Génio e graça estética: uma arqueologia dos discursos sobre ensino da dança em Portugal (1839-1930)

RESUMO O artigo identifica a emergência de diagnósticos e soluções em torno dos fins e dos meios do ensino da dança em Portugal, e que derivaram na defesa continuada de um Conservatório por vir. Concentra-se em dois momentos - o século XIX e a Primeira República - durante os quais se impôs um discurso em torno da antinomia aptidão natural vs. aprendizagem universal. Com os programas de dança teatral estatuídos em 1911, procura-se suspender esta dicotomia. Porém, estas formações discursivas continuaram a reconduzir os princípios da graça estética e do individualismo do génio, exponenciados pela perceção que então se cultivava da vanguarda estrangeira (Isadora Duncan e Ballets Russes).

Restaging Bronislava Nijinska’s Les Noces: Multimodal Interdisciplinary Curriculum in the Performing Arts

In this article I will discuss "Performance-As-Research," as a method of pedagogy, an approach to learning and problem solving, as a practice of inquiry and of making meaning in the performing arts, and as a conduit for students to develop physical, cognitive and affective proficiencies; in the context of a first year undergraduate dance repertory course. Over the past academic year, I have begun to collaborate with entering Bachelor of Fine Arts Dance majors at Temple University (where I am an assistant professor) to restage and perform Les Noces, (French; English: The Wedding; Russian: Свадебка, Svadebka), a ballet and orchestral concert work composed by Igor Stravinsky for percussion, pianists, chorus, and vocal soloists. Stravinsky subtitled the work "Choreographed Scenes with Music and Voices." The ballet, commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, was choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska and premiered in Paris in 1923. In my Repertory I course, the students and I have worked together to collaboratively craft a creative reimagining of the original work. This article will describe that process, and demonstrate the multiple avenues for teaching and learning that Performance-As-Research opens up in the pedagogical context of the higher education performing arts curriculum.

Les arts peuvent-ils et doivent-ils « unir leurs forces » ?

Le fil conducteur de l’article est « le rôle fondateur du symbolisme » dans les mouvements artistiques du XXe siècle. À la Belle Époque succèdent la fracture de la guerre et les tentatives de recomposition du monde (exploration du monde et de l’homme dans les sciences, foisonnement des mouvements artistiques, pratique du dialogue entre les arts). Si une première tentative de « cicatrisation » se manifesta dans les témoignages et les commémorations, une autre solution consista à faire table rase du passé (dadaïsme) et à s’orienter vers la « surréalité ». L’accent est ici mis sur l’effervescence du milieu parisien (poésie, peinture, musique, danse) et la révolution des ballets russes, comme exemples d’une revitalisation et d’un renouveau de la pensée et de la création : le dialogue des arts mis en scène de manière novatrice, voire provocatrice, pendant la guerre et plus encore dans l’immédiate après-guerre, contribue fortement à rendre possible la crédibilité d’un autre futur que celui du malheur.

From historical materiality to performance: Choreographic functions of the costumes in The Rite of Spring (1913)

Examining the surviving costumes of the 1913 production of The Rite of Spring, this article explores how costumes functioned in the Russian ‘new ballet’ choreography, of which the Ballets Russes Company is the most internationally famous example. The materiality of costumes – the fabric, cut and dye – organized the dancing bodies onstage in a manner that, in part, relied on Russian contexts invisible to the predominantly foreign audiences of the performances in Paris and London. Subsequently, these Russian reactions where The Rite of Spring was part of a continuum of representations of Russia’s past have been largely ignored in favour of the opinions of French and British critics, for whom the work appeared extraordinary and alien. The so-called reconstruction (1987), where the surviving costumes were used to compensate for the absence of choreographic understanding, has further obscured what the choreography was and what costumes actually did (and do) in performance. Although decisions made in recreating performance differ from historiographical research, exploring the practical making of costumes also draws attention to perspectives often forgotten in discussions of past performance more generally – such as changes in how costumes are experienced, or what that experience explains of later reminiscences.

Poetic Transformations in Matisse's Earliest Dance Images

Matisse's early dance paintings Joy of Life, Dance (I), and Dance (II) appear in countless art books in which their public receptions are repeatedly treated in a superficial manner. The fame of these works needs to be understood in a fuller context for students of dance and art. Matisse's early dance paintings are carefully examined in terms of their historical influences. His exposure to Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, and the Ballets Russes is considered. The frequent citation of specific folk dances Matisse saw at the time he created these works is challenged. What becomes significant is how poetically Matisse transformed the many sources he absorbed into his own reductive style. Matisse's decades-long interest in dance is demonstrated by select examples from his dance oeuvre. Even as an invalid, Matisse continued to work with dance themes. His joy in watching dance and making dance works, including those for ballet, reflected his passion for colour, motion, and expression of the liveliness he saw in dance. It is hoped that this article can lead to more interdisciplinary scholarship and teaching between dance studies and art history.

Feigned and Distorted Bodyscapes

Creative interdisciplinarity in performance and scenography permeate the masking and disguising of the avant-garde. Chapter Four highlights the artistic collaboration of choreographers, composers, visual artists and writers in Paris and beyond, beginning with the production of Parade in Paris (1917) and concluding with work of Vsevolod Meyerhold in Moscow in the 1920s. Popular performance disguising by Liesl Karlstadt and Karl Valentin in Munich, as well as Alexander Vertinsky’s Ukrainian Pierrot, contrast with much of the abstraction proposed in other urban bodyscapes. The bold distortions of Aleksei Granovsky’s mises en scène with the State Yiddish Chamber Theatre complement the masquerading described in Paris with the Swedish Ballet and the Ballets Russes. This chapter parades a line-up Charlie Chaplin, Clowns and Pulcinella interpreters alongside the omnipresent Pierrots who offer an escape from the troublesome years of war. In this era, disguising also proliferated in domestic and military circumstances as malingerers and ‘Aspirants and Pretenders’ displayed Chaplinesque masquerading skills throughout the belligerent communities and battlefields of Europe.