Dancing and Thinking Politics with Deleuze and Rancière: Performing Hesitant Gestures of the Unknown in Katarzyna Kozyra’s Rite of Spring

Abstract

According to Deleuze, the arts have the potential to move the spectator―in the Nietzschean sense of the word―beyond common sense. Inciting the spectator to be moved in this sense implies an urge towards creative thinking instead of mere cognitive recognition. This chapter reads Deleuze’s lines as an invitation to think his philosophy in relation to the art of dancing, to investigate how the aesthetic of intensities at work in contemporary dance performances might incite a creative mode of thinking with political and ethical affects. It will particularly look at the way in which Katarzyna Kozyra’s dance installation, Rite of Spring, challenges clichéd thinking with respect to the dancing body. While the Rite of Spring has traditionally celebrated youthful vigour, through featuring older bodies, Kozyra’s work offers a very different experience for the spectator. In so doing, it enables a politicised aesthetic experience in Rancière’s terms, able to challenge normative conceptions of agency and ageing.