Dance and Silence

A series of conversations with researchers and practitioners that explores the critical dynamics of silence within choreography, performance and composition.

The age of humans has gotten increasingly loud in terms of literal sound and environmental impact. Recognising silence as a disappearing ontological value, there is grief around our loss, but there is also a greater desire for opportunities to experience silence in its various diverse forms.

This book explores the critical dynamics of silence within choreography, performance and composition, comprising a series of conversations with researchers and practitioners, including choreographer Rosemary Lee, architect Richard Dougherty, architectural historian Pérez-Gómez, Natural Horn player Isaac Shieh, neuroscientist Tony Steffert and drummer and aerialist Jonny Leitch.

These conversations:

- question what has been silenced through the immobilisation of our bodies through movement-saving technologies;

- discover points of convergence through silence in seemingly separate and unrelated physical, conceptual and philosophical spaces;

- examine neglected intelligence and marginalised ways of knowing of gesture and movement

Ultimately, we come to see how dance, embodied modes of inquiry and corporeal-based understandings within socio-cultural and ecological contexts can propose pathways in the absence of sound.