Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
Research output: Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings - With ISBN/ISSN › Chapter
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TY - CHAP
T1 - Spectacle, world, environment, void
T2 - understanding nature through rural site-specific dance
AU - Stewart, Nigel
PY - 2015/3/30
Y1 - 2015/3/30
N2 - This essay makes a contribution to environmental dance in general by not only reflecting on examples from the field of rural site-specific dance but also by mapping four epistemologies by which we can understand that field in the first place. The essay appears as a chapter in a publication that was the first to address the area of site-specific dance in general. Given the critical apparatus it uses to scope and reflect upon this area, it is twice as long as any other chapter in the book.I set out four different ways, or epistemes, in which we can understand how rural site-specific dance produces knowledge of nature. They are “spectacle”, “world”, “environment”, and “void”. In effect, these epistemes exist on a continuum between, at one extreme, aesthetic theories and dance practices that understand “nature” as merely a human construction to, at the other extreme, theories and practices that confront nature’s sheer alterity and unmasterable magnitudes. I define and exemplify each episteme in relation to the natural sciences, the aesthetics and ethics of nature, and the function of language in articulating nature. I also give examples of rural site-specific dance, putting, as I move along the continuum, more emphasis on methods of work than finished site-specific works. For the sake of comparison, I refer to works and practices concerned with birds, beaches and grasslands. Finally, at the behest of the editor I review the four epistemes and demonstrate the ways in which they can overlap through a discussion of two co-productions by Sap Dance and Louise Ann Wilson Company: the walking performance Jack Scout (2010), which is discussed by other contributors to the book, and the film Jack Scout Redux (2013).
AB - This essay makes a contribution to environmental dance in general by not only reflecting on examples from the field of rural site-specific dance but also by mapping four epistemologies by which we can understand that field in the first place. The essay appears as a chapter in a publication that was the first to address the area of site-specific dance in general. Given the critical apparatus it uses to scope and reflect upon this area, it is twice as long as any other chapter in the book.I set out four different ways, or epistemes, in which we can understand how rural site-specific dance produces knowledge of nature. They are “spectacle”, “world”, “environment”, and “void”. In effect, these epistemes exist on a continuum between, at one extreme, aesthetic theories and dance practices that understand “nature” as merely a human construction to, at the other extreme, theories and practices that confront nature’s sheer alterity and unmasterable magnitudes. I define and exemplify each episteme in relation to the natural sciences, the aesthetics and ethics of nature, and the function of language in articulating nature. I also give examples of rural site-specific dance, putting, as I move along the continuum, more emphasis on methods of work than finished site-specific works. For the sake of comparison, I refer to works and practices concerned with birds, beaches and grasslands. Finally, at the behest of the editor I review the four epistemes and demonstrate the ways in which they can overlap through a discussion of two co-productions by Sap Dance and Louise Ann Wilson Company: the walking performance Jack Scout (2010), which is discussed by other contributors to the book, and the film Jack Scout Redux (2013).
KW - Eco-phenomenology
KW - Site-specific dance
KW - Nature
KW - Performance
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9780415713252
SN - 9780415710176
SP - 364
EP - 384
BT - Moving sites
A2 - Hunter, Victoria
PB - Routledge
CY - Abingdon
ER -