At a conference in 2014[1], dance theorist André Lepecki talked about movement in dance, and how it marks the body and is marked by it in turn. Contrary to a concept of dance, where each movement in a choreography can be repeated and endlessly reproduced, identically and without a loss (Lepecki gives the example of Kleist’s figure of the marionette as the perfect dancer[2]), the bodies of real dancers pit themselves against such an idea of frictionless informational flow: as if in a game of Chinese Whispers, a dance transmits both the message of a choreographic author, and the experience of its subsequent messengers. Dance inserts bodies into the flow of information and capital – as history, as change, as friction, or impurity.
[1] „Topographien des Flüchtigen – Topographies of the Ephemeral. Internationale Tagung des Sonderforschungsbereichs Ästhetische Erfahrung im Zeichen der Entgrenzung der Künste,” January 2014, Uferstudios Berlin, Concept and Organisation: Gabriele Brandstetter, Kirsten Maar, Maren Butte.
[2] Gabriele Kapp and Heinrich von Kleist, Über das Marionettentheater: Studienausgabe (Stuttgart: Reclam, Philipp, jun. GmbH, Verlag, 2013).
[1] „Topographien des Flüchtigen – Topographies of the Ephemeral. Internationale Tagung des Sonderforschungsbereichs Ästhetische Erfahrung im Zeichen der Entgrenzung der Künste,” January 2014, Uferstudios Berlin, Concept and Organisation: Gabriele Brandstetter, Kirsten Maar, Maren Butte.
[2] Gabriele Kapp and Heinrich von Kleist, Über das Marionettentheater: Studienausgabe (Stuttgart: Reclam, Philipp, jun. GmbH, Verlag, 2013).