ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide the double-sided tendency that either conflates the archive with the body or categorically forecloses their confluence. The anarchive of dance, it must be said, is as elusive as dance itself; it only becomes palpable in practice. The Anarchive-cycle created by the German artist twin deufert&plischke foregrounds the anarchival principle of regeneration, asking to what extent choreographers can archive their work without archiving it in the traditional sense of the term. The contorted skull in Hans Holbein’s painting might stand, uncannily perhaps, as an emblem for the stance contemporary dance is taking toward the archive. Meg Stuart’s Hunter, in contrast, presents an entirely different topographical mapping of the anarchival layers that buttress and impregnate her choreographic practice. An-archival dance does indeed deconstruct the archive, but only to let it reemerge from a vantage point that reveals the submedial layers of dance and also ties choreography back to its own materiality.
