Performing history: Wind Tossed (1936), natural movement and the hyper-historian

This chapter discusses the navigational challenges undertaken by the author to make sense of Madge Atkinson’s solo, Wind Tossed from ingrained corporeal experience as a classical ballet dancer. Salgado Llopis defines her approach as ‘performing history’ within the domain of reenactment, and in so doing articulates the process of the transmission of this work in the present from the point of view of the dancer as a ‘hyper-historian ’. This role is seen as pivotal because it establishes the idea of the dancer as a connecting link between past and present in performance . Ideas such as locating the ‘remains of the performance ’ in the present are explored alongside notions of the archive and the repertoire as referential systems and systems of transfer have the body at the heart of their operations.