When a chronically sick body is not forced to get better, it interrupts notions of productivity, invites slowness and makes space for other ways of being. Closely examining the performance of Sick Witch by chronically ill, body-based artist Johanna Hedva, I argue that their performance undoes assumptions of sickness as a stagnant, passive, waiting state in which the goal is always to 'get well'. Provoked by Hedva's work, I ask: what place do sick individuals have within a neo-liberal ontology predicated upon being well? I explore and critique how health and sickness are used to define human value drawing on theorizations of neo-liberalism as an ontology from scholars spanning the fields of dance, performance and disability studies including Petra Kuppers, Maria Firmino-Castillo, Donna Haraway, Stacy Alaimo and others. Using performance analysis I examine how Hedva performs embodiments of sickness-most notably the embodied performance of retching-to disrupt assumptions about getting well. Ultimately Hedva's performance of Sick Witch reveals an unsettling truth, that not only does a neo-liberal ontology violate chronically ill and/or disabled bodies but shapes our very understanding and enactment of reality; neoliberalism pushes us to prioritize productivity over our wellbeing.
This article explores choreography and translation as overlapping practices, examining how choreographic processes transform source material into dance. Drawing on theories from translation studies - including feminist and prismatic approaches - it reimagines translation beyond its traditional linguistic boundaries to include choreographic creation as an intermedial, choreo- translation form. Choreo-translation practices are positioned as dynamic sites for ethical and political acts of translation, highlighting resonances between choreographic and translational ethics. Building on this foundation, the article shifts focus to examine the application of translation theories within the dance studio. Through my own choreographic practice, work as a dance dramaturg, and teaching with BA and MA Dance and Theatre students, I outline a series of studio-based exercises designed to explore how translation functions as a creative, constraint-driven process. These practices foreground the performer's creative agency and engage with concepts such as ethical engagement, multiplicity and embodied meaningmaking. By combining theoretical inquiry with studio experimentation, the article proposes a framework for understanding choreography not merely as a representational act but as a dialogic, translational encounter with source materials. It calls for renewed interdisciplinary dialogue and positions choreography as a site for innovating translational thought and practice.
'Dancing Dante's La Vita Nuova' is a reflection on the choreographic process as translation, specifically, prismatic translation, as conceptualized by translation theorist Matthew Reynolds. Dancing three passages from Dante Alighieri's La Vita Nuova, performing the role of Beatrice, Dante's female muse, I explore how dance praxis might embolden us to imagine literary texts anew and envision worlds beyond the pen of the author. Following Walter Benjamin's assertion in 'The task of the translator' (1923) that translation breathes a new life into the source text, I investigate through dance-as-translation the potential to craft a new life for Beatrice transcending beyond Dante's written word. The title of this article, of course, riffs on Benjamin's foundational essay, framing choreography as a new application of translation.
Text-based choreographic experiments are omnipresent on contemporary western dance stages. Even though experimentation with different forms of textuality clearly transcends the contemporary moment, the current artistic-choreographic research on language seems to be more explicitly oriented towards treating language itself as a medium for choreography, by emphasizing its rhythm, the physical effort it requires to produce language or by using it to describe movement. In response to the different ways in which performing artists approach language from a choreographic point of view, it has become more and more pressing to start looking at these texts from the choreographic context in which they appear as well. My article proposes a possible framework to do so, by introducing the term 'kinetic textuality' and by demonstrating what the choreographic mechanisms behind it possibly signify. Through a close reading of how kinetic textuality functions in the performance Indispensible Blue (Offline), I will in the first place demonstrate that a choreographic perspective on language allows to recognize the dance that is taking place in a piece that seemingly does not have anything to do with dance.
I premiered Finally, Fairies!, a 35-minute dance performance, on 11 March 2022, at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Dance Theatre. The performance integrated archival footage, an original sound score, a scenic landscape with lighting and media designs, original costumes and live performers. This writing details the creative process that began in 2009 and led to the premiere of Finally, Fairies!. I contextualize the work through the lens of hauntology, drawing from the work of Jacques Derrida, Mark Fisher, Merlin Coverley, Franco 'Bifo' Berardi, Katy Shaw and Colin Davis. I outline hauntology's relevance to contemporary art and performance and its resonance with the music aesthetic of Vaporwave, and I examine how these theoretical concepts directly influence my choreographic process and compositional strategies. Through performance descriptions and auto-analytical reflections, I explore the emergence of hauntological sensibilities and how they continue to shape and complicate my choreographic voice.
Inspired by historic protests in India's capital city, New Delhi, queer and Sikh choreographer Mandeep Raikhy devised The Secular Project in 2020. The Secular Project is a performance work and an archive that exists as a series of short reels, posts and story highlights on Instagram. This article analyses The Secular Project as a dissident social practice and the dancing body as a mode of dissent against majoritarian nationalism. I critically reflect on the notion of secularism in the Indian context and where it stands in reference to the rising religious fundamentalist politics in India. I ask: How is secularism embodied and enacted by its citizens, both in private and public spaces, in contemporary India? How does the dancing body intervene or help us understand the values of a democracy shifting into an authoritarian regime? I employ ethnographic research methods - participant observation, qualitative interviewing and field notes - with choreographic analysis of the work on social media to address the politics of secularism and corporeal dissent in this work. I argue that Raikhy's choreographic work not only brings activism and dance together but also exemplifies the connection between individual dissent and desired collectivity for social change.
This article presents Behind Closed Doors, a choreographic research project exploring the philosophical notion of 'affect', which resulted in a site-specific dance theatre piece, performed in the John Lewis department store in Liverpool. Drawing on Spinoza, Deleuze and Massumi's writings on affect, the research sought to examine the shift from physical execution to an embodied and affective experience, in which emotion, intention and perception are inseparable. By disrupting conventional spectatorship and positioning the audience as voyeurs, the work reframed the performer-spectator relationship, shifting focus from visual aesthetics to affective engagement. The study demonstrates how choreographic strategies rooted in everydayness, sensation and improvisation can intensify audience connection, foregrounding dance as a site of affective encounter rather than representation.
S. Ama Wray (formerly Sheron Wray) and Robert Hylton are part of a generation of Black British choreographers who gained recognition in the subsidized arts sector between the early 1990s and early 2000s. Their work was often labelled 'choreographic fusion', referring to the deliberate blending of dance styles from distinct cultural traditions. At the time, their work received little critical engagement. This article examines culturally hybrid choreography in relation to cultural policy, highlighting its role as a site of struggle for Black choreographers. It presents brief biographies of Wray and Hylton and analyses Wray's (1998) Bare Hands, Broad Feet and Hylton's (2001) Landscapes, focusing on their compositional methods. Stuart Hall's theory of articulation draws attention to how their choreographies create continuities between artistic practice and cultural histories and resists dominant narratives of rupture-as-innovation. By recognizing them as creators of distinct choreographic methodologies, this article positions their stories within the broader history of contemporary choreography in Britain. Both choreographers remain active today, and their careers offer valuable insights into reinterpreting the UK dance archive of that era.
This article explores 'splenic thinking' as a speculative, embodied methodology for artistic and choreographic practice. Emerging at the intersection of performance, medical humanities, traditional Chinese medicine and affect theory, the spleen is reconsidered not only as an anatomical organ but also as a conceptual apparatus for filtering, metabolizing and holding ambiguity alongside performance philosophy. Drawing on historical, cultural and posthuman perspectives, as well as reflections from embodied workshops and diverse writing practices, splenic thinking is presented here as a practice of attentiveness to the overlooked, the melancholic and the metabolically entangled. The article proposes that to think with the spleen is to attend to what is unspoken, marginal and internally processed, offering a diagnostic and generative framework for understanding knowledge production through the choreographic. This is not thinking as clarity or cognition, but as filtering, dwelling and releasing. Splenic thinking invites artists and researchers to write, move and notice differently.
Dance-making processes that engage with posthuman thinking offer artists new perspectives and ways to relate to the world. This article applies this mode of thinking to 360 degrees digital immersive technologies. Considering 360 degrees immersive dance-making in outdoor environments provides opportunities to observe the self and develop a consciousness that offers an expanded state of awareness. This research explores the ramifications of double embodiment, where one simultaneously is and sees their body in the immersive space. It also examines the generation of allocentric perspectives and autoscopic experiences in 360 degrees dance viewing. In doing so, the 360 degrees immersive dance-making process shifts subjectivity, expanding the understanding of the body. Making and viewing 360 degrees immersive dance allows practitioners to reflect, immerse and reconsider lived experience in relation to the nonhuman. There is a twofold interaction between the body and the sites, as well as between the body and the other, where movement both affects and produces changes in the world. This practice offers a way to extend subjectivity and develop an alternative understanding of the body as the other.
We live in a world that features unprecedented acceleration, spatial surplus and an egocentric sense of self, a phenomenon that ethnologist Marc Aug & eacute; terms as super-modernity. With the rapid proliferation of travel in the globalized age, an increasing proportion of our time is thus spent in airports, supermarkets, highways and railway stations, which Aug & eacute; refers to as non-places. For the first time, in this article, I investigate these transit spaces through the theoretical assertion of non-place and explore what supermodern choreographies might be by critically analysing two contemporary Bharatanatyam choreographies, Quick! by Nina Rajarani (2006) and NowHere by Divya Kasturi (2011). Drawing on a multidisciplinary understanding of non-place and applying a mixed-method approach, including dance observation, dance reading and narrative analysis of interviews, I depict the spatial politics of supermodern time in these dances which is dominated by abundant travels, shifting homes, identity crisis and solitude. By adopting the Aug & eacute;an 'palimpsestic model', I also reveal how it acts as a prism to view (non)places, practices and identity not as permanent but evolving over time. Furthermore, I argue that non-place can be purely 'psycho-geographic', expanding the boundary of the Aug & eacute;an assertions. Drawing on ethnographic interviews, I demonstrate that these two dance works have created semblance by connecting the lives of the characters with audiences, disrupting the line between them. In light of these, my conten-tion is that theory informs practice as much as life and dance practices inform the Aug & eacute;an assertions.
This article offers an articulation of my orientation towards choreography and/as knowledge-generation, which has evolved through my history of artistic practice. It maps the terrain of my choreographic work and body of artistic doctoral research No-How Generator , through the lens of a discussion of back-and-forthing – the choreographic material that forms of the nucleus of the choreographic score of this work. It maps a meshwork of tools, influences and approaches, including the term no-how, which I use to name the particular kind of knowing that I consider this artistic research to be generative of, and the phrase Magic & Science, which I use to name the broader epistemological orientation within which I situate choreographic no-how generation.
Review of: William Forsythe’s Postdramatic Dance Theater: Unsettling Perception , Freya Vass (2023) London: Palgrave Macmillan, 271 pp., ISBN 978-3-03126-658-4, e-book, GBP 79.50
This article examines the disability studies concept of misfit applied to aerial dance choreography. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson defines a misfit as an incongruency between two things, as in a square peg and round hole. Thus, misfit is not a fixed attribute but rather arises from the interaction of those two things. In aerial arts, fit or misfit is located in the relationship between a particular dancer’s body and the aerial apparatus. The aerial hoop, a rigid metal circle, is rife with potential misfits. The dancers in this project are visibly non-disabled, yet Garland-Thomson explicitly invites a broad application of misfit, noting that it is an inherent aspect of all embodiment. The material reality of the aerial apparatus in relationship with each dancer’s particular embodiment reveals misfits that might otherwise go unnoticed, unacknowledged and unvalued in dance practices. In this practice-research, a misfit approach to choreography serves to re-examine virtuosity and highlight the context-specific abilities of the bodies involved. This method guided the research inquiry in three areas: movement invention, spatial design and costuming and provided insight into the particularities of embodiment and perceptions of virtuosity in dance and circus practices.
This discussion reflects on obsolescence as a hauntology through the lens of an interdisciplinary, criticalcreative, artistic practice of improvisation. The practice is grounded in contemporary dance, choreographic thinking, experimental sound and is distracted by relationships between the body and technology. The writing offers further exposition, speculating on and generating insights about improvisation in relation to dance and technologically mediated sound in live performance. Informed by cultural theorist Mark Fisher's perspectives (2012) and French philosopher Jacques Derrida's notion of hauntology (1994), this article reflects on relationships between hyper-capitalism and obsolescence. Those relationships are considered a terroir of affect acting constantly upon both practice and practitioner. Notions of improvision (not to be confused with the word 'improvisation' in this writing) are explored in relation to hyper-capitalism and obsolescence, revealing challenges around ageing, futurity and artistic production. Improvisation is itself proposed as a meta-resource for responding to issues that can emerge through improvising a dance- sound art form. From these reflections, a critical framework is developed, which at times threatens to overshadow the practice. Within that critical framework, a process of renovation emerges along with novel perspectives and discoveries about pre-existing materials, skills, practitioner knowledge and hope.
In movement improvisation, improvisers often experience vagueness and uncertainty of perception prior to moving. This article examines the sense of indeterminacy before movement is formed. It explores key concepts in Japanese Noh theatre, namely the sequencing concept of jo-ha-ky & umacr; ((sic)(sic)(sic)) and the notion of interval, or ma ((sic)), as a framework for mediating the indeterminacy in the act of improvising from the perspective of embodied practice. By configuring improvised movement as discrete jo-ha-ky & umacr; modulations, the ma interval occurs when one modulation is fulfilled, and the next one is about to take form. The interval is where potential of upcoming movement emerges from its indeterminacy. This article proposes that the improviser can approximate the fields of attention through the notion of 'superposition' where the felt sense of potential movements and relations are schematized as coexisting. In so doing, the sense of potentiality can be directly attended to, not only for enriching actualized movements but also for accounting for the wholeness of movement events. By drawing attention to the indeterminacy and poten- tiality in movement improvisation, this article argues that potential movement that becomes actualized, and that which does not, are equally valuable as improvisational material for enhancing the experience of both improviser and audience.
This article investigates the creation of ‘Until We Meet’, an outdoor sensory performance that used pre-recorded audio tracks to recreate the sensation of touch for participants. The project was designed to engage individuals who are unable or uncomfortable with direct physical contact, offering a remote alternative to experience touch-like sensations. Through practice-based research, including rehearsals and participant feedback, the study explores how sensory language and diverse types of touch can evoke emotional connection and bodily awareness through audio. Employing an interpretive framework, the research highlights the potential of these audio-guided performances to foster sensory engagement, connection and well-being, especially for individuals with limited access to affective touch. The findings underscore the broader implications for integrating touch-based experiences into accessible and inclusive creative practices, offering new possibilities for therapeutic innovation in both physical and digital spaces.
This interview is a research dialogue between Stephanie Arsoska and Andrew Morrish, focusing on their exploration of Stephanie’s solo improvisation practice. Over the course of a year, they conducted ten, ten-minute solo improvisations via Zoom, analysing emerging patterns over time. Stephanie’s practice, which integrates movement and text, is deeply rooted in acting and physical theatre traditions. Rather than engaging in conceptual analysis, they adopted reflective and descriptive methods to gain insights through lived experience. Their goal was to better understand and articulate their creative processes. The conversation highlights the importance of cultivating a pedagogical awareness within artistic practice, fostering openness and mapping these practices to achieve a deeper understanding. Their methodology involved gathering data from multiple perspectives, promoting a reflective engagement with personal experiences and uncovering new insights through the process of improvisation.
Butoh dance - an avant-garde dance f'orm' which emerged in Japan in the early 1960s - has been discussed by various scholars in terms of the deconstruction or the unlearning of the social body. In this article, written from my perspective as an autistic butoh dancer, I offer a reflection on the relationship between the autistic body and the butoh body - or rather, I offer a reflection on the relationship between (my) autistic body and (my) butoh body, though I argue that butoh and autism precisely call into question the (neurotypical) assumptions embedded in this sentence. That is, I believe that butoh and autism call into question both the existence of 'the body' as a pre-existing form and the notion that it would be the property of an 'I', of a subject, of a unified self.
Direct, communicative and largely accessible, the choreographic tools of nightlife performance often elicit dramatic reactions from spectators, whether sexy, funny, surprising, glamorous or all of the above. This article follows pleasure, joy, erotics and pain across crip slutaesthetics into the choreographies of crip nightlife, based on interviews with four burlesque artists based in the United States with diverse experiences of sickness, neurodivergence, trauma and disability. I use movement analysis alongside attention to other artistic practices foundational to burlesque such as prop and costume creation to unravel the ways that performers Sweet Lorraine, Poison Ivory, Chaos X Machina and Jaqueline Boxx integrate their divergent bodymind experiences into compelling aesthetics and justice-oriented frames. I argue that crip slutaesthetics, that is the aesthetic qualities of crip sexual performance, can offer tools towards undoing ableism as it is entangled with racism, homophobia and transphobia that are often silenced by more formal concert dance worlds in the effort to deny embodied difference as well as pleasure from the proscenium stage.
