Singularities: Dance in the Age of Performance

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Routledge, Jun 17, 2016 - Art - 204 pages

How does the production of performance engage with the fundamental issues of our advanced neo-capitalist age?

André Lepecki surveys a decade of experimental choreography to uncover the dual meaning of ‘performance’ in the twenty-first century: not just an aesthetic category, but a mode of political power. He demonstrates the enduring ability of performance to critique and subvert this power, examining this relationship through five ‘singularities’ in contemporary dance: thingness, animality, persistence, darkness, and solidity.

Exploring the works of Mette Ingvartsen, Yvonne Rainer, Ralph Lemon, Jérôme Bel and others, Lepecki uses his concept of ‘singularity’—the resistance of categorization and aesthetic identification—to examine the function of dance and performance in political and artistic debate.

 

Contents

List of figures
1995
Moving as some thing or some things want to run
In the dark
monstrous nature thingly life
will to reenact and the afterlives
the dancer as worker of history
four notes on witnessing performance in
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About the author (2016)

André Lepecki is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and affiliated Professor at Stockholm University of the Arts, UNIARTS.

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