Perpetual Motion

Perpetual Motion

Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common

Harmony Bench

A new exploration of how digital media assert the relevance of dance in a wired world

288 Pages, 6 x 9 in

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Details

Perpetual Motion

Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common

Series: Electronic Mediations

Harmony Bench

ISBN: 9781517900526

Publication date: March 10th, 2020

288 Pages

44

8 x 5

"With an unmatched skill at plain-language engagement with dense philosophical problems, Bench lays out a wide-ranging case for the radical possibilities inherent in the online dissemination of even the corniest dances, while avoiding neoliberal language of democratization and universality."—Performance Research 

"This book is a rewarding way to further study dance in the digital age, with deep considerations of access and distribution, and explorations of what technology means for audience engagement, collaboration and more."—Dance Teacher


A new exploration of how digital media assert the relevance of dance in a wired world

How has the Internet changed dance? Dance performances can now be seen anywhere, can be looped endlessly at user whim, and can integrate crowds in unprecedented ways. Dance practices are evolving to explore these new possibilities. In Perpetual Motion, Harmony Bench argues that dance is a vital part of civil society and a means for building participation and community. She looks at how, after 9/11, it became a crucial way of recuperating the common character of public spaces. She explores how crowdsourcing dance contributes to the project of performing a common world, as well as the social relationships forged when we look at dance as a gift in the era of globalization. Throughout, she asks how dance brings people together in digital spaces and what dance’s digital travels might mean for how we experience and express community. 

From original research on dance today to political economies of digital media to the philosophy of dance, Perpetual Motion provides an ambitious, invigorating look at a commonly shared practice.

Harmony Bench is associate professor in the Department of Dance at The Ohio State University. Her writing has been published in The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen, Choreographies of 21st Century War, and Dance on Its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Dance as Common

1. Interactivity and Agency: Making-Common and the Limits of Difference

2. Dance in Public: Of Common Spaces

3. A World from a Crowd: Composing the Common 

4. Screen Sharing: Dance as Gift of the Common

Notes

Index