Abstract

This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s discussion of the concept of cynical parrhesia to explore some similarities between the kind of provocative dialogue practised by the Cynics and the provocative way in which some recent European contemporary dance pieces criticise contem- porary dance as an institution. It focuses on one ancient and one modern, twenty-first century example of provocative dialogue: the meeting between Diogenes and Alexander the Great, and that between gallery visitors and dancers in Production by Xavier Le Roy and Ma° rten Spa° ngberg in response to an invitation to create a work for exhibition in an art gallery. The purpose of provoca- tive dialogue, Foucault argues, is not to make someone to accept the truth but to persuade them to internalise the voice of the provocateur and thus initiate within themselves a process of ethical self-criticism. This paper argues that Production offers opportunities for this ethical practice both to gallery visitors and to the institution that commissioned it.