Choreographies of 21st Century Wars is a densely packed collection of illuminating essays devoted to examining the “complex relationship between choreography and war in this century” (1). For the most part, the essays are deeply dark and frustrating as they provide agonizing evidence of the tremendous disorder enacted and produced through the choreography of this moment in history. Reading through the articles by a range of scholars and practitioners is an exercise in riding waves of tension, disgust, and despair, with only occasional moments of humor and hope. Nonetheless, as coeditors Morris and Giersdorf observe, the embodied, social, and choreographic nature of violence means that its danced counterparts of protest provide a continued opening for increased empathy and “some real understanding occurs of how pain is inflicted and suffering relieved” (19). It is this that leaves us with a ray of hope for a future free of endless strife.

The anthology begins with an overview of the nature of twenty-first century war and its implications for a revised understanding of the role of choreography. Reviewing the work of post-9/11 authors on the subject of war, such as Philip Bobbitt, Mary Kaldor, Antonio Negri, and Roberto Esposito, the editors offer some defining characteristics of contemporary conflicts. These include increased privatization, globalization, asymmetry, and mediatization. Moreover, as boundaries dissolve and nation states are unable to protect themselves against danger through externally directed warfare, they lean inward with increased policing that signals “autoimmunity,” as when the body turns on itself. As a result, modern warfare has “flooded the whole social field” (Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri Reference Hardt and Negri2005 quoted by Morris and Giersdorf, 7) such that in general there is a diminished difference between war and peace and this affects all of us.

The editors then provide a perceptive analysis of how “choreography,” as a Western concept originally intended to “reinforce a particular kind of order in society,” emerges in relation to this highly “disordered” set of current conditions (8). To this end, Morris and Giersdorf note the importance of examining both how stage choreography has been impacted by dissolving boundaries, confusion, and an increased reach of violence and also how choreography in the broader sense “as a structuring system for any kind of movement” (6) and as “an organizational, decision-making, and analytical system” has been influenced (7). A strong influence of performance and cultural studies is recognizable here (and infuses the entire volume), demonstrating how the book situates itself within the discourse of contemporary dance studies as conceived by such scholars as Susan Foster, Randy Martin, and André Lepecki. The editors’ ultimate aim is to argue that all choreography is political and that especially (and perhaps paradoxically) both its ephemerality and its embodied nature provide the grounds for resisting coercive and violent forces.

Perhaps as a reflection of the disorder of which they write, the volume is structured along this general line of resistance and glimmers of hope, but it is otherwise irregular in format. Most of the articles focus on staged dance pieces, with only a few devoted to examining online/video games, a television show, and training manuals for the army. Another article examines a ceremony performed at a border between two countries, one considers life stories of choreographers facing censorship, and several articles are penned by choreographers about their own work, thus in a manner mirroring Dignity in Motion: Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice (Jackson and Shapiro-Phim Reference Jackson and Shapiro-Phim2008). If the essays on staged dance tilt toward resistance through building community and empathy, those examining other performative platforms stress the propagandistic employment of certain choreographic strategies. Overall, the book begins on a more resistive note, intermittently addresses the repressive forces that work against this kind of resistance, and then ends with a kind of stuttering hopefulness since the final two articles both consider William Forsythe's Three Atmospheric Studies. Gerald Siegmund's article is a bleak response in which Forsythe's war on stage is internalized and unresolved by the viewer; Franko's review closes out the volume with a more hopeful perspective.

For the purposes of this review, I will first briefly consider the general ways in which the stage works are shown to reproduce many characteristics of modern warfare in an attempt to resist that warfare and discuss how coercive forces are choreographed in the alternative media platforms. I will then briefly highlight three articles that stand out for their complexity, originality, and provision of welcome humor before concluding with a description of Franko's provocative closing essay.

Many of the essays consider specific dance works that explore the chaos of conditions generated by contemporary conflicts as a means to establish empathy, build community, and enact resistance. The themes examined range from occupation, torture, refugee experiences, and soldier injuries to drug/border wars. The confusion and incomprehensibility that arise in these situations find expression in stage works employing “narrative jumble, fragmentation, in-betweenness, bordering, overlap, and incongruities” (13). Discrepancies are established between bodily gestures, spoken words and staged imagery. Props become disruptions of choreographic space in Access Denied, a piece about life in the Occupied Territories. Use of juxtaposed, nonlinear live interviews on stage and the contrast between routine walking and extreme, contorted movements appear in Ordinary Witness, a piece about torture. As in many other essays, the argument is made here by author Alessandra Nicifero that Ordinary Witness creates a “highly charged … transitional space where performers and audience connect empathically, and potentially disrupt” the normative mainstream ways of picturing war as heroic (47).

Counterpoints to these essays are the few that concentrate on the ways in which a highly orderly choreography of preparedness is used for propaganda purposes. These articles examine the kinds of mental and physical patterning that occur in different print and video media that train the body for alertness and readiness for contemporary battle. For instance, Yehyda Sharim's insightful essay “Choreographing Masculinity in Contemporary Israeli Culture” considers the stamina, acceleration, strength, and general fitness deployed through army training manuals to create the ideal Israeli soldier and by extension the post-army civilian, who is ready to sacrifice himself for the state. In Derek Burrill's “‘There's a Soldier in All of Us’: Choreographing Virtual Recruitment,” the focus shifts to the online gaming system America's Army and a discussion of how the emphasis on taking short, rapid strides, the ability to switch positions fluidly, constant verbal communication, and carefully timed advances prepare players for warfare. As Burrill notes, the participants are “willingly engaging in a recruitment process, effectively embracing an active performance of indoctrination” (78).

Indeed, one of the most original and beautifully written chapters in this volume addresses the kind of propagandistic choreography that is deployed by mainstream American media. In her article “Affective Temporalities: Dance, Media, and the War on Terror,” Harmony Bench offers a brilliant analysis of the way in which shows such as So You Think You Can Dance and the interactive gaming system Dance Central prepare audiences and participants to accept and even (so disturbingly!) enjoy the psychological insecurity or precarity typical of contemporary warfare by presenting it in highly controlled, family-friendly packaging. In this essay, Bench focuses on “the posture of anticipation as an orientation that positions a subject in front of a threat—whether that threat is one's own defeat, [or] a favorite contestant's elimination” (177). She demonstrates how these mediated, commercial forms of entertainment model for viewers/participants the successful surmounting and neutralizing of those threats through processes of memorialization and preemptive learning of movement information.

What is especially valuable is the recognition by some of the authors that the same event can be viewed through multiple, even contradictory, lenses that shift between perceiving it as warmongering propaganda or as an attempt at peaceful reconciliation. To this end Neelima Jeychandran's piece “Specter of War, Spectacle of Peace: The Lowering of Flags Ceremony at the Wagah and Hussainiwala Border Outposts,” is a much-appreciated addition. Her chapter examines an occurrence at a border outpost in which security forces of India and Pakistan perform a “retreat ceremony” to signal the close of official transactions at the end of each day. In her layered reading of this event, the author observes that the ceremony is “a theater of war, nationalism, and memory, while also being a spectacle staged to promote cultural tourism” (197). She argues that there is both “an exhibition of peace through a flamboyant and colorful display … [and] a demonstration of political tensions” (194). She concludes by claiming that “it is difficult to state … whether the ceremony diffuses tensions or is a site that perpetuates hatred” (199).

Also noteworthy in the anthology is a darkly humorous offering by Maaike Bleeker and Janez Jansa with their article “War and P.E.A.C.E.” The stage pieces they describe, titled We are all Marlene Dietrich FOR: Performance for Peacekeeping Soldiers and P.E.A.C.E., is to draw parallels between contemporary dancers and peacekeepers and advocate for contemporary dance especially created as entertainment for peacekeepers. As the authors assert with some understatement, these works “are complex in that they are simultaneously highly satirical and deadly serious” (232). The assertion is that peacekeepers and independent choreographers share having to be flexible, adaptable, and culturally sensitive as they traverse the globe; by the same token, the idleness and boredom that faces many peacekeepers could be challenged by experimental performance. The authors make a fascinating case for the soundness of this perspective, even while noting the unlikeliness of it coming to pass due to negative receptions from both the peacekeeping and contemporary dance communities.

This ambitious and deeply important volume concludes, as stated earlier, with a piece by Franko, “The Role of Choreography in Civil Society under Siege: William Forsythe's Three Atmospheric Studies.” This article analyzes Forsythe's ballet on trauma precipitated by the Iraq War and thus reflects on what it is for civil society to be under attack. Franko argues that Forsythe's choreography addresses the imbalance created by a “withdrawal of the state from the defense of its citizenry” (335). This is a result of what Franko theorizes as a “choreographic public sphere,” where embodied subjects can “occupy” public space and in so doing open up a new way of conceiving of civic engagement (335). Through the “blockages” established by Forsythe's work—to translation, memory, and rational-critical discourse—we are left to experience “the mayhem of suffering bodies” (345). This, however, is a place of hopefulness for Franko. It means “dealing directly with the mayhem and ‘structuring’ it such that its aporias can be refelt and reflected upon” (346). And so we are left to believe that perhaps there is a way for us to be compelled to move to more humane ways to coexist. It is a heroic call for the power of choreography in the twenty-first century; let's hope that it is heeded.