ABSTRACT
As contemporary choreographers investigate and re-chart their own ‘artistic topographies’ (Birringer 1993: xi) in terms of communication, attitude, structure and roles in their approaches to human movement, there is a need for greater investigation of issues such as how movement is perceived and executed, how choreographers wish to see bodies move, and how choreographers want the audience to experience bodies moving. Across the performing arts, traditional lines of demarcation shift, strain and shatter; but whereas historical moments of revolution, challenge and shock leave their own recognisable legacies and have been reasonably well documented, the chapters in this section indicate individual quests, unfinished, inquisitive, postmodern, resonant. Without literal narratives, stylistic movement or symbolising functions, contemporary choreography proves challenging, almost defiant in its complexity and multiplicity.
