Virtuosity in the wings

The collaborations that make the dancer’s body at the Royal Danish Ballet

Forfattere

  • Franziska Bork-Petersen

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7146/peri.v21i39.152292

Nøgleord:

backstage, technique, composite body, infrastructure, Royal Danish Ballet

Resumé

The article analyses artistic practices and institutional patterns that concern the collaborative creation, maintenance and transformation of dancing bodies at Royal Danish Ballet. Classical ballet conventionally relies on the myth of the solitary artistic genius who gives herself to the artform with extraordinary devotion and discipline. Yet, a series of interviews that I conducted with employees at the Royal Danish Ballet, highlight the outstanding individual on-stage performances as heavily reliant on the backstage expertise, care and commitment of many; the principal dancer’s body as collectively produced.

Forfatterbiografi

Franziska Bork-Petersen

is associate professor in Performance Studies at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies/University of Copenhagen. She is a member of the research project Knowing in Motion. Dance, body, archive (2023-26). Her writings on performance art, fashion, dance and digital bodies have appeared in Performance Research, Nordic Theatre Studies and MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research. Her latest book publication Body Utopianism: Prosthetic Being Between Enhancement and Estrangement (2022) explores the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism.

Referencer

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Downloads

Publiceret

2024-12-17

Citation/Eksport

Bork-Petersen, F. (2024). Virtuosity in the wings: The collaborations that make the dancer’s body at the Royal Danish Ballet . Peripeti, 21(39), 74–97. https://doi.org/10.7146/peri.v21i39.152292