Introduction

There can be no doubt that the subject “the aging body in dance” is highly topical. For a long time the question of the aging body in Euro-American dance – whether in aesthetics or the discourses of dance institutions – was taboo. In dance studies, too, such questions have only recently begun to be taken seriously (see Foster 1996; Albright 1997; Brandstetter 2000; Odenthal 2005; Nakajima 2011). It is true that aging and its medical, demographic and political implications for our society and its future are a frequently chosen field of research in the humanities and social sciences: interdisciplinary research teams try to “view the contemporary problems of the elderly in an aging society from the standpoint of other societies, past and present, other values, other cultural traditions, as well as our own, and thereby to enhance our understanding”.1 These researches and their implications for body politics and gender theory provide the background of the book (Beauvoir 1996; Basting 1998; R. Butler 1975; Hartung 2005; Kollewe/Jahnke 2009). The focus, however, is on dance. Dance combines in a particularly volatile manner fundamental aesthetic, physical and cultural patterns and body techniques which determine a culture’s aesthetic and social concepts of beauty, agility and expressiveness. Dancers who are no longer able to meet the exacting requirements of a dance vocabulary (e.g. like ballet) and no longer have the necessary flexibility or stamina for reasons of age are often forced to give up dancing, and/or “reject” their aging body (which no longer conforms to the norm; Kristeva 1982). What would be the consequences of revising such boundaries – which separate the perfect dancer’s body from the “no longer” efficient aging body – in favour of an up-to-date aesthetic and body politics that are not confined to dance?