Choreographing Dirt

This book is an innovative study that places performance and dance studies in conversation with ecology by exploring the significance of dirt in performance. Focusing on a range of 20th- and 21st-century performances that include modern dance, dance-theatre, Butoh, and everyday life, this book demonstrates how the choreography of dirt makes biological, geographical, and cultural meaning, what the author terms "biogeocultography". Whether its the Foundling Father digging into the earths strata in Suzan-Lori Parks The America Play (1994), peat hurling through the air in Pina Bauschs The Rite of Spring (1975), dancers frantically shovelling out fistfuls of dirt in Eveoke Dance Theatres Las Mariposas (2010), or Butoh performers dancing with fungi in Ivn-Daniel Espinosas Messengers Divinos (2018), each example shows how the incorporation of dirt can reveal micro-level interactions between species like the interplay between microscopic skin bacteria and soil protozoa and macro-level interactions like the transformation of peat to a greenhouse gas. By demonstrating the stakes of moving dirt, this book posits that performance can operate as a space to grapple with the multifaceted ecological dilemmas of the Anthropocene. This book will be of broad interest to both practitioners and researchers in theatre, performance studies, dance, ecocriticism, and the environmental humanities.