About
Creative Practice forum (CPf) is a new space for artists and practitioners to share ideas and information about their work. It is organized around the concept of “creative practice” as a field in which people with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives can meet.
“Creative practice” refers to the area in which creativity and repetition overlap and intersect. The subtitle of the forum also implies this intersection. “The art of practice” refers to creative artistry in the development of embodied practices such as yoga and martial arts. “The practice of art” refers to long-term continuities in the performing arts.
The point of this forum is to discuss creative practices in relation to each other, and to develop the concept of creative practice. A few things that might be called creative practices are:
- Yoga
- Martial arts
- Healing arts
- Theatre
- Dance
- Music
- Traditional song
- Sacred song
- Ritual
- Drama Therapy
- Dance/Movement Therapy
- Active Meditation
- Authentic Movement
- Performance Research
- Actor training
- Alexander, Feldenkreis, Laban / Bartenieff…
- Linklater, Fitzmaurice, Lessac…
- Stanislavski, Grotowski, Lecoq, Suzuki…
- etc…
Some people may take issue with the broadness of this list. Can a practice like taiji be understood as creative in the sense that an artistic work is creative? Can a method of actor training like those of Stanislavski be considered a practice in the way that a yoga practice can be? Can a form of self-exploration like Authentic Movement be considered a practice even though it does involve any formalized, repeated movements?
The open discussion of such questions is the purpose of this forum.
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Concepts related to creative practice may include: practical research or practice as research; performance research or performance as research; drama therapy, dance/movement therapy, and music/voice therapy; para-theatre, ritual arts, and art as vehicle; embodied practice; and active meditation.
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The Creative Practice forum is administered by Ben Spatz, but it is intended to support many diverse perspectives as well as connections made across international, conceptual, and practical boundaries. You do not have to agree with or even like the idea of “creative practice” to post or comment here. Anyone with an investment in art, practice, or their intersection is welcome to contribute to the ongoing discussion. You can also post news items here, such as upcoming performances, workshops, publications and conferences.
For Ben, this forum serves as a place to publish information about Urban Research Theater’s current work. (It replaces the Urban Research Theater newsletter, which was published monthly from 2006-2009.) It is also part of his preparation to write a scholarly dissertation in the field of performance as research. Finally, he hopes that it will lay groundwork towards the eventual establishment of a Center for Creative Practice in New York City.
Over the next few months, we will be looking for regular and guest contributors to this website. Ideally these would include performance artists; practitioners of yogic, martial, and healing arts; students and teachers; as well as theorists of art and practice. Please contact Ben if you are interest in making a regular contribution to the forum.
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You can contact the administrator directly with this form:
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Special thanks to Kate Harding and her companions in the fat-o-sphere for the inspiration to attempt community-building through blogging. My model for a successful theoretical and activist blogging community is the one that exists in and around Shapely Prose.