Transgressions: Energetic Processes of body and scene Energetic forces: Studies on Choreography as the art of transgression

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Sabine Huschka
• Subject Area: Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 265443773

The research aims at conceptualizing the aisthesis and politics of choreographed bodies. Its central question concerns the aesthetic agencies and cultural functions of choreographed bodies, which activate forms of dissolution and excess - transgressions - by engaging both retrieved and hidden forces. These artistic acts of (re-)presentation characterized by precise techniques of perception and aesthetic procedures that operate to energize body, action, space and gaze are the project's main interest. The study's main objective is to distinguish the complex techniques of movement and perception employed as strategic politics of perception which turn the event of representation into an energetic force field initiated by specific ways of exceeding body and scene. Following a transdisciplinary approach, the research will trace aisthetic signatures of the choreographic in modern, postmodern and contemporary theories of movement and body, dance techniques and choreographic works, encompassing such different artistic formats as dance event, performance and installation. Distinguished as energetic figurations of ecstasy, desire, exhaustion and economization the project analyzes these aesthetic approaches to movement and choreographic processes marked by activating and channeling forces, the recovery or distortion of forces. Subsumed under the notion of 'energizing', these choreographed figurations are examined in their medial and mediating strategies qualified by the potential to initiate energetic processes. The research considers 20th- and 21st-century aesthetic positions that expose extensions of the body and theatrical strategies of dissolution and excess. The project is organized along the lines of three historical moments [1920-40, 1980s, contemporary artistic positions of the beginning of the 21st century]. It addresses the following areas, all of which have so far received little scholarly attention: Rudolf von Laban's Effort-Theory, dance and choreography of the 1980s, installation-based choreographies (i.a. William Forsythe) and contemporary dance works i.a. by Doris Uhlich and Margrét Sara Guðjónsdóttir. Situated in the field of theatre and dance studies, my research thus aims a transdisciplinary notion of the choreographic. Expanding a topological notion of choreography as writing, my research proposes an aisthesiological understanding of the choreographic in order to direct attention to the transformative constellation of bodies within space and time, and to the (re-)presentations that organize body and scene as precisely balanced and strategic politics of perception. My investigation reflects these specific choreographic constellations in their theatrical functions and proposes a model of transcorporality that is informed by the perspective of critical cultural analysis. The aim is to develop for theatre and dance studies a model of analysis of moving, perceiving and (re-)presenting bodies.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants