Singularities: Dance in the Age of Performance

Abstract

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. Introduction: dance and the age of neoliberal performance -- Moving as some thing (or, some things want to run) -- In the dark -- Limitrophies of the human: monstrous nature, thingly life, and the wild animal -- The body as archive: will to reenact and the afterlives of dances -- Choreographic angelology: the dancer as worker of history (or, remembering is a hard thing) -- Afterthought: four notes on witnessing performance in the age of neoliberal dis-experience.