Edith Cowan University Research Online Theses: Doctorates and Masters Theses 1-1-2000 Tracing image and bodily displacement in modern and postmodern dance Carolyn Margaret Griffiths Edith Cowan University Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses Part of the Dance Commons Recommended Citation Griffiths, C. M. (2000). Tracing image and bodily displacement in modern and postmodern dance. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1362 This Thesis is posted at Research Online. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/theses/1362 Edith Cowan University Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorize you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. 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TRACING IMAGE AND BODILY DISPLACEMENT IN MODERN AND POSTMODERN DANCE USE OF THESIS The Use of Thesis statement is not included in this version of the thesis. iii COPYRIGHT AND ACCESS DECLARATION: I certify that this thesis does not, to the best of my knowledge and belief: (i) incorporate without acknowledgment any material previously submitted for a degree or diploma in any institution of higher education; (ii) contain any material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text; or (iii) contains any defamatory material. Signe Date: ..... io..... .P.Pl.: .. aJ... ................. EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY iv LIBRARY TRACING IMAGE AND BODILY DISPLACEMENT IN MODERN AND POSTMODERN DANCE By Carolyn Margaret Griffiths, BA, Dip. Ed. MA Thesis, Faculty of Creative Arts, WAAPA @ Edith Cowan University. December 6 2000. V ABSTRACT Through time the dancer has been both celebrated and disadvantaged by antithetical ideas: the division of soul and body, form and matter, life and death, artist and audience. For the romantics, the dancing body stood in a relationship to poetic thought in much the same way as the dancer stood to the body. Notions of the body in early modernism arose from cultural and political constructs through which poets and writers examined the nature of truth. These poets, Yeats in particular, hinted at a premise that a whole history of culture may be necessary to explain why women and art may not be considered as 'thinking bodies'. The notion of truth and of the female dancing form became bound up in the idea of the symbol of art, beauty and truth. Contemporary dance forms have evolved in various movements which either celebrated and lauded or rejected and satirised the dancer and the dancing image. Either way, the cultural and political movements of the twentieth century have bequeathed a residue of impressions surrounding bodily image. The current processes employed in today's dance practice, all of which contour the scope and diversity of contemporary dance, are couched in the multi­ faceted presence of postmodernism. Alongside such constructs is the fact that the twentieth century has been centred in the desire to 'create an image' and a subsequent preoccupation with bodily image. But there are also many other channels through which the idea and use of image in postmodern dance are expressed. For instance, postmodern artists orchestrate and play with the idea of image to decontruct forms, to lay bare the object of the dance process and in so doing, they disrupt, fragment and question established precepts and perceptions of culture. Postmodern theorists and artists also examine the literary, cultural and philosophical phenomena of politics, technology, identity and change. An examination of postmodern treatment of imagery can illuminate some of the particular processes by which choreographers explore ideas and incorporate them into their work. Postmodern dance can produce positive images for women and illuminate the conditions of men and women in defiance of the dominant constructions of gender and the hegemonic views of existence working in our culture. Gendered constructions in modernist dance forms have effected the evolution of body image whilst postmodern dance offers a complexity that 'deconstructs' these images. vi I wish to express my thanks to my Supervisor, Dr Maggi Phillips for her untiring assistance and guidance in the preparation of this thesis. I would also like to acknowledge colleagues and students in the MA Creative Arts course and dance students at WAAPA @ ECU who performed in Liquid Vertigo or were part of my performance research. vii CONTENTS Copyright and access Declaration Acknowledgements ii Title Page iii Abstract iv Acknowledgments V Contents vii Introduction 1 Chapter One 4 Chapter Two 19 Chapter Three 34 Chapter Four 50 Chapter Five 65 Conclusion 80 Bibliography 85 Appendix A 88 Appendix B 89 INTRODUCTION INJRQQUCJIQN The dancing presence of the artist reminds us of the bodily grounding of all those acts of discourse, training and movement which spring from the dance, and which dance seeks to resolve through creative expression. Discourses strive to articulate a body's essence in movement. This thesis is primarily concerned with the ideology of the dancing body in performance. It seeks to reflect on how elements of image are perceived by linking modernist insights and philosophies with innovations in dance and relating these to contemporary dance practice. The major questions posed are, 'How has modem society expressed images of alienation from the body through dance performance and, 'How have historical movements affected the use of image and image-making in contemporary postmodern dance'? To illuminate a perspective of image and imagery and its use in dance, I have examined some of the cultural and political movements in romanticism, modernism and postmodemism to show how these movements have affected the evolution of image in dance practice. I begin by looking at the integration of the 'Romantic Image' in dance from the late nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century, discussing these in relation to literary theories and feminist analyses of performance and perception. In Chapter One, I describe romantic concepts of image and symbolism in dance. Together with a brief sketch of the way in which alienation caused by industrialisation coincided with romantic ideas and imagery of some modernist dancers who created new movement forms embedded in the spirit of industrialisation and scientific experimentation. I outline and discuss the styles and innovations of dancers Lo'ie Fuller and Maud Allan together with W. B. Yeats' theory of the 'Romantic Image' and Stephane Mallarme's ideology of the 'poet's gaze'. Chapter Two considers the late emergence of romanticism in classical ballet, which merged with elements of what became known as the aesthetic movement, defined as the nature of art to be read as discrete language and deciphered for its meaning. I discuss and compare the responses of writers, Theophile Gautier and Mallarme to the various dancers and dance genres, indicating how modernist dancers like Isadora Duncan, Valentin St Point and Bronislava Nijinska created a space for female discourses of the body and new practices in dance. Chapter Three investigates some common principles in the social and creative constructions of choreographic frameworks and questions processes through which audiences make meaning from the performance of these works. To discuss these questions I consider a definition of image at the conscious sensory and at the deeper kinesthetic level of perception and cognition. Following this is my suggestion that theories of 'image schemata' derived from studies in clinical psychology, philosophy and linguistics can be applied to the body in dance performance. I discuss Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey's styles of 'modem dance' choreography, analysing them by applying 'image schemata' to illustrate readings of image on a holistic body level, projecting the idea that meanings are not arbitrary, but dependant on a range of factors related to I NJBQQUCJIQN 2 cognition and perception. Chapter Four considers the emerging modernist dance body free of classical technique, outlining innovations independent of gender hierarchies in classical ballet and the outmoded narratives of proceeding eras. The modern dance form characterised new dance genres, through which license was given to view and develop new techniques derived from different perspectives of female physicality, to express new inner female voices. I consider feminist sociological perspectives of the body to question modernist notions of the essential female body and the perspectives emanating from these modern dance forms. Early postmodern dance rejected this notion of the modern dancer. I discuss