Jonathan Burrows: Towards a Minor Dance
- Author: Perazzo Domm, Daniela
While this is a significant contribution to the field of dance and performance studies, it is also an invaluable resource for practitioners, researchers and students interested in dance and...
Jonathan Burrows: Towards a Minor Dance
- Author: Perazzo Domm, Daniela
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While this is a significant contribution to the field of dance and performance studies, it is also an invaluable resource for practitioners, researchers and students interested in dance and...
About
The first monograph on the work of British choreographer Jonathan Burrows, this book examines his artistic practice and poetics as articulated through his choreographic works, his writings and his contributions to current performance debates. It considers the contexts, principles and modalities of his choreography, from his early pieces in the 1980s to his latest collaborative projects, providing detailed analyses of his dances and reflecting on his unique choreomusical partnership with composer Matteo Fargion.
Known for its emphasis on gesture and humour, and characterised by compositional clarity and rhythmical patterns, Burrows’ artistic work takes the language of choreography to its limits and engages in a paradoxical, and hence transformative, relationship with dance’s historical and normative structures. Exploring the ways in which Burrows and Fargion’s poetics articulates movement, performative presence and the collaborative process in a ‘minor’ register, this study conceptualises the work as a politically compelling practice that destabilises major traditions from a minoritarian position.
Contents
- 1.Dance and/as poiesis, poetry, poeticsPoiesis as 'non-making': Weak Dance Strong Questions (2001)A po(i)etic(s) (of) danceFrom poetics to aesthetics and/as politicsPoetics as engaged writing Between canons and individuation: Positioning Jonathan Burrows'
- 2.Resisting from within: Dance canons and their deterritorialisationBallet, English folk, Rosemary Butcher and Judson Church: A historical accountThe paradox of the familiar in Hymns (1986-1988)Absurdity and de-/re-territorialisation in Stoics (1991)Inte
- 3.Reduction, repetition, returns: The trouble of minimalismBurrows' minimalist label: A critical divide Reconfigurations of minimalism in The Stop Quartet (1996)Dance and the real: Or, the po(i)etic potential of 'small things' Choreography's 'retroactive
- 4.Rhythm as friendship: Movement, music and MatteoSpacing and repetition: On poetry and partnershipDisproportion and dissymmetry in Speaking Dance (2006)Not-knowing and non-reciprocity in Cheap Lecture (2009) and The Cow Piece (2009)Rhythm and chaos in B
- 5.Duets and (self-)portraits: Choreographing the im/personalSingularity and plurality: A Choreographer's Handbook (2010)Deconstruction of the personal subject in Hands (1995)Duets beyond interlocution: Both Sitting Duet (2002) and The Quiet Dance (2005)I
- 6.Choreographies of plurality: Rethinking collaboration and collectivityGiving and stealing: 52 Portraits and a discovered communityAffective solidarity in Any Table Any Room (2017)Debunking mastery in Music For Lectures (2018)
- 7.Towards a politics of poetry, gesture and laughter
Awards and reviews
Theatre Research International
While this is a significant contribution to the field of dance and performance studies, it is also an invaluable resource for practitioners, researchers and students interested in dance and performance practice. ... This book is a long-awaited careful assessment of one the most influential, prominent and progressive choreographers of contemporary dance today, and a rich and valuable contribution to dance and performance studies scholarship
