Pinchbeck, M., 2014.

Bolero (filmed performance)

Bolero is a multi-lingual devised performance that involves six performers from three different countries (UK, Germany and Bosnia & Herzegovina) and a community cast of performing arts students and graduates from Nottingham Trent University, De Montfort University and University of Lincoln. Bolero continues research into the role of the dramaturg in contemporary performance and asks how we write texr, how we perform text and how text performs. The performance is a biography of the music of Ravel?s ?Bolero? and explores the materiality of music by having manuscripts onstage that are read from and then discarded to create a visible dramaturgy. I am interested in how the performance has a musicality and speaks about music to the rhythm of that music. Its dramaturgy follows the score of the Ravel original. Bolero premiered at Nottingham Playhouse as part of NEAT 14 Festival on 31 May and 1 June 2014. It was then restaged at Sarajevo War Theatre on the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. This activity enabled me to cement a reputation as an internationally touring theatre maker on a high profile Arts Council and British Council supported project. It consolidates and builds on my existing relationships with the British Council, Nottingham Playhouse and Sarajevo War Theatre. The community cast choreographer and senior lecturer in drama and linguistics at Loughborough University, Arianna Mairorani, has already spoken about Bolero at conferences and is writing research papers about the choreographic process. I have been in contact with Routledge about writing a monograph about the role of the dramaturg in contemporary performance. In both Sarajevo and Pristina, the project kickstarted a Youth Theatre group who made their own performances inspired by our production of Bolero. This has had a tangible legacy that outlives our visit. In August 2015, Bolero was selected for the British Council Edinburgh Showcase. In October 2014, Bolero toured venues in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Sarajevo, Zenica, Mostar and Tuzla) to coincide with 2014 Culture and Conflict programme. In March 2016, Bolero toured Kosovo (Pristina and Prizren). In 2016, I delivered a provocation about Bolero at TaPRA. In 2018, it features in a forthcoming Palgrave Macmillan publication, Staging Loss: Performance as Commemoration, co-edited with Andrew Westerside. This is the full length show filmed at neat14, Nottingham Playhouse on 31 May 2018.