Maxine Sheets-Johnstone on the phenomenology of dance as re-languaging. A liminality between the two faces of an object: presence/absence. I’m curious how this does or doesn’t relate to a relationship between the real, or more apropriately physical, and digitally virtual (as opposed to S-J’s physical virtual force).
Technologically, when we digitally loop materials and we program loops into our network we complicate the possibility for what Gilles Deleuze calls the “following present,” or repetition, which is where he locates the virtual. In the case of Deleuze, the virtual characterizes a very physical presence, repetition. This virtual presence as a physical quality as opposed to digital reality is one that philosopher Maxine Sheets-Johnstone uses to philosophize dance in her book, Phenomenology of Dance.
Lest we forget that although these considerations of the body and the real in media driven movement and looping are repetitions of well-articulated theories on the body and the real, our experiences of Deleuzian repetitions in everyday action are nonetheless confused and complicated with the introduction of “new” media and digital presence. For this reason I’m interested in how my research on digital environments are pre-established concepts in a new context. I will, therefore, ground much of my research in a historical situation of dance experience in relation to the body and the everyday with the hope of locating a new articulation of these terms; or perhaps new terms altogether.
There is space in dance scholarship to move through experiences in relation to digital limitation and/or distraction and phenomenological experience. The digital is no longer so “new” and technologies have forever mechanized movement practice. So, rather than forget previously articulated ideas, I hope to consider contemporary technologies and dance performance in relation to a historical theoretical perspective.
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