(Con)fusion between testimonial dance and biodrama

Abstract

This article, which is part of a postdoctoral study that is being developed at the Faculdad de Philosofía y Letras (FFyL) of the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), addresses the border zones between biodrama and testimonial dance. Both, biodrama and testimonial dance, are a contemporary cenical languages that focus on the autobiographical aspect to their making-happening. The cenical configurations of a testimonial dance often carry identical characteristics to those seen in biodrama, one of the branches of documentary theater, but it is still possible to recognize the limits that identify one genre as belonging to the field of Dance and the other as belonging to the field of Theater. Testimonial dance was a term I created in my thesis when I observed that a type of choreography has been recurrent in the production of contemporary dance in which dancers present, in a spoken way, autobiographical testimonies, using few dance movements on stage. Having this identification, I affirmed this choreographic type as a genre that can be cut out for conceptual consolidation and future studies. The concept of biodrama was created by the argentine director Vivi Tellas, who proposes to explore the intersection between the autobiographical and the theatrical, between the real and the theatrical. This article thus presents a discussion on the (con)fusions between both contemporary scenic genres.