The Choreopolitics of Alain Platel's les ballets C de la B

Christel Stalpaert is Full Professor Theatre, Performance and Media Studies at Ghent University, Belgium where she is Director of the research centres S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media) and PEPPER (Philosophy, Ethology, Politics and Performance). Guy Cools is a dance dramaturg at Ghent University, Belgium. His focus is production dramaturgy, contributing to work by choreographers all over Europe and Canada. Hildegard De Vuyst is Dramaturg of Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium, where she has worked since 1994.

Introduction: The Choreographic Work of Alain Platel in Context (Christel Stalpaert, Ghent University, Belgium; Guy Cools, Ghent University, Belgium; and Hildegard De Vuyst, Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium)
1. Collaborative Dramaturgy: An Experiment in Democracy (Katalin Trencsenyi, Freelance Dramaturg, UK)

Part I: Emotions
2. Alain Platel is a Barbarian: Perceiving Emotions as Forms of Intelligent Awareness (Hildegard De Vuyst, Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium)
3. Desire amongst the Dodgems: The Scene of Seduction (Adrian Kear, Aberystwyth University, UK)
4. Platel’s Quest for Embodied Salvation: A Musical Perspective on Choeurs (Francis Maes, Ghent University, Belgium)
5. Poetics of Fight in Nicht Schlafen (Claire Besuelle, École Doctorale Sciences de l'homme et de la Société, France)

Part II: Gestures
6. How to Witness the Hyper-Sensitive Through the Virtuosic: “I Have Never Seen Anybody Who Can Participate So Intensely While Standing Aside” (Guy Cools, Ghent University, Belgium)
7. Choreic Gesture: Virtuosic Angularity and Alterkinetic Dance in Platel’s Out of Context: For Pina (2010) (Kélina Gotman, King’s College, London, UK)
8. Being Alone Together: The ‘Disturbance of Violent Relatedness’ in La Tristeza Complice, Pitié and Tauberbach (Ann Cooper Albright, Oberlin College and Conservatory, USA)
9. Staging the Precarious: Vulnerability and Sexual Identity in Gardenia (Miriam Dreysse, Universität Hildesheim, Germany)
10. Schizophrenia and Resistance: On Tauberbach (Jeroen Donckers, Independent Psychotherapist, Belgium)

Part III: Politics
11. Catastrophe as Political Gesture: On Gestus and Hieroglyphs in Bernadetje (Erwin Jans, Dramaturg, Toneelhuis, Belgium)
12. Tauberbach: A Diagrammatical Reading (Piet Defraeye, University of Alberta, Canada)
13. Mourning a Europe in Crisis: En Avant, Marche! (Lourdes Orozco, University of Leeds, UK)
14. Troubled Pasts, Differential Futures: Platel’s Choreopolitics with Les Ballets C de la B (Christel Stalpaert, Ghent University, Belgium)
Conclusion: A Genealogical Perspective on Les Ballets C de la B’s Influences and Offspring (Christel Stalpaert, Ghent University, Belgium; Guy Cools, Ghent University, Belgium; and Hildegard De Vuyst, Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium)

Bibliography

Index