I often wonder what would become of dance if dance artists didn’t have to write about what they were doing. Many people reading this will have either found themselves trying to pin down in language what they are doing with their body, or read texts that try to explain what the body is doing: programme notes, subsidy applications, artist statements and so on. These texts are, of course, some of the cogs that keep the well-oiled machine of the art market rolling. But they are also ways of using language to justify or legitimise what dance is already doing, as a way of framing it so that it can be contextualised and consumed. They also sometimes sideline it.

At Spring Forward this year, I tried not to read anything about the performances before I saw them, to let the works – and not the words – speak for themselves. I wanted to see how much a performance could communicate without the need to be already immersed in its discourse, in the topic that it wanted to address. Even then, when I yearned to see movement, text started creeping into many of the works anyway: as context about the political situation in Eastern Europe (CLAP & SLAP by Agnietè Lisičkinaitė and Igor Shugaleev), as an explanation on melting ice caps (in Company Furinkaï’s fable about global-warming, Mizu), and even – in the case of Marie Kaae’s WIRED – as a powerful call to action for the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It’s incredibly important that urgent issues are brought to our stages, yet the presence of so much text made me wonder if dance is somehow not enough. Can dance only go so far before language has to take over to hammer the point home? 

This tendency for dance artists to reach for text may have something to do with the fact that dance is, by its very essence, ephemeral. It cannot make a statement in the way that words can. Dancing a fandango or performing a rhythmic gymnastic routine – as in Inka Romaní’s Volvamos al baile – arguably doesn’t speak about the domination exerted over women’s bodies during the Franco regime in Spain in the way that a programme note or a subtitle would. The dance needs contextualising.

But I wonder whether the presence of text in so many dance works being made today has to do with contemporary dance’s general apprehension about needing to be relevant, to make sure it’s always speaking about something beyond mere dance. Because what is the point of dance in a world being heated into oblivion, and in which there is a live-streamed genocide that seemingly nothing can stop? Dance needs to do something, or else what’s the point, right? And so it becomes almost logical that many choreographers call upon language to help them make their point. If we are to speak out, language will always serve us better than the body. 

In a panel talk during the festival about art in times of conflict, Fábio (Krayze) Januário, Lisičkinaitė, Shugaleev and Romaní were asked about the function of language in their work. Tellingly, Romaní responded by saying that when it comes to complex topics such as the female oppression portrayed in her powerful work, words need to take over because dance fails. That phrase stuck with me throughout the festival: dance fails. Yet although dance cannot do the same things that language can, part of me wonders whether this constitutes a failure, or whether we can trust the body alone to tell powerful stories on its own terms. 

I want to believe that we can. I want to believe that dance can speak about things in a way that makes our very bones understand what is being communicated. I want to believe that our kinaesthetic intelligence – our ability to understand what is happening inside another person’s body – can fathom things in ways that our cognitive brains cannot. As I watched Lisičkinaitė and Shugaleev repeatedly hit themselves in self-flagellation during CLAP & SLAP, I started to feel the complex feelings of guilt and complicity the dancers felt in relation to the Belarusian government’s actions during the ongoing war in Ukraine. Maybe we don’t need the accompanying subtitles. Maybe the visceral brutality of watching someone slap their own body is enough. 

I’m not saying that dance artists need to abandon text altogether. It can find its way into work in ways that complement, contextualise, and expand on what the body is already doing. But I wonder if it’s time to take a step back and ask ourselves what dance is already saying before we try to explain it. What is it doing inside us? What visceral, kinaesthetic power does it already possess? And, maybe, more to the point, does it need to be saying anything at all? 

In times of global turmoil, language can aid dance in its quest to justify its relevance, and it’s useful for dance artists to command discourse in a way that gives them access to funding systems and curatorial frameworks. We need this for our survival. And yet the more dance artists become well-versed in talking about their work, the more these texts start to leak into the work itself. Which leaves me wondering what a dance festival would look like in which no text was allowed – not in shows, not around them, no programme notes, nothing. Just bodies moving, and being moved, and speaking to each other.