Dance and the Twilight of Capitalism

Abstract

Performance, Dance and Political Economy: Bodies at the End of the World, a new collection edited by Katerina Paramana and Anita Gonzalez, addresses how dance and movement provide a means for our bodies to claim back the world and reject the commodified relations of capitalism. Framing the volume as a whole, Tavia Nyong’o’s forward to the book draws attention to how capitalism has been resculpting the human body and how dancers can use movement to undo or outdo the constraints of capitalism. After initial provocations from both editors, the book smartly progresses through six dialogues, each between two contributors. The form recalls the Socratic method. In a group conversation at the end, contributors have the chance to raise remarks in response to the co-contributor whose essay the editors paired with theirs. Until the group conversation, only the editors knew whose essay had been paired with whose and why. The dialogic form is innovative and facilitates an exchange of ideas about the key themes orienting the collection. The contributors come from a range of disciplinary backgrounds. They include dancers and artists like Alexandrina Hemsley and Jamila JohnsonSmall. Nina Power is principally a feminist theorist, Elena Loizidou, a law scholar, and Melissa Blanco Borelli, a dance scholar. Others—including Marc Arthur, Usva Seregina, and the two editors—occupy the space between scholarship and artistic practice. In “Dialogue 1: Control of Bodies,” Nina Power elucidates how capitalism regulates bodily movements and how alternative ways of approaching ordinary movements can facilitate escaping the state’s radar and its economy of control. Marc Arthur foregrounds rage as a way of resisting the violent forces of state manipulation. Dance, according to Arthur, can make rage contagious and channel it toward the common good. Power starts “Dialogue 2: Commodification of Bodies” with her second contribution that explores how the capitalist mode of production acts upon