Experiencing ‘an opening’
As a part of our ongoing exploration of training processes, this article asks a fundamental question that is close to the authors' heart: 'What is Yoga?'. Although this is undoubtedly a question that has no fixed and determined response, it becomes the framing through which we consider how a knowledge and daily practice of yoga might influence both the execution and readings of various body-based performance practices. The specific area of focus for this article is a consideration of yoga as a potential preparatory strategy for the development and preparation for performance art practices. Using our own relationship to Ashtanga yoga (both as practitioners and as teachers) as its base and its filter as an ad hoc training for witnessing performance art, the article focuses upon three interrelated pieces by Marina Abramovic (Marina Abramovic Presents ... as part of the Manchester International Festival, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, The Pigs of Today are the Hams of Tomorrow, Plymouth, UK and The Artist is Present at MoMA, New York, USA). The focus of the thesis is the idea of the ‘expert-witness’ and how expertness might develop through a body-based process, and what the implications are for the genitive vs. intuitive responses to practice as articulated in Malcolm Gladwell's concept of 'thin slicing'. Alongside this is a consideration of contemporary scholarship exploring posture practice in modern yoga pedagogy.