This essay brings the work of Georges Perec, the experimental twentieth-century French writer, into contact with dance. It considers ways that Perec's writing and post-modern dance share certain compositional processes and categories, such as Perec's four “fields” (the “sociological,” “autobiographical,” “ludic,” and “fictive”) and concerns (such as time, attention, and exhaustion); aspects of autobiography, such as acts of disclosure and mystification, and resistance to conventions of self-representation; the central place of the body; and the ways these forms so differently express, suggest, or evade what cannot be said in words. Written from the perspective of a dancer/scholar, it explores the experiences of dancing as they connect to ideas articulated or suggested in Perec's writing, and it demonstrates ways that dance may be created and viewed through a Perec-ian lens.
