Contemporary Dance, from movement to gesture

Drawing on a fieldwork with contemporary dancers, this paper addresses the question of movement. It explores the notion of gesture beyond its visual form: what makes a gesture powerful? What gives its quality and performativity? The author investigates the entanglement of sensations, meaning, space, time and ecology. Adopting a phenomenological perspective, the anthropologist explored gestures through the metaphor of ?shadow? to avoid a dualism between an ?outside? form (the shape of gesture) and an ?inside? life (the interiority of dancers).