Bojana Cvejić's 'Choreographing Problems' Analyzes Contemporary Dance Through Deleuzian Concepts

Bojana Cvejić's book 'Choreographing Problems: Expressive Concepts in European Contemporary Dance and Performance' (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015) addresses a gap in the reception of contemporary dance over the last twenty years, during which choreography has entered a unique relationship with thought. Cvejić, who has worked closely with many choreographers as a dramaturg and performer, examines seven performances produced between 1998 and 2007: Xavier Le Roy's 'Self Unfinished' and 'Untitled', Jonathan Burrows and Jan Ritsema's 'Weak Dance Strong Questions', Boris Charmatz's 'Théâtre-élévision', Ester Salamon's 'Nvsbl', Mette Ingvartsen's '50/50', and Ingvartsen and Jefta van Dinther's 'It's In The Air'. These works share a direct proximity to performance and a method that 'problematizes' procedures of contemporary dance, drawing not from representation theory but from expressive principles developed by Gilles Deleuze, particularly in his studies on Spinoza's ontology, 'Difference and Repetition', and his cinema books. The book's chapters are titled 'Part-bodies', 'Part-machines', 'Movement-sensations', 'Headbox', 'Wired assemblings', 'Stutterances', 'Power-motion', 'Crisis-motion', 'Cutending', and 'Resonance'. Cvejić suggests moving beyond aesthetic categories to recognize the rhythms of thought within dance practice itself.