Mediation, Trace and Space in Dance Theatre: Already Elsewhere

In Already Elsewhere (2005), bodies and media work together to produce postdramatic narratives in a nightmarish dreamscape. The work emphasises the spatial dimension, presenting a landscape within which the live body, material objects and mediated imagery only develop meaning in relation to each other. Media and projection are used as key dramaturgical devices that further the themes of the work and as such, the ‘filmic’ aspects and mediated imagery cannot be read within a media tradition but should be accepted as fundamentally embedded within the dramaturgy. This essay addresses the dramaturgical context of the media presentation in Already Elsewhere and connects this element with the structure and concerns of the overall work. By exploring the manifestation of bodies and their media traces and the doubling of the dancers, this essay suggests that the intermedial choreography unfolds as a type of 'scenic poem' (Lehmann).