Overt and covert politics in contemporary choreography

This paper examines how choreographic forms can be used to express political ideologies. Various cultural theorists debate whether art can still be ‘political’ at all under the conditions of postmodernism (Kershaw, Auslander, Jameson); but this article focuses more specifically on the political status of Western theatre dance, as seen against the backdrop of global politics of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Specifically it seeks to understand how the rise of globalisation and late capitalist culture, together with recent arts policy trends, have (re)defined performance aesthetics and practices. It argues that contemporary dance is often ‘covertly’ political, i.e. politically charged in terms of form rather than explicit content, for instance when works of a collaborative or interdisciplinary nature are aligned with the values and principles of democracy.