Through the Back: Situating vision between moving bodies

Dance as a critical force

In today’s visual regime, contemporary dance operates as a critical force. It questions univocal representations and dominant cultural ideals of the body. Developing alternative approaches to physical expression, certain choreographers create body images that are vulnerable and permeable to the world. Their critical and experimental approach challenges and expands spectatorship, including the corporeal, technological and cultural elements that support the ways we see, hear, sense and imagine.

   Through the Back: Situating Vision between Moving Bodies seeks to articulate this critical potential in a series of essays that explores the work of experimental choreographers active throughout the noughties: Alexander Baervoets, Boris Charmatz, Meg Stuart, Benoît Lachambre, Vera Mantero, Philipp Gehmacher, Jennifer Lacey and Nadia Lauro, and deufert & plischke.

   The dancer Chrysa Parkinson and the performance theoretician Gerald Siegmund will introduce the book and engage in a conversation with Jeroen Peeters.

• Jeroen Peeters is a writer, dramaturge and performer active in the field of contemporary dance across Europe. Recent publications include Ar we here yet? (2010), a book in collaboration with Meg Stuart. In 2012, Peeters received the Dutch literary award Pierre Bayle for his body of work in dance criticism.