Choreographing difference: the body and identity in contemporary dance

TLDR

The 1990s choreographies of artists such as Bill T. Jones and David Dorfman positioned dance as a key cultural discourse, framing the body as a site of gendered, racial, and social meaning. Albright investigates how the dancing body reconfigures representation, illustrating the dialectical link between culture and embodied identity. Drawing on her experience as a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, she analyzes the material experience of bodies to trace how cultural representation becomes embedded.

Abstract

The choreographies of Bill T. Jones, Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, Zab Maboungou, David Dorfman, Marie Chouinard, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and others, have helped establish dance as a crucial discourse of the 90s. These dancers, Ann Cooper Albright argues, are asking the audience to see the body as a source of cultural identity a physical presence that moves with and through its gendered, racial, and social meanings. Through her articulate and nuanced analysis of contemporary choreography, Albright shows how the dancing body shifts conventions of representation and provides a critical example of the dialectical relationship between cultures and the bodies that inhabit them. As a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, Albright turns to the material experience of bodies, not just the body as a figure or metaphor, to understand how cultural representation becomes embedded in the body. In arguing for the intelligence of bodies, Choreographing Difference is itself a testimonial, giving voice to some important political, moral, and artistic questions of our time.