Dance and Precarity in Contemporary Buenos Aires

VALLEJOS, JUAN IGNACIO

Nueva York

Conferencia; The Graduate Center's PhD program in Theater and Performance; 2018

CUNY - The Graduate Center

Lives of contemporary dancers and choreographers in today's Argentina are marked by the undeniable circumstance of precarity. A condition not limited to the dance industry's modes of production or society's low esteem of the artistic work, precarity is a constitutive element of Argentinean contemporary dance from a historical and aesthetic point of view. However, even if precarity represents a constraint for artistic practice, it can also be subverted. This presentation explores precarity's potential through the analysis of three artistic acts of resistance by Buenos Aires's contemporary dance community and Argentinean choreographers: the participation of dancers in political groups like the Foro Danza en Acción (Dance in Action Forum); the emergence of a poetics of precarity in Fabian Gandini?s work, which exposes precarious modes of production in dance; and Marina Sarmiento?s artistic research into dance history and disappearance that accentuates the material and symbolic precarity of the archives.