Jeschke, Claudia/Bayerdörfer, Hans-Peter (Ed.): Bewegung im Blick. Beiträge zu einer theaterwissenschaftlichen Bewegungsforschung.
Berlin: Vorwerk 8 Publishing House, 2000.

The aesthetics of movement is what makes dance so fascinating for many of today’s audiences and this applies not only to dance and choreography but to any form of stage play. This is why, for the last 100 years, movement theory has been central to the reform of theatre. Movement research is one of the cornerstones of theatre studies. How is movement staged in the different genres? And where exactly do theatre-specific discourses on movement leave the realm of theatre and become a more general cultural debate? Other than theatre and dance studies, it was especially in the fields of sociology, anthropology and ethnology that different cultural productions of movement were scrutinised and analysed between the contrasting concepts of „naturalism“ and „virtuosity“.

The authors of this book explore the many ways science tries to understand the fascinating phenomenon of movement. They discuss problematic areas such as the materiality of movement, the complex relation between movement and perception, further complicated through cultural, theatre and media history and the topic of narratology, touching on literature and present stylistically and aesthetically significant movement programmes of theatre history as well as a number of culture-historically further reaching case studies.

On the whole, these articles are an accurate reflection of the many different and controversial issues and research interests perceivable in current discussions relating to theatre and cultural studies and they provide impulses for further methodical and topical development in the attempt to understand the fascination.