Performing Age(ing): A Lecture Performance

This text is the written version of a 30-minute long lecture performance on images and narratives of age(ing) from a contemporary dance perspective.1 I developed this lecture performance for the international symposium “Cultural Perspectives on Ageing” in Hanover, Germany and performed it there on November 29, 2018. As a researcher on the subject of dance and age(ing) with a practice-as-research approach (Nelson 2013) – usually called “artistic research” in continental Europe (Borgdorff 2006) – it is my concern that my performative, embodied practice and artistic methodology is visible in my academic research. In the lecture performance, therefore, my live dancing body played quite an important role. To retain the performance-based form of the lecture in this publication, I have integrated into my text both the verbal contents of the lecture and short descriptions of my actions and dances, in a similar manner that stage directions are included in dramatic text. The photos taken by age researcher Peter Derkx during the performance offer important additional information. Even though such photos do not convey the dynamics of the actual dancing, they do give an indication of the aesthetics of the overall event.