L’atlante e la danza: percorsi di una ricerca coreo-drammaturgica tra il butoh di Hijikata e la filosofia delle immagini

Abstract

The research at the heart of this essay began in 2018 and gradually gained depth as the creative processes underlying it were updated in various pedagogical and artistic contexts. The methodological proposal for choreographic-dramaturgical creation that was arrived at is based on a critical and negative use of images, i.e. on the destabilisation of their forms and the deconstruction of their “figurability”, rather than on their affirmation in a mimetic perspective. The research was initially inspired by the poetics and procedures used by the creator of butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata, and their potential intersections with the universe of image philosophy, in particular with the contributions of philosopher Georges Didi-Huberman and his dialogue with the works of Aby Warburg and Georges Bataille. The aim of this article is, therefore, to present some of the conceptual principles of this methodology, as well as to report on some practical creative experiences in which what I have defined as the “choreo-dramaturgical atlas” has been applied and developed in more complex forms in recent years, both in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses I have taught and in the creative process of the university artistic research group I coordinate.