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.
