Fous de danse (Editions Autrement, June 1983)

Paperback

From the back cover (translated from the French):

“The body is in fashion. Muscles are smoothing out. Energy is being released, sometimes at the cost of excessive determination. The ‘look generation’ adheres to this religion of the body, as a necessary condition for its identity.

Like a wave that sweeps everything away in its path, dance is ‘catching’ more and more fans…from the rock of the ‘trendy’ to the rap of young New Yorkers, from captivating salsa to competitive tango, calves don’t matter as long as there’s intoxication! Dance, beyond entertainment, reflects in its own way lifestyles and social languages.

Contemporary dance professionals are also participating in this wave of expression. From Cunningham’s aesthetics to Pina Bausch’s theatricality, from Jean-Claude Gallota’s productions to Regine Chopinot’s rock, neither tightrope walkers nor actors, dancers invent a thousand ways of moving a thousand ways of thinking. As if only the authenticity of gesture could express this history that escapes us, these crumbling ideologies…

Dance makes us rediscover the essential, the unsaid, poetry, ambiguity…a vital necessity that explains the passions it unleashes.”