Dances of time
2004 : Les danses du temps : recherche sur la notion de temps en danse contemporaine, Centre national de la danse
2018 : Les danses du temps, Paris : Les Presses du réel et Pantin : CND, version numérique
Exploring the Notion of Time in Contemporary Dance
Are the temporalities created by dance different from those of the other arts? What experiences of time does contemporary dance invite us to live? What is the power of the temporary body? Combining a theoretical approach with sensitive testimony, Geisha Fontaine proposes a philosophical and artistic questioning on the singularity of the notion of time in contemporary dance. She brings into dialogue the pre-Socratics and the post-modern, Gilles Deleuze and certain contemporary choreographers… Through an analysis of the temporal strategies of Merce Cunningham, Jérôme Bel, Xavier Le Roy, Myriam Gourfink, Hideyuki Yano, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Pina Bausch and Trisha Brown, she questions the uses and role of time in creation from the 1950s to the present day. Referring to her personal experience, she invites the reader to an aesthetic journey through the many presents of dance. She shows how choreographic time is simultaneously a face-to-face with the other, an incessant updating of futures and, paradoxically, the assertion of reality up to its disappearance.