The closing decades of the twentieth century and the opening years of the twenty-first have seen a wide range of hybrid and cross-over performance forms, dance/theatre being prominent among them. In this article, Maria Shevtsova outlines the similarities between the working principles of director Lev Dodin and those of the choreographers Pina Bausch and William Forsythe, suggesting how they have set and still exemplify current trends in a networked world (Castells) of precarity (Bourdieu) and uncertainty. She also explores a broader socio-artistic context for her focus. This text is a slightly modified version of a belated inaugural lecture for her third appointed professorial chair, at Goldsmiths College, University of London, in March 2002. Maria Shevtsova is an Advisory Editor of NTQ, whose recent publications include ‘Theatre and Interdisciplinarity’ (2001), a special issue she guest-edited for Theatre Research International, and ‘The Sociology of the Theatre’ (2002), edited for Contemporary Theatre Review, which includes her essay, ‘Appropriating Pierre Bourdieu's Champ and Habitus for a Sociology of Stage Productions’. Her book on Lev Dodin and the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg is due for publication in 2003.