Turbulent Rhetorics in Keith Hennessy's Turbulence: A Dance About the Economy

Abstract

Keith Hennessy's Turbulence: A Dance about the Economy propels his emergent dance experiments into self-forgetting rituals – struggles, compromises, seductions, destructions, absencing – to both survive and unsettle the subjections of neoliberal economics. The theatre becomes the containment of the state, and the work of the performers is to queer that space not by direct disruption but by the far more troubling energy of disturbance. The essay here builds a ‘list’ of critical engagements with the piece that document one occurrence of a rehearsal/performance. Hennessy has generated a technology that flips rehearsal and performance strategies, so that the playing of the piece is a simultaneous generation of feedback mechanisms that appear spontaneous because they disturb the conventional expectation of virtuosity and medium, begin to offer alternatives, and are immediately diverted into/by further turbulence. Rehearsal generates performance becomes rehearsal. The analog potential for political effectiveness is radically disturbing, eluding as it does recognition, identification and subjection.

Notes

1 See William George Lectures in Turbulence for the 21st Century (2013), http://www.turbulence-online.com/Publications/Lecture_Notes/Turbulence_Lille/TB_16January2013.pdf

2 A rebus communicates by way of things, rather than words. It is usually an ambiguous or riddling visual pun (OED online, rebus n.)

3 The Turbulence trapeze (designed by Hennessy and trapeze artist Emily Leap, and constructed by Sean Riley) is stable, in that it won't break when used by up to three vigorous humans, but unstable in that its multiple parts fold into each other and are in constant movement when used.

4 The spanset is a re-enforced fabric loop that is used in construction and heavy rigging, as well as in circus. Inspired by a deconstructive approach to circus in France in the 1990s, Hennessy adapted the spanset as a primary circus apparatus. Many artists have either been inspired by this example or found their own way to using spansets in circus and aerial performance.

5 As with early capitalists learning how to perform a moneyed class, sprezzatura/spontaneity from training or ‘agylitie’ as Thomas Hoby advises in The Book of the Courtier (London: David Nutt, 1561), goes hand in hand with Machiavellian power.

6 The piece for which he received a Bessie Award, Crotch (all the Joseph Beuys references in the world cannot … ), is a complex solo rant about art-makers and made-art.

7 I find out later that this audience member is a well-known dancer, keen to be involved, surprised at the risks he took.