Dancing with the Environment as Epistemic Practice

• In Event: Dancing the Anthropocene: Envisioning Rituals, Bodies, Environments and Political Situatedness through the Lens of Dance - II

Abstract

In my presentation I will pinpoint the question of dance and knowledge, analyzing selected works of three contemporary ensembles that have addressed the experience of environmental consumption in their dance practices.
These works present frequent interactions on stage with –usually– non scenic devices (water, soil and trash). Two of them have been featured in the festival of Santarcangelo di Romagna —a traditional hub for independent theater in Italy, especially, but not exclusively, for Italian-American artistic negotiations. They are: Di natura violenta (Of Violent Nature) by Cosmesi (Eva Geatti e Nicola Toffolini, Santarcangelo, 2016), which questions the closely related philosophies of nature by Henry D. Thoreau (1817-1862) and Ted Kaczynski, or Unabomber (1942) through juxtaposition of dance and texts; the second work is Yellow Towel by Dana Michel (Santarcangelo, 2017), which questions the expectations of naturality related to black bodies dancing on the stage. A third case study is Dopo di me il diluvio (After Me the Flood) by choreographer Enzo Cosimi (2013), who has worked in the US for twenty years, and interrogates apocalyptic aesthetics.
These works reveal how dance is expanded into a heuristic tool, since interactions with environmental symbols uncover our assumptions about gender, race and class of the moving body.

Author

• Mariaenrica Giannuzzi, Cornell University - German Studies