ABSTRACT
Considering the embodied knowledge that emerges through acts of dancing, this epilogue explores how recent performances inspired by the choreomania of 1518 reveal the relevance of dance in our time. Two contemporary dance works bearing the same title, Strasbourg 1518, engage such knowledge from different perspectives and with distinct intentions, while both appeared publicly in the Spring of 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world. A live performance by New Zealand’s Borderline Arts Ensemble as well as a dance film directed by Jonathan Glazer both encounter the present-day pandemic from echoes of 1518’s dancing plague. In both works, dance evidences its capacity to conjure and contain opposites including historical and present tense, dancing as both symptom and healing, and a tension between the physical body and spiritual experience.
