  This paper addresses the question of how and with what consequences anonymity
is used as a creative element in experiments dealing with alternative forms of
knowledge production. More specifically, the focus is on a particular current
in contemporary dance, experimental dance. This has developed in the course of
the 1970s. Its guiding idea is to shift the focus away from finished
choreography and performance to the processuality, spontaneity, and experience
of dance practice itself. Dance is seen as a laboratory in which to experiment
with gravity, body boundaries, group dynamics and perception. The focus is on
testing, touching, trying. The corresponding events are called either 'Dance
Labs' or 'Movement Research Workshops', depending on the regularity. An
instrument that is often used in the context of such events to create specific
social situations and group dynamics or to channel perceptions in certain
directions is anonymity. Anonymity is broadly understood as the capping of
connections that results in a degree of unaccountability with respect to
various aspects of a person, situation, or activity. For example,
unaccountability can arise from the fact that people can no longer see each
other, so that visual identification becomes impossible, even if only
temporarily. By breaking familiar modes of identification, other forms of
relating can sometimes be emphasized. This is what makes this form of anonymity
so interesting for experimental dance.
