Telling Pieces (2016)

A theory workshop at SEAD Salzburg

Dance and language still seem to have precarious ties to each other. On the one hand, contemporary dance maintains a close bond with the language of theory, with its reflexivity attempting to inflect the dance process. On the other hand, there is the notion that dance dwells beyond the reach of language and cannot be touched by it. So viewing dance as a discourse, it is a phenomenon that simultaneously transcends and is unassailable by this reflexivity – and that presumed lopsided relationship leads over and over to curious contortions when dance and language meet. But in fact the putative misunderstandings in the relationship can be abrogated when the traditional categories are defined not as mutually exclusive, but as complementary bodies of knowledge. In that scenario, dance is neither outside of language, nor can language entirely catch up to it – in an interweave of undercutting and surpassing , dance and language enter into productive reciprocity, which this one-week workshop will examine. What does dance ‘actually’ have to say? And how is that ‘actually’ expressed in language? Perhaps even by keeping quiet about that ‘actuality’?

In the framework of PNEU festival 2016 Salzburg from January 18 – 24, 2016