Moving Relation: Touch in Contemporary Dance

Moving Relation explores the notion of touch in the realm of contemporary dance.

By closely analyzing performances by well-known European and American choreographers such as Meg Stuart, William Forsythe, Xavier Le Roy, Jared Gradinger and Angela Schubot, this book investigates their usage of touch on the level of movement, experience and affect. Building on the proposition that touch is more than the moment of bodily contact, the author demonstrates the concept of touch as an interplay of movements and multiple relations of proximity. Egert employs both depth, using close descriptions and analyses of dance performances with theoretical investigations of touch, with breadth, working across the fields of performance and dance studies, philosophy and cultural theory.

Suitable for scholars and practitioners in the fields of dance and performance studies, Moving Relation uses a process-oriented notion of touch to reevaluate key concepts such as the body, rhythm, emotional expression, subjectivity and audience perception.

Gerko Egert is a dance and theater studies scholar. He is postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen. His publications include Movements of Interweaving (co-edited with Brandstetter and Hartung, 2019) and "Choreographing the Weather – Weathering Choreography" (TDR, 2016).