The School of Performance Presents: Arts Pessimism and the Role of Dance in Times of Crisis

Conversation #5 - Notes on Spitting - Expanded Reading by Dani Blanga Gubbay

Notes on Spitting is an expanded reading grounded in a series of recent texts in which Dani Blanga Gubbay explores the relations between dance and choreography, sex and pornography. Blending theory and fiction, the reading moves through references to dance performances, André Lepecki, Susan Sontag’s The Volcano Lover, Maria Hassabi and Alex Baczyński-Jenkins, and the possibility of thinking dance as a force rather than a form. It introduces the notion of counter-choreography, imagined as a corroding gesture—like saliva spat onto a stain to dissolve it—capable of softening categories of perception. The reading is accompanied by an exhibition of drawings by Alina Popa (1982–2019), soundscape by Krzysztof Bagiński, a loop from Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982), and a saliva-inducing drink. Notes on Spitting was originally commissioned and published in Mousse Magazine (issues 91–94).

Daniel Blanga Gubbay is a writer and performing arts curator. He was part of the artistic direction of Kunstenfestivaldesarts in Brussels from 2018 to 2026, and has worked as an educator and independent curator of performance and public programs, including for the latest Bienal de São Paulo (2025), Ashkal Alwan, Beirut (2020, in collaboration with Zeynep Öz), and Manifesta, Palermo (2018). He holds a PhD from the University of Palermo and is a founding member of Celador, a space for experimenting with language in Brussels, as well as a member of the artistic committee of the Beirut Art Centre. He teaches regularly, including a weekly class titled Contemporary Salmon at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels. He writes between theory and fiction, exploring choreography, language, and pleasure as forms of thinking. His latest writing has been published in Performance Journal, Mizna: Journal of Arab American Literature, BUTT, and Mousse Magazine. He sometimes publishes under the name Dani—a personal, night name—following a lineage of artists and writers who use a diminutive to signal intimacy, experimentation, and a shift in tone, allowing a signature to become a voice rather than a label.

Credits:

Organized by Lília Mestre 

Supported by SSHRC IDG Performative Publishing: Critical Ways of Making Public and CURC Ecologies of B/black Performance

Series by Jens Richard Giersdorf and Lília Mestre - Contemporary Dance, School of Performance, Concordia University