Andrew John Davidson

This thesis provides insight into the experience of the performer trainer in the university conservatoire. Situated across actor training, music education, and dance instruction, it moves beyond technique or tradition to examine how teaching is shaped in action. It configures seven peer-reviewed publications into an ecology of practice structured around three interdependent themes, each developed through five sub-themes:

• Working from the Body and Its Sensations: Intra-Personal Perceptions

• Facilitating Connections and Collaborations: Inter-Personal Relationships

• Navigating Institutional and Professional Expectations: Extra-Personal Contexts

Within this ecology, aspects of training take on different meanings at each layer: teaching foregrounds the body’s temporal-spatial intelligence, converting sensation into embodied knowledge, and cultivating self-awareness; learning develops through listening with the whole self, dialogic exchange, and ensemble commitment; and pedagogy navigates conservatoire traditions, university structures, and industry expectations that produce the conditions for professional formation. Rather than operating as separate domains, these layers continuously shape one another, as embodied perception supports collaboration, collaboration gives form to institutional demands, and institutional conditions shape what can be sensed, shared, and sustained. Together, they reveal performer training as a dynamic negotiation rather than a linear progression.

Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by prior publication, this thesis reads its constituent papers as a coherent body of work. In doing so, it reframes performer training as an ecology of practice, advancing a critical, reflexive, and ethically attuned account of teaching across theatre, music, and movement in the university conservatoire.

Discussion on the role of listening in actor training is limited. Compared with studies on ear training for conservatoire music students, there is a gap in the literature regarding the ways in which student actors acquire and improve listening skills. This paper investigates the musicality inherent in Meisner Technique, an approach to actor training, and points to intersections with ear training in Dalcroze Eurhythmics, an approach to music education. It analyses the common ground between these pedagogical practices, drawing on sources from a variety of domains in which listening is foregrounded. It asserts that Meisner Technique and Dalcroze Eurhythmics promote similar forms of responsive, interpretative, and collaborative listening skills. This paper is written from the author's interdisciplinary perspective as a teacher of acting and music at a university conservatoire. It offers insight into practical training through a personal, philosophical lens. Its themes are transferable to actor trainers and music educators engaged in continuing professional development.

This paper explores the fields of actor training and music education in order to illuminate the historical and pedagogical connections between the work of Konstantin Stanislavski and Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. It identifies historical parallels between their artistic practices, including their dedication to rhythm and polyrhythm. It illustrates the ways in which their pedagogical paths crossed. It analyses the artistic lineage that can be drawn from the work of Jaques-Dalcroze at the Hellerau Institute to the work of Stanislavski at the Moscow Art Theatre. This includes the influence of Dalcroze Eurhythmics on the development of Tempo-Rhythm. The paper considers how aspects of Stanislavskian actor training are reflected in aspects of Dalcrozian music education, including ensemble work, intention and emotion, and the evolution of psychophysical performance. It proposes that there is a correlation between the creative process undertaken by an actor on a play text, known as Active Analysis, and the creative process undertaken by a musician on a compositional score, known as Plastique Animée. Comparing the pedagogical principles of Stanislavski and Jaques-Dalcroze from the author's own perspective as an actor trainer and music educator reveals areas for further research. This paper presents themes that are transferable to artists and educators engaged in continuing professional development.