From Exhaustion to Possibilising – or, How to Think Through Contemporary Choreographic Practice

This paper responds to the phenomenon of ‘exhausting dance’ (Lepecki 2006) in contemporary choreography, by introducing an alternative notion of ‘possibilising’ (Deleuze 1997) for current dance thinking and practice. Following an examination of key points related to the phenomenon of exhaustion in dance, as raised both by theorists and by choreographers, this paper argues that it is often the constant processes of labelling and re-labelling in dance studies and practice that has brought about exhaustion, and ‘diagnoses’ instead a symptom of ‘fatigue’ (Connor 2004) in contemporary choreography, which might indeed be able to lead to new possibilities in dance