ARTISTIC RESEARCH

STILL(ING)DANCE

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This research-based artistic project proposes the practice of stilling as a methodology to rest in dance. Developed against the backdrop of late capitalism and its current conditions of existence, the practice poses the relevant question of how to think (about) (as) the exhausted body in dance. To this end, it draws on a wide and complex range of theories and methods that include critical dance studies, affect theory, contemporary philosophy, and auto-ethnography.

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As a practice that approaches dance as potentiality, stilling is driven by the researcher as dancer-anthropologist disrupting the divisions between theory and practice, thinking and doing. By attending to the immanent, what is not yet but about to become so, the practice aims to shed light on dance as a (re)generative force and open up new possibilities for dancing otherwise. Ultimately, in response to the compulsion of production imposed by the striving societies of today, this methodology points out the urgent need of de-disciplining the dancing body and demonstrates a firm determination to continue dancing still and despite.

 

This research started at the end of 2021 in the context of a master program in performance practices at ArtEZ University of the Arts in the Netherlands. Since then, the project has been shared in different formats including performances, workshops, laboratories and publications.

 

Supported by: Home of Performance Practices, ArtEZ University of the Arts, HelgeAx:son Johnsons stiftelse, Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Centro Coreográfico Canal, Teatro de La Laboral, RCPD Mariemma de Madrid, Centro Coreográfico de la Gomera / Special thanks to: João da Silva, Núria Guiu, Andrew Champlin, and all my peers, teachers and guest artists from HoPP