1 00:00:01,410 --> 00:00:06,330 Just to say that this is taken this bit should be taken from a book chapter that'll 2 00:00:06,330 --> 00:00:11,760 be published by Oxford University Press probably later in the spring of next year. 3 00:00:12,900 --> 00:00:15,930 Five soldiers. The body is the front line. 4 00:00:16,240 --> 00:00:21,900 It's a dance theatre worker choreographed in 2010, and it's since toured throughout the U.K., Germany and Spain. 5 00:00:22,380 --> 00:00:28,800 The piece was made following a period of field research in November 2008, when I joined the fourth Battalion, 6 00:00:28,800 --> 00:00:33,120 the Rifles, and was allowed to join in full battle exercises on Dartmoor and Salisbury Plain. 7 00:00:33,630 --> 00:00:44,459 I then visited the Military Rehabilitation Centre Headley Court to see the effect of conflict and training on the soldiers bodies by focusing on the 8 00:00:44,460 --> 00:00:49,140 embodied experience of the soldier rather than the moral values of war and 9 00:00:49,140 --> 00:00:52,350 engaging with the visceral experience of the audience through the performance. 10 00:00:52,710 --> 00:00:59,070 Five soldiers reframes war inside the context of the soldier's body, the enactment of the soldier's training, 11 00:00:59,070 --> 00:01:03,210 the psychological consequences of that training, and the impact of injury. 12 00:01:03,450 --> 00:01:08,129 Invite the audience to identify it and thus respond to the issue of what soldiers 13 00:01:08,130 --> 00:01:12,090 are trained and asked to do in the name of civilian elected governments. 14 00:01:12,600 --> 00:01:17,760 Although not overtly political, the work invites the audience to see war through the soldier's body, 15 00:01:18,000 --> 00:01:21,450 therefore therefore influencing their perception of war. 16 00:01:22,170 --> 00:01:27,930 Dee Reynolds And I argue that, especially in an era of great disillusionment with the political establishment, 17 00:01:28,320 --> 00:01:37,080 choreography has a significant potential to affect audiences through embodied, empathic engagement that cannot be produced by verbal means. 18 00:01:38,130 --> 00:01:45,960 Major changes in the post-Cold War era have made armed conflict too frequently much more disparate, diffuse and asymmetrical business. 19 00:01:46,290 --> 00:01:50,249 The more conventional confrontations between nation states, however, 20 00:01:50,250 --> 00:01:57,690 this dance work positions the body the body that is trained to injure and that is also itself injured at the centre of the Theatre of War. 21 00:01:58,170 --> 00:02:03,840 As Elaine Scarry has argued, the main purpose of war continues to be the inflicting of injury and pain. 22 00:02:04,380 --> 00:02:08,580 The piece therefore invites awareness of physicality at many different levels, 23 00:02:08,880 --> 00:02:15,030 both through the subject matter and the strength of energy conveyed by the dancers from the intense rigours and 24 00:02:15,030 --> 00:02:22,140 exhaustion of training to sexual aggression and tensions and the literal breaking of the body and pain of injury. 25 00:02:22,470 --> 00:02:27,330 In a shocking final scene here, rather than disowning injury and its effects, 26 00:02:27,720 --> 00:02:34,200 the audience is subjected to witnessing the prolonged pain of one of the liveliest members of the battalion slash troupe, 27 00:02:34,890 --> 00:02:37,080 both in the military and choreographic contexts. 28 00:02:37,320 --> 00:02:42,990 This is a controversial move since the emphasis in the military is on rehabilitation and positive attitudes. 29 00:02:43,350 --> 00:02:47,760 While in contemporary dance, the trend is to emphasise how disabled bodies are able to move. 30 00:02:48,150 --> 00:02:51,120 Rather debilitating effects of pain and trauma. 31 00:02:51,750 --> 00:03:00,540 The work raises issues of sacrifice, a notion perhaps out of sync with the general public, but clearly articulated in military religious contexts, 32 00:03:00,900 --> 00:03:07,860 with death being seen as the ultimate sacrifice of war in a political climate, albeit a democratic one, 33 00:03:07,860 --> 00:03:12,960 where the population feels disenfranchised and powerless to change the government's foreign policy, 34 00:03:13,380 --> 00:03:20,760 and where war is increasingly disconnected from reality and what the DARIÉN has called the Military Industrial Entertainment Network. 35 00:03:21,240 --> 00:03:26,760 The viewing public can become indifferent to the seemingly inevitable and mediated horrors of war. 36 00:03:27,270 --> 00:03:33,780 However, we argue that dance performance of peace offers the opportunity for a challenging and thought provoking encounter 37 00:03:33,780 --> 00:03:40,830 with war through embodied kinaesthetic responses by portraying the horrors of war through the corporal. 38 00:03:41,130 --> 00:03:45,270 The work uses the body and the body's power to convince and cause physical reaction, 39 00:03:45,570 --> 00:03:50,910 where words in the case of the media and politicians have little or no effect. 40 00:03:51,720 --> 00:03:59,820 In this chapter from the book, Dee Reynolds and I analyse how the body is the frontline by describing experiences of training with the army 41 00:04:00,180 --> 00:04:05,460 and how those experiences shaped the making of the peace I underwent with the rifles at Headley Court. 42 00:04:06,060 --> 00:04:09,780 I'm also going to describe some of the qualitative audience research, 43 00:04:10,290 --> 00:04:15,840 and I'm going to look at two key moments within the work and focus on the audience's responses. 44 00:04:16,920 --> 00:04:24,420 We're focusing on the live performances in two performance areas one at the Rifle Club and one in Nottingham, 45 00:04:24,420 --> 00:04:27,780 which was a sort of much more mainstream, sort of normal theatre, I suppose. 46 00:04:28,740 --> 00:04:34,080 First, however, I feel it's important to position the work in the context, the political context of the UK. 47 00:04:35,460 --> 00:04:41,460 At the time of the first performance of that, five soldiers took place in the UK, which was April to June 2010. 48 00:04:41,790 --> 00:04:43,950 Afghanistan was prominent in the news. 49 00:04:44,340 --> 00:04:50,310 Also, debate was intensifying on whether it was time for Britain to reduce its commitment to the war effort on financial grounds. 50 00:04:50,910 --> 00:04:58,260 Interestingly, audiences of five soldiers did not refer to any such reports or political discussions in their responses. 51 00:04:58,920 --> 00:05:04,670 This was a. The argument that the public felt disenfranchised and disengaged from political discourse, 52 00:05:05,510 --> 00:05:10,160 contrasting with the enshrinement of the Army in the symbolic consciousness of the British nation. 53 00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:15,560 There's been remarkably little public support for the role that the Army has been asked to play in recent years. 54 00:05:16,070 --> 00:05:22,490 In 2003, opposition to the Iraq war fuelled the largest demonstration ever seen in the UK, 55 00:05:22,700 --> 00:05:27,350 with organisers claiming that opponents to the war were up to 2 million. 56 00:05:27,950 --> 00:05:34,190 The fact that opponents of the war were powerless to prevent its outbreak resulted in a strong sense of disenfranchisement, 57 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:43,200 creating a pained distance between the public and the political class, which has had a lasting effect in the case of the war in Afghanistan. 58 00:05:43,220 --> 00:05:50,990 It has been a glaring contrast between mass opposition to engagement in the conflict and the platforms of the major UK political parties, 59 00:05:51,290 --> 00:05:58,790 all of which have argued that the presence of British troops in Afghanistan was vital for reasons of national security and humanitarian engagement. 60 00:05:59,390 --> 00:06:03,770 Those opposed to the war therefore did not find that views represented by mainstream politics, 61 00:06:04,190 --> 00:06:11,570 and especially since the failure of the anti-Iraq war demonstration, public opposition to war appears to be deprived of a political voice. 62 00:06:12,410 --> 00:06:16,790 The recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have seen rapid advancements in 63 00:06:16,790 --> 00:06:21,020 personal protective equipment and in the medical management of severe trauma. 64 00:06:21,470 --> 00:06:27,770 These gains have meant that increasing numbers of soldiers are surviving previously fatal and complex injuries. 65 00:06:28,430 --> 00:06:34,700 At the time of my initial investigation, the Ministry of Defence was releasing fatality figures when they occurred. 66 00:06:35,150 --> 00:06:41,570 Hidden from public view, however, were the injury rates incurred and the corresponding severity of the injuries. 67 00:06:42,230 --> 00:06:50,390 The media began making amputation statistics available in February 2011 after previously resisting calls for them to be released, 68 00:06:50,690 --> 00:06:57,770 along with published injury statistics, possibly for fear of further reducing public support in military action. 69 00:06:59,210 --> 00:07:10,160 Through investigating this area, I stumbled upon a key aspect of the wars and also a defining bridge between the work of the dancer and the soldier. 70 00:07:10,670 --> 00:07:17,360 Both risk bodily injury and face the experience of recovering from profound life changing injuries as part of their 71 00:07:17,360 --> 00:07:24,950 job and managed to secure access to facilities that have now since been off limits to most researchers and press. 72 00:07:25,820 --> 00:07:28,970 Perhaps the role of the artist seemed less of a threat. 73 00:07:29,540 --> 00:07:34,340 However, I sense that the military felt overwhelmed by the high rate of profound injury, 74 00:07:34,580 --> 00:07:40,250 particularly incurred in Afghanistan during Operation Herrick between 2008 and 2010, 75 00:07:41,300 --> 00:07:48,830 investigating the injury and rehabilitation of the soldiers became a focus throughout the research and creation of five soldiers. 76 00:07:49,310 --> 00:07:52,490 Having worked in dance and disability in the UK for many years. 77 00:07:52,850 --> 00:07:58,520 I was struck by the force changes in attitudes to disability in the military as it struggled to deal with 78 00:07:58,520 --> 00:08:05,330 both the high rates of amputees and new regulations regarding the armed forces and disability equality laws. 79 00:08:06,140 --> 00:08:09,260 At about the same time, in 2007, 80 00:08:09,590 --> 00:08:14,989 a former UK Army officer set up a charity Help for Heroes with widespread media 81 00:08:14,990 --> 00:08:19,190 attention and a focus on highlighting the injury and disability of soldiers. 82 00:08:19,790 --> 00:08:26,720 The charity has been highly successful in raising funds to support the rehabilitation of soldiers and ensuring public attention to these issues. 83 00:08:27,290 --> 00:08:36,200 However, the term hero could be seen as problematic to a liberal, disengaged civilian population who saw nothing heroic in the invasion. 84 00:08:36,770 --> 00:08:44,210 I also encountered responses from injured soldiers who did not see themselves as heroes, but as young men with uncertain futures. 85 00:08:45,020 --> 00:08:48,829 The complexity of their new identity, together with public perceptions, 86 00:08:48,830 --> 00:08:53,630 led to some soldiers to refuse to be interviewed or involved with publicity for the project. 87 00:08:54,140 --> 00:08:59,030 Consequently, while public awareness of the injury rate increased and was made more visible in the media, 88 00:08:59,420 --> 00:09:02,990 many soldiers were privately unhappy about the way in which their injured bodies 89 00:09:03,230 --> 00:09:07,400 were being portrayed at a time of fighting for employment rights and compensation. 90 00:09:08,180 --> 00:09:15,770 The public might see their injuries as the cost of war or their sacrifice, but many of soldiers had joined the Army for very different reasons, 91 00:09:16,160 --> 00:09:20,870 looking for stable employment, training and education in the sense of strong identity. 92 00:09:21,350 --> 00:09:28,070 The risk of injury was what one amputee soldier told to me as something that was just never going to happen to me. 93 00:09:28,850 --> 00:09:36,409 But these representations of the injured soldier were perhaps the only signs of what the public encountered through the charity appeals, 94 00:09:36,410 --> 00:09:42,740 X Factor, single hits and sponsored treks with a public highly detached from any sense of physical warfare. 95 00:09:43,160 --> 00:09:48,920 The injured body was the only visible sign of the impact of war mediated by the title hero. 96 00:09:50,180 --> 00:09:57,530 In contrast to this representation, the injury in our soldiers is starker, more brutal, shown without the aura of heroism. 97 00:09:57,980 --> 00:09:59,030 The decision to focus. 98 00:09:59,090 --> 00:10:06,830 On the injury of a soldier at the end of the dance piece in a shocking manner that highlights the loss of an individual's physicality was crucial, 99 00:10:07,310 --> 00:10:13,430 influenced both the work, how the work was framed and its surrounding debate, as well as what was not included. 100 00:10:13,820 --> 00:10:15,680 For example, there is no enemy in the work. 101 00:10:16,010 --> 00:10:23,690 That choice was made after discussions about the tactics used by insurgents in Afghanistan and the highest incident rate of IED attacks. 102 00:10:24,020 --> 00:10:28,250 With a human enemy seldom encountered by infantry patrols. 103 00:10:28,880 --> 00:10:34,400 The use of weapons was also excluded, despite soldiers assertions that their weapons became part of their body. 104 00:10:34,700 --> 00:10:38,720 It was felt that toy, like replicas, cumbersome and expensive, 105 00:10:39,020 --> 00:10:45,020 would give the work an action and visual effect which would deflect the focus from the soldier's bodies and movement. 106 00:10:45,830 --> 00:10:53,840 Because of its detailed re-enactment of specific military details, five soldiers this deceptively realistic term military audience. 107 00:10:54,380 --> 00:11:00,650 However, the work is set in an imagined, claustrophobic compound an aircraft hangar, a base drill hall, 108 00:11:00,650 --> 00:11:05,570 an empty room, the kind of place where soldiers in reality are grouped and told to wait. 109 00:11:05,810 --> 00:11:09,680 Their boredom and lack of control. A real aspect of the soldier's life. 110 00:11:09,920 --> 00:11:13,880 But dramaturg, actually providing a space where anything can happen. 111 00:11:14,570 --> 00:11:21,200 It is both a real and a fantasy space where the soldiers fears or their memories are replayed or imagined. 112 00:11:21,860 --> 00:11:26,360 Despite the impossibility of staging a realistic portrayal of war, 113 00:11:26,720 --> 00:11:33,950 what is going on in the soldiers bodies and in their heads can be portrayed through the mix of identifiable signifiers, 114 00:11:33,950 --> 00:11:38,180 of military action, and through the beauty and freedom of the dancing self, 115 00:11:38,540 --> 00:11:43,580 allowing an ambiguity of place and meaning to be given over to the audience to interpret. 116 00:11:44,390 --> 00:11:46,880 While the story of soldiers is often a male story, 117 00:11:47,150 --> 00:11:55,130 a very deliberate choice of one female upsets the balance of male identity narrative and allows for a scope of tension and drama, 118 00:11:55,430 --> 00:11:59,270 as well as a realistic reflection of women. Now on the front lines. 119 00:12:01,340 --> 00:12:12,620 I'm going to talk a little bit about the genesis and making of the piece after a severe knee injury in 2007 and the resulting surgery. 120 00:12:13,010 --> 00:12:21,290 I had a vision like dream of flying on a desert war zone and realised that my left leg had been blown off. 121 00:12:23,060 --> 00:12:30,920 I could still see my legs fall to my right, a large lump of bone and flesh dislocated from my body, but still my body. 122 00:12:31,520 --> 00:12:35,900 My first thought was shock. My second thought was surprise. 123 00:12:36,530 --> 00:12:46,130 I discovered in my dream state that I could lose my limbs, but I didn't lose my soul while my body was my dancer's identity. 124 00:12:46,460 --> 00:12:48,890 By losing parts of it, I didn't lose myself. 125 00:12:49,940 --> 00:12:55,970 Switching on the telly the following morning, I was confronted yet again with images of more soldiers killed in Iraq. 126 00:12:56,450 --> 00:13:01,100 I stopped and looked at them. The dreamed memory of the battlefield still within me. 127 00:13:01,490 --> 00:13:05,900 And I saw and felt the connection between the dancer's body and the soldier's body. 128 00:13:06,860 --> 00:13:11,329 I wondered how a soldier could risk not just injury and the potential loss of limbs, 129 00:13:11,330 --> 00:13:19,190 but even his life for a job to the role of soldiering and the physical act of soldiering mean that the soldier is willing to take those risks. 130 00:13:19,580 --> 00:13:24,020 Is that perhaps even a thrill? An enjoyment? A love of soldiering? 131 00:13:24,650 --> 00:13:27,800 There have been war artists, war photographers, war poets. 132 00:13:28,070 --> 00:13:30,620 But the medium of the profession is their body. 133 00:13:31,070 --> 00:13:38,180 Perhaps a war choreographer could get under the skin of a soldier and portray how it actually feels to be a soldier. 134 00:13:39,200 --> 00:13:41,000 In her work, the body in pain alone. 135 00:13:41,090 --> 00:13:50,930 Gary points out that although injury is an inevitable by-product of war, it continues to disingenuously be described as accidental or unwanted. 136 00:13:51,560 --> 00:13:56,360 She argues that civilians and politicians discuss war in a way that is remote from its real purpose, 137 00:13:56,360 --> 00:14:00,469 its true nature, and talks of how, by contrast with this language, 138 00:14:00,470 --> 00:14:05,570 a real wound can stupefied us into silence or shame us with the shame of a 139 00:14:05,570 --> 00:14:10,550 powerlessness to approach the open human body and make it not open as before. 140 00:14:11,420 --> 00:14:16,430 Theodore Nelson and trained to kill. Talks of the sexual arousal of mortal risk. 141 00:14:16,430 --> 00:14:20,120 The unbearable building up of tension being released by contact, 142 00:14:20,450 --> 00:14:25,189 and the strong [INAUDIBLE] thrill of shared conflict with the comrades I once discovered. 143 00:14:25,190 --> 00:14:28,220 Was there a link between aggression and repressed sexual feeling? 144 00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:35,600 Is killing itself sexualised? US Marines use the term eye [INAUDIBLE] to describe setting their sights on a target. 145 00:14:35,900 --> 00:14:42,320 And Glenn great hooks the lust for life conflict in the Warriors War is all about force and domination. 146 00:14:42,320 --> 00:14:49,130 The dominator and the dominated women are now embedded in the US UK military but have an ambivalent role. 147 00:14:49,580 --> 00:14:53,120 They're not part of the infantry and they're not able to front fight on the front line. 148 00:14:53,360 --> 00:14:58,340 However, women are very much on the front line, particularly in their role as medics. 149 00:14:58,980 --> 00:15:06,210 Also, although women cannot have close combat roles, they are in very dangerous situations, carry weapons and are often under fire. 150 00:15:06,750 --> 00:15:13,649 Indeed, following an announcement by UK Defence Secretary in May 2014 that he was ordering a review of women's roles, 151 00:15:13,650 --> 00:15:19,830 it now looks very likely that women will soon be eligible to serve in combat roles in the British Army for the first time. 152 00:15:21,360 --> 00:15:30,400 It took me nearly two years to secure and became my attachment to the fourth Battalion, the rifles for rifles. 153 00:15:30,420 --> 00:15:39,720 I was finally able to join them for a two week period on training exercises in Dartmoor Barracks in Beaufort and on exercises on Salisbury Plain. 154 00:15:40,410 --> 00:15:41,489 Following this attachment, 155 00:15:41,490 --> 00:15:49,080 I also secured a week's account at the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre Headley Court and visited the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine, 156 00:15:49,080 --> 00:15:51,720 then at Sally Oak Hospital, Birmingham. 157 00:15:52,380 --> 00:16:01,110 The two week experience with full rifles was highly demanding and full of incredibly strong and powerful experiences and emotions for me. 158 00:16:01,770 --> 00:16:05,310 It began with a four day and night exercise on Dartmoor, 159 00:16:05,580 --> 00:16:10,709 where I struggled with the £70 burger and helmet and body armour over a continuous 160 00:16:10,710 --> 00:16:16,080 march with battle exercises taking place throughout each day and early dawn attacks. 161 00:16:17,550 --> 00:16:20,820 The following account is from my diary, written during the secondment. 162 00:16:21,300 --> 00:16:25,680 As dawn came, eyes played tricks on you. Every bush looks like a soldier. 163 00:16:25,710 --> 00:16:30,060 Very eerie. Silent. Serious pain begins in sweating like a pig. 164 00:16:30,390 --> 00:16:35,550 So many layers of close friend. The troops sitting along the bank, almost invisible in the darkness. 165 00:16:35,790 --> 00:16:39,780 Quite bizarre with their packs and helmets. It look like soldiers from the Somme. 166 00:16:40,770 --> 00:16:45,210 My role within the battalion certainly changed as the two weeks progressed. 167 00:16:45,660 --> 00:16:49,770 At each stage I was being tested, assessed and encouraged. 168 00:16:50,310 --> 00:16:53,640 This participatory approach afforded some great benefits. 169 00:16:54,120 --> 00:16:57,270 After encountering shared sleep deprivation with a group of soldiers, 170 00:16:57,570 --> 00:17:01,860 the guards would be lowered and the men stopped presenting macho defensive postures and 171 00:17:01,860 --> 00:17:06,840 opened up about their lives and experiences both in battle and on return to the UK. 172 00:17:07,380 --> 00:17:13,170 In fact, after the initial hostility, there was a general openness to questioning and quite a sociable atmosphere. 173 00:17:13,980 --> 00:17:19,830 It's worth stating that at times I felt my dance training was extremely useful during this learning phase. 174 00:17:20,400 --> 00:17:25,680 The military world is a world of unspoken rules, regulations, instructions, 175 00:17:25,680 --> 00:17:32,550 and highly subtle and complex power hierarchies with a dancer's instinct to watch carefully and unobtrusively. 176 00:17:32,880 --> 00:17:38,340 I was able to follow the rules, fit in, and do the right thing without being spotted as out of place. 177 00:17:39,030 --> 00:17:42,240 Despite this, I had quite a constant fear of getting it wrong. 178 00:17:42,540 --> 00:17:47,280 As the following diary extract reveals, Fear of being late is more than being wrong. 179 00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:51,440 It's like everything starts to become a moral issue. Being late is a moral issue. 180 00:17:51,480 --> 00:17:55,170 Being in the wrong uniform is a moral issue. Being late is probably a cardinal sin. 181 00:17:55,620 --> 00:17:58,800 Why does everything seem to be a moral issue and why do you want to be good? 182 00:17:59,160 --> 00:18:02,250 Is that how the training works? You always want to be a good girl or a good boy. 183 00:18:02,250 --> 00:18:07,860 So you obey instructions. And so you just do as you're told because it means you're good, even if what you're doing is not good. 184 00:18:07,920 --> 00:18:15,209 Not good at all. I suggest that this attitude corresponds with a dancer's training, good behaviour, good physical abilities. 185 00:18:15,210 --> 00:18:19,440 Praise one wishes to avoid mistakes, avoid looking weak or stupid, 186 00:18:19,770 --> 00:18:23,730 and say both dance and the military encourage an atmosphere of doing what you're told. 187 00:18:24,420 --> 00:18:32,070 I became absorbed in the new language of the military world and used it to understand how personnel coordinate and analyse troop and battle movements. 188 00:18:32,640 --> 00:18:36,660 As a choreographer, some of the battle manoeuvres were quick to read the no, no. 189 00:18:36,690 --> 00:18:43,889 The notion of no movement without fire really struck me. Soldier work and work in pairs were two part groups of soldier one firing at the 190 00:18:43,890 --> 00:18:47,820 enemy to give covered soldier to who advances while the enemy's heads are down. 191 00:18:48,210 --> 00:18:52,770 One soldier to which is the forward position the soldier swapped role, a sequence called fire manoeuvre. 192 00:18:53,310 --> 00:19:01,590 While the movements it was easy to do in theory, in practice, it was difficult to execute on tricky terrain, even in only simulated exercises. 193 00:19:01,980 --> 00:19:07,020 The eye becomes all important. A bush and hill become a crouching soldier to the tired eye, 194 00:19:07,320 --> 00:19:13,770 an unknown and unaware enemy spied through the sides of a rifle, a cause of pleasure as you seek your target. 195 00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:22,860 I felt generally tolerated, even if not accepted by most of the soldiers, rarely encountering overt sexism or any kind of bullying towards me. 196 00:19:23,310 --> 00:19:27,260 But my diary extracts reveal a sense of general intimidation at times. 197 00:19:27,270 --> 00:19:31,139 It's okay, I tell myself. You're bound to feel a bit lost during the bloody army. 198 00:19:31,140 --> 00:19:35,250 The real army is intimidating. Don't make your idea of yourself. 199 00:19:35,250 --> 00:19:42,420 Hold your dignity and pride. I also sense a contradiction of how the soldiers talked of their mothers, wives and girlfriends, 200 00:19:42,660 --> 00:19:48,450 and how women in general were were discussed with references to prostitutes, strippers and slags. 201 00:19:48,960 --> 00:19:56,250 Women were judged only on their appearance alone, and yet I was treated with a rather old fashioned gentlemanly charm at times. 202 00:19:56,790 --> 00:20:01,470 I did feel that it would be hard for. Most of these men's take orders from a female officer. 203 00:20:01,920 --> 00:20:06,330 I also sensed a lot of positioning around me among the men as they judged one another. 204 00:20:06,780 --> 00:20:10,690 The men analysed each other's strengths, weaknesses and leadership capabilities. 205 00:20:10,710 --> 00:20:16,530 Constantly, at times, their tone of conversation, particularly during meals, could be adversarial. 206 00:20:16,710 --> 00:20:22,350 And they made a decision to always answer back. This seemed to be effective and gained a certain grudging respect. 207 00:20:23,430 --> 00:20:33,000 After my secondment with full rifles, I then spent time at Headley Court and at Sandy Oak Hospital at Hadley Court. 208 00:20:33,030 --> 00:20:38,340 I shadowed a rehabilitation instructor, a physiotherapist and a clinical physician. 209 00:20:38,850 --> 00:20:40,589 I was allowed access to the patients, 210 00:20:40,590 --> 00:20:46,200 and I was able to talk to them about their injuries and their experiences of both war and their life after injury. 211 00:20:47,640 --> 00:20:54,120 After these experiences, I took quite a long time to deal with the challenging intensity and depth of the subject matter, 212 00:20:54,570 --> 00:21:00,810 and then started to process what could be made out of this to create a work of dance theatre. 213 00:21:01,620 --> 00:21:07,110 I began to form my creative team and was delighted to meet with the visual artist David Cottrell, 214 00:21:07,410 --> 00:21:13,440 who had visited Afghanistan with joint medical forces and spent time at Headley Court and Sally Oak. 215 00:21:14,400 --> 00:21:17,520 These are some of his images. 216 00:21:19,540 --> 00:21:27,280 Being able to share our thoughts was incredibly helpful as we found parallels across both individual experiences. 217 00:21:27,940 --> 00:21:33,460 Together, we had a small window of insight into the world of the soldier in training, 218 00:21:33,820 --> 00:21:38,980 the soldier on deployment, and the injured soldier in hospital and rehabilitation. 219 00:21:41,850 --> 00:21:45,450 You have to sit here, as was no courage. 220 00:21:46,050 --> 00:21:48,930 And these are his images from Afghanistan. 221 00:21:50,040 --> 00:21:57,900 And with these experiences still vivid in our minds, we agreed to work together to represent the soldiers physical experiences on stage. 222 00:21:58,440 --> 00:22:04,230 I'm going to jump ahead a little bit and not talk through how the work was made. 223 00:22:07,780 --> 00:22:19,290 So. This is us in Baton Rouge training in the studio and the wee wee wee did the 224 00:22:19,290 --> 00:22:23,129 training at work sent to me overnight to do battle exercises around the campus, 225 00:22:23,130 --> 00:22:26,970 which terrified quite a few students. Five in the morning. 226 00:22:28,170 --> 00:22:31,889 And we we we had some some some real weapons. 227 00:22:31,890 --> 00:22:40,110 And then the theatre actually had to get new insurance to allow the weapons into the studio, and we had to block out all the windows. 228 00:22:40,110 --> 00:22:43,980 It was terribly exciting. The director was very excited about this. 229 00:22:45,660 --> 00:22:54,150 And once we sort of had I did a lot of preparation with the dancers and once we sort of they had training with weapons expert security experts. 230 00:22:54,630 --> 00:22:58,530 We then went into the studio and we started sort of trying to define that point, 231 00:22:58,530 --> 00:23:05,670 abstract qualities that trying to find movement vocabularies through the military means, but also turning it into dance as well. 232 00:23:08,040 --> 00:23:11,100 And then some of them went on a two day training weekend. 233 00:23:11,340 --> 00:23:17,400 One was one dancer was a former soldier in the Polish Army and one was a former cadet. 234 00:23:18,390 --> 00:23:23,130 And the contrast of the tracksuit bottoms, the cartoon tracksuit bottoms in the boots, 235 00:23:23,940 --> 00:23:28,200 I think one of the dancers said it was great because her feet didn't get injured because she was in boots all the time. 236 00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:35,370 And normally dancers get really messed up, bare feet and oops, we stopped. 237 00:23:37,260 --> 00:23:38,159 And this is us. 238 00:23:38,160 --> 00:23:47,150 We, we actually took the work to Paderborn and we did a residency and we worked with families, teenagers, families over in the base there. 239 00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:53,099 And we did a whole week of workshops exploring. They didn't necessarily want to talk about their issues, 240 00:23:53,100 --> 00:23:58,829 but actually exploring things through dance meant that it was another way to look at things that were already affecting them. 241 00:23:58,830 --> 00:24:02,580 And we put together a curtain raiser and they performed to their families. 242 00:24:02,850 --> 00:24:08,790 And then we did the show. We converted the cinema at the base into a sort of theatrical space. 243 00:24:12,330 --> 00:24:16,110 It premiered in Birmingham in April 2010. 244 00:24:17,040 --> 00:24:23,250 The work has a three part structure, so just confined in a pen like set where they wait between periods of action. 245 00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:29,820 The weighting structure allows the boredom intention to build each scene, being an imagined evocation of a true to life scenario. 246 00:24:30,420 --> 00:24:36,600 The first part builds in ideas, a training and drill with the soldiers forming a machine like identity through long, 247 00:24:36,600 --> 00:24:39,900 complex drill manoeuvres and double time marches. 248 00:24:40,290 --> 00:24:43,740 They aim an aggressive, honed attention at the audience. 249 00:24:44,340 --> 00:24:47,670 This training section is intended to dehumanise the participants, 250 00:24:47,910 --> 00:24:53,280 but also to allow the audience to become lulled by the almost meditative quality of the repetition and rhythm. 251 00:24:53,880 --> 00:25:00,900 The second part lets the audience see the soldiers as humans attacking each other, playfully dancing and fighting together in a nightclub, 252 00:25:01,140 --> 00:25:06,270 preying on women and the intense stress of waiting for long periods and close friendships. 253 00:25:06,720 --> 00:25:11,850 The audience is shown relationships, forming tensions, building booms, bonds formed together. 254 00:25:12,330 --> 00:25:18,030 Part three is in effect on the ground and starts with a helicopter scene which develops into a skydiving dance. 255 00:25:18,450 --> 00:25:22,590 We build the long wait for an attack or explosion with a section called Patrol. 256 00:25:22,890 --> 00:25:27,930 The rising tension evident on the faces of the soldiers as they carefully tread on unsafe land. 257 00:25:28,470 --> 00:25:31,470 When the explosion comes, the moment is stretched out. 258 00:25:31,470 --> 00:25:35,430 The youngest soldier spinning and spinning before hitting the ground injured. 259 00:25:35,910 --> 00:25:41,970 The final part is an intense solo at dances, legs strapped so that he appears to be a double amputee. 260 00:25:42,510 --> 00:25:47,880 His colleagues sit along beside waiting again as he fights to find his new identity. 261 00:25:48,960 --> 00:25:52,020 Good talk a little bit about the qualitative audience. 262 00:25:52,020 --> 00:25:59,980 Research director Professor Reynolds became involved in researching audience responses to five soldiers. 263 00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:06,150 After my collaboration with the owner on a project in 2008 called Watching Dance. 264 00:26:06,690 --> 00:26:12,720 In some ways, the new research was a natural continuation of this collaboration throughout his research. 265 00:26:12,930 --> 00:26:18,299 My choreography, which explored the effects on spectators of their awareness of the physical presence of 266 00:26:18,300 --> 00:26:24,690 performers and particularly effort breathing in the impact of sounds produced by dancers bodies. 267 00:26:25,260 --> 00:26:31,560 The body was at the centre of this new work and I was intrigued to see how this would play out in the context of the military theme. 268 00:26:32,760 --> 00:26:41,520 So she attended the premiere at the festival in Birmingham and then performance in the Writers Cup in Mayfair. 269 00:26:41,940 --> 00:26:43,080 After that performance, 270 00:26:43,350 --> 00:26:50,100 interviewed by telephone audience members who were either members or former members of the armed forces or current or former dancers. 271 00:26:50,580 --> 00:26:51,209 Subsequently, 272 00:26:51,210 --> 00:26:58,890 they attended films at Lakeside Arts Centre in Nottingham and conducted a focus group involving ten audience members of the general public. 273 00:26:59,490 --> 00:27:05,430 And the reason for including military personnel and dancers in the research was that she was interested to certain what effect 274 00:27:05,430 --> 00:27:10,980 the particular professional backgrounds and training of these groups would have in their experience of the performance. 275 00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:15,450 Individual interviews were chosen in order to explore the responses in some depth. 276 00:27:18,160 --> 00:27:24,910 Responses to physicality emerged as a key theme right across the discussions, albeit with different emphasis. 277 00:27:25,510 --> 00:27:33,700 Frequently, it was the audiences embodied visceral responses that led them to reflect on the wider implications of what they were watching. 278 00:27:34,240 --> 00:27:37,750 Their comments focussed both on the general physicality of the dancers performance 279 00:27:38,110 --> 00:27:42,370 and also some key moments that were picked out for attention across the cohort. 280 00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:47,950 These included the nightclub scene, the helicopter scene, and the final injury scene. 281 00:27:49,660 --> 00:27:53,980 Interestingly, given my wish to explore the links between the embodied experience of dance and the military, 282 00:27:54,250 --> 00:27:58,930 both officers and dancers responded very strongly to the athleticism and expenditure 283 00:27:58,930 --> 00:28:03,130 of energy which they related to in terms of their own personal experience. 284 00:28:04,840 --> 00:28:11,590 Each group was surprised at the other's physicality. James, an officer, commented that although this was a dance show, 285 00:28:11,920 --> 00:28:17,950 actually there were so many parts that were hugely physical and they kept up that stamina endurance for a long period. 286 00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:19,269 It was very impressive. 287 00:28:19,270 --> 00:28:25,780 And had you not known they were just dancers, if you'd photographed them not dancing in a different with their look and dripping with sweat. 288 00:28:26,140 --> 00:28:33,380 Do you think that was a psychology of training or having just been running around of Africa, in Afghanistan in 40 degrees of heat, your hands. 289 00:28:33,400 --> 00:28:40,660 An officer was surprised by the energy. I was absolutely fascinated and no one ever stopped in the whole one hour and the energy. 290 00:28:42,100 --> 00:28:47,320 For his part, John, a dancer, was surprised by the physicality of the soldier's experience. 291 00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:51,640 The power that I see is amazing. I didn't quite realise how physical. 292 00:28:51,640 --> 00:28:55,930 I mean, I understand soldiers would have to be very strong and very well trained and all of those things, 293 00:28:56,290 --> 00:29:01,120 but I didn't quite think it would be so hard and so regimental and so athletic and physical. 294 00:29:02,110 --> 00:29:06,640 MARTIN An officer said that he was amazed at the physical sort of levels that they had. 295 00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:11,920 He felt this went beyond acting. It was very tough and it wasn't acted physical. 296 00:29:12,160 --> 00:29:14,649 It was it was it wasn't acted physically. 297 00:29:14,650 --> 00:29:21,430 It was very physical as well as the degree of effort put in by the dancers and the high level of physical fitness. 298 00:29:21,820 --> 00:29:29,559 The effect of the dancers physical presence broke through visual distance by impacting on other senses effectively. 299 00:29:29,560 --> 00:29:32,740 If you would near enough, you would have been able to smell them. 300 00:29:33,100 --> 00:29:36,880 They were sweating, Jesus. They were sweating. And you could definitely tell that. 301 00:29:37,240 --> 00:29:40,720 You could tell when people were having a break effectively just because they needed to. 302 00:29:41,020 --> 00:29:45,340 And you could hear the sound of people hitting the ground as well, which was also pretty brutal. 303 00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:53,980 For the officers, the experience of watching the piece evoked memories of combat in preparation for combat as experienced in the body. 304 00:29:54,910 --> 00:30:00,010 Then going actually out an operation, being dropped by helicopter and getting ready and so on, 305 00:30:00,340 --> 00:30:03,430 you could feel the tension and that was really communicated. 306 00:30:03,910 --> 00:30:10,390 And there's a lot of tension because you don't quite know what's going to happen and your body is getting prepared and the adrenaline is starting. 307 00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,049 That brought back memories for Tim and other officers. 308 00:30:14,050 --> 00:30:18,820 The tension is connected with embodied memories triggered by the performance, 309 00:30:19,270 --> 00:30:23,770 whereas for the dancers it's more about an embodied experience of war as provoked by the 310 00:30:23,770 --> 00:30:29,680 performance itself and felt in the moment of watching this sometimes had a discomfiting effect. 311 00:30:29,950 --> 00:30:33,550 There's self triggered reflections on the war situation. 312 00:30:34,990 --> 00:30:38,680 There is no pretence, you know, it's just hard, if not harder. 313 00:30:39,130 --> 00:30:44,380 So you have absolutely no. It's all there. You can see exactly how hard they work, how much sweat. 314 00:30:44,800 --> 00:30:51,070 And it's kind of frightening to see that. And sometimes it makes you feel uncomfortable because there is no sort of an illusion. 315 00:30:51,340 --> 00:30:55,450 It's not a piece that she dreams out of nowhere. That's what's happening. 316 00:30:58,030 --> 00:31:04,570 I'm going to look at to quickly look at two key moments of the work and the audience responses. 317 00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:09,040 One part is the so-called night club scene. It's not it's not a nightclub. 318 00:31:09,040 --> 00:31:13,000 No disco ball comes down or anything. It's just an imagined space. 319 00:31:13,450 --> 00:31:18,999 And this was inspired by conversations with soldiers about how they let off steam when they returned from Iraq or 320 00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:25,240 Afghanistan and how they loved going out with their soldier means because only they understood what they'd been through. 321 00:31:25,810 --> 00:31:29,830 The dramaturgy of the work means there is never a total specificity of exactly 322 00:31:29,830 --> 00:31:33,190 where they are in the way they're trapped forever in this aircraft hangar. 323 00:31:33,610 --> 00:31:36,760 And these are at once imaginings, memories and fears. 324 00:31:37,240 --> 00:31:41,140 Night club scene is an evocation of many experiences I've been told about, 325 00:31:41,590 --> 00:31:46,960 often because the men are used to being an all male environments, they do prefer to let off steam together and behave badly. 326 00:31:47,530 --> 00:31:54,050 It's a non-specific outpouring of male aggression and tension, including sexual tension choreographed to pop hit. 327 00:31:54,100 --> 00:32:01,390 I got a feeling by the Black Eyed Peas. The nightclub scene starts with the floor bump dance by the male dancers, but gets progressively wilder. 328 00:32:01,690 --> 00:32:05,680 Pogo ing jumping turns to pushing, which quickly turns to violence. 329 00:32:06,100 --> 00:32:11,259 The physical needs of the men are strong. They need to touch one another, even if that touches violent. 330 00:32:11,260 --> 00:32:16,240 At first, the violence breaks through their skins until they can legitimately hug. 331 00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:19,360 And hold on to one another. Underneath, they are scared. 332 00:32:19,360 --> 00:32:25,180 Young men that don't develops until they're almost brainless with the perceived physical effects of drink. 333 00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:33,040 And then they see a female. All through this time, the female soldier has retired from the men and seems to be in her own space, 334 00:32:33,040 --> 00:32:37,959 but perhaps in her own room at the front corner of the stage, slowly removes her clothes, 335 00:32:37,960 --> 00:32:41,320 neatly folds them and takes down her hair from its tight bum. 336 00:32:41,830 --> 00:32:48,760 Female soldiers talked of letting go of their soldier mask, but only in the privacy of their rooms and needing time to be alone, 337 00:32:49,060 --> 00:32:53,050 to feel like a woman and do girly things such as hair care, body cam. 338 00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:59,559 The women start to pay to herself with talk. And this scene is based on a true account of a woman soldier in Afghanistan, 339 00:32:59,560 --> 00:33:05,950 talking about how vital her talk was to preventing sweat rashes and making her feel better in a combat zone. 340 00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:11,440 In the work we use as a theatrical device, the men becoming aware of the scent, 341 00:33:11,440 --> 00:33:16,629 an aura of a woman near them, conducting recorded interviews with soldiers at full rifles. 342 00:33:16,630 --> 00:33:22,570 I asked the soldier what he missed most while away on tour, and he cited cited the smell of a women's perfume. 343 00:33:23,740 --> 00:33:30,160 The dancers, too, remarked on how they smelled the talk, and it brought them out of their masculine world of fighting and brawling. 344 00:33:30,160 --> 00:33:36,130 On stage, the men finally see the female soldier, and the setting is deliberately ambiguous. 345 00:33:36,520 --> 00:33:44,290 Is she a dancer in the club, a stripper prostitute, or is she the same soldier alone in her room stretching and dancing alone? 346 00:33:44,710 --> 00:33:50,530 Or does she exist only in the men's imagination if she starts trying to seduce the men? 347 00:33:50,800 --> 00:33:59,410 Or is she a fantasy in their heads? The stage allows for this ambiguity to work into the magical and disturbing quality of the scene. 348 00:34:00,760 --> 00:34:04,480 The female soldier has all the power in the room for seconds. 349 00:34:04,510 --> 00:34:06,310 She has the power of sexuality. 350 00:34:06,610 --> 00:34:14,530 The men almost seem to fear her, but through their looking it tends to last in the last full hour turns to stalking and they look like hungry wolves. 351 00:34:14,530 --> 00:34:21,819 They act like a pack, honing in on their prey. There is a threat of rape and they each grab a male partner and pretend to [INAUDIBLE] each other. 352 00:34:21,820 --> 00:34:28,090 Eyes locked and the women playing again, intimidating her with her sexual desire, dominance and deep aggression. 353 00:34:28,480 --> 00:34:33,910 Tension builds the men chase until she turns and stops them with a dignified and strong stare. 354 00:34:34,420 --> 00:34:36,850 Stare at their mothers, their wives, their sisters, 355 00:34:37,150 --> 00:34:44,470 the power shifts and the female soldier goes through a transformation as they subjugate themselves before her literally worshipping her. 356 00:34:44,770 --> 00:34:48,249 She is queen country, all women and all motherhood. 357 00:34:48,250 --> 00:34:49,990 To them, the sacred goddess. 358 00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:57,100 The moment ends and the infatuated sergeant tries to win her over, making a laugh to take away the memory of the so-called attack, 359 00:34:57,790 --> 00:35:01,810 the tension of the scene with the female soldiers, very feminine solo, 360 00:35:02,140 --> 00:35:09,760 her male colleagues, aggressive pursuit of her and the threat of imminent potential assault was commented on by many of the non-military spectators, 361 00:35:10,060 --> 00:35:12,970 while also striking a chord with the officers interviewed. 362 00:35:14,620 --> 00:35:21,220 It was a very, very good portrayal of the sort of sexual issue that arises on a six month tour away from your wife and girlfriends. 363 00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:25,600 The unleashing of the sexual charge is quite sudden. It's sudden and unexpected. 364 00:35:25,990 --> 00:35:29,680 As the female soldier without her fatigues reveals a new feminine identity, 365 00:35:29,950 --> 00:35:34,410 which her colleagues have difficulty dealing with and which triggers aggressive rivalry between them. 366 00:35:35,500 --> 00:35:40,150 There's also the thing of a whole lot of guys and one girl and the jealousy between them. 367 00:35:40,390 --> 00:35:42,370 And when you want her, every woman looks amazing. 368 00:35:42,370 --> 00:35:48,879 And if you particularly she looks even more amazing in that a real sort of very realistic thing that people have to sort of deal with, 369 00:35:48,880 --> 00:35:54,040 which at one point this girl, often very slight pretty girl, other than, you know, I think it's a mate. 370 00:35:54,040 --> 00:35:58,120 And the next thing she has a bit of a romantic interest. The next thing, she's just a sort of colleague. 371 00:35:58,870 --> 00:36:08,710 This account is the complexity and the confused feelings that can arise in a soldier situation and the other spectators could also relate to. 372 00:36:09,190 --> 00:36:13,900 One of the dancers interviewed said that her husband was in the parachute regiment in the T.A. for two years, 373 00:36:14,410 --> 00:36:17,200 which she felt helped to connect to the emotions of the piece. 374 00:36:17,560 --> 00:36:22,120 So on one level, she was thinking of her male soldiers experience the presence of women. 375 00:36:22,930 --> 00:36:25,390 From my experience of knowing soldiers and hearing about them, 376 00:36:25,840 --> 00:36:31,120 very true to probably what happens 99% of the time that they're having to kind of hold back as well. 377 00:36:31,570 --> 00:36:36,459 And there'll be moments when they're just it's just another moment and another moment when they suddenly look at each other and think, 378 00:36:36,460 --> 00:36:39,880 gosh, they're really stunning or, you know, there's a sense of attraction. 379 00:36:40,750 --> 00:36:45,969 Both the female dancers interviewed were particularly affected by the scene with a female soldier, 380 00:36:45,970 --> 00:36:51,970 which was the first example they cited when they asked them to describe a moment of moments which they remembered for doing. 381 00:36:51,970 --> 00:36:55,959 This was a situation she could relate to as a woman. Made me think about the tension. 382 00:36:55,960 --> 00:37:00,160 If a woman is over with a bunch of men fighting in a sexual tension for that long. 383 00:37:00,610 --> 00:37:04,840 Being away from loved ones, I guess it was a kind of I was kind of concerned for that woman. 384 00:37:06,100 --> 00:37:10,659 Peter, a dancer, also chose the section as the one he particularly liked in the focus group. 385 00:37:10,660 --> 00:37:16,180 There was quite an extensive discussion about the scene in the way express conflict between frustrated sexual desire for the. 386 00:37:16,240 --> 00:37:19,290 Women on the one hand and respect for her on the other. 387 00:37:19,650 --> 00:37:25,920 People like this ambiguity, in contrast between animalistic group behaviour and the emotional needs underneath, 388 00:37:26,220 --> 00:37:32,910 which made the men gentle and respectful. Several people expressed their agreement with Maria when she described her interpretation 389 00:37:32,910 --> 00:37:37,560 of the female dancer's behaviour as facing up bravely to the soldiers aggression. 390 00:37:37,830 --> 00:37:42,930 As if she were saying, Remember, I am one of you. We're all the same here, so don't come with that. 391 00:37:43,470 --> 00:37:46,560 And she goes and they just face away. I thought that was so powerful. 392 00:37:46,920 --> 00:37:52,500 Amazing, powerful and wonderful were adjectives used by other women in the group describing this section. 393 00:37:54,540 --> 00:38:03,629 The final section of the work where one of the soldiers is seriously injured and takes the audience in the performance and a long build-up of tension, 394 00:38:03,630 --> 00:38:04,950 intensity and meaning. 395 00:38:05,430 --> 00:38:12,140 The scene shifts from choreographed movement, movement that is realistic, recognisable as military into a world where dance is allowed, 396 00:38:12,150 --> 00:38:17,280 a freer rein and movement becomes a symbolic place of multiple meanings and readings. 397 00:38:20,550 --> 00:38:25,460 There are sort of moments where it almost refers to the rights of spring with 398 00:38:25,470 --> 00:38:29,700 a young male body as the sacrifice of war rather than a young female body. 399 00:38:30,120 --> 00:38:35,610 And it brings the work into the realm of the metaphysical, as in addition to evoking specific military conflicts. 400 00:38:35,910 --> 00:38:39,150 It also evokes a human quest for meaning and redemption. 401 00:38:39,990 --> 00:38:45,480 The dancers begin to chase one another ganging up on the weak soldier until he's chosen. 402 00:38:46,380 --> 00:38:51,630 Don't be so lifted in a crucifix crucifixion position. 403 00:38:51,630 --> 00:38:53,820 And then he's sort of placed in the centre of the stage. 404 00:38:54,240 --> 00:39:01,210 The dancers spin and then fool around, leaving him alone, spinning in the centre, a middle to building cacophony of sound. 405 00:39:01,230 --> 00:39:04,290 The lights dim until a soldier is lit by a single spot. 406 00:39:04,740 --> 00:39:09,719 There's a flash, an explosion, and he drops to his knees, accompanied only by a high pitched ringing. 407 00:39:09,720 --> 00:39:15,240 He dances a solo, pulling back, struggling, dragging his lower body until he lies at the edge of the light, 408 00:39:15,600 --> 00:39:19,500 shaking and convulsing in a replication of the shock reaction to blood loss. 409 00:39:20,370 --> 00:39:23,999 The scene in which one of the soldier loses his legs in the blast was taken from 410 00:39:24,000 --> 00:39:27,910 a description by a soldier who survived an IED blast that cost him his leg. 411 00:39:28,530 --> 00:39:34,710 He was thrown upwards, seeing lights, then moved, then sky, then mud again as he went head over heels four times. 412 00:39:35,160 --> 00:39:38,700 Then all he heard was the screeching in his ears, totally deafening. 413 00:39:39,180 --> 00:39:44,610 He wanted to scream and fight and run, but it took him a while to realise that he did not have his legs. 414 00:39:45,090 --> 00:39:51,240 And then he started shaking. Soldiers can lose all their blood and minutes of their arteries are not tied to the tourniquet. 415 00:39:52,200 --> 00:39:56,430 To describe how time seemed to stop and everything was distorted. 416 00:39:56,910 --> 00:39:59,730 We took that literally and distorted all the moments. 417 00:39:59,930 --> 00:40:06,270 The quick things happened slowly, ever so slowly, as a soldier struggles to fight until he collapses, 418 00:40:07,950 --> 00:40:11,640 the other foot jump up and instead of running to him, as one might expect, 419 00:40:11,940 --> 00:40:16,290 they have to very carefully feel and pick their way across the stage to him. 420 00:40:16,680 --> 00:40:21,300 Fingertips representing the thin metal sticks used to check for IEDs. 421 00:40:21,790 --> 00:40:25,470 This is based on real life train bomb training I received in Dortmund. 422 00:40:26,070 --> 00:40:30,300 The youngest soldier was strip chained into T-shirts and his legs are bound. 423 00:40:30,810 --> 00:40:34,650 He's lifted, cradled, held, then placed down onto the stage. 424 00:40:35,100 --> 00:40:39,150 We call this part of the piece The Rehabilitation Centre. 425 00:40:39,510 --> 00:40:47,610 It's based on soldiers experiences of stabbings. The first shoe adaptations that are given to patients who are learning to walk on prosthetic limbs. 426 00:40:48,240 --> 00:40:53,879 Two soldiers hold the young man's arms on the other side, with another walks in front to help. 427 00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:57,360 If he falls, takes a few painful steps forward, he falters. 428 00:40:57,360 --> 00:41:02,700 Falls is held back up until he finally shakes off his help and wants to go it alone. 429 00:41:03,180 --> 00:41:06,569 And he begins a dance solo of the moves from earlier in the work. 430 00:41:06,570 --> 00:41:11,610 But now on his knees he tries to dance. But the anger, pain and frustration are obvious. 431 00:41:12,030 --> 00:41:19,740 The fourth is watch him and step aside, returning to their places, waiting for what might they be ordered to do next. 432 00:41:20,520 --> 00:41:28,740 In this final scene, it was decided that the soldier's ankles would be tied to his thighs using military straps that look like tourniquets. 433 00:41:29,340 --> 00:41:33,030 This means that when he's on his knees, he looks as if he's lost his lower legs. 434 00:41:33,660 --> 00:41:36,810 As the scene changes, this shown in rehab, heavily caught. 435 00:41:37,290 --> 00:41:43,590 And for me, this was a key scene of the world, controversial to civilian and military audiences alike. 436 00:41:44,130 --> 00:41:52,260 Both injured soldiers and rehabilitation staff talked of however realistic the scene was to them, describing it as hard but truthful. 437 00:41:52,950 --> 00:41:59,640 Kay wanted the audience to feel sorry. I wanted the audience to feel the literal breaking of the body and the pain of the injury. 438 00:42:00,210 --> 00:42:04,050 Non-military audiences and participants often felt the scene was too long, 439 00:42:04,380 --> 00:42:10,050 although one focus group member said that she felt it conveyed the reality of the experience more effectively. 440 00:42:10,500 --> 00:42:16,110 One of the officers interviewed who had experienced this sort of event firsthand, expressed with some. 441 00:42:16,140 --> 00:42:21,900 Difficulty finding the right words. His appreciation that it was presented in a non emotive way. 442 00:42:23,490 --> 00:42:30,350 We had it strikes and we lost when we were in Afghanistan this last time and it was, you know, as a battalion we lost of stats, 443 00:42:30,360 --> 00:42:37,230 we lost the same number of guys and sort of injured as well where I thought it was very good and portraying it with that, making it very emotive. 444 00:42:37,590 --> 00:42:44,640 So, I mean, one of the things was almost the frantic, tragic ness of it all and trying to sort everything out and all that kind of thing. 445 00:42:45,870 --> 00:42:50,790 Does Dawn a Dancing had no military connections or experience describe how this made her feel? 446 00:42:51,330 --> 00:42:59,040 She responded with reference to specific muscles and expressed how the emotion and subsequent reflect shown were rooted in a physical response. 447 00:43:00,330 --> 00:43:04,740 LEIGH Tragic. I think I got quite emotional and I was well, I didn't expect that. 448 00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:07,470 I think it went back to the man who did the introduction at the beginning. 449 00:43:07,680 --> 00:43:10,710 Frank Gardner had done an introduction to the beginning of this performance. 450 00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:17,040 But it was funny because they put his legs back into the straps in the dancer's legs, and so his quads were really tightly bound, 451 00:43:17,430 --> 00:43:22,500 and then he standing on his knees, I kept thinking, that must hurt for the dance, really putting himself out there as well. 452 00:43:22,920 --> 00:43:24,390 I mean, think of the broader context. 453 00:43:24,430 --> 00:43:31,670 Just I think she did a good job of visualising the severity of people going out there and dancing because it's bodies, not words. 454 00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:33,360 You know, I've seen that before. 455 00:43:33,360 --> 00:43:40,350 I've thought about it before, but it made me think about it in a different way because I saw the guy as a body minus the legs and his struggle, 456 00:43:40,620 --> 00:43:44,070 which is trying to deal with that in the last couple of minutes of the piece. 457 00:43:47,290 --> 00:43:49,660 So I'm going to jump to the conclusion. 458 00:43:52,080 --> 00:43:59,880 So it's important for me that the piece should indeed end on potentially negative and angry notes for the broken body. 459 00:44:00,630 --> 00:44:07,200 Despite all the rhetoric, politics, technologies and enemies, it's the individual body that takes the brunt of all wars. 460 00:44:07,980 --> 00:44:16,410 I did not want an empathic hand, an end in which this tragedy makes us cry, but an ending that makes you face the reality. 461 00:44:16,740 --> 00:44:23,280 I wanted to express the physical frustration of the young soldier and the waste of war on the body itself. 462 00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:30,810 As noted above, the spectators at these performances did not engage in political discourse from responding to the work. 463 00:44:31,110 --> 00:44:34,890 We made a connection with the context that encouraged political disengagement. 464 00:44:35,310 --> 00:44:39,240 However, it's clear from the spectators responses that through the work they experienced 465 00:44:39,240 --> 00:44:43,440 in bodies of four embodied effects that led them to reflect on the issues. 466 00:44:43,980 --> 00:44:51,390 Although mediated in different ways and often with stronger responses to the directly physical, the more theatrical aspects of the work, 467 00:44:51,720 --> 00:44:58,650 reflecting whether they had personal logic, knowledge of military training or armed conflict or dance training or close connection with the military. 468 00:44:58,860 --> 00:45:07,200 Well, none of these facts matters. Spectators from all categories with support reported experiencing embodied effects that 469 00:45:07,200 --> 00:45:13,170 provoked in them awareness of the soldier's experience and led them to reflect on war. 470 00:45:16,140 --> 00:45:25,740 The work repeatedly brings audiences closer to the embodied experience of war and makes them uncomfortable for its military and dance audiences. 471 00:45:25,860 --> 00:45:34,890 The work evokes lived felt in the body experiences that can open up memories of warfare and complex senses of identity following injury. 472 00:45:35,340 --> 00:45:35,850 The lived, 473 00:45:35,850 --> 00:45:45,060 empathic experiences of spectators provoked painful awareness of the live body as the tug of war and opened up a space for critical reflection. 474 00:45:46,080 --> 00:45:51,239 Given the political context that lines the beginning of this paper, we'd like to suggest a direct, 475 00:45:51,240 --> 00:45:58,469 embodied approach to performance that brings spectators to reflect on the body as a front line via an empathic 476 00:45:58,470 --> 00:46:05,460 and sensory experience of dance is a powerful means by which to open up in a creative and effective manner. 477 00:46:06,300 --> 00:46:07,710 The Legacy of war.