Crisis and the Emotional Body: Towards (Another) Freedom

In his analysis of the recent European crisis, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi (2012) looks beyond its economic causes and implications and theorises the role played by poetry and the emotional body in rediscovering the relationship between language and desire and reopening the possibility of social solidarity. Drawing on Félix Guattari’s (1995) reflections on the correlation between singular refrain and universal chaos in the reinvention of subjectivity, Berardi conceptualises rhythm as a poetic feature which can contribute to restoring our ability to conjoin with other singularities and with our social and cosmic environment. This article considers how a close engagement with rhythmical, repetitive and cyclical performative practices in examples of recent European choreography may offer ways of responding to today’s crisis of social cohesion, reimagining channels of intensive communication. In particular, the article looks at works by the Italian artist Alessandro Sciarroni (Folk-s, will you still love me tomorrow?, 2012 and Chroma_don’t be frightened of turning the page, 2017) and by the London-based duo Igor and Moreno (Idiot-Syncrasy, 2013) and discusses how, in revisiting elements of folk traditions, they mobilise their potential as formal, semantic and affective modalities that can sustain a reconfiguration of social freedom