"While this is a significant contribution to the field of dance and performance studies, it is also an invaluable resource for practitioners, researchers and students interested in dance and performance practice. ... This book is a long-awaited careful assessment of one the most influential, prominent and progressive choreographers of contemporary dance today, and a rich and valuable contribution to dance and performance studies scholarship." (Antje Hildebrandt, Theatre Research International, Vol. 46 (1), 2021)
"Perazzo Domm's research skillfully familiarizes the reader with the range of ways in which Burrows's oeuvre plays at the edges of normative structures. ... I find myself drawn to consider the potential of this manuscript to act as exemplar. ... this latest contribution to the field of dance studies, is a method of articulation that demonstrates empathy and deep listening with respect to both the artist and the work-a quality often absent in theoretical publications." (Gemma Collard-Stokes, Dance Chronicle, Vol. 43 (3), 2020)
1.Dance and/as poiesis, poetry, poetics
Poiesis as ‘non-making’: Weak Dance Strong Questions (2001)
A po(i)etic(s) (of) dance
From poetics to aesthetics and/as politics
Poetics as engaged writing
Between canons and individuation: Positioning Jonathan Burrows’ choreography
Articulation of chapters: Cross-overs and in-betweens
2.Resisting from within: Dance canons and their deterritorialisation
Ballet, English folk, Rosemary Butcher and Judson Church: A historical account
The paradox of the familiar in Hymns (1986–1988)
Absurdity and de-/re-territorialisation in Stoics (1991)
Intensive (a)signification in Both Sitting Duet (2002)
Inadequacy and urgency in Body Not Fit For Purpose (2014)
3.Reduction, repetition, returns: The trouble of minimalism
Burrows’ minimalist label: A critical divide
Reconfigurations of minimalism in The Stop Quartet (1996)
Dance and the real: Or, the po(i)etic potential of ‘small things’
Choreography’s ‘retroactive ontology’: Remaking the same piece
4.Rhythm as friendship: Movement, music and Matteo
Spacing and repetition: On poetry and partnership
Disproportion and dissymmetry in Speaking Dance (2006)
Not-knowing and non-reciprocity in Cheap Lecture (2009) and The Cow Piece (2009)
Rhythm and chaos in Body Not Fit For Purpose (2014)
5.Duets and (self-)portraits: Choreographing the im/personal
Singularity and plurality: A Choreographer’s Handbook (2010)
Deconstruction of the personal subject in Hands (1995)
Duets beyond interlocution: Both Sitting Duet (2002) and The Quiet Dance (2005)
Impersonal singularities in 52 Portraits (2016)
6.Choreographies of plurality: Rethinking collaboration and collectivity
Giving and stealing: 52 Portraits and a discovered community
Affective solidarity in Any Table Any Room (2017)
Debunking mastery in Music For Lectures (2018)
7.Towards a politics of poetry, gesture and laughter
Daniela Perazzo Domm is Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies at Kingston University London, UK, where her specialist areas include dance theory and performance philosophy.
The first monograph on the work of British choreographer Jonathan Burrows, this book examines his artistic practice and poetics as articulated through his choreographic works, his writings and his contributions to current performance debates. It considers the contexts, principles and modalities of his choreography, from his early pieces in the 1980s, to his latest collaborative projects, providing detailed analyses of his dances and reflecting on his unique choreomusical partnership with composer Matteo Fargion.
Known for its emphasis on gesture and humorous quality, and characterised by compositional clarity and rhythmical patterns, Burrows’ artistic work takes the language of choreography to its limits and engages in a paradoxical, and hence transformative, relationship with dance’s historical and normative structures. Exploring the ways in which Burrows and Fargion’s poetics articulates movement, performative presence and the collaborative process in a ‘minor’ register, this study conceptualises the work as a politically compelling practice that destabilises major traditions from a minoritarian position.