Abstract
This article focuses on discussions on practice-led research that seek to describe the possible relations between theory, practice and various non-dance fields of knowledge. In order to explore some of the specificities of the relations between performance practice research and theory, but also between practice-led research and the professional arts scene, a further examination is made of recent developments in the European contemporary dance scene, where choreography is thought to have expanded, to address theory and to include a wide range of conceptual tools, materials and strategies. In particular, the case of Jérôme Bel is used to demonstrate how, even when one explicitly invokes theory with/in their work, as long as their doing takes place onstage (or within a performance setting), it already speaks to an economy of knowledge that is specific to performance-making, rather than that of performance-writing. Following Susan Melrose's proposition that practice emerges as a singular event that is significantly different from theoretical writing, this article then introduces Alain Badiou's notion of 'the event' as a concept through which to understand practice as a particular type of interruptive operation, in the way it functions to further knowledge within a performance research enquiry. Finally, then, the suggestion is put forward that the practitioner-researcher embraces a task of having to retain a sort of fidelity to whatever shifts or destabilizations occur within the theoretical writing from interruptions caused by performance-making processes.