Tandem Dances: Choreographing Immersive Performance proposes dance and choreography as frames through which to examine immersive theater. The idea of tandemness-suggesting motion that is achieved by two bodies working together and acting in conjunction with one another-is critical throughout the book. Choreography is positioned as essential to the creation and reception of immersive productions for two distinct yet entwined reasons. First, in the creation of these productions, immersive practitioners devise and structure performance content intended to immerse audiences, often by prioritizing dance over other communicative media due to its potential for kinesthetic dynamism, the different kinds of perception it invites, and the varieties of interpretive analyses it affords. Second, choreography is critical to immersive productions in that it serves as a crucial mechanism by which the spectator's role is transformed into that of an active participant within the production, namely, a subject of choreography enacting an improvisational score. In articulating these two applications of choreography in immersive productions, it is fruitful to understand immersive productions as tandem dances, meaning they function as choreographic events requiring the bodies of both performers and spectators to enact parallel movement scores. Tandem Dances foregrounds the choreographic, giving voice to prominent choreographers, directors and performers as well as spectators of immersive works in order to examine its specific impact on the evolution of immersive theater while presenting choreography as a discursive problem that is fundamentally related to creative practice, to agendas of power and control, and to concomitant issues of freedom and agency.
Industry Reviews
"Ritter opens up new territory for performance studies in her fascinating discussion of 'extended audiencing', which drives SNM into a spectator-controlled digital sphere of blog posts, discussion boards, fan art and the like." -- Alison D'Amato, Performance Research
"Tandem Dances is an essential book for those invested in immersive performance or, broader yet, any body-based performance that incorporates the audience's participation and physicality as core elements to the production itself." -- Mara Mandradjieff, Dance Research Journal
"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- S. E. Friedler, CHOICE
"Tandem Dances makes a welcome intervention in a field that has marginalised the perspectives and insights of dance scholars, dancers, choreographers, and choreographed audiences. It prompts reconsideration of how audiences are immersed in contemporary performance by centring on choreography, kinesthesia, and improvisatory engagement as key elements underpinning the design and experience of immersive environments, and offers a helpful means of
conceptualising and analysing audience immersion in ways that I'm sure will inspire fresh consideration of the political in immersive performance." -- Adam Alston, Goldsmiths, University of London
"While dance is integral to so much immersive theatre, its contribution remains relatively covert. Ritter has written a much-needed book to work through the production and reception of choreography within this contemporary performance form." -- Kate Elswit, author of Theatre & Dance and Watching Weimar Dance
