In Exhausting Dance (2006) Andre Lepecki argues that the use of stillness can challenge the very essence of dance itself:
“I suggest the perception of the stilling of movement as a threat to dance’s tomorrow indicates that any disrupting of dance’s flow- any choreographic questioning of dance’s identity as a being-in-flow – represents not just a localized disturbance of a critic’s capacity to enjoy dance, but, more relevantly, it performs a critical act of deep ontological impact. No wonder some perceive such an ontological convulsion as a betrayal: the betrayal of dance’s very essence and nature, of its signature, of its privileged domain. That is: the betrayal of the bind between dance and movement.” (Lepecki 2006: 1)
Dwelling in this possibility for a moment one can only wonder what is this stillness? A hush in the noise? Adding to a flow does not necessarily mean increase “to me it is dilution.” (Larkin 1964: 40).To be still particularly in dance is a risk, interrupting (or is it punctuating) the flow.
How can we be still? How does one come to be still? An apparent absence of movement on any large scale anyway, alongside a profundity of presence. To be acutely present in this still-ing. How do we sense ourselves in stillness? In what ways do we know ourselves and others in stillness? Maybe there is a connection here to a point of recognition for the audience-spectators – I see your body still and I know my own body in stillness, I remember, I may or may not be able to dance those steps you have just danced but I can be still. My stillness may be different from yours but it is mine and in this sense perhaps we are not so far away from dance, my dance and my movement is different from yours but it is still movement, it could still be called dance if I choose.
Lepecki, Andre (2006) Exhausting dance: performance and the politics of movement, London and New York: Routledge.
Larkin, Philip (1964) The Whitsun Weddings, London: Faber & Faber.
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