The Intimate and the Epic in Plunge: A Case Study in Heterarchical Composition for Site-Specific and Interdisciplinary Performance Makers

Abstract

<p>This practice-led enquiry offers a model for heterarchical performance composition in interdisciplinary site-specific practice. It comprises of a new performance work, <i>Plunge</i>, and an exegesis that positions the creative practice within the fields of phenomenology, aurality, intermediality, site practice and multi-sensory integration. Set against preparations for the 2018 Commonwealth Games and performed in the Gold Coast Aquatic Centre, <i>Plunge</i> was a largescale, cross-artform site-specific performance which deployed the spectacle of its site and the physicality of elite sport to celebrate and critique the commodification of young athletes. Drawing on multiple performance modes, <i>Plunge</i> combined contemporary dance, postdramatic spectacle, headphone aurality, intermediality, verbatim text and fictional narrative into a simultaneous and multisensory experience. In so doing, <i>Plunge</i>'s compositional structure represented a dismantling of hierarchies: of the senses, of artforms and of institutional structures, blending sound and image, the ‘real’ and the imaginary, heighted visuality and intimate confession, to create a heterarchical integration between people and place. <i>Heterarchy</i>, a term first applied in neurophysiology to describe the complex processing of the brain (McCulloch 1945) and, more recently, defined by archaeologist Carole Crumley as “the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked” so that power is “counterpoised” (1995, p.3), offers a fluid, polymodal conceptual framework for the composition of performance strata and the shifting dynamics between the senses. Traditionally, the challenge for directors of hybrid work has been how to balance the affective power of disparate elements, such that each is fully realised and available to the audience’s perception, while also serving the holistic goals of the production dramaturgy. <i>Plunge</i> thus serves as a case-study to examine the efficacy of a heterarchical approach to performance composition in polyvocal site practice, both in Australia and globally, as a means of creating highly sensate spectacles that still feel deeply intimate, personal and political. </p>