MaRking Difference: On the Productivity of Concepts of Negation, Negativity, and Absence in Contemporary Dance Discourse (working title)

In Dance and Theater Studies, conceptions of “movement” or “presence” on the stage are, with increasing frequency, undergoing reformulation via negative concepts such as “absence” or “stasis”. Focusing on recent writings in Dance Studies, this project investigates the range, related discourses, and effectiveness of these terminologies.

Influential publications have taken distance from presence as the key category for a determination of the specific performativity of dance. Instead, concepts of absence and negativity are used, by means of the analysis of pieces by Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy and Meg Stuart, among others, in order to formulate a redefinition of an “ontology” of choreography which is accompanied by theoretical gestures of dissociation from positions in Theatre Studies, Culture Studies and Performance Studies. The project investigates the extent to which such concepts in Dance Studies and in analyzed excerpts of choreographic practice are characterized by a double interaction with concepts of “absence” and “negativity” in philosophy. This perspectivation enables a consideration of both fields, Dance Studies and philosophy, in relation to one another and simultaneously allows the spectrum of concepts ranging from absence to negativity to be understood as a discourse that evolves between them. Read more