Charizard

Practice & Theory is a series of short videos that dramatise the long-debated relationship between ‘practice’ and ‘theory’.

This crude puppetry elevates an academic debate into an antagonistic, erotic and mundane melodrama. The central characters are performed by pieces of scrap cardboard, and animated by the hands of dispassionate figures who remain off-screen. Over the course of seven episodes, their tortuous relationship is explored through brief, mute, and noisy encounters, full of touching, rubbing, slapping, lingering, dancing, crumpling and dropping.

Practice & Theory is a silly and totally serious educational resource for children, undergraduates and activists – as each of us continues to circle back to the tired and tiring question of the relationship between thought and action.

Video series: First presented at Whorling.net in April 2020, curated by Adam Grainger and Chloe Laycock.

Filmed at Chisenhale Dance Space (London) in 2019, after initital development at Dance4 (Nottingham) and Dancexchange (Birmingham).