Presence Rewired: The Re-materialisation of Digital Dance from the Sweatshop to the Pixel

This article examines digital dance, not in opposition to physical bodies but in material continuity with them. By offering an expansive notion of ‘presence’ in dance, we intend to supersede the binarism that condemns the digital as mere traces of the ‘real’ or as a blunt synonym for the ‘virtual’ and the ‘immaterial’. We depart from a historical overview of attempts to capture bodily creativity into mediated forms according to the values of each epoch. Thus, considering the current moment of dance digitalisation immersed in the information society, we formulate our argument by discussing how presence and virtuality transcend within the attempts to digitalise dance. Later, we address how, although transformed, the material dimension of the body persists through its digital capturing. In the last section, we address the relational ontologies that the digitalisation of dance can unleash in diverse cultural contexts, as dance-data regains its virtuality.