Rhythm as Friendship: Movement, Music and Matteo

Abstract

The chapter interrogates the potentialities opened by the understanding of rhythm that emerges from Jonathan Burrows’ choreographies and writings. It examines how rhythm operates compositionally in specific dance works, with particular attention to duets created and performed with the composer Matteo Fargion between 2002 and 2014. Perazzo Domm investigates how rhythm informs the ways in which partnership is articulated in their collaborative practice. Drawing on Jacques Derrida’s writings on rhythm and on friendship, on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s conceptualisation of rhythm and refrain and on Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s idea of conjunction as ‘becoming-other’, the author argues that rhythm serves as more than a compositional tool in the dances, conceptualising its function as poetic and poietic.