Talk this Dance

As a means of expression, the unequivocally physical experience of dance is typically construed and spoken about in communicative terms, as a ‘conversation between body and soul,’ a ‘dialogue between dancers,’ or a means to ‘tell a story’ to an audience (Pascual and Brandt 2015; Brandt 2015). This chapter analyses this metaphor through a case study of Tiago Rodrigues’ choreography A Perna Esquerda de Tchaikovski (‘Tchaikovsky’s Left Leg’). In this performance a ballerina engages in different interactions: (i) with the audience, to whom she tells her life story; (ii) with the pianist on stage, who silently complies with her requests; and most remarkably (iii) with her own body, which she presents as the locus of autobiographical memory and of ‘thinking with the body’ (Kirsch 2011).