Responsability of Performance. The Interweaving of Politics and Aesthetics in Intercultural Contexts.

Dance performances in ceremonial and other intercultural political encounters in north-east Arnhem Land strive to achieve several general goals: to achieve co-presence through forms of participation; to engage total attention through a movement backward and forward between different levels of intensity or feeling; and to express something beyond what is represented. How are we to talk about participation? What are its critical components? What is its role in the effectiveness of performances? In locating the meaning of Yolngu dance performances in aesthetic experience—a modality of participation—the author explores the nature of this participation as a doing that accomplishes itself in the single act of its production and reception. Beyond symbolism and structure, referential meaning and exegesis, the force of performance is in the first instance itself, in its very actualization, in the responsibility it demands of performer and public to create the conditions of possibility for the social to realize itself, through a series of investments involving reciprocal recognition, engagement, commitment and accountability.