Editorial

7 pages, 182 KiB

Open AccessEditorial

“Dance and Abstraction” Special Issue Introduction

by S. Elise Archias and Juliet Bellow

Arts 2020, 9(4), 120; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9040120 - 25 Nov 2020

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In his 2013 book Hating Empire Properly, historian Sunil Agnani helpfully reminds his audience that an emphasis on cultural difference—a perspective that we tend to think of as the postmodern antidote to Enlightenment-era universalizing rhetoric—can in fact be traced back to early [...] Read more.

In his 2013 book Hating Empire Properly, historian Sunil Agnani helpfully reminds his audience that an emphasis on cultural difference—a perspective that we tend to think of as the postmodern antidote to Enlightenment-era universalizing rhetoric—can in fact be traced back to early modern European thought [...] Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

Research

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16 pages, 4163 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Towards an Embodied Abstraction: An Historical Perspective on Lucinda Childs’ Calico Mingling (1973)

by Lou Forster

Arts 2021, 10(1), 7; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts10010007 - 21 Jan 2021

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Abstract

In the 1970s, choreographer Lucinda Childs developed a reductive form of abstraction based on graphic representations of her dance material, walking, and a specific approach towards its embodiment. If her work has been described through the prism of minimalism, this case study on [...] Read more.

In the 1970s, choreographer Lucinda Childs developed a reductive form of abstraction based on graphic representations of her dance material, walking, and a specific approach towards its embodiment. If her work has been described through the prism of minimalism, this case study on Calico Mingling (1973) proposes a different perspective. Based on newly available archival documents in Lucinda Childs’s papers, it traces how track drawing, the planimetric representation of path across the floor, intersected with minimalist aesthetics. On the other hand, it elucidates Childs’s distinctive use of literacy in order to embody abstraction. In this respect, the choreographer’s approach to both dance company and dance technique converge at different influences, in particular modernism and minimalism, two parallel histories which have been typically separated or opposed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

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27 pages, 1494 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Balanchine Dilemma: “So-Called Abstraction” and the Rhetoric of Circumvention in Black-and-White Ballets

by Tamara Tomić-Vajagić

Arts 2020, 9(4), 119; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9040119 - 24 Nov 2020

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Abstract

Choreographer George Balanchine was known for rejecting the premise that his ballets were abstract. Yet, a closer look into his comments on abstraction reveals a greater degree of ambivalence toward the concept than previously noticed. His influential words found response in dance critical [...] Read more.

Choreographer George Balanchine was known for rejecting the premise that his ballets were abstract. Yet, a closer look into his comments on abstraction reveals a greater degree of ambivalence toward the concept than previously noticed. His influential words found response in dance critical writing, where the term “abstract” continued to circulate, but was often applied in vague ways, such as “so-called abstraction.” This and other softened terminological variations formed an ambiguous collection of abstractive terms, like a vague word cloud around the dance concept. This article explores abstraction in Balanchine’s particular ballets, and makes a two-fold argument. On the one hand, by emphasizing the visual aspects of Balanchine’s compositions, we may uncover ways to untangle his dilemma about dance abstraction. Visual theories of “semantic abstraction” by Harold Osborne, and of “the gesture of abstraction” by Blake Stimson, may help us to understand the abstractive modes in several of Balanchine’s black-and-white ballets. On the other hand, whether discussed or not, Balanchine’s abstractive gestures have created powerful representational shifts in some cases. In particular, by examining the interracially cast duet from the ballet Agon (1957) as a visual case study, we may see how Balanchine’s rejections of the concept, amplified by critics’ vague terminological invocations of, or silence about, abstractive choreographic gestures, occluded the work’s participation in the discourse of abstraction. Simultaneously, unnoticed yet potent choreographic gestures of semantic abstraction may have promoted whiteness as a normative structure, one that relies on a hegemonic “bodily integrity” (as discussed by Saidiya Hartman). Such an analysis leads to a recognition that Balanchine’s abstraction could have been a subversive form of dissent similar to Kobena Mercer’s concept of “discrepant abstraction.” However, I posit that, as a result of the Balanchine dilemma and its influence, the interlinked gestures of an abstract nature that have not been recognized as such promoted the self-regulative structure identified by Bojana Cvejić as “white harmony.” Ultimately, a more specific and clear application of the term “abstract” in ballet is needed, as it can help to dismantle or disrupt the system of white supremacy operative in dominant ballet structures. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

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19 pages, 3465 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Rosas, the Storyless, and Roles

by Rachel Haidu

Arts 2020, 9(2), 44; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9020044 - 28 Mar 2020

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4286

Abstract

Analyzing the early work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker—and particularly Rosas danst Rosas (1983)—this article examines the notion of “the storyless” in relation to the role: that pillar of dance, and especially choreography, which enables the individuation, transmission, and exchange of each dancer’s [...] Read more.

Analyzing the early work of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker—and particularly Rosas danst Rosas (1983)—this article examines the notion of “the storyless” in relation to the role: that pillar of dance, and especially choreography, which enables the individuation, transmission, and exchange of each dancer’s part. Set in relation to the principles of serial music that De Keersmaeker had already explored in Fase (1982) and to the idea of seriality itself, the role provides a way to consider how “storylessness” could be both emancipatory and feminist. It responds to identitarian models of feminist argumentation by suggesting that a virtue of certain forms of abstraction lies in the pleasurable ways that dance’s roles demonstrate the circulability and exchangeability of the self. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

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11 pages, 251 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Trisha Brown: Between Abstraction and Representation (1966–1998)

by Susan Rosenberg

Arts 2020, 9(2), 43; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9020043 - 27 Mar 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 4397

Abstract

Choreographer Trisha Brown (1936–2017) is renowned as one of the most influential abstract artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Emerging from Judson Dance Theater and the 1960s avant-garde, Brown invented what she termed her ‘pure movement’ abstract vocabulary in the 1970s, rejecting [...] Read more.

Choreographer Trisha Brown (1936–2017) is renowned as one of the most influential abstract artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Emerging from Judson Dance Theater and the 1960s avant-garde, Brown invented what she termed her ‘pure movement’ abstract vocabulary in the 1970s, rejecting narrative, psychology and character as bases for dance-making. Yet Brown’s notion of abstraction, when examined across the long arc of her fifty-year career, is more complicated and elastic than previously known. This essay addresses selected choreographies dating from her first decade as a choreographer, the 1960s, to the production of her first opera L’Orfeo (1998), underscoring how memories, images, language and stories fueled a previously unexamined dynamic relationship between abstraction and representation that profoundly influenced her choreography’s development. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

12 pages, 289 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dance That “Suggested Nothing but Itself”: Josephine Baker and Abstraction

by Joanna Dee Das

Arts 2020, 9(1), 23; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9010023 - 14 Feb 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 5619

Abstract

This article reconsiders Josephine Baker’s legacy for the field of dance by emphasizing the principles of abstraction that she developed through performance. Although she is considered to be a modernist, Baker is rarely discussed as an abstractionist. Doing so requires a rethinking of [...] Read more.

This article reconsiders Josephine Baker’s legacy for the field of dance by emphasizing the principles of abstraction that she developed through performance. Although she is considered to be a modernist, Baker is rarely discussed as an abstractionist. Doing so requires a rethinking of the relationship between race and abstraction, a conversation revived by choreographer Miguel Gutierrez in 2018. Audiences in 1920s Paris described how Baker confounded identity categories to produce something new for the stage, but critics and scholars since have continued to define her by those very categories. Baker’s dancing prioritized the expression of kinesthetic energy over representation or narrative, clearly fitting within the purview of abstract dance. In building upon the work of Brenda Dixon Gottschild, I argue that Baker demonstrates how abstraction is not in opposition to Africanist dance aesthetics, but rather is a constitutive part of it. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

19 pages, 7773 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On a Curious Chance Resemblance: Rudolf von Laban’s Kinetography and the Geometric Abstractions of Sophie Taeuber-Arp

by Flora L. Brandl

Arts 2020, 9(1), 15; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9010015 - 04 Feb 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 6169

Abstract

This paper investigates a case of historical co-emergence between a modern system of dance notation and the rise of geometric abstraction in the applied arts during the first decades of the 20th century. It does so by bringing together the artistic careers of [...] Read more.

This paper investigates a case of historical co-emergence between a modern system of dance notation and the rise of geometric abstraction in the applied arts during the first decades of the 20th century. It does so by bringing together the artistic careers of the choreographer Rudolf von Laban and the visual artist Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Comparing their pedagogical agendas and visual aesthetics, this paper argues that the resemblances between Laban’s Kinetography and Taeuber-Arp’s early geometric compositions cannot be a matter of pure coincidence. The paper therefore presents and supports the hypothesis of a co-constitutive relationship between visual abstraction and the dancing body in the European avant-garde. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

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11 pages, 222 KiB

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Machine Bodies: Performing Abstraction and Brazilian Art

by Mariola V. Alvarez

Arts 2020, 9(1), 11; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts9010011 - 19 Jan 2020

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Abstract

In 1973, Analívia Cordeiro produced the videodance M3x3. Filmed in a Brazilian television studio and choreographed by Cordeiro with a computer, the work explores the limits of the human body through abstraction and its inhabitation of a new media landscape. Tracing the [...] Read more.

In 1973, Analívia Cordeiro produced the videodance M3x3. Filmed in a Brazilian television studio and choreographed by Cordeiro with a computer, the work explores the limits of the human body through abstraction and its inhabitation of a new media landscape. Tracing the genealogy of M3x3 to the history of videodance, German and Brazilian art, and Brazilian politics, the article spotlights the media central for its conceptualization, production, and circulation to argue for how the video theorizes the posthuman as the inextricable entanglement of the body and technology. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

23 pages, 2876 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mapping a New Humanism in the 1940s: Thelma Johnson Streat between Dance and Painting

by Abbe Schriber

Arts 2020, 9(1), 7; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts9010007 - 11 Jan 2020

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Abstract

Thelma Johnson Streat is perhaps best known as the first African American woman to have work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. However, in the 1940s–1950s she inhabited multiple coinciding roles: painter, performer, choreographer, cultural ethnographer, and folklore collector. As part of [...] Read more.

Thelma Johnson Streat is perhaps best known as the first African American woman to have work acquired by the Museum of Modern Art. However, in the 1940s–1950s she inhabited multiple coinciding roles: painter, performer, choreographer, cultural ethnographer, and folklore collector. As part of this expansive practice, her canvases display a peculiar movement and animacy while her dances transmit the restraint of the two-dimensional figure. Drawing from black feminist theoretical redefinitions of the human, this paper argues that Streat’s exploration of muralism, African American spirituals, Native Northwest Coast cultural production, and Yaqui Mexican-Indigenous folk music established a diasporic mapping forged through the coxtension of gesture and brushstroke. This transmedial work disorients colonial cartographies which were the products of displacement, conquest, and dispossession, aiding notions of a new humanism at mid-century. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

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18 pages, 3208 KiB

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The Hollywood Dance-In: Abstract and Material Relations of Corporeal Reproduction

by Anthea Kraut

Arts 2019, 8(4), 133; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/arts8040133 - 14 Oct 2019

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Abstract

This essay asks what the figure of the Hollywood dance-in—a dancer who performed in place of a star prior to filming and who assisted the choreographer in the creation of dance numbers—can reveal about the reproduction of corporeality as an operation that is [...] Read more.

This essay asks what the figure of the Hollywood dance-in—a dancer who performed in place of a star prior to filming and who assisted the choreographer in the creation of dance numbers—can reveal about the reproduction of corporeality as an operation that is both abstract and material. Focusing on the white film star Gene Kelly and his Mexican-born dance-in Alex Romero, the essay shows how the men functioned as literal and virtual doubles for one another in the rehearsal process and argues for an understanding of their relations of reproduction as queer and racially charged. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Dance and Abstraction)

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