Full Description
The age of humans has gotten increasingly loud in terms of literal sound and environmental impact. Recognising silence as a disappearing ontological value, there is grief around our loss, but there is also a greater desire for opportunities to experience silence in its various diverse forms.
This book explores the critical dynamics of silence within choreography, performance and composition, comprising a series of conversations with researchers and practitioners, including choreographer Rosemary Lee, architect Richard Dougherty, architectural historian Pérez-Gómez, Natural Horn player Isaac Shieh, neuroscientist Tony Steffert and drummer and aerialist Jonny Leitch.
These conversations:
- question what has been silenced through the immobilisation of our bodies through movement-saving technologies;
- discover points of convergence through silence in seemingly separate and unrelated physical, conceptual and philosophical spaces;
- examine neglected intelligence and marginalised ways of knowing of gesture and movement
Ultimately, we come to see how dance, embodied modes of inquiry and corporeal-based understandings within socio-cultural and ecological contexts can propose pathways in the absence of sound.
Contents
PRELUDE
CURATORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERSTITIAL PAGES
PREAMBLE
FIRST MOVEMENT
COMING BACK: GEOMETRY AND DANCE - (with Alberto Pérez-Gómez, McGill University, Canada)
Second Movement
Meandering through the gestural shapes of music: Hands and Sound (with Isaac Shieh, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK)
Third Movement
Moving language and territory through signing: Hands and Corporeal Hearing (with co-author Louisa Petts, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and Richard Dougherty, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA)
Intermission
Reflections on Outside of Speech
Fourth Movement
How the human body occupies (with Jonny Leitch, Head Over Wheels Aeriel Company, UK)
Fifth Movement
The baseline or 'you try and get some rest' (with Tony Steffert, UK)
Sixth Movement: Recapitulation
Silence as a Landing Place (with Rosemary Lee, Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK)
Concluding Remarks
Contributor Bios
