Alive or dead? Face to face with contemporary dance

At a time when artists are questioning twenty-first-century dance for its contemporary-ness, this writing exposes a tension that plays across differing choreographic processes – a tension that suggests a widening rift between letting go into collaborative uncertainty and the creation of single authored productions of spectacle. I suggest that a move away from spectacle in the United Kingdom is exacerbated by various wider themes such as practice as research, somatics, digital technology and neo-liberalism, all of which have deeply affected artists’ performance processes. Particular emphasis is given to how shifts in institutionally driven dance training and education are affecting performance, and the writing draws attention to what artists might have in common across the divide – a passionate engagement with how we communicate what we do with others.