Reenactment, Dance Identity, and Historical Fictions

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Pakes
Keyword(s):  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
The Body ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
Work Type ◽  
Dance Identity ◽  
Historical Fictions ◽  
Mary Wigman

Commentary on the recent trend toward performance “reenactment” suggests that there is something distinctive about how the phenomenon enables past dances to return. This raises ontological and identity questions that this chapter explores through three central cases: Fabian Barba’s (2009) A Mary Wigman Dance Evening, Philippe Decouflé’s (2012) Panorama, and the Kirov Ballet’s (1999) restaging of Marius Petipa’s The Sleeping Beauty. Do past dances reappear in reenactment, and, if so, how? Does the reenactment offer new tokens of a choreographic work type, or a redoing of a past performance event? Critically analyzing ideas central to the reenactment literature about the body-as-archive and affective history, the chapter argues for a conception of reenactment (alongside other models of dance reconstruction) as a form of historical fiction. As such, reenactment represents, rather than “re-instances,” past dances, hazarding and testing historical claims, by presenting thought experiments about how those dances might have been.

Aesthetic Strategies of Trance-gression: The Politics of Bodily Scenes of Ecstasy

2019 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 4-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Huschka
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Dance ◽  
Mary Wigman

Choreographic bodies are empowered by modes of expansion and transgression. Focusing on the energetic processes that lead to such empowerment, this article discusses the perceptual politics of trancelike scenes in the work of contemporary European choreographers and performers. As a body-mobilizing choreographic strategy of out-of-body and out-of-mind experiences, trance is closely linked to critical and utopian ideas, bodily transgressions, and crossed boundaries. While Mary Wigman treats trance as an incantation which contains the powers that it unleashes, contemporary choreographers like Doris Uhlich or Meg Stuart, expose the body to powers that nearly disintegrate it. As opposed to Wigman-style modernism, contemporary dance stages movement as a tremendous event that exposes performers and audiences to experiences of transgression.

She's Beauty and She's Grace(less): The Mercurial Femininity of the Modern Disney Princess

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 229-234
Author(s):  
Michelle Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Social Roles ◽  
Sleeping Beauty ◽  
Female Identity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Walt Disney ◽  
Societal Issues ◽  
Static Character

Focusing on characters from Disney's three most recent “princess” films, Tangled (2010), Brave (2012), and Frozen (2013), I examine the development and divergence of these figures from “classic” Walt Disney models. Their mercurial character, as illustrated through gesture and movement, presents a firm contrast with and significant departure from their predecessors in films such as Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959)—protagonists who exhibited a static character reflective of their social roles through the “embodiment” of balletic grace. Expanding on existing research comparing Walt Disney–era princesses with those from the Disney Renaissance of the 1980s and 1990s, I explore the significance of this shift in representation. Viewed as a metaphor for contemporary femininity, how do these modern princesses resolve the incongruity between their official social stations, proscribed behavior, and “real” personalities through their bodies over the course of the films?I believe that the conflict staged on these animated bodies is representative of larger societal issues emerging from contested definitions of both feminism and femininity, and that the Disney princess offers a contemporary site for the expression and resolution of this dissonance. Viewing the body of the Disney princess as representative of a larger female “social body” and conflict that occurs within her as indicative of the larger forces that shape female identity, I integrate my study with historical dance scholarship which regarded movement as indicative of the presence of an Apollonian/Dionysian dialectic working within culture.

Historical Fiction, Academic History, and Civic Pageantry (c. 1850–c. 1960)

2019 ◽  
pp. 120-156
Author(s):  
J. Patrick Hornbeck
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
The Public ◽  
Academic History ◽  
Early Twentieth Century ◽  
Christ Church ◽  
Historical Fictions

Chapter 4, which covers the period from c. 1850 to c. 1960, begins with a genre of representation that came into its own in the nineteenth century: historical fiction. The chapter addresses some of the interpretive challenges that historical fictions present and offers new readings of two early stories about Wolsey, both set in his native Suffolk. The emergence of historical fiction occurred contemporaneously with far-reaching developments in academic historiography. With the publication of copious original documents from the Henrician period came new resources for the study of Wolsey. The chapter explores the work of such historians as James Anthony Froude and J. S. Brewer, alongside the Wolsey biographies of Mandell Creighton (1891), Ethelred Taunton (1902), A. F. Pollard (1929), and Hilaire Belloc (1930). It observes how Victorian historians were often zealous about policing the boundaries of their discipline. Finally, since it is from this period that we have the earliest evidence for the public commemoration of Wolsey, the chapter explores the ways in which the cardinal was remembered in early-twentieth-century civic pageants in Oxford and Ipswich, as well as on the anniversaries of his Oxford foundation, currently known as Christ Church.

Reforming and Uniforming the Body

2021 ◽  
pp. 60-87
Author(s):  
Ron J. Popenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
The Body ◽  
Great War ◽  
Commedia Dell'arte ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
Isadora Duncan ◽  
Constantin Brancusi ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Mary Wigman

In ‘Marionettes Unmasked’, King Ubu is analysed as a masquerade and architectural construction. Jarry’s oversized body mask is distinguished from the art of the puppet and from Edward Gordon Craig’s Übermarionette. The masquerading actor in movement is situated and theorised, with consideration of Heinrich von Kleist’s commentary, and analyses from Schumacher, States and Taxidou. The chapter also includes thoughts on the performances of Isadora Duncan, Mary Wigman and Sadda Yakko. Head and body masks created by Marcel Janco and Rudolf Laban and presented at the Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich or at the Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland contribute to the discussion on disguise and camouflage in the era of Dada and Cubism. Masquerading and ‘Pirouettes on Eastern Fronts’ extend modernist responses to the Great War to Germany, Romania and Russia while citing the work of sculptors and other visual artists like Ernst Barlach, Constantin Brancuşi, Emmy Hennings and Käthe Kollwitz. Commedia dell’arte treatments in ‘Pierrot and Harlequin Disguised’ feature Picasso images and others created by Heinrick Campendonk, André Derain, Juan Gris and August Macke. Arnold Schönberg’s texts, images and music further complicate the role of Pierrot from Viennese point of view.

Exploring the Brain, Looking for Thoughts: On Asimov's Second Fantastic Voyage

Nuncius ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Cassou-Nogus
Keyword(s):  
Human Body ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
The Brain

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to investigate various concerns which appear in Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain. I will disregard his first voyage inside a human body in Fantastic Voyage I, which the author disavows as not being his own work. In contrast, the second voyage is intricate, suggesting problems drawn from a variety of sources. In a nutshell, Asimov's explorers enter the body of a comatose man in order to read his thoughts. The story can be related both to philosophical thought-experiments, such as those of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and of Herbert Feigl, as well as to personal anxieties peculiar to Asimov.

Drowning in Swan Lakes

2020 ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
Anna Pakes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophical Literature ◽  
Swan Lake ◽  
Insufficient Attention ◽  
Modern Sense ◽  
Work Type ◽  
Dance Identity

The chapter continues the discussion of dance identity, examining the problem posed by a specific case, the ballet Swan Lake. This ballet is often invoked in the existing philosophical literature on identity but arguably with insufficient attention paid to its historical genesis and development. The chapter argues that nineteenth-century ballet ‘classics’ are not central or paradigm cases of choreographic works in the modern sense. It also makes the case that the variously authored, individual productions titled Swan Lake are works in their own right rather than tokens of some overarching work-type. If there is an overarching Swan Lake type, then this is a very “thin” entity on which it is problematic to model an account of the identity conditions of later works, since that misrepresents their identity constraints. The discussion illustrates how identity issues—and work ontology more generally—are intertwined with historically contingent conceptualisations and practices.

scholarly journals Fencing Kolong Area Relation with the Work Type

2019 ◽  
Vol 280 ◽  
pp. 03020
Author(s):  
Idawarni ◽  
Edward Syarif ◽  
Samsuddin Amin
Keyword(s):  
Coastal Areas ◽  
The Body ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Know How ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
Work Type

Work was an important aspect of people’s lives, as well ashomes. Both were two things that cannot be separated in the life of fishingcommunities. The work that people currently do as seaweed farmers andfishermen involve family and community members. In work, it takes spacethat was roomy, shady, and comfortable. During this phenomenon in arural community is no exception in the coastal areas that use the model ofthe house stage will do the development of space into under the body of thehouse (kolong) with various types of materials and purposes, generally thepurpose of fencing was adapted to the material used. The development ofseaweed cultivation work that requires space that was roomy, shady, andcomfortable in the process (especially sorting of seaweed) this affects thefencing form of the kolong. The purpose of the study was to know how farthe fencing area undertaken by the community associated with the work. The method used was a mixed-use method. The result obtained is thedecreasing of the undercover area as a whole due to the increase of socialrequirement to the room which was roomy, shady, and cool to work.

The Blackest Eyes . . . The Devil’s Eyes

2019 ◽  
pp. 107-132
Author(s):  
Adam Charles Hart
Keyword(s):  
Recent Trend ◽  
The Body ◽  
First Person ◽  
Found Footage ◽  
History Of Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Partial View

This chapter analyzes the recent development in first-person camerawork in horror, in which the killer-aligned camera of Killer POV has been supplanted by the victim- or protagonist-aligned cameras of “found footage”—and in the realm of gaming, first-person shooters (FPS). Where Killer POV communicates the owner’s mastery over the objects of their look, this “searching camera” indicates vulnerability and inadequacy, and the chapter looks to a long history of writing about documentary cinematography to theorize the connection between handheld camerawork, and the body of the camera operator. An FPS game like Left 4 Dead (2008), however, pairs that feeling of vulnerability and an always-partial view of its zombie-filled landscape with action and the ability to combat the threats surrounding the players. In [REC] (2007) and [REC] 2 (2009), the camera operator is always placed in a position of impotence, and an inability to act. The chapter closes by examining a recent trend in horror gaming, which equates powerlessness with horror. So games like P.T. (2014), Layers of Fear (2016), and Paranormal Activity: The Lost Soul (2017) pair an FPS-like first-person interface with an inability to directly attack or defend against the threats that populate the diegesis.

Scenes of Reenactment/Logics of Derivation in Dance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randy Martin
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Past Performance ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Future Gain

The spatial, temporal, and kinesthetic features of reenactment in dance also apply to what is perhaps the most creative and destructive figure of the present day, the derivative. Quite literally, derivatives restage past performance as a prospect of future gain, they seek profits from sudden shifts in equilibrium, mining volatility for inventive returns. As avatars of the ways in which value is realized in movement, derivatives invite consideration of what dance knows so well. Dance, of course, relies upon risk, but also engenders other ways of valuing the creation of the unexpected. Whereas finance insists upon obligatory movement, it lacks a language of motion that dance discloses. In short, if reenactment today assumes the body of a derivative, one should turn to movement practices to grasp the social kinesthetic.

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