Movement as Lived Abstraction: The Logic of the Cut

Moving is an immediate bodily sensation. As object of perception and thought, however, a movement has to be abstracted out of the continuity of immediate sensations. Abstraction allows to make this distinction without erasing the important relation between the two. Abstraction is also the point of connection between the rise of media culture, transformations of the practice of choreography and choreographers becoming phenomenologists. The work of Yvonne Rainer marks a key moment in these transformations, in which choreography is expanded to include also movements not performed but abstracted out of what is presented to an audience.