The Choreographic Politics of a Staircase

Abstract

In this duet, Heimonen and Rouhiainen discuss their approach to site-informed textual choreography through examining its applications at the staircase of the Parliament House in Helsinki. They present the full textual choreography generated in tandem with this site, that is reiterative poetic text, and introduce the political interests motivating their undertaking. Important to their choreographic approach is a multifaceted score and the urban sites they work in. Relying on insights from Sara Ahmed and André Lepecki, they explore the political opportunities that experimental co-authored choreographic writing has as a mode of queering the familiar. The duo describes their experiences of engaging with the staircase and how it permeates their writing and text. They underline that otherness conditions both their experience and the sharing of their collaborative endeavour. They discuss textual choreography as a plan that involves others and enables the freedom to explore and initiate alternative ways of perceiving, writing, moving and being together, alternative choreographic futures. Important is that the choreographic process is repeatedly engaged with and that in reading others continue to enact the published texts as performance. The authors propose that, as a continuous and progressive collaborative practice that engages others, their textual choreography is public political activity.