Gestures of Dance - Dance as Gesture. Cultural and Aesthetic Translations in International Coproductions by the Tanztheater Wuppertal

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Gabriele Klein
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2013 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 231419571

The research project examines cultural and aesthetic processes of translating gestures based on fifteen international coproductions by the Tanztheater Wuppertal. The focus lies on urban everyday gestures, which the ensemble experienced and investigated in the specific cultural contexts of the co-producing countries and then subsequently integrated into their choreographies.With the help of exceptional empirical material, not yet available to a professional and scientific public like performance excerpts and choreographic paratexts, visual and written rehearsal notes, i.e. as yet unpublished archive material, which the Pina Bausch Foundation has offered to provide for this project, as well as further empirical data like audience surveys, interviews with dancers, personal notes made during rehearsals, online film and other visual material, the research project will examine the production of cultural knowledge and the forms and framings of intercultural understanding in and through dance gestures. This will be analyzed on three levels, the scenic performances of the dancers, the solo and group dances and the choreography, its temporal-rhythmic and spatial-architectural and interactive-figurational aspects.Instead of approaching the subject of gesture from an anthropological perspective, the research project seeks, on the one hand, to fundamentally contribute to a cultural and social theory of the gesture in the fields of dance studies and cultural sociology by examining the cultural and social aspects of gesture and their potential to permit intercultural understanding. On the other hand, the research project also aims to develop a conceptual understanding of gesture as a fundamental term of dance theory against the backdrop of whether cultural understanding is at all possible. By questioning the relationship of everyday gestures and dance gestures, the latter as an artistic gesture understood as a second construction of gestures (Brandstetter 2010, Fischer-Lichte 2010), the subject of gesture will be investigated in terms of its use in intercultural understanding with a main focus on performative and corporeal aspects.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants