Choreographing Problems: Expressive Concepts in European Contemporary Dance and Performance

277 Pages·2015·2.928 MB·English

by  Bojana Cvejić (auth.)

Choreographing Problems
Performance Philosophy
Series Editors:
Laura Cull (University of Surrey, UK),
Alice Lagaay (Universität Bremen, Germany)
Freddie Rokem (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought, creative practice
and scholarship. The Performance Philosophy book series comprises monographs and essay
collections addressing the relationship between performance and philosophy within a broad
range of philosophical traditions and performance practices, including drama, theatre,
performance arts, dance, art and music. The series also includes studies of the performative
aspects of life and, indeed, philosophy itself. As such, the series addresses the philosophy of
performance as well as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance.
Editorial Advisory Board:
Emmanuel Alloa (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland), Lydia Goehr (Columbia University,
USA), James R. Hamilton (Kansas State University, USA), Bojana Kunst (Justus-Liebig
University Giessen, Germany), Nikolaus Müller-Schöll (Goethe University Frankfurt am
Main, Germany), Martin Puchner (Harvard University, USA), Alan Read (King’s College
London, UK)
Laura Cull & Alice Lagaay (eds)
ENCOUNTERS IN PERFORMANCE PHILOSOPHY (2014)
Broderick Chow & Alex Mangold (eds)
ŽIŽEK AND PERFORMANCE (2014)
Will Daddario & Karoline Gritzner (eds)
ADORNO AND PERFORMANCE (2014)
Forthcoming titles:
Stuart Grant, Jodie McNeilly & Maeva Veerapen (eds)
PERFORMANCE AND TEMPORALISATION (2014)
Mischa Twitchin (author)
THE THEATRE OF DEATH: THE UNCANNY IN MIMESIS (2015)
Published in association with the research network Performance Philosophy
www.performancephilosophy.ning.com
Palgrave Studies in Modern European Literature
Series Standing Order ISBN 978–1–137–40739–9 (hardback)
(outside North America only)
You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order.
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Choreographing Problems
Expressive Concepts in European
Contemporary Dance and Performance
Bojana Cvejic´
© Bojana Cvejic´ 2015
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2015 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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ISBN 978-1-349-55610-6 ISBN 978-1-137-43739-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137437396
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managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
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country of origin.
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Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India.
Contents
List of Figures and Tables vii
Series Preface ix
Acknowledgements xii
Abbreviations xiii
Introduction 1
Works of choreography and contemporary dance 4
Choreography and performance 11
Choreographic performance after Deleuze: expressive concepts 14
Rupture of the body-movement bind 17
Performance beyond disappearance: making, performing,
and attending 22
Structure and method 25
1 Problems and Expressive Concepts 28
Thought beyond recognition 31
The logic of expression 41
Problems and Ideas 46
Expressive concepts 54
Making, performing, and attending 62
2 Disjunctive Captures of the Body and Movement 73
Self Unfinished: part-bodies 75
It’s In The Air: part-bodies, part-machines 83
Nvsbl: partitioning and adequation between
movement and sensation 87
3 Theatrical Apparatuses of Disjunction 96
What is the apparatus of theatrical representation? 97
Subtractions within the theatrical apparatus 102
Head-box: an apparatus of flight and containment 105
De-figurement of the stage 114
Assemblings of bodies and things 117
Wiring spectators 120
4 Exhausting Improvisation: Stutterances 127
Improvisation in lack of philosophy 128
v
vi Contents
The holistic ground of improvisation 131
Still grounded in knowledge: improvisation as composition 138
Ungrounding possibilities 142
The Weak Dance of stutterances 148
To repeat and to rehearse 153
5 A Critical Departure from Emotionalism: Sensations and
Affects in the Mode of Performing 160
Binding movement with emotion, kinesthesia with empathy 162
Affect and sensation in Spinoza and Deleuze 166
50/50: the problem of composing affects 171
Constructing expressions 174
Defacing the self in a solo 184
Power-motion and crisis-motion 188
6 During and After Performance: Processes,
Caesuras, and Resonances 195
Process in performance studies 196
Duration, process, and becoming 199
It’s In The Air: processes of a constructed continuum 203
Composition as a distribution of intensities 206
Nvsbl: durations outside of the sensorimotor present 208
Molecularization and memory 211
Self Unfinished: caesuras in becoming 214
Cut-endings 218
Implicating the attender with resonance 220
A Post Hoc Conclusion: An Expanse of Choreography 225
Notes 232
Select Bibliography 238
Index 253
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
1 Still images from the video recording of Self Unfi nished
© Xavier Le Roy/in situ productions, 1998 76
2 Still image from the video recording of Self Unfi nished
© Xavier Le Roy/in situ productions, 1998 77
3 Still images from the video recording of Self Unfi nished
© Xavier Le Roy/in situ productions, 1998 78
4 Still images from the video recording of Self Unfi nished
© Xavier Le Roy/in situ productions, 1998 80
5 Nvsbl © Eszter Salamon/Botschaft Gbr, 2006.
Photography © Alain Roux 89
6 Nvsbl © Eszter Salamon/Botschaft Gbr, 2006.
Photography © Alain Roux 93
7 héâtre-élévision © Boris Charmatz/Edna Association,
2003. Photography © Anna van Kooij 106
8 héâtre-élévision © Boris Charmatz/Edna Association,
2003. Photography @ Marie-Lou Burger 108
9 Still image from the video recording of Untitled ©
Xavier Le Roy/in situ productions, 2005 119
10 Still image from the video recording of Untitled ©
Xavier Le Roy/in situ productions, 2005 122
11 Weak Dance Strong Questions © Jonathan Burrows
Company, 2001. Photography Hermann Sorgeloos 147
12 Weak Dance Strong Questions © Jonathan Burrows
Company, 2001. Photography Hermann Sorgeloos 147
13 Weak Dance Strong Questions © Jonathan Burrows
Company, 2001. Photography Hermann Sorgeloos 150
14 50/50 © Mette Ingvartsen/Great Investment, 2005.
Photography © Peter Lenaerts 176
vii
viii List of Figures and Tables
15 50/50 © Mette Ingvartsen/Great Investment, 2005.
Photography © Peter Lenaerts 182
16 Trajectory of displacements in Mette
Ingvartsen’s 50/50, B.C. 183
Tables
1 Overview of compositional parameters in Mette Ingvartsen’s
50/50, B.C. 192
Series Preface
This series is published in association with the research network
Performance Philosophy (http://performancephilosophy.ning.com/),
which was founded in 2012. The series takes an inclusive, interdiscipli-
nary and pluralist approach to the field of Performance Philosophy –
aiming, in due course, to comprise publications concerned with perfor-
mance from a wide range of perspectives within philosophy – whether
from the Continental or Analytic traditions, or from those which
focus on Eastern or Western modes of thought. Likewise, the series
will embrace philosophical approaches from those working within any
discipline or definition of performance, including but not limited to,
theatre, dance, music, visual art, performance art and performativity in
everyday life.
In turn, the series aims to both sharpen and problematize the defini-
tion of the terms ‘performance’ and ‘philosophy’, by addressing the
relationship between them in multiple ways. It is thus designed to support
the field’s ongoing articulation of its identity, parameters, key questions
and core concerns; its quest is to stage and re-stage the boundaries of
Performance Philosophy as a field, both implicitly and explicitly. The
series also aims to showcase the diversity of interdisciplinary and inter-
national research, exploring the relationship between performance and
philosophy (in order to say: “This is Performance Philosophy.”), whilst
also providing a platform for the self-definition and self-interrogation of
Performance Philosophy as a field (in order to ask and ask again: “What
is Performance Philosophy?” and “What might Performance Philosophy
become?”). That is to say, what counts as Performance Philosophy must
be ceaselessly subject to redefinition in the work of performance philoso-
phers as it unfolds.
But this does not mean that ‘anything goes’ or that the field of
Performance Philosophy is a limitless free-for-all. Rather, both the field
and this series specifically bring together all those scholars for whom the
question of the relationship between performance and philosophy and,
therefore, the nature of both performance and philosophy (including
their defi nitions, but also their ‘ontology’ or ‘essential conditions’), are
of primary concern. However, in order to maintain its experimental and
radical nature, Performance Philosophy must also be open to including
those scholars who may challenge extant concepts of ‘performance’ and
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