One of the contemporary performance’s features definitely entails the blurring of conventional geographic boundaries as well as the reconfiguring of the relation between centre and periphery. While the centre/periphery relationship has represented a recurrent problematic within the history of art and performance studies’ research (leading, for example, to essays on the rise and fall and fragmentation of art centres), the present state puts one before an expanded reality, as if the centre was indeed an expanded, or expanding, centre on a planetary scale. The recent information technologies should be credited with most of the responsibility for this process. At the same time, one may recognise distinct accents and trends within this expanded centre. When preparing this paper, I have started attempting to identify a Portuguese accent. In order to do so, I have chronologically listed dance pieces exhibited in Portugal by Portuguese, or Portugal-based, choreographers, where intersections with new technologies were portrayed. Soon I was to face a curious dilemma: how would one distinguish ‘new technologies’? And above all, how would one identify those artworks where the authors take up technology not only as devices or resources but as dramaturgically purposeful?
“Dance and Technology with Portuguese accent at the crossroads” excerpt, by Daniel Tércio.
In Tedance. Perspectives on Technologically Expanded Dance. Lisbon, FMH, 2009. 249 pp. Paper plus a DVD. ISBN: 987-972-735-160-2
Please contact <imorais@fmh.utl.pt> to order copies of the book.
