Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 15 Number 2, August 2014
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Performance Review
Aurelia Baumgartner
Human without Cortex -- Attempts
World Congress, International Federation for Theatre Research,
Warwick, UK,
31 July 2014
Reviewed by
University of Kansas
I had the good fortune of sharing in Aurelia Baumgartner's work at the International Federation for Theatre Research's 2014 World Congress in Warwick, UK. Ms. Baumgartner is an extraordinarily gifted dancer and thinker as clearly demonstrated in her open-mic performance and academic presentation. Jointly entitled, "Human Without Cortex-Attempts," Baumgartner regaled her appreciative audience with a dance piece in the morning, before following it up with an academic paper during the afternoon. The former was a welcome pastiche of dance styles that included tango, tap, modern, and ballet towards rendering an electrifying language of movement that was supported by images presented on a screen upstage and the underscoring of a live trombonist. Baumgartner's aesthetic was to capture the essence of the unconscious in dance through a free interplay of sounds, movement, and the imagination. During the afternoon session, she then unpacked her engaging performance as part of a paper that led to a fruitful dialogue with her colleagues in the IFTR Performance and Consciousness Working Group. All told, Baumgartner gave us a remarkable performance on both intellectual and performative planes.
Click here for Aurelia Baumgartner's website