Daring to Embody: notes on performing futures with the elements

Abstract

This article offers the theoretical foundations for, and a reflection on, the workshop ‘Performance for Futures: the four elements’, which we delivered at the conference The Discovery of the Future, on the 7th June, 2024 in Trento. Making use of well-established approaches to performance training (Lecoq, 2002; Chekhov, 2002; and others), which take the natural elements – Earth, Water, Air and Fire – as bases for physical expression, the workshop examined our relationship with the time after now from the point-of-view of the elements, as embodied by the participants, exploring the interplay between pasts, presents and futures, both human and nonhuman. In doing so, we were engaging in an effort to decolonise the future and deconstruct hegemonic narratives, by combining an arts-based approach with indigenous thought, framed by the concept of the monstrous.