From Heidegger to Performance

In Being and Time Martin Heidegger developed a way of considering human existence as ’being there’, a process of interrelationships with aspects of the environment in which the very process itself constitutes the essence of human being. From Heidegger to Performance engages with this radical perspective and consider Heidegger’s thinking in relation to different senses of performance, from the familiar, such as theatrical contexts of dance, live art and theatre, to explorations of modes of being within these performative situations. The contributors engage with a wide variety of topics from clowning to questions of linguistic construction; from the phenomenology of objects in stage space to the ephemerality of performance; from the performance of personal memory to the anxiety of the moment of choice in performing a complex movement. This book explores the ways in which Heidegger’s work and ideas of performance and performativity intersect, across their various senses and usages and will be useful to scholars, teachers and students who are interested in thinking about performance, and themselves as performative, in new ways.

Martin Leach is senior lecturer of Performance Studies at De Montfort University where he teaches anatomy, physiology and philosophy to dance students. Marie Hay is senior lecturer in Dance in the School of Humanities and Performing Arts and part of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Dance at De Montfort University.