1st Edition
Dressaged Animality Human and Animal Actors in Contemporary Performance
The book applies a productive interdisciplinary lens of art history, performance, and animal studies for approaching political economy issues, critiquing anthropomorphic worldviews, and provoking thoughts around animal and human nature that spark impulses for an innovative performance aesthetics and ethics.
It combines Marxist analysis with feminist and posthumanist methodology to analyse the relation between ‘societal dressage’ and ‘bodily animality’ that humans and animals share. Within this original theoretical framework, the book develops the concept of ‘dressaged animality’ as a mode of artistic critique to analyse the social and political function of interdisciplinary forms of ‘contemporary performances.’
Drawing on archival and primary research, the book theorises and historicises more than 15 artistic performance practices in which animality is allegorically staged through by humans danced, real, or filmically mediated animals. It focuses on Rose English’s pioneering approach to performance-making as well as on overlooked performances by other renown and largely unknown American (Mike Kelley/Kate Foley, Robert Morris, Bruce Naumann, Yvonne Rainer, Diana Thater), British (Mark Wallinger, Rose English), and European artists (Tamara Grcic, Judith Hopf, Joseph Beuys, Bartabas) from the late 1960s until the late 2010s. While various types of artistic practice are framed as forms of critique (for example protest art, interventionist strategies, institutional critique), the book maps an original performance theory in art which shows that contemporary artistic performances can also take up a critique of societal dressage.
This study will be of great interest to students and scholars in art history, theatre and performance studies, and ecology, as well as to artists and curators working with performance.
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Interdisciplinary as a Critical Framework
Theoretical Approaches
Contemporary Performance and Its Leftovers
Chapter Summary
Politics of Embodiment
CHAPTER 1
Theorising Dressage
Conceptions of Dressage and Animality in Marxist Theories
‘Dressaged Animality’: Feminist Approaches to Societal Dressage
‘Self-Dressage’: The Performance of Subjectivity and its Ethics
Other Theories of Dressage
CHAPTER 2
Performance Histories: The Mechanisms of Human and Animal Dressage
VIRTUOUS: Militaristic Dressage in the L’Art Militaire
VIRUTOUS: The ‘Revolutionary Romanticism’ of the Manège
VIRTUAL: Choreographing Human Animality as Ballet en Action
Conclusion: Artistic Pre-Modernism and the Illusion of Autonomy
CHAPTER 3
The Critique of Dressage: Dancing Horses
Choreographing Artistic Self-Dressage: Yvonne Rainer’s Horses
Patriarchal Dressage: Rose English’s Quadrille
Dressage Performances: Mike Kelley and Kate Foley’s Pantomime Horse Dance
Conclusion: Allegorical Criticism
CHAPTER 4
The Ethics of Dressage: Non-Acting Dressage Acts
Playing Comedians: Rose English’s My Mathematics
A Radical Staging of Animality: Beuys’s Titus Andronicus/Iphigenie
Searching for Animal Spirits: Bartabas’s Ex Anima
Conclusion: Theatrical Experiments with Animals
CHAPTER 5
The Technology of Dressage: Animal Machines
Testing Physical Limits: Robot Morris’s Horse Performances
Gambling with Animality Against Dressage: Mark Wallinger’s A Real Work of Art
Abstracting the Corporeal Machine: Tamara Gricic’s Turf
Conclusion: Co-Evolutionary Developments
CONCLUSION
Dressaged Animalities: Towards Human-Animal Forms of Bodily Realism
Political Potentials of Aesthetic Critique
Bibliography
Index
Biography
Lisa Moravec is an Art Historian-Performance Scholar. She writes, lectures, curates, and dances on intersections of the performing and visual arts.
‘This highly original book, by galloping from pre-modern times to contemporary artistic strategies, analyses the interdisciplinary parcours that is societal dressage. A knowledgeable take on our shared beastly rhythms and body politics for those who want to reflect on "how we can more ethically train, rehearse, and perform together"’.
Professor Petra Lange-Berndt, Department of History of Art, Universität Hamburg
‘Within Dressaged Animality, Moravec makes a vivid and compelling case for the concept of "dressage" as allied to, but distinct from "training". Her attention to horses, and to the "centaurian", exposes a crucial pinch point in the history of corporeal forms.’
Kélina Gotman, Professor of Performance and the Humanities at King’s College London
‘The book sensitively explores the relation of practices of dressage and political economy through animal art and performance. By this, it reinforces much needed links between Marxist and feminist body politics.’
Karin Harrasser, Professor of Cultural Theory at the University of Art and Design Linz
‘Bridging debates in animal studies with those of Marxism, Lisa Moravec has written a deeply historicised book that bridles at well-worn assumptions about animality, human subjectivity, and the role of performance therein. The rigorously researched chapters that comprise this monograph offer novel accounts of cross-species art, all of which culminate in the enthralling theory of "dressage" as a critical concept for grappling with the social relations that impinge on bodily training, discipline, and subject formation under conditions of late capitalism.’
Michael Shane Boyle, Senior Lecturer in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies at Queen Mary University of London
‘In this highly original and intriguing interdisciplinary study, Lisa Moravec presents us with a range of innovative performance works since the 1960s that centre on the entanglement of humans and animals. It reveals the history of dressage with its link to military practices, manège, and ballet, and expounds critical theories of dressage and human–animal relationships by the likes of Henri Lefebvre, Karl Marx and Donna Haraway. Through its guiding theme of animal and societal dressage, this book raises pertinent and ever-timely issues of ethics, anthropocentrism, human and animal agency, and issues of domination and suppression. Scholars and general readers alike will appreciate the fascinating material that Moravec has compiled, which straddles dance, theatre, and the visual arts.’
Professor Alexandra Kolb, University of Roehampton
