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The way the body is considered and explored in the performing arts has assumed a growing importance. In the context of live performance in Portugal, this book brings together different approaches addressing current theoretical debates on the body, relating to issues such as the theory of affects, ethics, gender, age, discourse and representation.

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The way the body is considered and explored in the performing arts has assumed a growing importance, introducing new questions and cross-cutting perspectives on our understanding of the political, sociological and philosophical relevance of the body today.

This book is a meeting point for these questions, bringing together a set of contributors experienced in examining the body´s presence in live performances. It interweaves several disciplinary outlooks, addressing current theoretical debates on the body relating to the theory of affects, ethics, gender, age, discourse and representation.

Looking at recent practice in Portugal, the volume examines several cases where the body and issues of corporeality raise questions of memory, identity, experience and existence. It opens a rare window onto the distinctive Portuguese post-colonial legacy, which has given rise to an intensified search for new forms of bodily affirmation in the world. In so doing, the book conjures up the transformative power of performing arts today: from body into Being.

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CONTENTS: José Gil: Foreword - Gustavo Vicente: Introduction: The urge to embody the world - Ana Pais: Affective rhythms in Until the Moment When God is Destroyed by the Extreme Exercise of Beauty by Vera Mantero - Fernando Machado Silva: New notes towards a supreme fiction: Experience, experimentation and the Body for Life - Né Barros: Body and discourse: Incalculable choreographies - Gon‡alo M. Tavares: Body, performance, language and tradition: The example of Pina Bausch and Clara Andermatt´s Fica no Singelo - Daniel Tércio: The body in descent: Catastrophes, feelings and choreographies in the Portuguese landscape - Maria José Fazenda: Creating and performing in Companhia Maior: Memories of life, experiences of continuity and transformation - Anabela Pereira: Self-representation as a performative act of the body: Absence-presence disruptions and aporias in the works of Helena Almeida and Jorge Molder - Maria JoÆo Brilhante: Looking for the expressive body through images: The infinite struggle against insignificance.

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