André Lepecki

The Body as Archive: Will to Re-Enact and the Afterlives of Dances

Laurence Louppe once advanced the intriguing notion that the dancer is “the veritable avatar of Orpheus: he has no right to turn back on his course, lest he be denied the object of his quest” (Louppe 1994, 32). However, looking across the contemporary dance scene in Europe and the United States, one cannot escape the fact that dancers—contrary to Orpheus, contrary to Louppes assertion—are increasingly turning back on their and dance historys tracks in order to find the “object of their quest.” Indeed, contemporary dancers and choreographers in the United States and Europe have in recent years been actively engaged in creating re-enactments of sometimes well-known, sometimes obscure, dance works of the twentieth century. Examples abound: we can think of Fabian Barbas Schwingende Landschaft (2008), an evening-length piece where the Ecuadorian choreographer returns to Mary Wigmans seven solo pieces created in 1929 and performed during Wigmans first U.S. tour in 1930; of Elliot Mercer returning in 2009 and 2010 to several of Simone Fortis Construction Pieces (1961/62), performing them at Washington Square Park in New York City; or Anne Collods 2008 return to Anna Halprins Parades and Changes (1965), among many other examples.

Editor's Note: Dance in the Museum

Over the past five years, we have been witnessing an ever-growing presence of dance performances and choreographic works “exhibited” in major museums across the globe. A quick survey would have to include the exhibition MOVE: Choreographing You, at the Hayward Gallery, London (2010; Dusseldorf 2011; Seoul 2012); the exhibition Danser sa Vie, at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2011); the exhibition Dance/Draw (2011) at the ICA Boston; and the exhibition Dancing Around the Bride, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2013). All of these exhibitions, despite their curatorial singularities and divergent approaches, have explored the deep relations and concurrent developments (to use the expression of Yvonne Rainer1) between dance and the visual arts since World War II (the big exception being Danser sa Vie, which covered the entire twentieth century). However, other approaches indicate that the current interest in dance and its relationships with the development of the visual arts and of performance art are not just a matter of rewriting history and finding parallel lines of development among the arts. Were we to follow that logic, we could see dance’s intrusion into visual culture as parallel to the earlier acceptance of photography, film, and video as arts within the narrow confines of the fine art canon.

Teleplastic Abduction: Subjectivity in the Age of ART, or Delirium for Psychoanalysis: Commentary on Simon's “Spoken Through Desire”

Using the notions of “telepathy” (John Forrester), “teleplasty” (Roger Caillois), and “social choreography” (Andre Hewitt) this essay responds to Tracy L. Simons analysis of her patient Nora by proposing a critique of subjectivity as predicated on the notion of the individual subject. Through a dialogue with dance studies, performance studies, and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a case is made for the symptom to be perceived not as a patients own (property) but as world-delirium and as delirium of the world. Finally, analysand and analyst are conceived as dancers, incorporating and excorporating each other in the social choreography of an activity whose other name could be “lovemaking.”

Inside/Beside Dance Studies: A Conversation Mellon Dance Studies in/and the Humanities

In 2012, Susan Manning, Rebecca Schneider, and Janice Ross collaborated across their home institutions of Northwestern University, Brown University, and Stanford University, respectively, to found a research initiative interrogating the field of dance studies. This manifold project, Dance Studies in/and the Humanities, receives funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation through 2015 and includes a series of public roundtable discussions. This conversation—abridged from the original event—took place during two such roundtables at Brown University in June 2013, and it features substantial contributions from scholars Michelle Clayton, Mark Franko, Nadine George-Graves, Andre Lepecki, Susan Manning, Janice Ross, and Rebecca Schneider. Speakers address what dance studies may need, want, or do in this current historical moment. Manning articulates her experience being “inside” and “beside” dance studies through teaching in an integrationist/assimilationist model that promotes dance as a subfield in humanities (and occasionally social science) departments. Franko asserts that dance studies formed as a result of an epistemological break in the 1980s and adds that interdisciplinary frameworks can also support this relatively new field. Through embracing the partiality that comes with interdisciplinarity, Clayton encourages participants to investigate generative misunderstandings. Ross provides a comprehensive account of the crisis in the humanities, and Lepecki connects this crisis to the permanent state of war in the U.S. and emphasizes the importance of theory in dance studies. Falling short of Afro-pessimism, George-Graves calls for dance studies to infiltrate the upper echelons of higher education administration, and Schneider articulates post-structuralisms link to the Global South while calling for more scholarly representation from this area of the world. Through exploring possibilities for embodied knowledge, reenacting post-structuralism, and embracing partiality, these scholars address the expanding aperture of dance studies in a global economy. Topics identified for future discussion include decentering the whiteness of dance studies transnationally, exploring how dance studies methodologies are currently utilized in academia, and expanding dance studies beyond the American academy.

Moving as Thing: Choreographic Critiques of the Object

OCTOBER 140, Spring 2012, pp. 75–90