck. Further information: www.corinna-eikmeier.de
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Stefano Grasso
FHNW Academy of Music, Basel | Switzerland
Induction – An experimental system for collective improvised music
Induction is an experimental system for improvising ensembles, where every musician is invited to perform a gesture that expresses their own intention before putting it into action. Each one can only show the ensemble what their intention is, allowing others to responsibly (re)act on that; no one can tell others what to do. With Induction I explore non-verbal tools that can embody individual responsibility and awareness, so as to sharpen collective intention within shared collaborative creation. Induction draws on the practice and study of collective decision making processes in both music (improvising ensembles) and socio-political dimensions (public assemblies), referring in particular to: Soundpainting, Conduction, Cobra and personal collective improvisational experience from one side; Indignados, Occupy Wall Street, and socio-political movements embracing autonomy, voluntary association, self-organization, mutual aid, direct democracy from the other. By borrowing decisional methodologies from these systems, I’m searching for a way that can allow multiple individuals to negotiate new collective possibilities. The teaching demonstration involves a big improvising ensemble (up to 25-30 performers) and wants to share collaborative constructive tools with the participants, opening the reflection about responsibility, intentionality and awareness in collective improvised music. Keywords: collective, embodiment, politics, improvisation, process.
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Stefano Grasso is a drummer and contemporary trained percussionist devoted to improvised and creative music. He is engaged in several projects from solo to big ensembles and is co-founder of Conserere (2016, Milan) and KreativKlang (2024, Basel), collectives dedicated to the promotion and dissemination of improvised music. He is independent researcher and lecturer at Conservatorio Verdi in Milan (a.y. 2022–24) and at FHNW Musik-Akademie in Basel (a.y. 2025-26).
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Adam Mašura
Janáček Academy of Performing Arts, JAMU | Czech Republic
Mindfulness in Actor training
My artistic research/dissertation, originally titled ‘Application of Mindfulness Techniques to the Pre-performative Phase of Actor Training,’ explores how to integrate eastern meditation with acting exercises. This research creates systematic attention training for students of acting. Nevertheless, I have found that the potential of mindfulness practice extends far beyond this specific application. Thus, I have been slowly but surely straying from solely “the pre-performative” aspect of it. An actor is not merely a craftsman with a specific set of skills, but a human being with a life outside the rehearsal room and off the stage. Because of this, I now consider mindfulness a uniquely useful and complex tool for addressing the multifaceted needs—including wellbeing—of this ‘strange human’ we call an actor. My own life, the primary object of my PhD research, is continuously evolving proof of this claim. To say that mindfulness was a significant finding for me would be an understatement. It has profoundly impacted on my work as an actor, helping me navigate the pressures of performance and cultivate a deeper sense of presence. Beyond my professional life, it has become an indispensable practice for my personal psycho-hygiene. My presentation would take the form of a research-based teaching demonstration, where I would like to present a “mindfulness in actor training” class. I want to put mindfulness into the context of acting through my personal experience and story, while also introducing the basic practice to those who have never experienced it firsthand. Furthermore, I believe it would be beneficial to talk about the experience of teaching a Mindfulness class at my alma mater especially since it is the first time in the history of JAMU that such a course is being offered as a part of curriculum. In practical terms, the optimal number of participants for the class is 15, with an upper limit of 20. I would appreciate a classroom large enough to accommodate this number, ideally with a sound system, where participants can move around freely. In case, it is not possible for these conditions to be met I can adjust the class to be more static with less focus movement. I believe that mindfulness has an integral and rightful place in actor training and that it plays a vital part in its future development. Provided that we can date the birth of actor training back to the Stanislavsky system, we can arguably consider mindfulness an almost traditional tool in an actor’s work. The recently published book Stanislavsky and Mindfulness: Being in the Moment, edited by Dawn Ingleson, provides compelling evidence for this connection through multiple essays. To my delight, some of these put considerable emphasis on the well-being aspect of mindfulness in actor training which cannot be overlooked. This journey of incorporating mindfulness into my profession is deeply personal, making my research equally so. I feel that my research is closely related to the topic of Embodiment, intuition and the unconscious in the creative process and I would consider it a privilege to share my findings and to engage in a dialogue with other performers, teachers, academics, and theatre professionals interested in the topic.
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Adam Mašura is an actor and movement specialist with a decade of experience across theatre, film, TV, and motion capture. He is also a PhD student focusing on the application of Mindfulness to acting and actor training. Creativity being his passion, he has explored multiple roles as a choreographer, musician, director and teacher. This unique blend of practical and academic experience, informed by his certification in Relational Mindfulness Training (RMT), gives him a complex and multi-faceted perspective on creative processes, which he applies to his work and his teaching at JAMU in Brno.
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Arnolda Noir Strigūnaitė
Independent Scholar
Unbecoming the Character: Integrating Mental Health into Performance Education and the Creative Process
Unbecoming the Character: Integrating Mental Health into Performance Education and the Creative Process Actor training across all major traditions — Stanislavski’s “given circumstances,” Meisner’s repetition, Grotowski’s physical scores, Chekhov’s gestures — is centered on becoming the character. The actor’s body is the instrument, the vessel through which realities are created and lived. Yet, while curricula teach countless ways to immerse, they offer no structured methods for unbecoming: releasing, disentangling, and returning to self. This omission leaves performers vulnerable, as embodied stories inevitably affect identity and mental health. Through over a decade of teaching in performance academies across Europe, I have consistently observed the same absence: institutions cultivate immersion but fail to provide recovery tools. To address this gap, I developed an innovative adaptation of muscle testing — a practice already used in medicine, sports science, physiotherapy, and psychology — for the performing arts. It allows actors to measure, in real time, whether exercises are strengthening or depleting, offering immediate insight into sustainability. Further, during a 2023 investigation with New York’s Caborca Theater, supported by the Lithuanian Culture Mobility Scholarship, I found that professional actors and directors shared the belief that life = art, art = life. Yet without exit rituals or discernment practices, roles bled into personal lives, often destabilizing mental health. This research argues for systemic change: integrating discreation practices, somatic release, and resilience frameworks into performance education. Only by teaching both becoming and unbecoming can we create sustainable, healthy performers for the future of theatre and cinema.
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Arnolda Noir Strigūnaitė is a director, actress, and mentor with over a decade of international teaching in European academies and creative platforms. She has coached performers and enterprises in creative process, led sustainability-focused projects, and directed films and performances presented internationally. Her work bridges acting, education, and embodied practices, advocating for sustainable artistry and mental health at the core of creative training.
PERFORMANCE AS RESEARCH OUTCOME
Dario Savino Doronzo
“G. Verdi” Conservatory of Music, Milan | Italy
Livio Minafra
“N. Piccinni” Conservatory of Music, Bari | Italy
Fabulae – Nature as Sound, Sound as Story. An Artistic-Musical Inquiry
Duo Doronzo | Minafra (Dario Savino Doronzo, trumpet/flugelhorn – Livio Minafra, piano)
Fabulae is a performative project in artistic-musical research, centered on the poetic and sonic exploration of the deep interconnection between Nature and Music. Emerging from the encounter between flugelhornist Dario Savino Doronzo and pianist-composer Livio Minafra, the duo develops a sound-based inquiry in which the natural world is reflected and transfigured into acoustic landscape through improvisation, original composition, and deep listening. Rooted in Art-Based Research, the project addresses two core questions: How can Nature be translated into musical language? And how can two acoustic instruments symbolically represent landscapes, ecological dynamics, and metamorphoses? Original works such as Gongilo, La piuma, Cerbiatto, Oltremare, Rane, Sol Invictus and Vespe act as sonic fabulae, where sound becomes both narrative tool and philosophical device. The title, from the Latin fabula, evokes myth as an original mode of knowledge and a bridge between human and non-human realms. In this sense, FABUALE resonates with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s embodied perception and Timothy Morton’s ecological philosophy, which conceives Nature not as external object but as relational presence that inhabits and is inhabited. The performance creates an immersive, synesthetic experience that moves beyond aesthetic enjoyment to become a poetic and reflective act on the human-environmental relationship. In line with musical ecocriticism and relational aesthetics, FABUALE offers a gentle yet urgent invitation to hear the Earth anew with the ears of the heart. Keywords: Art-Based Research, Musical Ecocriticism,Improvisation, Acoustic Landscape, Human-Nature Relationship.
VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddr4xPm5nzA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0765NcVE_C4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoPQN9PmA08
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Dario Savino Doronzo is an artistic researcher and professor at the Milan Conservatory of Music. He holds degrees in Trumpet, Jazz Music, Science and Technology of Sound, Choir Conducting and Engineering. He has performed as a soloist in prestigious venues, including Carnegie Hall (NY). He is regularly invited to give lectures and presentations at important research institutions, including University at Buffalo, Maastricht University, Luleå University and MDW University. www.dariodoronzo.it
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Sharon Young
Camberwell College of Arts, University of the Arts London | United Kingdom
Hysterical Chorus Live!
The Hysterical Chorus Live is a performance that grew out of Sharon Young’s art practice and PhD research. Drawing from her own experience, Freud’s case studies of hysteria and literary figures such as Madame Bovary she wrote a sound work in collaboration with Joseph Costi that revisited the symptoms of these women and her own experience. The Hysterical Chorus Live is an extension of this research and opens an invitation to all who relate to the feeling of “hysteria” as a mode of communication and an expression of freedom against repressive societal norms. Working with Blair Kelly this work takes on a new live dimension of mystery and reaching to new realms. The collective uses artistic practice, through body and voice, to vocalise a refusal of societal norms and to reach for new methods of expression together. The collective began as a collaboration at Trinity Laban’s CoLab and includes dancers and singers. Although we avoid terms such as diagnostics, we invite our audience to be self-selecting hysterics and to join in the chorus if you would like to be part of this evolving conversation. Keywords: Hysteria, feminisms, subjectivities, queerness, gender. https://artslondon.padlet.org/syoung/portfolio-of-performances-and-installations-n0c6hydesez8btx4
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Dr Sharon Young is a Northern Irish artist based in London. Sharon is a lecturer in fine art at Camberwell University of the Arts, London. She holds a PhD from the Royal College of Art called Once More with Feeling. Her work has been presented and exhibited worldwide including The Freud Museum, London; Stroud Film Festival; Tate Exchange – Tate Liverpool // Venice; Encontros das Imagem, Braga; Goa Photo Festival; Cosmos, Arles; Peckham 24, London; The Centre of Photography, Clement-Ferrond and P3 Ambika Gallery, London and has been the recipient of awards such as Flash Forward Magenta Awards, Canada and The International Photography Awards, New York. Her work is held in public collections such as the V&A Library, The Yale Centre for British Art and PhotoIreland Foundation. Blair Kelly is a vocal coach and lecturer specializing in contemporary commercial music, musical theatre, spoken voice and drag and cabaret performance. Blair teaches singing on the Popular Music and Musical Theatre programmes at Trinity Laban and is the founder and Artistic Director of Errata: London’s Queerest Choir with an additional interest and specialism in working with drag and cabaret performers. He is an Estill Master Trainer and is trained in Body-Based Voice Pedagogy.
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Bruno Pereira
ESMAE i2ADS | Portugal
From Immersive Practice to Curated Experience: Collaborative and Immersive Audio-Visual Design
The design of immersive sound content enables experimental processes that combine technological and artistic perspectives, with applications in artistic research and the development of new outputs. Such content can also function as an effective tool for interaction in diverse contexts and spaces. Integrating artistic research with these purposes raises questions about ensuring adequate interfaces between research and usability, namely the need for research designs that foster collaborative and collective musical creation, supporting the transfer of artistic outputs to wider audiences. This was addressed before, during, and after a residency undertaken by the authors, through a step-by-step process that included: (i) developing dedicated tools and contents (instrument and software) and a corpus of combined live vocal and keyboard extended techniques; (ii) systematic experimentation with pre-structured and free improvisation; (iii) critical appraisal of recorded materials through an immersion–dispersion–consolidation model; and (iv) selecting relevant recordings in studio work for dissemination and further development. In addition, a video-artist filmed site-specific footage, which was integrated with the selected audio materials to create an audiovisual installation. The presentation will feature a 25-minute improvisational live performance layered onto the fixed audiovisual media, followed by a discussion of the artistic and research processes and their multiple dimensions. Keywords: improvisation, collaboration, immersive processes, immersive audio.
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Bruno Pereira is Professor at ESMAE and researcher at i2ADS, he investigates the voice within contemporary performance practices. Holding a degree in Voice (ESMAE) and a PhD in Contemporary Performance (FBAUP), he transitioned from over a decade in opera to focus on experimental performance, creating solo works and collaborating with artists including Baars, Penha, Marinho, Costa, Aguiar, Krukauskas, Parker, and Brandtsegg. brunop.bandcamp.com
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Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre | Lithuania
Sound as Time, Rhythm as Flow: Rethinking Performance Practice
The performance, in a broader sense, will be the outcome of artistic research into the performer’s state between composition and improvisation. The Musical part is based on the theory of sound as a set of frequencies, that is a phenomenon composed of time durations (rhythm). By manipulating durations, a flow of frequencies is created or reproduced, in which and with which the performer interacts. Percussion instruments are used to amplify live frequencies, and the flow of rhythm is expressed in a complex polytemporal rhythmic musical language. The consciously controlled space of multiple musical times immerses the listener in an ambiguous, floating state of weightlessness. This concept explores the boundaries of compositional and improvisational methods. Between the traditional performer as a mediator between the composer and the listener, or the performer of free improvisational music, a third, undefined performative dimension is sought. When improvisation is not the basis of performance, as well as compositional ideas are only inspirational in nature, the question is explored of what constitutes the basis of performance and whether it can be called a performance of a composition or improvisation. Keywords: Percussion, Polyrhythm, Performance, Composition, Improvisation.
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Dominykas Snarskis is a percussionist active in contemporary, jazz, and improvisational music. He collaborates with ensembles such as The Folds, Artisans, Luvhurts, Quark Effect, Lazy Diamonds, contributing to numerous interdisciplinary and experimental projects. His work includes original instrument creation and sound performances. His research themes spans on music based on rhythmic and time structuring elements.