Taking a Position

This chapter is stimulated by the author’s collaboration with the renowned choreographer Sharon Watson and dancers from the Northern School of Contemporary Dance to produce a contemporary dance work exploring the feelings of people who had voted for and against Brexit in the UK referendum of 2016. Suggesting that through attention to corporeal experience we might find ways of encapsulating prevalent political moods, it considers the ways in which political affect can exceed the capacities of typical scientific representation. Focusing on what it means to take a position, the chapter argues that dance has the potential to provide ways of attending to deep, prereflective, affective moods underlying and surrounding political situations. The chapter reflects upon the work of translation through which a choreographic devising process was informed by qualitative data. The idea of affective framing is outlined as a new way of thinking about such translatory work. Four arguments for further imaginative collaboration between artists and social scientists are offered, with a view to developing modes of political attention that capture the dynamics of politics as a felt experience.