Moving Otherwise: Dance, Violence, and Memory in Buenos Aires

Moving Otherwise examines how contemporary dance practices in Buenos Aires, Argentina enacted politics within climates of political and economic violence from the mid-1960s to the mid-2010s. From the repression of military dictatorships to the precarity of economic crises, contemporary dancers
and audiences consistently responded to and reimagined the everyday choreographies that have accompanied Argentina's volatile political history. The titular concept, moving otherwise names how both concert dance and its off-stage practice and consumption offer alternatives to and modes to critique
the patterns of movement and bodily comportment that shape everyday life in contexts marked by violence.

Drawing on archival research based in institutional and private collections, over fifty interviews with dancers and choreographers, and the author's embodied experiences as a collaborator and performer with active groups, the book analyzes how a wide range of practices moved otherwise, including
concert works, community dance initiatives, and the everyday labor that animates dance. It demonstrates how these diverse practices represent, resist, and remember violence and engender new forms of social mobilization on and off the theatrical stage. As the first book length critical study of
Argentine contemporary dance, it introduces a breadth of choreographers to an English speaking audience, including Ana Kamien, Susana Zimmermann, Estela Maris, Alejandro Cervera, Renate Schottelius, Susana Tambutti, Silvia Hodgers, and Silvia Vladimivsky. It also considers previously undocumented
aspects of Argentine dance history, including crossings between contemporary dancers and 1970s leftist political militancy, Argentine dance labor movements, political protest, and the prominence of tango themes in contemporary dance works that address the memory of political violence. Contemporary
dance, the book demonstrates, has a rich and diverse history of political engagement in Argentina.


Author: Victoria Fortuna
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 12/05/2018
Pages: 280
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.20h x 6.10w x 0.90d
ISBN: 9780190627027

About the Author

Victoria Fortuna is an Assistant Professor in the Dance Department at Reed College in Portland, OR. Her research interests include Latin/x American concert and social dance, dance as a mode of political and community organization, and cultural histories of dance in transnational perspective.

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