The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training a Disse
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles A Conceit of the Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Culture and Performance by Duncan G. Gilbert 2014 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION A Conceit of the Natural Body: The Universal-Individual in Somatic Dance Training by Duncan G. Gilbert Doctor in Philosophy of Culture and Performance University of California, Los Angeles, 2014 Professor Susan Leigh Foster, Chair Under the influence of regimens broadly known as “Somatics,” late 20th century contemporary dancers revolutionized their training. They instituted biological and mechanical constructs of the body as the logic for dance classes, claiming to uncover a “natural” way of moving. By doing so these dancers saw themselves as rejecting preceding models such as Graham technique and ballet, which they felt treated the body as an instrument trained to meet the ideals of an aesthetic tradition. Convinced of the importance of their intervention, practitioners of Somatics initially worked with meager resources forging transnational alliances of pedagogies and aesthetics. Yet by the end of the 20th century, the training had found its way in the worlds most venerable dance education programs. A handful of choreographers, who initially experimented with Somatics in a small community, ultimately ascended within a transnational circuit of large concert houses. Educational institutions consequently saw value in Somatics, and implemented its pedagogy ii based on the conceit that focusing on the natural body provides dancers with the greatest facility for performance, while fueling broad creative possibility in choreographic processes. In contrast with Somatic rhetoric, this dissertation traces how dancers used the idea the idea of nature to tackle changing social circumstances. A conceit of the natural body endured throughout the last 4 decades of the 20th century even while its ideological underpinnings underwent change, visible in shifts seen in studio procedures, the look and aptitudes of the dancing body, and the modalities of concerts. Dancers constructed what they saw as essential bodily truths by combining scientific metaphors, with non-Western practices that they represented as ancient and mystical. Through this combination they felt they retrieved lost corporeal capacities that they believed were still evident in children, animals and supposedly primitive societies. By the 1970s, a community of practitioners had synthesized what they felt was a comprehensively inclusive body that engendered an anti-hierarchical collective dance culture. Somatics therefore lined up with other subcultures of the era that turned to nature in search of personal authenticity as a source for liberation. Bodily “truth” purported to resist outdated gender ideals and authoritarian training, an idea that fueled the rapid transnational uptake of Somatics. As the approach established itself in Britain, Holland and Australia, it disseminated and naturalized key principles of American post-war liberalism; dancers across the network believed they were reclaiming an inherent right to individual creative freedom by displacing modern and classical aesthetics with dance based on the natural functioning of anatomical structure. In the 1980s, artists largely jettisoned the emphasis on collectivism; yet as they became entrepreneurs in line with the new economic culture of staunch individualism, the rhetoric about nature endured. Using signature choreography, and emphasizing the uniqueness of different Somatic-informed pedagogies, they pursued careerism, even as they often contested iii rampant conservative cultural agendas. Despite the political critique launched in the 1980s, by the close of the 20th century, Somatics had achieved institutional status, embodying new corporate ethics. The creative autonomy that dancers had won in previous decades now recalibrated itself through demands made upon artists in education and the professional field to prove capitalism is constituted by boundless innovation despite diminishing arts resources in an age of austerity. Throughout all these changes Somatics continued to cultivate a canonical body as an invisible category of nature, which purportedly accounted for ontology, yet marked difference and enacted exclusion from its supposedly universal purview. iv The Dissertation of Duncan G. Gilbert is approved. Lionel Popkin Sue-Ellen Case Janet O’Shea Susan Leigh Foster, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2014 v This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of Gill Clarke (1954-2011) and Edna Coates (1914- 1996). Gill was a London-based dancer, educator and lynchpin of independent dance in her home city. She worked tirelessly to cultivate a sense of worth among artists that was not dependent on state-support or conventional ideas about success. I took my first Somatic-based class with Gill and decided that this was the training I wanted to pursue based on her teaching and dancing. Gill supported my artistic development even as my work went in directions that were challenging for her. I like to think that she would similarly engage with my study of Somatics, valuing its contribution to our field whether or not she agreed with all the ideas put forward. My maternal grandmother Edna also instilled in me a sense of worth by never tiring in her interest in, and support for, my artistic pursuits, which moved far beyond what was familiar for her. In 1993 she visited me in the Netherlands where I was training in Somatics. After watching some classes she said to faculty member Lisa Kraus, “I think this could really catch on!” As you will see in the dissertation, she could not have been more accurate! vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgements xi Vita xv Dissertation Introduction: Defining a Community of Practitioners. 1 Methodology. 8 Project overview. 13 A framework to analyze the meaning in Somatics. 34 The Structure of the Dissertation. 52 Chapter 1: Renewable Originality: The Natural Body & Social Change. 57 Aggregate Social Categories of Nature: Early 20th Century Somatics. 60 Nature as a Universal-Individual Category: Mid-Century Somatics. 72 Individualized Vocabulary. 78 Section 1. Displacing Aesthetics: Radical Inclusion in 1960 & 1970s Somatics. 86 Separating Training from Choreography. 88 The Aesthetics of No Aesthetic. 94 Dancing Direct Democracy. 104 Embodying Objectivity. 107 A Field is Established. 115 vii Section 2. Reflexive Critique: Individuality and Subjectivity in 1980s Somatics. 116 Reproducing Successful Individuality. 117 Individual Empowerment. 121 Subjectivity versus Objectivity. 126 Expanding Anatomy. 133 Section 3. Corporate Somatics: Recalibrating Critique for Commercialism. 137 Training for an Established Field. 139 Selling Somatics. 144 Release Technique: Imitation Anxiety. 148 Conclusion. 158 Chapter 2. Contradictory Dissidence: Somatics and American Expansionism. 162 Section 1. New York Somatics: The Innovative and Professional Body. 172 Transnational Role. 188 Section 2. New England Somatics: The Body in Artistic Respite. 191 Resources for Exploration. 204 Transnational Implications. 209 viii Section 3. British Somatics: The Political and Socially Signifying Body. 213 Structural and Aesthetic Critique of the British Dance Establishment. 214 Transnational Significance. 227 Section 4. Dutch Somatics: The Body in Flux. 231 Individualism. 234 Transnational emphasis. 248 Section 5. Australian Somatics: The Body of the New Frontier. 253 Conclusion. 268 Chapter 3. Somatic Bodies on the Concert Stage, Processing, Inventing, and Displaying. Introduction: Natural contestation, it’s not all softness and flow. 272 Section 1. Processing Somatic Experience in Concerts. 277 Delimiting Universality in Processing. 292 Lamenting and Contesting the Decline of Processing. 307 Section 2. Inventing Novel Movement with Somatics. 313 Reengaging Spectacle: Difference and Visibility. 331 ix Section 3. Displaying the Theatrical Effects of Somatics. 351 New Universal Dancer Identities. 357 Conclusion Nature, Artistic Rigor, and Economics. 375 Dissertation Conclusion. Understanding the Focus on Authenticity. 380 Bibliography. 391 x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This study would not have been possible without a great many people, both because every dissertation takes a village, but also because, while Somatics is now taught in many training programs, its history has as yet received very little critical attention. Eva Karczag showed the commitment of a research consultant to this project, giving generously of her time, making connections for me with others in the field, and sharing her archive of clippings, audio- visual documentation, and publications. I met a similar enthusiasm from Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Jennifer Monson and Stephanie Skura who all contributed to my study over several years, answering questions about their own work and the community, while also sending me reviews, other documents, and audiovisual material. Other informants took time to give lengthy interviews in person and on the telephone, make available their personal archives, help me source materials from institutions, and answered follow-up questions by email. Some of these folk I have known for many years, while others I never got to meet in person, and communicated with them for the first time based on an introduction. The passion with which they told their stories brought to life for me the different the different