The Body as Text

The book series Studia Theatralica offers the readers a great variety of theatre history topics in a wider sense and with modern approach.

The present volume leads to a new area of dance art science in Hungary, the theory of interpreting the performance as a text created by body movement. The author is Katalin Lőrinc, dance artist, choreographer, journalist and university lecturer honored with the Harangozó Gyula award and the Hungarian Bronze Cross of Merit. The book is her doctoral thesis, worthy of the interest of those working in the field of theatre and dance, and their audience. Katalin Lőrinc approaches the “text of the body” from three points of view, a theoretical, a critical and a personal approach, this last one being an analysis of her own experience and practice.

In what manner can we look at the movements of a performer, and how does the performer experience it? The author, as a dancer, asks the question of how the body can become text. But first of all, she explores the questions and answers of natural sciences, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and theatre art…

Katalin Lőrinc’s logic can also be read the other way round, if you prefer starting your investigation from direct experience… And the volume can be regarded as a non-chronological experiment of dance, theatre and culture history, since it does not simply place in time all that has happened in a stage to a moving body so far, but also organizes it in terms of the use and view of the body.