Jalons pour une géographie de la danse

Abstract

The dancing body informs us of space, in its interactions with other dancing bodies, music, or a changing physicalenvironment, costumes, sets, an audience. Dance is a “géoindicateur”, it reflects onthe forms of social organization. It produces images that act uponwhere it takes place, it becomes cultural, religious or national, even an instrument of territorial governance. Dance flows, migrates to hybrid or otherwise takes roots, freezes, purifies. It is self-created, regenerates, invent new stories. It incorporates dry coats or silhouettes, speeds up or slows tempos, eroticizes or neutralizes body to suit local cultures and vital rhythms that inhabit them. The geography of dance has a close relationship with the geography of the body that deconstructs the frames of knowledge, particularly with reference to feminist epistemology. It makes references to historical and anthropological approaches, as well as to postcolonial studies, before considering the spaces of practices and territoriality, the links between dance and politics, traffic dances between anchor and mobility. In this issue, the first text aims at setting a milestone for the geography of dance, and presents the six texts that follow, chosen for their complementarity.