The Aesthetics of Movement

This is an interdisciplinary study of the aesthetics of movement in Gilles Deleuze s writings and in Merce Cunningham s choreographies. But it is also a study of the movement that arises when the two meet in a series of variations. It is a textual happening where the random juxtaposition between seemingly unrelated areas, philosophy and dance, gives rise to arbitrary connections. It is a textual machine, composed of seven parts. First, the methodological architecture of the juxtaposition is introduced. The presence of movement in Deleuze s thinking is then presented and the figure of immobile movement is defined. This figure is a leitmotif of the analyses. Then follow four parts that build a heterogeneous whole. The analysis of movement is continued through four juxtapositions of particular texts and choreographies. Through these juxtapositions, different aspects of movement appear and are discussed: the relation between movement and sensation, movement in interaction with other arts, movement as a means of taking the body to its limit, movement as transformation. In the seventh and concluding part, all this is brought into play.