video by Matteo Laguni

Before the name is a performance inspired by Alain Badiou’s text, ‘Dance as a Metaphor for Thought’, part of the ‘Petit manuel d’inesthétique’ written by the French philosopher in 1998 – (Handbook of Inaesthetics, A.Toscano trans., Stanford University Press., 2005), which considers the relationship between thought and dance.
The work is a collective performance that interlaces languages and contributions from dancers, thinkers, musicians, and the figure of the French philosopher. Using video projections, Badiou’s thoughts resonate in the space along with the live music of artist and composer Emiliano Zelada, and the movements of two dancers from the Michael Clark Company of London. They occupy the whole space, trying to reach their own understanding of density level, generating tension for the entire lenght of the performance.
The collective nature of the performance is ignited by the interventions of the artist-philosopher Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield interacting with Badiou’s words, and establishing a dialogue in time with the dancers. The symmetrical binomial produced by the philosopher’s appearance/disappearance, and the dancers’ language that engages movement with mind, will be cut by non-theoretical perspectives introduced by the Italian art critic and curator Pier Luigi Tazzi.
Tazzi’s contributions open the boundaries of the performance’s territory, using direct actions, life’s memories, and a tributes. The focus on “dance as metaphor for thought” departs from its starting point, only to collide with a real entourage, connected to life and experience. Dance, as a concept, is now dissolved into movement, travel, life, debris, powerful objects and images.