ABSTRACT
Using situated Bourdieuian Field Theory and practice-based research, this chapter investigates international cross-disciplinary collaborations in two case studies that feature both dance and opera: Orfeo by Sasha Waltz & Guests Berlin (2014) and Project Faust by Sally Blackwood with Louisville Ballet and Kentucky Opera USA (2018). These works were created collaboratively by international ensembles of cross-art form practitioners. The chapter demonstrates how these opera/ballet works were co-created in time and space, involving artists digitally traversing continents and also sharing their practice in-the-flesh, body-to-body. It shows how these performance works – characterized by a diversity of voices, transnational perspectives, and the embodied place-based practice of the individual – are embedded with intangible personal and collective cultural and social experience, and an enriching collision of Bourdieuian social and cultural capital.
This chapter highlights the impact of internationalization on art form innovation, artistic exchange, and cross-pollination of contemporary practices in the development of hybrid operatic works. The analysis of international artistic collaboration in the creation of the works includes the digital coming together across continents and gathering and sharing of research material and created data, as well as the crucial moments of collective exploration during intensive residency periods. The chapter’s practice-based approach allows comparative analysis to be conducted from inside the making of the two case studies, situating the in-body practice, while simultaneously examining the impact of internationalization and collaboration together-at-a-distance on both content and form.
