The kinesthetic citizen: Dance and critical art practices

Unrestricted When we watch a dance performance, we become aware not only of the dancer’s movements, but of our own corporeal capacity for movement. Thus, dance in exhibition spaces posits spectatorship as a physical act. It also provides an embodied understanding of our relationship to social spaces. How might this kinesthetic awareness be mobilized as a political gesture? My thesis examines the work of six contemporary artists -- Jérôme Bel, Trisha Brown, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joachim Koester, Ralph Lemon, and Rashaad Newsome -- whose multi-disciplinary practices utilize two central tenets of the postmodern dance genre: the incorporation of everyday movement within choreography and a rejection of the archetypal dancer. I examine the kinesthetic experience of their dance events through the lens of political and spatial theories proposed by Ernesto Laclau, Chantal Mouffe, and Doreen Massey in order to locate political empathy in everyday movement, social encounters and lived experiences.