About ResCen

ResCen Research Centre
performance processes, practices, contexts

From 2016 ResCen projects have been developed in partnership with the professional arts sector involving collaborations with independent artists and organisations such as Dance Umbrella, Sadler’s Wells, Complicité, Akram Khan Company, Avant Garde Dance, Hetain Patel and others. This was in tandem with significant international collaborations, particularly Danscross-ArtsCross with Beijing Dance Academy which began in 2009, a partnership that was extended in 2011 with the inclusion of Taipei National University of the Arts, and which now celebrates its 10th anniversary. It is set to be extended further when Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts joins us and hosts a creative process and performance project in 2022 (Covid-19 permitting). 

ResCen Research Centre was established in 1999, focused on the practices of artists working in performance and the contexts in which they work. Six artists were attached to ResCen as research associates from 1999 to 2019, Ghislaine Boddington, Shobana Jeyasingh, Richard Layzell, Rosemary Lee, Graeme Miller and Errollyn Wallen; and the webpages relating to their work are available here. Sadly the 2021 demise of Adobe Flash renders some parts of the site inoperable. This is a challenge to all those with an interest in the archiving of performance processes and outcomes and we are actively looking for a sustainable solution.

Through all of these projects certain lines of enquiry interweave and, while specific approaches are adopted and adapted according to the needs of each project, the broad research concerns continue to cohere around processes, practices and contexts of performance as it is conceived, created, presented and made available through and in the arts marketplace.