Dance and Silence

Vipavinee Artpradid is Assistant Professor at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK.Petra Johnson is an independent multidisciplinary artist and researcher. She holds a PhD in Social Sculpture and has devised cross-cultural art projects, bridging communities in China and Germany. She runs annual workshops at the China Academy of Art and occasional workshops at the Urban Ecology Lab at Tongji University, China. Between 2018 and 2020, she directed the curatorial program for Lijiang Studio in Jixiang Village, Yulong Naxi Autonomous Region, China.

As a study in humble, open, interdisciplinary exploration, this is a sensitive and artful text that aligns content and form to weave together issues of mythic resonance, marginalisation, mapping and art-making. It will appeal especially to dance and music scholars and to those within cultural studies more generally. The form of the text hovers and settles in the reader’s understanding; it captures the central themes in its shape. The Minotaur, the authors’ trope, acts as the very thread of which we are reminded, taking us in and amongst meanings. The interspersed ‘Movement Snacks’ invite not only an ‘entering into’ that renders the reading of the book something akin to an event or happening, they also let the reader consider Leith’s Radical Rest from an embodied perspective. This book is timely and expansive, not shying away from thinking related to technology and the body, whilst unabashedly lamenting and politicising the undervaluing of the latter.

• PRELUDECURATORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERSTITIAL PAGES PREAMBLE FIRST MOVEMENTCOMING BACK: GEOMETRY AND DANCE – (with Alberto Pérez-Gómez, McGill University, Canada) Second MovementMeandering 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 SpeechFourth Movement How the human body occupies (with Jonny Leitch, Head Over Wheels Aeriel Company, UK)Fifth MovementThe 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