Context

Imagined choreographies and the time we live in

Staging the presence of someone who is in fact absent, touches upon a broader social and cultural phenomenon: the dismantling of spatial proximity and the feeling of closeness. In our globalized age, entanglements reach way beyond what one might even perceive: *“Every act results from more than one can know, and bears consequences upon more than one knows.” Fostered by continually evolving communication and information technologies, the usage of mobile devices, and the impact of social media networks, like Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter etc., we have moved towards becoming involved with the world as a whole; lessening the geographically defined gap between one another.

We live in a time, in which the measure of presence is no longer closeness, and the measure of closeness is no longer touch.

Sabrina Huth

At the same time, whilst transforming from local to global beings, we might have widened the gap with what is physically close to us. The very tissue of our spatial and relational experience has altered. Anthony Giddens, a British sociologist, recognized already thirty years ago, **“conjoining proximity and distance in ways that have few close parallels in prior ages”. Our concepts of space, time, and the relationships we live in have fundamentally changed . In such a situation, what kind of relationships to ourselves, others, and the world around us do we rehearse and perform by dancing and creating dances?  What new forms of artistic production and collaboration can take place?

These are our current research questions.

 *Chauchat, Alice. 2017.“Generative Fictions, or How Dance May Teach Us Ethics.” In Post-Dance, edited by Danjel Andersson, Mette Edvardsen, and Marten Spangberg, 29-43. Stockholm: MDT.

** Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. United Kingdom: Polity Press.