ABSTRACT
Is history over, or simply sleeping (or dreaming)? In asking this question, I echo a decade of attacks on social projects for change that are often negatively associated with the 1960s. Those who ask this question hope to prove in their answers that the need for a left has come to an end. There is certainly nothing new about the attempt by forces of dominance to dismiss as obsolete the visions of those who seek profound social alternatives. My concern with the present version of 1960s bashing as a means of devaluing a particular historical legacy is the extent to which the left has been tempted to assimilate this rightist idea. What I propose in this essay is to approach the analysis of dance through overreading as a means to dream on, to perpetuate and, at the same time, reconfigure, the invaluable aspirations for social change identified with the 1960s. Overreading draws on the social movement in dance to re-envision the context both for critical innovations in dance and for social movements beyond the stage.
