Performance in the digital age has undergone a radical shift in which a once ephemeral art form can now be relived, replayed and repeated. Until now, much scholarship has been devoted to the nature of live performance in the digital age; Documenting Performance is the first book to provide a collection of key writings about the process of documenting performance, focused not on questions of liveness or the artistic qualities of documents, but rather on the professional approaches to recovering, preserving and disseminating knowledge of live performance.
Through its four-part structure, the volume introduces readers to important writings by international practitioners and scholars on:
* the contemporary context for documenting performance
* processes of documenting performance
* documenting bodies in motion
* documenting to create

In each, chapters examine the ways performance is documented and the issues arising out of the process of documenting performance. While theorists have argued that performance becomes something else whenever it is documented, the writings reveal how the documents themselves cannot be regarded simply as incomplete remains from live events. The methods for preserving and managing them over time, ensuring easy access of such materials in systematic archives and collections, requires professional attention in its own right. Through the process of documenting performance, artists acquire a different perspective on their own work, audiences can recall specific images and sounds for works they have witnessed in person, and others who did not see the original work can trace the memories of particular events, or use them to gain an understanding of something that would otherwise remain unknown to them and their peers.

Documenting performance is an important new area of practice and scholarship, especially in the light of the increasing demand for digital resources to facilitate teaching and research, and to record practice as research

1. Documenting Performance: An Introduction Toni Sant (University of Hull, United Kingdom) Part I: Documenting Performance in a Digital Curation Context 2. Performing Arts and Their Memories Daniela Salazar (New University of Lisbon, Portugal) 3. Description Models for Documenting Performance Alberto Pendón (Miguel de Cervantes Municipal Theatre, Spain) and Gema Bueno (Charles III University of Madrid, Spain) 4. Intellectual Property Matters for Documenting Performance Jeanine Rizzo (Fenech & Fenech Advocates, Malta) 5. Expanding Documentation, or making the most of the cracks in the wall Annet Dekker (Piet Zwart Institute, the Netherlands), Gabriella Giannachi (University of Exeter, United Kingdom), and Vivian van Saaze (Maastricht University, the Netherlands) Part II: Ways of Documenting 6. Remembering Performance Through the Practice of Oral History Panayiota Demitriou (University of Bristol, United Kingdom) 7. Translating Performance: desire, intention and interpretation in photographic documents Helen Newall (Edge Hill University, United Kingdom), Amy Skinner (University of Hull, United Kingdom), and Allan Taylor (University of East London, United Kingdom) 8. Documenting Audience Experience: Social Media as Lively Stratification Joanna Bucknall (The University of Portsmouth, United Kingdom) and Kirsty Sedgman (United Kingdom) 9. Web Archiving and Participation: the future history of performance? Vanessa Bartlett (University of New South Wales, Australia) 10. Documenting Digital Performance Artworks Adam Nash (RMIT University, Australia) and Laurene Vaughan (RMIT University, Australia) Part III: Documenting and Archiving 11. Paradocumentation and NT Live's 'CumberHamlet' Daisy Abbott (Glasgow School of Art, United Kingdom) and Claire Read (University of Roehampton, United Kingdom) 12. Archiving Shakespeare and Thinking Virtually in a Distracted Globe Alvin Eng Hui Lim (National University of Singapore, Singapore) 13. From Copper-Plate Inscriptions to Interactive Websites: Documenting Javanese Wayang Theatre Miguel Escobar (National University of Singapore, Singapore) 14. Documenting Music Performance in the Western Australian New Music Archive Cat Hope (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Australia), Adam Trainer (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Australia), and Lelia Green (Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Australia) 15. Participation and Presence: Propositional Frameworks for Engaging Users in the Design of the Circus Oz Living Archive Laurene Vaughan (RMIT University, Australia) Part IV: Documenting Bodies in Motion 16. What do we document? Dense video and the epistemology of practice Ben Spatz (University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom) 17. The Pleasures of Writing about the Pleasures of the Practice: Documenting Psychophysical Performer Training Alissa Clarke (De Montfort University, United Kingdom) 18. Dance Archival Futures: Embodied Knowledge and the Digital Archive of Dance Laura Griffiths (Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom) 19. Documenting Dance: Tools, Frameworks and Digital Transformation Sarah Whatley (Coventry University, United Kingdom) List of Contributors Notes Index