The Department of Performance Studies is happy to announce Professor André Lepecki has been appointed as our new department chair. Recognized internationally as a leading theorist of dance and contemporary performance art, André has published some of the most influential performance theory in the past decade. _________________________________________________________________
André Lepecki works and researches at the intersection of critical dance studies, curatorial practice, performance theory, contemporary dance and visual arts performance. Selected curatorial work includes Chief Curator of the festival IN TRANSIT (2008 and 2009 editions) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin. Co-curator of the archive Dance and Visual Arts since 1960s for the exhibition MOVE: choreographing you, Hayward Gallery (2010). Curator of the lecture series Points of Convergence: performance and visual arts (2014) and Off-Hinge Off Center: alternative histories of performance, for the Museum of Modern Art of Warsaw (2014 and 2015). Also for MoMA-Warsaw he curated the series Performance in the Museum (2015).
In 2008 he received the AICA Award for Best Performance as co-curator and director of the authorized re-doing of Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (commissioned by Haus der Kunst, Munich 2006; presented at Performa 07).
Selected lectures include Museo Reina Sofia, MoMA-NY, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio, MACBA, Para Site, Hong Kong, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, WIELS, The Gauss Seminars at Princeton University, Freie Universität, Berlin, Brown University, UC-Berkeley, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, École Superiore des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. In 2009 he was Resident Fellow at Institute Interweaving Performance Cultures at Freie Universität, Berlin. In 2015 he was Artistic Professor at Stockholm University of the Arts, where he helped develop the research profile area on Concept and Composition.
He is the editor of the anthologies Dance (Whitechapel, 2012), Planes of Composition: dance, theory and the global (Seagull press, 2009, with Jenn Joy), The Senses in Performance (Routledge 2007, with Sally Banes), Of the Presence of the Body (Wesleyan University Press, 2004). His single authored book Exhausting Dance: performance and the politics of movement (Routledge 2006) is currently translated in 10 languages. His forthcoming book Singularities: dance and visual arts in the age of performanceis scheduled for publication in 2016 also through Routledge.