L’Ombre du Geste : le(s) Sens de l’Expérience en Danse Contemporaine

Drawing upon an ethnography of production processes of three Swiss dance companies (Cie Nicole Seiler, Cie Massimo Furlan/Numéro23Prod, Cie deRothfils), this book reveals what is present in the Shadow of the dancing gesture. The anthropologist explored the making process of dance plays, which treat existential questions. Fear, loneliness, and relationships between the dead and living portray shadows on stage (spirits, phantoms, monsters). By emphasising the choreographic work being created, the aesthetic dimension has been linked to the contexts of production. This investigation was enhanced through a personal practice of dance, anchored in a phenomenological approach to anthropology. Proximity with dancers and choreographers introduced the scholar to the core of choreographic creation, and led her to share the pleasures and the pains of affected bodies. The book sheds light on the shadows behind the gesture: the bodies chosen to carry the gesture, the shadows of others present in the dance of the soloist, the choreographer’s instructions, improvisation’s constraints, sensations, and ultimately the universe of sense created for the play and the narrative invented by performers, to inhabit their gesture. The biography of a singular gesture is traced in its tension with the collective, supported by the metaphor of the shadow. In a dialogue with dance studies in these ways, this book contributes to social theories of the living body and sensations