Choreography of the “non-human”. The monstrous as the product of contemporary dance’s bodies “beyond codes”

Abstract

Xavier Le Roy’s performance Self-Unfinished (1998) is emblematic of how contemporary dance’s resistance to the submission of the body to a codified ideal body model manifests itself through the staging of bodies “beyond codes” , i.e., bodies that take surprising, sometimes even apparently “monstrous” shapes. The purpose of this article is to investigate the “monstrosity” of Self-Unfinished and to sketch out an analysis of it following Hermann Schmitz's theory of the Leib and Tonino Griffero’s account on atmospheres.