ABSTRACT
Knowledge is made and given shape in representation, according to the potentials of modal affordances; process of representation is identical to the shaping of knowledge. Makers of representations are shapers of knowledge. Kinesemiotics shows that dance is a mode with its own materiality – the human body – that produces meaning by interacting with space as a semiotic dimension: this meaning cannot be denotatively captured but is offered for interpretation to an engaged audience that also needs to interact with it. In terms of theoretical development, this approach makes the gap existing between a movement-based live performance and archived material irrelevant to the analysis of the meaning produced for the audience’s interpretation, because dance can only exist in interaction with space and kinesemiotic analysis captures precisely that interaction. By putting the dancer’s body at the centre of this interaction, kinesemiotic analysis provides a means to capture the specific, personal input of an individual artist to the role s/he is performing.
