Can we repeat the singularity?

In many of the moments that Lepecki describes, something seems to happen to the audience. The clearest example of this is the difference between the discussion at the beginning and the end of Xavier LeRoy’s Low Pieces (95-98). By sitting through the piece, by experiencing the different images and the moments of stillness, the experience of self-in-the-group changes. Is there a bit of “you had to be there”? Some of Lepecki’s description, especially the theoretical backing, makes sense without seeing the performance. For example, the links between darkness and the Enlightenment and racism. But, as I read his descriptions of the pieces that take place in the dark, a skeptical voice comes in and asks, “Really? Is it really like that?” I suspect I can never know if I would experience the piece in the same way because I can’t go back in time and take part in the same dance that Lepecki did. The description and the explanation cannot produce the experience of being in the dark with other people. A description of how Aitana Cordero destroys objects and then crawls over the pile of fragments (50) can intellectually point to the difference between objects and things, but it can’t predict my reaction to the visceral physicality of a rampage of destruction.

The dances, then, don’t only offer a critique of neoliberalism or an illustration of resistance. They enact the alternative in the moment of performance. The dance creates moments of resistance where the audience experiences something different from being an upright, consuming spectator. The question, then, is, does the singularity-event have to be a temporal, living event? If so, how can it teach us or point a way to the future? After reading this book, I keep asking myself, “How can I make performances that sidestep the dominance of an identifiable, reproductive Self?” That seems like a silly question to ask after reading about many dances that accomplish that. But to what extent can this book be a manual for performers? Obviously, there is no guaranteed process: If you do x, y, and z, you will resist neoliberalism. But as performers and audience members, what do we take from these experiences of “life unconditioned” (3)? Only a happy memory that, for a moment, we stepped out of our conditioning? Or hope that, because we found a neoliberalism-free zone once, we can find another one again?