Dance's Shimmering Call

Written by Megan Bridge
Published in Dance Chronicle, June 18th 2014
Link to original publication.

Below is the first paragraph of the piece. Click here to download a PDF of the full piece.

Always More Than One: Individuation’s Dance
By Erin Manning. 295 pp. Illustrated.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013. $24.95 paper.
ISBN 978-0822353348.

It is a call to attention. Erin Manning’s Always More Than One: Individuation’s Dance invokes dance, choreography, philosophy, film, and even autism to advocate for a richer relationship to the world around us. Steeped in the process-relational philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Manning’s book speaks to both theorists and practitioners with words that “are never just what they seem to mean: they dance, they gallop, they rest, they tune in or out, they call forth and efface” (p. 164). Manning introduces artwork and neurodiversity as two realms of human experience emblematic of her proposition that life be lived more “relationally.” Through inventive language and a deep engagement with continental philosophy, her authoritative text pushes thought to the limits of expressibility, and presents to the reader a world that shimmers with potential.