This article expands a keynote address given at the conference Ethics & Repair, Dance & Somatics Practices, at Coventry University (2015). Part One is an effort to understand a basic ethical tenet-respect of otherness-inviting an understanding of how to be with difference through a somatic sense of self as related, separate and in between. Part Two draws on this respect of otherness to offer a second discussion concerning dance training for performance. Somatic practices nurture an ethical relationship to others and the environment, contributing to physical and psychological change. Over the past twenty years somatic practices have come to form the foundation of contemporary dance training, disrupting competitively attained acquisition and achievement of spectacular technical skill. I Am Because You Are gives this dilemma in dance training some air space, to blow through currents of thought.
At a time when artists are questioning twenty-first-century dance for its contemporary-ness, this writing exposes a tension that plays across differing choreographic processes – a tension that suggests a widening rift between letting go into collaborative uncertainty and the creation of single authored productions of spectacle. I suggest that a move away from spectacle in the United Kingdom is exacerbated by various wider themes such as practice as research, somatics, digital technology and neo-liberalism, all of which have deeply affected artists’ performance processes. Particular emphasis is given to how shifts in institutionally driven dance training and education are affecting performance, and the writing draws attention to what artists might have in common across the divide – a passionate engagement with how we communicate what we do with others.
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