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Volume 14, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 2040-5669
  • E-ISSN: 2040-5677

Abstract

This autoethnographic video essay is based on , a performance presented in the seven-storey Sir Duncan Rice Library in Aberdeen (Scotland) in May 2017. Focusing on the phenomenology of the dancing body, the performance unfolded the complexity and richness of gestures. Departing from the assumption that a soloist moves with their shadows (gestures from previous dances), I argue for the plural shaping every singular gesture. Combining dance and anthropology, this video essay revisits the notions of and , and proposes a reflection on the intermingling of time, gestures, memory, knowledge and history. Claiming that the (dancing) body is a living archive, I use the metaphor of shadow as a linkage between bodies and movements. Drawing on performance studies and contemporary philosophy, the work emphasizes the way artistic creation generates knowledge, asking the value of embodied practices.

Link to video essay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgCTOWmarko. The video essay is also available as an online resource for the digital edition of this article (Online Resource 1: ‘The body as a living archive’).

Funding
This study was supported by the:
  • Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) (Award Doc.ch Grant P0LAP1_148958)
© 2023 Intellect Ltd
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/content/journals/10.1386/chor_00058_3
2023-08-02
2024-04-27
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The dancing body as a living archive
Choreographic Practices 14, 73 (2023); https://doi.org/10.1386/chor_00058_3
/content/journals/10.1386/chor_00058_3
/content/journals/10.1386/chor_00058_3
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Online Resource 1: ‘The body as a living archive’

  • Article Type: Article
Keyword(s): archive; gesture; history; knowledge; living body; memory; performance

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