This is (Not) the Ageing Body in Dance

Abstract

In ‘This is (Not) the Ageing Body in Dance: Tino Sehgal’s Ann Lee and the robotization of the ageing body in Japan’, Nanako Nakajima, with regards to ageing, combines three different discussions into one article: Tino Sehgal’s performance piece incorporating children, a discussion on infantilism in Japanese subculture and the recent biopolitical anxiety concerning robotics and silver care in Japanese society. The ageing body reveals the material of objects, and therefore the physical deterioration of dancers has been the negative element in destroying the dancing subject. With the recurrently changing child interpreters of his museum piece that is based on a Japanese girl’s figure in animation, Ann Lee, Sehgal inherits the problem of the ‘60s postmodern dance and further challenges the notion of documentation and authorship of performance in progress. A child’s image is the ideal image of humans in modern Japan, because it is symbolic of the true origin for Japanese modern writers, while the process of maturation is considered as Westernisation. The stage of Japanese economy as infantile capitalism runs parallel with officially promoting globalised pop culture such as kawaii. The newly emerging biotechnology influences the relationship between humans and machines. As Agamben’s term of the modern anthropological machine makes humans human, robotics also illuminates what is human in the machine. The positive image of robots is integrated with a political strategy to deal with the rapidly ageing population of Japan. In order to fill labour shortage in silver care, the Japanese government has promoted humanoid research with the biped walking style of robots. These are designed to have certain the features of children in order to cover the lack of technological perfection. Because of robot revolution and global immigration with foreign workers, this most ageing country of Japan confronts the change in its ageing body by including the others in the self.