There is a rare stunning mosaic in Villa del
Casale situated in Piazza Armerina in Sicily. It portrays ten
female athletes and reveals that in antiquity
women practised different kinds of sport. It is called ‘le
Palestriti’ from Latin ‘palestrita’ which means those who in
ancient Greece or in Rome fought in the gym’ (from Treccani).
Dancer and choreographer Simona Bertozzi, who when she was a child,
practiced some sports, saw it and had an epiphany. She saw female
strength and power, corality and beauty and decided to create a
project around
this work.
Part of the project, called Athletes, involved the participation of
female dancers, female professional athletes and of non professional
women of different body shapes to create a choreographic work where
sport and women met and nourished each other.
Le Palestriti, photo Luca Del Pia.
The
binomial dance and sport is not new. In 1924 Bronislava Nijinska
created Le train Bleu for The Ballets Russes, with
a scenario written by Jean Cocteau and costumes designed
by Coco Chanel. It was inspired by the luxury train that connected
Calais–Paris to the Côte d'Azur. Various sports were pictured,
like tennis, swimming and weightlifting.
In
1959 Martha Graham and George Balanchine
presented their choreographic collaboration in Episodes. In the part
created by Graham and dedicated to Mary Queen of Scots, the North
American choreographer imagined, among other things, a tennis matchbetween Mary and her cousin and rival
Elizabeth.
However, Le Palestriti is something unique. As a dance adaptation of
a mosaic, it explores women’s movement, strength, fatigue and
grace in both dance and sport with brilliant lucidity. I saw the work
at the Teatro della Luna in Polverigi as part of the Inteatro
festival. I thank my dear friend, dancer, choreographer, dance
teacher and dance critic Stefania Zepponi for suggesting that we go
and see it.
The dance opens with the lights designed by Rocio España
Rodriguez on, the four dancers Arianna Brugiolo, Sara Cavalieri,
Federica D’Aversa and Valentina Foschi moving at the perimeter of
the stage and the image of the mosaic printed on fabric lying centre
stage. Meike Clarelli and Davide Fasulo’s music starts: it is a
soundscape, a sort of noise which recalls a crowd cheering and
supporting its own team during a match.
The dance proceeds with slow-motion movements alternated with
movements of different paces. One dancer moves in deep-second
mimicking a sumo wrestler, another one mimicks a weight thrower with
a cry in the process. Vocality has a special place in sport and is
here reworked in an original manner thnaks to Meike Clarelli. At one
point they all together say the following words following a
crescendo: “la meta tocco lancio / nella mischia il cuore in gola
passo schiaccio” [the goal I touch I throw / in the fray my heart
in my thorat step I dunk]. At another point they sing a couple of
lines from Madonna’s “Like a prayer”.
Le Palestriti, photo Luca Del Pia.
The dancers lift the mosaic fabric and show it to the audience to
then play with it: they thorw it in the air and one of them wraps it
around herself. They dance together and they dance each according to
her own movement pace. Sometimes there is pure silence and one can
hear the dancers’ heavy breathing after a particularly hard dance
phrase. Movement from various sports continues to inspire the dancing
with references to swimming, volleyball, rugby and even the haka from
New Zealand.
There is a beautiful chorality on stage as both sport and dance for
women, especially in relation to the mosaic, means exactly that. They
are in this experience together, there is no real competition. The
costumes, where white prevailed, were designed by Bertozzi herself,
Katia Kuo and Cristina Suriani. The ending, perhaps not entirely
necessary at least not as a final phrase, saw the dancers moving with
a weight in the shape of a green ball attached to a rope, the noise
of the ball against the stage being subtle and strong at the same
time. When the dancers bow to the audience they do it with their arms
over each other’s back, all intertwined with each other, all
together as to signpost again the chorality of the piece. A nice and
meaningful touch on the choreographer’s part.
This was a Nexus 2025 project, with the support of MIC, Comune di
Bologna, Festival Danza Estate in collaboration with ALMASTUDIOS
Bologna.
In the town centre of Jesi, in the Marche Region, there has been an
invasion of coloured, funny, soldiers as decoration of the main
shops. In one shop two of these soldiers even appear in the window.
What can this mean? Is Jesi being militarised?
No, it is not. I believe these funny-looking soldiers represent the
nutcracker in the shape of a soldier that is one of the protagonists
of a now famous ballet, called precisely The Nutcracker. Based on
Alexandre Dumas, father’s story for children which, at the same
time, was based on E.T.A. Hoffmann’s dark tale, The Nutcracker and
the Mouse King, the ballet was choreographed by Marius Petipa, with
the assistance of Lev Ivanov to Pitor Tchaikovsky’s stunning music
and was performed for the first time in 1892.
It is divided into two acts and tells the story of the child Clara
who receives a present on Christmas Eve, a present which is a
nutcracker in the shape of a soldier. As she falls asleep the
nutcracker becomes a man, a prince who, together with an army of
other soldiers, engages in a battle against a group of mice, headed
by the terrible Mouse King. Clara helps to kill the King with her
slipper and goes with her prince to the Land of Sweets. There she
meets various characters, among whom there is chocolate, exemplified
by a Spanish dance, coffee, exemplified by an Arabic dance and tea,
exemplified by a Chinese dance. Then there is the Sugar Plum fairy
who dances a beautiful solo and who is sometimes interpreted by the
same dancer who performs Clara. In some versions, at the end, Clara
wakes up so as to say that the battle against the mice and the
adventure in the Land of Seets were all a dream.
In the ballet there are some scenes that are now considered racist,
like the representation of the Chinese dancers embodying tea.
According to Ronald Alexander,
The
whole ballet tradition is inherently racist, so the traditional
productions of Nutcracker
can also be seen as racist. In many versions of Nutcracker,
one sees overt racial stereotypes. In the second-act divertissements,
many of the dances or variations are borderline caricatures, if not
downright demeaning. For example, the way in which Asians have been
portrayed in the Chinese variation—with heads bobbing up and down,
index fingers protruding, and happy smirks of joy plastered on the
dancers’ faces—is insulting and embarrassing. (Alexander quoted
in Anonymous, 2013).
Various productions are attempting to change this aspect, but the
question remains as to whether a tradition even though it bears a
stereotype should be changed or kept for historical purposes. I think
it should be changed as history can be told in books or other places,
but living bodies on stage should represent something that reflects
our time, not a racist past.
Returning to the Nutcracker, according to Mariella Guatterini,
dancewise, it is characterised by three main waltzes: the waltz of
the snowflakes, poetic and fast paced, the celebrated waltz of the
flowers, sweet and harmonious and the final waltz, “the
transfiguration itself of the idea of waltz” (Guatterini, 1998:
113).
Because it is set during the Christmas Eve, the ballet is being
performed during this time of the year in many parts of the world. In
a way, it has become a symbol for Christmas and that is why those
funny-looking soldiers decorate the shops of Jesi’s town centre. It
is a pity that there is no Nutcracker being performed in town and one
wonders how many people do actually know the connection between the
Nutcracker and Christmas to fully appreciate said soldiers.
Alberto Spadolini, Tau – L’ultima colonna del tempio, 1960s. Courtesy of Marco Travaglini.
In front of the supermarket you need to take a number to stand on line. Then
inside another number will be given to us, on a yellow laminated card. Sometimes
this card does not have a number. A number which is not a number. About two weeks
have passed from the last time I went shopping and I did not know about the line
outside, least of all about the numbers. I wait. I start noticing that when
people arrive, they directly go to the little machine that dispense the numbers.
It is the same that is usually used to queue at the counter where cold cuts,
ready-made food ad bread are. In front of the supermarket there is a wide
rectangular area so that (so that?) people do not stand in a line but are spread
here and there. The metre is between us. One metre distance. Minimal security
measure. How long is a metre? I need to visualise space. Margaret Atwood has
shared the image that Health Canada recommends, a moose that is two metres long
[1]. And in Italy? In Italy we are left with the abostraction of metres.
However, in the area, there are those who do not care about it or are not fully
aware of it and walk too closely to people waiting in order to reach the machine
dispensing numbers. Everybody wears masks and gloves, except for me. They are
mainly disposable masks. There is a great talking about masks. I ask myself
whether those worn by these people are sufficient to protect them, to protect us. I keep the distance placing myself a bit outside the group. Two men
are too close and are chatting. Why? Distance, what distance? Masks and
security? Space. The body. Bodies. Years ago I read somewhere (or maye I
listened to) a choreographer, maybe Mark Morris, complaining about the fact that in
the underground people do not have a sense of space, that is of their body in
space. Dance, I think, teaches this. Can teach this. The awareness of the body
and bodies in space. Rudolf Laban, theorist of the early twentieth century,
talked of the kinesphere, “the personal space” [2], that we occupy with our body and
that surrounds it. That is the one that, while standing, we can occupy extending
our limbs, like arms and legs. Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man comes to mind
and also the new Vitruvian Woman Rosi Braidotti talks about [3]. This space
could exceed the metre if, for example, we opened both our arms laterally at the
height of our shoulders. Well, we could not go around with our arms open. O
could we?
Health Canada image twitted by Margaret Atwood.
Another person arrives, without a mask. She goes straight to the number machine
even though close by there is a woman. Why? I recall the famous pas de quatre of the cygnets from Swan Lake (1875-95) where four ballerinas dance holding their
hands [4]. It requires coordination ad syncronicity and it is an example of
kinesphere sharing, that today is not possible. When I studied dance (centuries
ago, now I write about dance, which means nothing to most people), I remember I
had to be careful about the distance between me and the people near me, because I
could have kicked them or hit them with my arms. Even though at the time I did
not know Laban, I was nevertheless beginning to know my kinesphere.
At this
point I understood that I need to take a number, otherwise I will never enter
the supermarket. To be sure, I ask the man closest to me. He confirms it. Then I
ask how can I reach the number machine if clsose-by there are two people. He
shrugs and adivises me to go around them, making a long round and passing outside
the group to reach the machine from behind. It is an excellent choreographic
intuition that I immediately put into practice. Then I go back to my position.
Still, standing, in place. The queue which is not a queue looks like a
choreography of standing in place. It could look a very limiting posture, but it
is not so. For Martha Graham, posture recalls stillness only on the surface, as
“the body is poised for most intense, most sublte action” [5]. If I decide to
stay still with my legs, I can move my arms, hands, shoulders, neck, head, torso
and so on. It is what Linda Rickett-Young defines as gesture [6]. If there is no
shift of weight, our body can still move a lot. And I think of Virgilio Sieni’s
hands and arms in Nudità [nudity] (2018) [7], of his art of gestures. If I then
decide to move my legs, a set of kinetic possibilities opens while standing in
place.
The cygnets' pas de quatre, Swan Lake, Royal Ballet
The first that comes to
my mind, due to my education, is flamenco. I could slightly bend my
knees and have my calves go to hit the floor, dancing a zapateado
with my planta, punta y taco. I do not do it. They would think I am
crazy. And then I think that in this absurd period, we would absurdly
need some choreographers to deal with, teach and coordinate people’
movement. And I think of all the dance teachers who have been hardly
hit by the pandemic [8]. They are used to deal with moving groups of
people (children included) and if they usually do it to get ready for
their final year shows, they could do it also on the streets and in
closed places and most of all they could teach and transmit this form
of knowledge to those who do not have it. We need a choreographic
sense of space, we cannot expect people to have sporadic
choreographic intuitions each of us can already have. I know, it
sounds absurd. Precisely.
Dance scholar Alessandro Pontremoli, talking of body
techniques, points out, quoting Eugenio Barba, that we can consider
the movements we do every day, like getting up and walking, as “daily
body techniques” [9] and the movements that go beyond this range,
as lifting one leg upwards, as “extra-daily techniques” [10].
With the coronavirus, people are implicitly asked to reconfigure
one’s own daily technques in extra-daily techniques, as standing in
palce in an area at the distance of at least one metre (?) in front of
a supermarket and walk that bit that allows the queue which is not a
queue to proceed, always keeping said distance.
Virgilio Sieni in Nudità.
In phase one we would
have already needed experts in choreography (absurd, what am I
talking about?), think of phase two where a lot more people will be
around. Will they/we be capable of self-organising? I do not think so,
because, contrary to what Gia Kourlas provocatively says [11], we are
not all dancers, but perhaps we should all become dancers. There are
probably other body practices (!), I talk about dance because this is
what I know a bit. If it is true that it is now a question of life
and death (rhetoric sometimes helps) to keep a certain distance, then
developing an awareness of the body in space and therefore the
ability not just to keep the distance of at least one metre (?!), but
also to keep this distance while we move (in the supermarket, for
example) becomes a fundamental requirement. And ignoring (in the
sense precisely of not knowing) this aspect could continue to bring
people infringing this ethereal distance to take the damned number
and enter the circle of queues which are not queues. We cannot give
this kinetic knowledge for granted. Many people will have it, many
others will not. Kourlas herself, and in this I agree with her,
quoting choreographer Ori Flomin, affirms that those who deal with
dance, deal precisely with this, organising “people in space”
[12].
It comes to my mind the enigmantic painting Tau –
L’ultima colonna del tempio by Alberto Spadolini, an almost unknown
painter and dancer, who has tansformed many of his paintings in
oneiric choreographies. The depicted figures are all at a certain
distance. At the centre a man, maybe a dancer with his back to the
viewer, in one of his hands a mask (a mask?). The atmoshere is
rearefied and surreal. Is it the way we will live now? Maybe. But if
we have to reinvent the way we stay together, we have to do it also
in choreographic terms (et voilà, I have said it) and not only that.
As the architecture scholar, Marta Magagnini has highlighted, “let’s
invent new jobs in this covid-19 times! We have many experts 'walking'
inside their houses!!!” [13]
I stay standing, feet together, firm and nervous. I
ask who has the number before mine, but nobody replies. Maybe
somebody has given up. The queue which is not a queue slowly moves
with people entering and people standing and taking their place in
the front line before the entrance. It is almost a magnetic, funnel
movement, where the entrance constitutes the magnet toward which each
of us is attracted. Apart from the two men chatting too close to each
other, the others are all silent. A woman has a terrified look as if
this standing like this, keeping the distance, were still something
incomprehensible and nonsensical. And it is. I am terrified.
When Graham was on a small unstable plane, she said
to have rehearsed in her mind her choreography, Errand into the Maze
(1947) to placate fear [14]. It is a choreography where a woman
fights against her demons. Inspired by the Theseus and Ariadne myth,
it concentrates on the female figure (Ariadne? Ariadne and Theseus)
who fights against the Minotaur, called the Creature of Fear. It has
a technical and interpretative depth, alternating the protagonist’s
solos and her duets with the Creature. I rethink of its beginning:
the dancer stands in place at the back of the stage, her look
downward and her hands crossed on her womb. And she breathes. She
breatheees. The movement of the inhaling and exhaling torso has
inspired Graham in the development of her technique based on
contraction and release. If I think about it, a mixture of bitter,
very bitter irony grips my stomach. Now that many, too many people
are dying of resporatory disease. I think about all this horror that
could be avoided and was not [15]. It is an unbearable situation. I
do not know if I will be able to stand still, in place, in balance on
this labyrinthine present.
It is my turn to enter. I am about to when the person
with the number prior to mine appears from the side street. Another
choreographic intuition. I take some steps backward and let him pass.
NOTES
[1] Margaret Atwood, “Proper Social
Distancing” Tweet posted on 28 March 2020. [2] Rudolf
Laban, Choreutics, edited by Lisa Ullman [1966] (Alton: Dance
Books, 2011), p. 10. [3] Rosi Braidotti, The
Posthuman (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 21. [4]Swan
Lake, chor. Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, music Pëtr Il’ič
Čajkovskij revised by Riccardo Drigo, dancers Pierina Legnani, Pavel
Gerdt and the Imperial Ballet (Saint Petersburgh: Mariinskij Theatre,
27 January 1875). [5] Martha Graham, “A Modern
Dancer’s Prime for Action” in Dance – A Basic Educational
Technique, edited by Frederick Rand Rogers (New York: MacMillan
Company, 1941), p. 181. I already talked of postures and the
act, even political, of standing in 2013. See https://storiadelladanza.blogspot.com/2013/08/stare-in-piedi.html (in Italian) 15 August 2013,
(accessed on 22 August 2020).
[6]
Linda Rickett-Young, Essential Guide to Dance (Londra:
Hodder&Stoughton, 1996), p. 75. [7]Nudità,
chor. and interpretation Mimmo Cuticchio,Virgilio Sieni (Firenze:
Teatro Niccolini, 11 October 2018). For more information:
http://www.virgiliosieni.it/schede/nudita-2/ (accessed on 13 April
2020). [8] See the plea made by Alessandra Celentano:
“Covid19,
Alessandra Celentano lancia l’allarme: ‘Il settore danza è al
collasso’”,giornaledelladanza.com, 15 April 2020
(accessed on 16 April 2020). [9] Alessandro Pontremoli,
La danza – Storia, teoria, estetica nel Novecento (Bari:
Laterza, 2004), p. xviii. [10] Ibidem. [11] Gia
Kourlas, “HowWe Use Our Bodies to Navigate a Pandemic”, The New York
Times, 31 March 2020 (accessed on 13 April 2020). See also the
article by Jason Kottke, “We
Are All Dancers Now – Mindful Movement is key to Social
Distancing”, in Kottke.org, 2 April 2020 (accessed on 16
April 2020).
The new Vitruvian woman.
[12] Ibidem. [13]
Marta Magagnini, Post on facebook, 16 aprile 2020. [14]
Martha Graham, Blood Memory – An Autobiography (New
York: Washington Square Press, 1991), p. 267. Errand into the
Maze, chor. Martha Graham, set Isamu Noguchi, music Giancarlo
Menotti, costumes Martha Graham, lights Jean Rosenthal, dancers
Martha Graham, Mark Ryder (New York: Ziegfield Theatre, 28
Febuary1947). [15] See for example the video
investigative report “Il
virus è un boomerang”, Indovina chi viene a cena,
edited by Sabrina Giannini (Rai 3, 29 March 2020), available for now
on RaiPlay (accessed on 13 April 2020). Or also the “Video
conferenza con Emanuele Leonardi”, edited by XRItaly, 5 April
2020 (accessed on 10 April 2020).
This is the English translation of the article I published on 19 April 2020, here.
Black Flags is a large installation William Forsythe created in 2014 for one of his projects called Choreographic Objects. Forsythe has been revolutionising the language of dance since the late 1980s, with his radical deconstructive approach to ballet, and, in 2005 he pushed his creative drive further by asking himself questions like, “is it possible for choreography to generate autonomous expressions of its principles, a choreographic object, without the body?” (Forsythe, no date). The result were the Choreographic Objects, a series of challenging installations which could differ in size, material and structure.
Black Flags is one of them, is huge and it consists of two robotic arms holding and moving two black flags. The big dark fabric of each flag moves sometimes in unison with the other, sometimes according to a different direction or angle, “there is a distribution of forces which is really unique” says Forsythe, praising the “beauty and precision” (Forsythe, 2017) of these objects. The noise of the robots in action is the only ‘music’ in the piece.
I have not seen it live, but I felt a deep sense of uncanny bewilderment watching the video of this performance and I begun to think about the reasons why. The first thing that has come to my mind is the Italian ‘sbandieratori’, flag twirlers, artists who move flags in various directions and even throw them in the air in acrobatic compositions. It is not clear what their origin was, but nowadays, there are numerous Medieval-inspired spectacles which include the exhibition of the flag twirlers whose work can certainly be seen as a type of choreography. Here are a couple of examples, the first is a live recording of the sbandieratori from Lanciano, a town in the South of Italy, the second is a video portray of the sbandieratori from Acquapendente, a smaller town in the Centre of Italy:
Watching Forsythe’s flags and the flag twirlers one can notice the creepy (Forsythe used the term ‘creep’ himself, see Forsythe, 2017) calmness of the formers with respect to the upbeat of the latters, there is a connection in the dexterous flags manipulation, but a sharp difference in dynamics.
The bewilderment continues, there is something out of place in this installation, but I still do not know what it is. Then , the second association emerges, it is is with the Anarchists’ flag, which was black towards the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth. First made popular by Louise Michel in France in the 1880s, it then recurred in other countries like the United States (afaq, 2008). According to Howard Ehrlich, the colour black was chosen for its association with various elements:
"Black is the shade of negation. The black flag is the negation of all flags. It is a negation of nationhood which puts the human race against itself and denies the unity of all humankind. Black is a mood of anger and outrage (…). Balck is also a colour of mourning. (…) Balck is also beautiful. It is a colour of determination, of resolve, of strength, a colour by which all others are clarified and defined. Black is the mysterious surrounding of germination, of fertility, the breeding ground of new life which always evolves, renews, refreshes, and reproduces itself in darkness" (Ehrlich, quoted in afaq, 2008).
I am getting there. This sense of bewilderment is connected with the idea of nation/group the flag incorporates. And I think of the United States flags planted on the moon in 1969 or, moving backwards, of the flag in Eugène Delacroix’s painting Liberty Leading the people (1830), where the allegory of the female form (Warner, 1985) representing the ideal of Liberty, guides a group of people through war (more specifically, the 1830 July Revolution). That same three-coloured flag would later became the French national flag.
Forsythe, talking about Black Flags, has affirmed that they worked hard “to de-anthropomorphise these robots in their actions and we’ve done everything we can to take away the idea of dominance or submission or purpose although it does creep in” (Forsythe, 2017). I am not sure I agree with this idea. Flags are highly overloaded symbols connected with human history, politics, culture and various other fields (there is also a field dedicated to them, it is called Vexillology, from the Latin word ‘vexillum’, flag) and they bear within themselves patterns of dominance and submission. Choosing flags for an installation without engaging with these patterns means to perpetrate them in some way. George Balanchine, for example, has choreographed two ballets devoted to flags, Stars and Stripes (1958) and Union Jack (1976), choosing a celebratory tone and “patriotic touches” (Balanchine Trust, no date).
Wlliam Pope.L’s Trinket, a 2008 installation, where a huge flag is being moved by large industrial fans and illuminated by several lights, is quite different in this sense. It looks like a United States flag but it is not as Pope.L has added a star, which is a small detail that disrupts the pattern. In a similar way, the title poses a sharp contrast to the majesty of the symbol the flag has, “when speaking of big things use small words” he says (Pope. L, 2015).
Christopher Knight summarises the work as follows:
"The egalitarian promise of the flag's symbolism is easily acknowledged, but what makes the sculpture great is its layered depth. More difficult to represent is the symbol's power, whose source is counterintuitive: The symbol is dynamic because its egalitarian promise has not been fulfilled" (Knight, 2015).
According to Pope.L the flag “is a space of disagreement and agreement” and this condenses the layered discourse on flag symbolism, especially for the use of the term ‘space’, as it recalls the geopolitical root of many conflicts.
Another artist, Roberto Longo, has created in 2014 a big sculpture of wood, steel and wax which recalls a partial United States flag, except for the fact that it is black and built as if it were a “sinking ship” (Longo, 2016). The erect (almost phallic) position of a flag hanging from its pole is deconstructed and reshaped according to a disturbing diagonal. Titled Untitled (Pequod) it recalls Ahab’s ship in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), a ship which in the end sank as did Ahab’s obsession with the white whale. “Moby Dick is like the genetic code of America” says Longo, in that the ship crew members came from different cultures but were led by white guys. And Ahab “has this incredible hubris which is very much like American hubris right now” (Longo, 2016).
Robert Longo, Untitled (Pequod).
Both Pope.L and Longo engage with the symbolism connected to flags, Fosythe does not. That is probably the cause of my bewilderment, I feel something important is missing. I appreciate Forsythe’s choice of two flags so that movement does not have a central focus, but two. However, this recalls the anthropomorphic image of two arms, even though the robots are placed on the floor and not attached to a unifying object. I also found the fabric moving through the air particularly interesting, with the three elements in this installation, interacting with each other: one is the robots, the second is the flags and “air is the third invisible player, you have to basically choreograph the air and the flags” (Forsythe, 2017). This aspect reminded me of two performances: Loïe Fuller’s Serpentine Dance (1891) and Martha Graham’s solo "Specter 1914" from Chronicle (1936). Fuller used metres of costume sewed together with two wands which were used to extend the length of her arms and amplify the volume of the moving fabric. Her body disappeared and was replaced by curves and spirals shaped by the costume. Here is an example danced not by Fuller but by one of her rivals and filmed by the Lumière brothers:
Graham’s solo is less high paced in fabric manipulation. The costume is made of a tight long-sleeved black top and a very long black skirt open at the back. At one point, the dancer begins to move the skirt from its laying down position upward, revealing its red inside colour (another version of the Anarchist flag was red and black). She repeats this gesture several times and, as in Fuller’s case, her figure seems to be reshaped by the moving fabric. Here is the solo danced by former Martha Graham Dance Company principal dancer, Katherine Crockett:
Flags, huge flags, moving flags, flags performing a choreography, flags as controversial symbols. Black Flags is a thought provoking work, a fascinating display of choreographic elements, with one missing point, a statement (of any kind) about flag symbolism, which I consider as the elephant in the room. As poet John Agard has written in his poem “Flag”:
What’s that fluttering in the breeze?
It’s just a piece of cloth
that brings a nation to its knees (Agard, 2004).
REFERENCES
afag, "Appendix - The Symbols of Anarchy", in Anarchist Writers, 11 October 2008, http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/append2.html (accessed 16 March 2019).
John Agard, “Flag”, in Half-Caste and Other Poems (London: Hodder Children’s Books, 2004), consulted in The Poetry Archive, https://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/flag (accessed 16 March 2019).
The George Balanchine Trust, “Stars and Stripes”, balanchine.com, no date, http://balanchine.com/stars-and-stripes/ (accessed 16 March 2019).
William Forsythe, “Choreographic Objects – Essay”, no date, williamforsythe.com, https://www.williamforsythe.com/essay.html (accessed 15 March 2019).
William Forsythe, “William Forsythe: Choreographic Objects”, Gagosian, 23 October 2017, youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgQYc5xJc5w (accessed 16 March 2019).
Christopher Knight, “William Pope.L sets the U.S. flag waving at the MOCA/Geffen”, Los Angeles Times, 24 March 2015, https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-pope-l-moca-review-20150324-column.html (accessed 15 March 2019).
Robert Longo, “I Will Strike the Sun”, Out of Sync – Art in Focus, 18 May 2016, youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-jZFOAw46I (accessed 15 March 2019).
William Pope.L, “William Pope.L: Trinket”, MOCA, 15 April 2015, youtube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5wdIAtO4pU (accessed 15 March 2019).
Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens – The Allegory of the Female Form (London: Picador, 1985).
The term 'choreosophy' derives from Greek 'χορός' (choros, dance) and 'σοφία' (sophia, knowledge) and indicates a layered system of knowledge that we have on dance. The term joins together the word 'dance' and 'knowldge', as if to imply that the art of dancing is capable of producing knowledge, an important aspect if we think that still today many people tend to limit the meaning of dancing to the mechanical movement of the body (which could also be a topic for discussion, but not in this article).
The term 'choreosophy' was used by dance theorist Rudolf Laban in his book Choreutics (1966), together with other terms such as choreography and choreology, on which I will return in another article. Laban mentions its use in ancient Greece: "choreosophy seems to have been a complex discipline in the time of the highest Hellenic culture" (Laban, 1966: viii) and he also talks about its use in Pythagoras's work (the word 'choros' also means circle).
In another book, The Art of Movement (1950) Laban had also coined the poetic expression "movement-thinking" where again a term like 'movement' was put next to 'thinking' to suggest that dancing can be connected to the intellect and can move the articulation of thoughts.
The term 'choreosophy' returns in choreographer Aurel Milloss's writings as he defines it "the discipline that deals with dancing from a moral point of view" (Milloss, 2002: 64). In this case, then, the word 'knowledge' is interpreted in a different manner with respect to my definition. Milloss goes on specifying that choreosophy "intends to analyse the apparitions and manifestations of dance in human life" (Milloss, 2002: 64), giving a mystic tinge to the term. Dance, in his vision, is seen as the art from which the other arts originated as they all share a movement of some sort, "from the rhythm of movement came dance, from the rhythm of words, verses, from the rhythm of sound singing and music" (Milloss, 2002: 65). Having the other arts derive from dance is not new, Curt Sachs had already expressed this notion in his World History of the Dance (Tomassini in Milloss, 2002: 65). Establishing a hierarchical scale among the arts in the present academic panorama where Deleuze's molecular philosophy is widespread and where the binary vision of reality is being questioned, does not make sense and I will not venture on a digression of this kind. Suffice it to say that to Millos choreosophy is an analytical instrument connected to dance as a human phenomenon.
The word 'choreosophy' can also be found in Alessandro Pontremoli's writings about the fathers and mothers of contemporary dance, as he defines their work using the expression "choreosophic thinking"(Pontremoli, 2004: xxi). He also mentions it when talking about Laban, stating that choreosophy is the "philosophy of dance" as it "establishes its ethical and aesthetical principles" (Pontremoli, 2004: 70).
Recently, the term 'filmosophy' has been created and Daniel Frampton has written a book about it, Filmosophy published in 2006. Frampton highlights the fact that films do not only reproduce reality but create a new one (Frampton, 2006: 5). Films have produced a new way of thinking
(Frampton, 2006: 7) so that the necessity has come to reflect on them in terms of 'mind' and 'thinking'
(Frampton, 2006: 10). His discourse is quite interesting, but seems to fall back into the mind/body dichotomy, for example omitting the analysis of film materiality. The term 'filmosophy' is for Frampton exclusively connected to intellectual questions, while choreosophy, as we have seen, focuses on knowledge that dance can produce integrating mind and body in a refined synergy.
I believe it would be more appropriate to use the term 'choreosopher' instead of 'choreographer', when talking about great figures in dance history (and maybe not only them) who have developed a choreo-thinking within their work, (in the twentieth-century we can mention Martha Graham, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, Tero Saarinen and the Abbondanza Bertoni Company), as this would express a more articulated picture of their vision.
Dance has its own terminology and 'choreosophy' is one of the less used but most stimulating terms to underline the complex research that surrounds the moving body.
(Note: tranalsations from Italian are mine. This article was originally written in Italian and published here)
REFERENCES
Daniel Frampton, Filmosophy - A manifesto for a radically new way of understanding cinema (London: Wallflower Press, 2006).
Rudolf Laban, L'arte del movimento [o.e. 1950], trad. Silvia Salvagno (Macerata: Ephemeria, 1999).
Rudolf Laban, Choreutics, edited by Lisa Ullmann (London: MacDonald&Evans Ltd., 1966).
Aurelio Milloss, Coreosofia - Scritti sulla danza, edited by Stefano Tmassini (Venice: Leo S. Olschki, 2002).
Alessandro Pontremoli, La danza. Stroria, teoria, estetica nel Novecento (Bari: Laterza, 2004)
In 1982 the International Dance Comittee of the International Theatre Institute (ITI), a UNESCO partner NGO, has chosen April 29th as International Dance Day to be celebrated worldwide. This is Jean-Georges Noverre's birthday (1727-1810). As is known, he is considered the father of Romantic ballet. Every year an important choreographer is called to give a message to the international community. This year Flemish-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui has been asked to deliver the message (clik here to read it).
It is a significant message that gives numerous stimuli. First of all, he relates dance with its past, even though it is an art rooted in the present. Second, he exalts dance with a too dance-centred approach, "dance does not have limits with other arts". This is a necessary vision, if we think of the reiterated disadvantage dance has with respect to other arts such as opera or music, especially in Italy, but it is perhaps not entirely correct. Maybe he refers to contemporary dance where frontiers between space and body are often altered, but in other styles and techniques this crossing is not always possible.
Furthermore, in the third paragraph he underlines the honesty in the act of dancing. In this sense, he recalls Martha Graham's famous affermation, "movement never lies", a questionable one as movement can indeed lie. Graham, and, in a smaller measure Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, place, in this way, the art of dancing in a dangerous pre-verbal dimension which puts it more in relation with nature than with culture and that ricks to essentialise it.
Apart from this, Cherkaoui's message has a great impact, mainly for what concerns the ability to dance as ap recious instrument of communication and connection. This works particularly well in today's world, a world which is highly interconnected both for what concerns virtual reality and actual reality, "by moving like other people, by moving with other people and by
watching them move, we can best feel their emotions, think their
thoughts and connect to their energy. It is, perhaps, then that we can get to know and understand them clearly."
In the final paragraph, he even defines dance as "a celebration of co-existence, a way to give and make space and time for each other," a kind of powerful sharing experience that everybody should experiment.
On July 13th
2011 this Adbusters poster appeared online to present the Occupy Wall Street protest. It features a
dancer on the top of the bronze bull which is situated near Wall Street. At the
back there is a group of people immersed in a foggy atmosphere and ready to
fight.
There is a
sharp contrast between the shape created by the dancer and that of the bull.
The former, in fact, stands on one leg performing an attitude to the back (a ballet position on one supporting leg, with the other bent at the knee to a
ninety degree angle) with
her arms in a loose second position. Her focus is downward left, her hair is composedly
combed and her sleeveless dress is tight and short. Her pose suggests a sense
of balance and stability.
On the
other hand, the bull is portrayed in a very dynamic manner, with its forefeet
off-balance to the right and its tail curled upwards. The bull was created in
1989 by artist Arturo DiModica as a Christmas present to the city of New York to praise its
endurance after the 1987 stock market crash. Since then, it has become Wall
Street mascot.
According
to Wray Cummings, there is an interesting parallelism between this picture and
one of the Major Arcana in Tarot decks, that is Strength. This card presents
the figure of a woman with her hands on the jaws of a lion. It is not clear whether she is
opening or closing them, but the usual interpretation of the card refers to
humans’ ability to tame instinctual forces. The parallelism is quite
appropriate as in the case of the Adbusters poster, the dancer tames the
charging bull with her steadiness and grace. It is as if non violent protests
could really make a difference in a world dominated by economic powers. So far
the Occupy Wall Street movement has become an almost mainstream motto to be
used in numerous protests’ activities in different parts of the world. In Italy,
for example, it has recently been used to promote a campaign against animal
testing (see here).
Watching
this image, I asked myself why did Adbusters choose a classical dance pose and
not, say, a hip hop one. But then maybe the contrast would not be as sharp as
this one. Classical dance is a technique based on tough discipline and rigour
and in the poster it is used to exemplify grace and steadiness (Cummings refers
to the dancer’s pose atop the bull as improbable though) which are also its
characteristics.
Interestingly, classical dance has been used in another kind
of political visual message, that is on the cover of Francesco Raparelli’s La
lunghezza dell’onda – Fine della sinistra e nuovi movimenti (2009) [The wave length
– The end of the left and the new movements], a book which analyses the Italian
students’ protests (nicknamed ‘the wave’) from 2008 to 2009 as a new political
agent in a country where the Berlusconi government repeatedly tended to erase
the students’ rights. The cover is an interesting mix of ballet and activism as
it presents the coloured drawing of a dancer performing an attitude to the back. However, if her legs are in the correct position, her arms
escape ballet grammar in that they are placed one straight downward
and the other bent upwards, with both hands in a fist. They eloquently express strength and the will to fight. At the back replicates of
this figure announce an army of people ready to fight. The effect is further
enhanced by the sense of perspective given by the baby blue rays that stem from
the right low corner of the image.
