What goes on in the body and mind of an endurance athlete at the limits of performance? How do they relate to the world around and prepare for the task ahead?
Offering a refreshing perspective on training in the cross-lighting of aesthetic and athletic processes, this book focuses on the learning, mastery and creative adaptation of technique in performance. From traditional and physical actors to runners, boxers and other sports practitioners, it is about performers: their bodies, trainings and experiences. It interrogates what it means to prepare and train as a performer in the early 21st century.
Writing from extensive experience in physical theatre and long-distance running, the author combines insights from both disciplines along with theatre history, sports science and perspectives like embodied cognition and affective science. From the kind of thoughts that go through the mind of an actor or a runner, to the economy and aesthetic of their movement and to how they feel about it, this book sheds light on the performing body and its capacities for action.
Topics covered include attentional focus and distraction, affordances and equipment, ‘choking’ and stage fright, physiological regulation and effort perception, pacing and play, optimal flow and creative improvisation, and intentionality and automaticity in expert performance. The volume presents an informative and thought-provoking account accessible to readers interested in theatre, dance, performance, running, athletics, and sport.
Preface
Foreword by Paul Allain (University of Kent, UK)
Introduction
We Are All Alligators
i. Bodyworld
Bodyworld and the 3As
Bodies in the Open
ii. Bodyworld Affordances in Sports
Affordances in Action
Intentionality in Affordance
iii. Via Athletae in Sport and Aesthetic Performance
Heart Athletes and Flying Acrobats
Action in Life
Action in the Boxing Ring
Punches in the Face of Ethics and Reality
Enduring Humanity
PART I: MIND GAMES
Chapter 1. I Perform, I Think: Bodyworld Cognitions
Thinking About It
Mind Mapping
Attentional Focus
Movement Aesthetic and Economy
Outward Monitoring
Refining Running/Bodyworld
Distraction
Automatic Pilot and Exhaustion
What I Take With Me
Chapter 2. Mind Your Body: Attentional Focus in Performance
Internal/External Focus and the Mind-Muscle Connection
Flow Automaticity
Epistemic Actions in Performance
Secondary Tasks
Practice Insights
Cross-Sectional Perspectives
Chapter 3. Maintaining the Pace: Action Planning for Performance
Central Governor and Anticipatory Regulation
Psychobiological Model
Perception of Effort
Pacing
Aesthetic Pacing
Anticipatory Modulation
Calibrating Inner Action
Grafting Insights
PART II: HEART MATTERS
Chapter 4. Feeling Performance: Affect, Sensation, Emotion
Affect Theory and Affective Science
Resonating Experience
Emotion Episode
Eliciting Conditions
‘More Than Just an Actor Dressing’
Expressive or Communicative Outcomes
Stage Fright
Action Readiness
Improvisation and Real-World Play
Chapter 5. Performing Feeling: Action, Intention, Transformation
From Action Readiness to Actional Outcomes
Thought-Action
A Cat With Which I have Contact, or Intentionality
Emotion Modulation
Changing Oneself
Chapter 6. Putting on an Act: Performance Through Experience
Cognitive Processing
Enacting Action
Aesthetic Experience
Experience Case Studies
Case Study 1 (Training): Plastiques
Case Study 2 (Training Performance): Tekhne Sessions
Case Study 3 (Running): Long Runs
Case Study Reflections: Aesthetics in Athletics
Case Study 4 (Performance): Id-Descartes and Martyr Red
Improvisational Conclusions
Conclusion: Along the Via Athletae
References
Bibliography
Index
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