A silent prelude to a dance

How silence shapes the viewer’s experience of a site-specific dance performance

Abstract

Drawing on the lexicon and conceptual framework of new phenomenology, particularly Tonino Griffero’s atmospherological approach, this article analyses a case study of the experience of silence in dance: the site-specific performance Prélude to Mountain Ghost by Po-Nien Wang (2024). The introduction to the performance, which involves the audience attending a gongfu tea ceremony in complete silence, shapes their experience of the subsequent dance solo and their perception of the accompanying music, offering an example of ‘discrepant atmospheric resonance’. The atmospherological analysis of the performance builds upon recent studies of silence by Jürgen Hasse, which view silence not as withdrawal from the present moment, but as a heightened mode of inhabiting it. The phenomenon of discrepant resonance discussed here demonstrates how contemporary performances challenge rather than facilitate spectators’ capacity to engage with such an experience of silence, revealing that this very difficulty can reveal unexplored nuances of these performances.