A Cinema of Movement: dance and the moving image Erin Brannigan A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of a Doctor of Philosophy Department of Theatre, Film and Dance University of New South Wales May,2004 © Erin Brannigan 2004 Abstract This thesis is an examination of the history and parameters of dancefilm. It traces the history of this form of cinema from some of its earliest manifestations in film's first decades through to contemporary experimental short dance films and videos. In so doing it also examines some of the most significant collaborations between dancers, choreographers, and filmmakers. But this thesis also sets out to examine and rethink the parameters of dancefilm and thereby re-conceive the relations between dance and cinema. In this thesis, dancefilm is understood as a modality that challenges familiar models of cinematic motion through its relation to the body, movement and time, instigating new categories of filmic performance and creating spectatorial experiences that are grounded in the somatic. Such an understanding of dancefilm foregrounds the points where dance and film meet, for example, the moment where the everyday body moves into dance. Drawing on debates in both film theory (in particular ideas of gesture, the close up, and affect) and dance theory (concepts such as radical phrasing, the gestural anacrusis and somatic intelligence) and bringing these two fields into dialogue, this thesis argues that the combination of dance and film produces cine-choreographic practices and gestural circuits of exchange that are specific to the dancefilm form. Conceiving of dancefilm in such a way enables me to understand the relations between the recent body of work that frequently goes under the name of 'dance screen' and a variety of forms of cinema from the musical to the music video. For Joe Table of Contents List of Illustrations Preface ii Chapter 1. Approaches to Dancefilm 1 (a) Dance writing on dance screen 7 (b) Corporeal presence, kinaesthetic spectatorship and dancefilm 14 (c) Toward new theories of dancefilm 22 Part 1. Modern Movement, Dance, and the Birth of Cinema Chapter 2. Modern Movement: A Challenge to Language and the Dissolution of the Pose 30 (a) Dance and the Symbolists' new poetic 35 (b) Henri Bergson's movement theory and the new dance aesthetic 43 (c) Modem movement, American Delsartism and the choreographic innovations of Loi"e Fuller and Isadora Duncan 51 Chapter 3. Loi"e Fuller and the Cinema 60 (a) Bridging technologies: Pre-cinematic studies of human motion 66 (b) Loi"e Fuller and fin de siecle popular entertainment: the 'Serpentine Danse' as moving image 72 (c) Abstraction of figure and space: Dancefilm beyond early cinema 80 Part 2. Cine-choreographic Orders in Dancefilm Chapter 4. The Close-up in Dancefilm: Micro-choreographies 89 (a) Theories of the close-up 95 (b) The close-up in dancefilm 103 (c) The poetry of things 110 Chapter 5. Maya Deren: Strategies for Dancefilm 115 (a)Vertical film form 121 (b) Depersonalization and movement as an 'event' across figural forms 128 (c) Gestural stylization and filmic manipulation of the performing body 136 Chapter 6. Anarchic Moves: Registering the Gestural Anacrusis 142 (a) Yvonne Rainer: Anarchic phrasing and the challenge to reproductive technologies 150 (b) Trisha Brown: Registering the gestural anacrusis 159 Chapter 7. The Musical: Moving Into Dance 170 (a) The musical star, corporeal familiarity and potential: 'The way you wear your hat... ' 181 (b) Verticality in the musical and the gestural anacrusis 197 (c) The city as accelerator of excess motor capacity in the musical star 203 (d) The influence of the musical genre on contemporary dancefilm 207 Part 3. Dancefilm as Gestural Exchange Chapter 8. Gestural Autonomy in Dancefilm 214 (a) The call and response imperative of the gestural sphere 220 (b) The improvisational tendency of gestural production: How we can meet it's call 223 (c) The merging of actus and situs in the gestural order 227 Chapter 9. Dancefilm and Spectatorship 231 (a) From the gesture as space-time-matter event to the affect 234 (b) Somatic forms of knowledge and the affect of dancefilm 238 (c) Somatography: a corporeal model of the mise en scene 241 Conclusion 250 Filmmography 253 Bibliography 256 List of Illustrations Fig. 1. Lore Fuller, 1900, Eugene Druet (Musee Rodin, Paris) Fig. 2. Lore Fuller dansant, date unknown, Harry C. Ellis (Musee Rodin, Paris) Fig. 3. Le Danse du lys, 1896, Theodore Louis Auguste Riviere (Maryhill Museum of Art, Goldendale) Fig. 4. Fanny Eissler dancing 'La Cachucha ', 1841, lithograph by J. French Sinclairs Lithographs, Philadelphia (New York Public Library) Preface A new field of activity involving dance and the moving image, which has been referred to as videodance, dance screen and cinedance (among other things), provided the initial inspiration for my work on this thesis. I will use the term dance screen to refer to these predominantly short films and videos made by collaborative director/choreographer teams, such as director David Hinton's work with DV8 Dance Theatre and Clara van Gool' s work with Jordi Cortes Molina, or choreographers who have also taken on the role of director as in the case of Anna de Manincor, Philippe Decoufle, Wim Vandekeybus and Miranda Pennell. Over the past few decades, such work has become a significant activity for major dance companies, independent choreographers and certain film directors. They have been funded and broadcast by television stations such as the UK's BBC and NPS in the Netherlands, and have caused a network of dedicated dance screen festivals to emerge across the world. 1 This has been followed by five publications on the subject, one Italian, one German and three in English. 2 1 In 2002, a meeting between dance screen festival directors at Monaco Dance Forum listed twenty annual and biannual festivals dedicated to dance screen in countries as diverse as Argentina, Canada, Russia and Australia. Monaco Dance Forum 2002 hosted the largest festival, IMZ Dance Screen. IMZ Dance Screen is the major international dance screen festival and has been held irregularly since its inception in 1990. It is run by IMZ International Music Centre in Vienna and has been hosted by various European cities. 2 Five books have been published in the last eleven years on the subject of dance screen: Parallel Lines, ed. Stephanie Jordan and Dave Allen (London: John Libbey and Company Ltd: 1993); Elisa Vaccarino, La Musa della schermo freddo (Genova: Kosta and Nolan, 1996); Claudia Rosiny, Videotanz: Panorama einer intermedialen Kunstforum (Zurich: Chronos Verlag, 1999a); Sherril Dodds, Dance On Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire and New York: Palgrave, 2001); and Envisioning Dance on Film and Video, ed. Judy Mitoma (New York and London: Routledge, 2002). Parallel Lines contains essays by directors, producers and programmers, dance critics and theorists, and media and cultural studies academics on representations of dance on British television, from dance documentations to shorts to advertisements. It includes essays. Dave Allen's contribution, "Screening Dance," includes a broad overview of what I have called dancefilm and aligns dance made for the screen with "oppositional filmmaking" which challenges "the dominant cultural practices of narrative fiction and documentary" (5), a point that recurs throughout my thesis. Vaccarino's book focuses on the arts and technology and places dance screen within a complex of other video genres; video art, music video and videoteatro. There is a special study of dance screen in several countries (mainly consisting of film listings) and connections between dance screen and other technologies involving what she refers to as the body machine, such as the internet and cyborgs. Rosiny bases her research on films and videos submitted to IMZ Dance Screen between 1990 and 1994. The analysis is broken into elements (body, movement/dance, camera, space, time, music etc) and she analyses specific examples within this framework. Dodd's book picks up on and develops Jordan and Allen's focus on television and will be discussed in Chapter I. Essays from the Mitoma anthology are referenced throughout this thesis. · Ill In this thesis, I consider this recent body of work which has been labelled, described and promoted through curated programmes and competitions, within a history of screen practices which I will call dancefilm. Dancefilm is understood as a modality that appears across various types of films including the musical and experimental shorts. Taking exemplary works from across the field of dancefilm as my starting point, I re­ examine and re-propose the parameters of dancefilm in relation to the questions raised by these specific forms. How is the concept and practice of choreography reconfigured for the screen? What filmmaking techniques produce cine-choreographies? Can we determine where the dance ends and the dancefilm begins? What kinds of film structures are best suited to dancefilm? In using the term dancefilm I do not mean to negate work made on video, but to include this relatively new format in a term which recognises a continuity between the earliest screen practices and the most current. This is in response to some writing on dance screen which uses terms such as 'dance video' to suggest that recent work constitutes an entirely new and autonomous genre. 3 Linking recent examples to earlier dancefilm practices has been vital to my research and findings. It has involved locating key works in early cinema, the historic avant-garde and Hollywood's golden era that have significance within broader cinematic innovations and still resonate through current dancefilm practices. The use of concepts from cinema studies has also been essential to my development of new interdisciplinary terminology and the term dancefilm reflects this aspect of my work.