Spectacle, world, environment, void : understanding nature through rural site-specific dance
- Submitting institution
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The University of Lancaster
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 151063375
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
-
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- Book title
- Moving sites : investigating site-specific dance performance
- Publisher
- Routledge
- ISBN
- 9780415713252
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2015
- URL
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-
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- 33 - Music, Drama, Dance, Performing Arts, Film and Screen Studies
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This chapter contributes to insights into environmental dance in general by not only reflecting on examples from the field of rural site-specific dance but also by reflecting epistemologically on ways of grasping that field in the first place. The publication is 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, the chapter is twice as long as any other chapter in the book.
The author sets out four epistemes for understanding 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.
Each episteme is defined and exemplified in relation to the natural sciences, the aesthetics and ethics of nature, and the function of language in articulating nature. The author also provides different examples of rural site-specific dance and, as he moves along the continuum, puts more emphasis on methods of work than finished site-specific works. For sake of comparison, he refers to works and practices concerned with birds, beaches and grasslands. Finally, at the behest of the editor, he reviews the four epistemes and demonstrates 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).
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -