Abstract

In my contribution to this volume I would like to investigate in how far the recent spread of the workshop format in the dance field in its difference from the formats of rehearsal, training, or showing can be contrasted with the historical emergence of the workshop in the Neo-Avantgardes of the 1960s and thereby situated in the area of conflict between group technologies and technologies of the self. I am doing so by relating my own current research project to Michel Foucault´s late investigation of ascesis and different kinds of subjectivity, to Richard Schechner´s approach to the workshop, and to the research Ana Vujanovi?, Bojana Cveji?, and Marta Popivoda have been conducting under the title Performing the Self in the last years. At the end of this essay I will briefly say a few sentences about the durational event Life Forms which took place at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin from April 25 till 27, since this contemporary workshop-like setting very much reflected on what I would like to call the paradox of the workshop.