Politics - talk by Jonathan Burrows

SUMMARY

Politics was a research talk written for the Inventur#2–Contemporary Dance and Performance Conference at Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf, June 2nd 2017. This talk formed part of a panel on Social Practices and the Inherent Politics of Dance, chaired by Jonathan Burrows and Dan Daw, with guest speakers Bojana Kunst and Joe Moran. It is now published as part of A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance, edited by Simon Ellis, Hetty Blades and Charlotte Waelde, published by CDaRE, 2018. The talk was also shared again as part of a seminar at the New Theatre Institute of Latvia on February 15th 2020.

The aim of the research behind this talk was to begin the process of an examination into the often spoken relationship between dance practice and the political. The research and outcome of this talk covered two main elements of the relationship between dance and the political: the tendency of dance performers to describe their experience of dancing as being a form of freedom; and the tendency of practitioners to also assume a separation between their activities and the possibility of co-option or appropriation by economic or political forces. The talk echoed a research by Jonathan Burrows, Simon Ellis and Efrosini Protopapa, which began by trying to identify contradictory arguments for the value of dance, focussing on the question 'If the value of dance is that it has no value, what might this mean in a historical moment that calls for action?'. 

These questions sit centrally to current developments in the field, led by a younger generation many of whom are already invested as activists in parallel to their artistic work. It identifies crucial ways in which diverse dance artists might continue to build strength together to question current notions of cultural, political and economic value in dance, and support positive commonal resistance within each other's practice.

CONTEXTUAL INFORMATION

- Credits:

text by Jonathan Burrows

commissioned by Inventur#2–Contemporary Dance and Performance Conference at Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf

- First presentation:

Inventur#2–Contemporary Dance and Performance Conference at Tanzhaus NRW Düsseldorf, June 2nd 2017

- Also presented at:

New Theatre Institute of Latvia, February 15th 2020

- Published as part of :

A World of Muscle, Bone & Organs: Research and Scholarship in Dance, edited by Simon Ellis, Hetty Blades and Charlotte Waelde, published by CDaRE, 2018