Echolocation and reverberation : praxical dispositifs in laboratory theatre

This multi-authored text aims to both reflect and reflect upon the polyphonic praxis of Cross Pollination (CP), a nomadic laboratory promoting dialogues in-between different arts practices. CP was established in 2017 by Marije Nie and Adriana La Selva, performers and scholars with a longstanding connection to Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium (Denmark). Over the past three years, Nie and La Selva have gathered a transnational group of core artist-researchers together to collectively develop performance, research and knowledge exchange projects. Together, the members of CP have elaborated a number of innovative tactics for praxical exchange, such as What If, Interview Threads and Drifts, which are all grounded upon a process of echolocation and reverberation. In echolocation, you use sound to place yourself in relation to your environment. Transposed to the context of CP’s work, the principle of echolocation allows us to ‘sound off’ one another whilst sharing our craft-based knowledge, promoting a non-judgmental, supportive environment that is nevertheless rigorous and creative. We argue that a liminal space exists on the edges of the cognitive patterns underscoring our practices, a space we curate together. In this space, emergent praxical grammars reverberate, enabling us to echolocate novel territories that blur the boundaries between training, performance and writing. Thus, rather than a traditional scholarly article, we envisage this collaborative writing as an extension of our expanded laboratory, one in which the somatic experience of our different practices dialogue with one another, generating knowledge that we ‘scuffle with’ as we translate complex tacit techné into critical, reflexive discourse