Abstract

As a means of expression, the unequivocally physical experience of dance is typically construed and spoken about in communicative terms, as a ‘conversation between body and soul,’ a ‘dialogue between dancers’ or a means to ‘tell a story’ to an audience (Brandt 2015; Pascual and Brandt 2015). This chapter analyses this metaphor through a case study of Tiago Rodrigues’ choreography A Perna Esquerda de Tchaikovski (‘Tchaikovsky’s Left Leg’). In this performance a ballerina engages in different interactions: (i) with the audience, to whom she tells her life story, (ii) with the pianist on stage, who silently complies with her requests, and, most remarkably, (iii) with her own body, which she presents as the locus of autobiographical memory and of ‘thinking with the body’ (Kirsh 2011).