Dance and Politics

Like all forms of art, dance has a social and political function. It comments on affairs, criticises and polemicizes, it participates or sets itself apart, it intervenes and reflects social realities. In this regard, the question is raised as to the utopias that dance can develop: For the sociologist Randy Martin, for example, a dance ensemble per se forms a kind of that generates not only artistic but also socially effective practices. Moreover, dance can transgress boundaries and in a very specific way question common notions of national identity, as the philosopher Wolfgang Welsch points out. How is the so-called alien reflected in one’s own, and in which way does dance focus on the corporeal encounter between a diversity of cultures and the associated biographies that, beyond language, are not necessarily the same?
Changes in the social realm are often described using the metaphor of movement. The fact that such transferences can also be realised in a concrete manner is something that the performance groups LIGNA, Public Movement and others demonstrate. They voice critique not only on stage but also in public space, disturbing or even unsettling its everyday structures. What is up for debate in this context is the extent to which dance leads to changes of perception in these spaces, and how public spaces and their orders determine movement or are themselves influenced by movement.
Hence, politics in dance not only discusses potential spaces and ideas, but also raises the very practical question of how this art form reflects and has an altering effect on structures of production: Is it possible to work beyond hierarchical power relations or collective ideals? And what political and infrastructural conditions does dance as such require to be able to sustainedly unfold its artistic power? In this context, various international dance initiatives jointly discuss their strategies and models, assessing them in regard to the chances of enhancing the status of dance.