The lion or dancing the linguistic animal

During the discussion on Dance and Politics at Southbank Center, London, in November 2010, Xavier Le Roy suggested that ‘We should look at him as we would look at the lion in the zoo, only of course the lion would not talk to us’. Later that evening he presented his work Low Pieces (2009–2011). Drawing on the particularity of Le Roy’s choreographic suggestion and on the ideas of Giorgio Agamben and Paolo Virno, this article attempts an analysis of the dramaturgical structure of Low Pieces in order to discuss connections drawn between the movement of the human animal and the way in which it uses language, between this movement and that of other animals and living organizations, but most importantly, between the human movement of the linguistic animal and current understandings of the relationship between dance and politics.