Performing Utopia

In her landmark study Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre, Jill Dolan departed from historical writings on utopia, which suggest social reorganization and the redistribution of wealth are utopian efforts, to argue instead that utopia occurs in fragmentary “utopian moments” often found embedded within performance. While Dolan focused on the utopian performative within a theatrical context, this volume, edited by Rachel Bowditch and Pegge Vissicaro, expands her theories to encompass performance in public life—from diasporic hip-hop battles, Chilean military parades, commemorative processions, Blackfoot pow wows, and post-Katrina Mardi Gras to the Philadelphia Mummers Parade, Festas Juninas in Brazil, the Renaissance Fairs in Arizona, and neo-burlesque competitions.

How do these performances rehearse and enact visions of a utopic world? What can the lens of utopia and dystopia illuminate about the potential of performing bodies to transform communities, identities, values, and beliefs across time?Performing Utopia not only answers these questions, but offers a diverse collection of case studies focusing on utopias, dystopias and heterotopias enacted through the performing body.

Rachel Bowditch is a theatre director and associate professor in the School of Film, Dance, and Theatre at the Herberger Institute of Design and the Arts at Arizona State University. She is the author ofOn the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man, also published by Seagull Books.Pegge Vissicaro is director of the Office for Global Dance Research and Creative Partnerships, Arizona State University. She is the author ofStudying Dance Cultures around the World.