Moving with(in) Language: Kinetic Textuality in Contemporary Performing Arts.

Traditionally, text and language have been central elements on the theatre stage. The first and foremost function of these texts was 'mimesis'. 'Mimesis' describes the use of the drama text as referring to, or evoking an external reality. Through the text the actors pronounce, characters of all sorts can emerge. Today, a broad range of theatre, performance, and dance practices do not employ texts for mimesis, but rather for kinesis. These texts do not imitate reality, but generate movement, because they are uttered in a distinctly rhythmic manner, and because the performers' bodies start to move on the rhythm of these texts. This project will offer the first, in-depth study of this recent tendency by examining how contemporary theatre, performance, and dance artists are rethinking the interaction between text and movement in ways that prevailing interpretative frameworks in academic research on the performing arts can hardly account for. The increased interest in what this project calls 'kinetic textuality' necessitates a different perspective on the relation between language and movement, that illuminates its underlying aesthetic strategies and makes the intertwinement between text and motion comprehensible.

Keywords:PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

Disciplines:Choreography, Dance, Performance, Theatre