Rationale

The Performance phenomenon is fundamentally autotelic – this means that true Performers find their greatest reward in their own performance, whether it be theatre, dance, music or sport. This sense of joy in creativity transcends by far the utilitarian aspects so often attached to Performance. As a result of this, Performance provides the ideal locus for investigating one of the Human Being’s finest attributes, perhaps, indeed, a fundamental need – Creativity, and the sense of fulfilment which creativity generates in Man. This is even more so where creativity is at its most primary level, in those fields where the creative person creates with nothing but himself: in theatre, dance, singing, sport, that is in Performance.

The creative performative act, however, is ephemeral and evanescent – it leaves no lasting product for the Performer to carry out a self-analysis with the aim of improving his capabilities. In order to refine one’s skill, therefore, one must necessarily depend exclusively on Memory Systems.

Studies and research being carried out in various disciplines give evidence that the Memory Systems and Learning Processes of Performers are constantly potentiated as a result of today’s sophisticated training. Such potentiation appears to be dramatic – even occurring in brain functions that seem to be totally unrelated to performance. This phenomenon seems to be rooted in the astonishing potential of the brain’s motor-programme, which, as neuroscience is showing, provides the foundations for most of the brain’s functions.

This European Masters Programme will guide students to study the need to be Creative, a need it considers to be innate, a need shared by all Human Beings, with no divisions of gender, race, creed, language, status, a need that is manifest in contexts that encourage and/or inhibit it. If given true rein that need could, in its striving for fulfilment, spiral towards a territory without frontiers.