* Wholegg Theory. Initially formulated in the late 19th Century by the German ornithologist E.G. Ovum (Wurtzen Aufeggum und Eggshaften, 1883), the wholegg debate developed around a general hypothesis that birds share a tendency to display symbolic behaviors that mimic both migratory patterns and reproductive rituals. One of the most revolutionary papers by E.G. Ovum was delivered at the 1887 International Conference of the Sunnyside Society in Migas, Spain. Ovum reported that there was abundant empirical evidence that a variety of finches tended to gather in circles around a nesting hen, keeping their distance, yet engaging attentively with the hen's activities. Ovum argued that this pattern of behavior symbolized the very structure of an egg and its development. Although many publications differed in details, other researchers shared most of the premises illustrated by E.G. Ovum and applied them to other cases. This scientific breakthrough became known in the ornithological community as the Wholegg Theory. A major split occurred in 1893, when prominent Florentine scholar Leopoldo Frittata challenged Ovum's then dominant theory, arguing that this variety of finches tended to nest in areas rich in seeds and berries, and that the other birds were simply feeding around the nest. The whole controversy was quickly forgotten, as it lost credibility as a reliable scientific observation of animal behavior.
The usage of the phrase Wholegg Theory reappeared in more recent times to define a wide variety of avant-garde trends in the arts. Notably, it gained currency in the most advanced experiments in choreography and performance arts. Its relevance was a defining moment in the development of post-modern choreography, and promoted a remarkable renaissance of publications, academic interest, and of course a prolific season of revolutionary choreographic practices and visionary modes of dance performance. Against the traditional, linear separation of audience and stage (already questioned by many post-modern choreographers since the 1960's), the Wholegg Theory is based on a complex metaphor, where the performance space is related imaginatively to the morphology of an egg. Here audiences are both bound to, and distanced from, the core of the performance (the yolk) by a curved, substantive space which folds upon itself as an organic and pliable matter (the albumen). In the philosophical parlance of its theorists, the nature of that medium and its dynamics is defined as a "multicentered cellularity". One of the most renowned practitioners of the Wholegg Theory, Judson alumna Deborah Hay, has recently expanded the Theory through a series of historic experiments that took place in Seattle in 2005 (ref. Deborah Hay, My Body, No Bacon, Journal of Performing Arts, Fall 2005). Here Hay shifts the symbolic relation between audiences and albumen from a contiguous one to a dialectical model of conflict and resolution. By pushing the terms of the central metaphor to their logical consequences, she solved its implicit philosophical impasse, the problem of trans-albumen spectatorship. She introduced into the equation the concept of the “periphery” of the audience, ("where the albumen ends, is where the audience begins" and later " the albumen begins at the furthest border of the circular gravity of the performance.") More recently, Hay revised some of her model. She allowed for the albumen to play a less structured role as a metaphoric space between performer and audience, and redefined the metaphor to that of an egg in a bowl, opening its possible imagery to scrambling or separating (cf. Deborah Jowitt, Mixing delicious audiences with peppery performers. The Village Voice, review of Deborah Hay's Breakfast Room, May 2006). This also provided a space for more radical trends known as poached, hardboiled, and beaten dance. – encyclopedia entry by Rino Pizzi