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Like Water Between One’s Hands: Embodiment of Time and the Ephemeral of Dance

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Abstract

Concepts of the body and habits of movement in discourses on dance and performance are often linked with metaphors of transformation, fluidity and experiences of the ephemeral. This chapter explores concepts of embodiment and temporality via metaphors of the ephemeral and ‘vanitas’, questioning how these ideas affect the phenomenology of body and memory, identity and transformation. From a historical perspective, the idea of ephemerality is linked to the social and aesthetic discourse of modernity. How is the experience of transience and fluidity interwoven in today’s contemporary dance? How do practices of somatic experience, of interaction and synchronisation explore the relationship between permanence and the ephemeral? And how might a theoretical reflection upon these questions be a starting point for an ‘aesthetic of the ephemeral’?

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Rabih Mroué: Water between Three Hands, UA Kampnagel/Hamburg, 23.04.2016, as the second production of the Dance On/First Edition project; here: Scene No. 13.

  2. 2.

    Script, Scene 10, Graph 3/‘No Face’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Free University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Gabriele Brandstetter

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  1. Gabriele Brandstetter
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Correspondence to Gabriele Brandstetter .

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  1. Department of Teaching and Learning (Ämnesdidaktik), Stockholms universitet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anja Kraus

  2. Anthropology and Education, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Christoph Wulf

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Brandstetter, G. (2022). Like Water Between One’s Hands: Embodiment of Time and the Ephemeral of Dance. In: Kraus, A., Wulf, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Embodiment and Learning. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93001-1_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93001-1_19

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