Performing Plurality: Contemporary Dance and the Limits of European Cultural Democracy

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 5. Performance, Embodiment & Aesthetics

Abstract

In recent years, the contemporary dance field in Europe has positioned itself as politically relevant by adopting activist frameworks as primary markers of artistic value and public legitimacy. This paper argues that while this turn has expanded the range of voices in the cultural milieu, it has also produced a paradox: the more explicitly political the framing, the more politically enclosed the encounter tends to become. Political engagement circulates in recognizable forms within institutional contexts that already endorse these positions, reaching audiences predisposed to agreement. Disagreement is framed as moral failing. The difficult work of building a shared world is replaced by the affirmation of shared positions.
The political dimension of art, I argue, cannot be captured through thematic engagementor moral positioning alone. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, I understand politics as action and judgment among multiple perspectives.
I examine EU-funded transnational contemporary dance networks supported by the Creative Europe Program as a diagnostic site, drawing on longitudinal analysis of policy documents, funding calls, festival programs, and performances, alongside two decades of involvement in the field as researcher, curator, and jury member. Engaging Fraser and Mouffe alongside Arendt, I show how symbolic inclusion and moral consensus crowd out genuine contestation. Reducing cultural democracy to a politics of visibility, I argue, weakens rather than realizes art's political potential.

Author

• Gurur Ertem, Bimeras gGmbH