Embracing the Unknown, Ethics and Dance

Dancers sometimes speak of adopting the perspective of not-knowing in the context of their dancing. This attitude has two aspects: one the subjectivity of the dancer (which adopts a mode of not-knowing), and two, the body that creates. According to these artists, the subject-dancer needs to make room for the body by getting out of the way. The idea that subjectivity is no longer central and that the body holds the key is not new. Nietzsche is renowned for preferring the body to consciousness, and for looking towards corporeal becoming as the means by which life can be affirmed. His notion of (self) overcoming could be thought of in relation to the subject-dancer’s being in the dark. But it is Spinoza who takes these components into an explicitly ethical domain.