Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance by Katherine Profeta (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2015)

Abstract

In Katherine Profeta’s monograph on dance and movement dramaturgy, a project ‘to unfold how a dance dramaturg may act and think’ (211), the author time and again mentions sparagmos, the ritual act of dismembering a body, and uses it as a metaphor to explain the collaborative processes she explores. Reflecting on her two decades of experience collaborating as a dramaturg with choreographer Ralph Lemon, and pondering how a moving body might accrue meaning, Profeta explains that in the process of ‘falling apart’ and ‘disassembling’ the body, movement and cultural forms, one can ‘see motion revealing structure’ (158). She concludes that her work with Lemon, which thrived on intercultural collaborations and hybridity, went even further. Once they had deconstructed these forms the destination of their journey became a fruitful location for the elements for ‘coming back together’, but this time creating a new entity through the act of reassembling (Lemon qtd. in Profeta 158).