Zarathustra\'s dancers

.A ]ournal of the Performi.g Arts

Surrrmer L990

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CO}iTENTS Dhgrated W

Text

- Elizabettr Stewart

md Pmtmodern Music: Eutrapelia in Search of the

- ?aul Pa1'ton

10

Dmmn off the Beanstalk: The Presence of a r loice in Janika Vandervelde's Genesis If

- Susan L4 24 31 36 45 49

,l

he's nh:

Dancers - Ramsay Burt -{natomy of a Pop Lyric - Patrick Campbell d Gender - 8 Choreographers Speak Out Theatre - Alison Oddey lllrfdmsk^ and the Demonic Woman - Betty Caplan

sfrf

CE FEATTIRE Hhh .lfritude - Jim Drobnick

52

5

F '- d [Ddian Culture: Peter Brook's The Mahabharata -fuG,rai' 's Ariadne, performed by Gloria - Julia Pascal tfir* Tfu of Absence: Rosemary Butcher's d2 - Stanley

58 59

jmmn,'tmmr

6L

.r'- fu

ON Turns Off the Lightsz Recorded Composition I.u Br*rscft The Fer

63 64

| -df

Sings: Catherine Cl6ment's Opera, or the L'"fuilrt af,Women - Susan C. Cook Thc Blu.t Trodition in American Dance - Sule Greg Wilson Bla* Doa,cc - \{aggie Semple Speafing of Dead Poets - Martha & Marty Roth

65 67 68 69

CO\TRIBTTORS

72

The cover photograph is from the Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Theatre featuring the dancers Jigna Shah, Subathra Shanteepan end Shobana Jeyasingh. Photograph by ChrisNash. Back cover photograph is Liz Ranken

in Glorh Production Company's

A

riadne.

ZARATHUSTRA'S DANCERS amsay Burt

R

Dance had a special meaning for Nietzsche: he thought of it as the highest - most sophisticated and harmonious form of human activity. For him all our higher actions

aspired to the condition of dancing. one well known example of Nieusche's use of this concept is to be found in his auiobiographical book Ecce Homo. He recounts how he cornposed a chapter of his book rhus spalu hrathusffa while climbing up to a ruined castle in the south of France, and described his sense of exhilaration thus: 'my muscular agiliry has always been greatest wlwn my creative power lws flowed most abundantly.Tlu body is inspired: let us leave tlu "soul" out of it... ,orid often lwve been seen dancing.' (Nietzsche 1979

I

p.IA) Dance is of course a bodily activity, and Niegsche was fully aware ilrat in asserting its importance in this way he was subverting a dualisric view of the body implicit in the scientific, rational and Christian culture of his day. It is this radical view of the body within his writings that makes Nietzsche a significant philosopher fu dance theory, and especially important for the development of modern dance at the beginning of the nventieth century. Many of the innovators of modern dance in ttre United States tr,ave been influenced by his ideas, including Isadora Duncan, Ivlartha Gratram, Doris Humphrey, and later John Cage and thus,

indirectly at least, Merce cunningham and Kenneth King.

Ii il

But in the German speaking world at the turn of the century, Nietzsche's ideas influenc€d a whole generation of artists

and intellectuals who reacted against the claustrophobic

parochialism of wilhelmine Germany and founded the .*pr.rsionist movement in ttre arts. As Roger cardinal (1084 p.6l)) suggests dance is the 'nanrral' medium of expressionism. This paper examines the place of Nietzsche's ideas in the emetgence of modern dance in the German speaking world at this time. In particular it considers ttre relationship between Nietzsche's philosophy and the ideas behind the de

velopm ent of ttre Eurhy ttr m ics of Em ile J ac ques -Dal srorg,

and Ruldoph Steiner's Euryttrffiy, and Nieusche's contribution o the development of ttre ideas of dancers Rudolph von I-aban and t'hry wigman. This is notjust a question of philosophical theory and artistic practice, bu1 also of the influence of these on a social and political level. Hisorical circumstance has caused both Nietzsche's philosophy and modern dance in Germany between the wars to appear contaminated by contact wittr Nazism' RJ'

Hollingdale (19g5) and George Bataitle (1985) have demonstrated the ways in which Nietzsche's ideas were falsified and aligned with right-wing, nationalistic and anti-semitic sentiments wittr whichNietzsche himself was notin sympa-

thy dgring his lifetime. The obscgre, allusive quality of

Nieusche's style of writing helped in the subsequent recuperation by the Nazis oi his rejection of conventional christian morality and his suggested replacementof it with the principle of the will to power. It must have been the Nietzschean aspect of Nazi ideology orat helped persuade laban and wigman in their initial acceptance of the Nazis in the 1930s. Modern dance was for a time, at least, Olerated by the Na-iS, whereas modernism and expressionism in the other ara was supprcssedby them. valerieprreson-Dunlop 1987) and Hedwig lrlouer (l9g 6 & 1987) and less apologetically Horst tcoegter (L974) and tv{artin Green (1986) give accounts of t-.aUan's and Wigman's involvement with the Nazis. Iaban was direcor of the Deutsches Tanzbuhnen (

which was part of Goebbels' Ministry of culnrre (although laban was subsequently sacked and fled ttre counUry):

wigman saton its commiuees. Laban was thus more deeply involved than wigman. when, as an employee of the Nazi government, he wrote in the Deutsclrcs Taruzeitschrift in 1936 about ttre german-ness of modern dance, this could only have been understood as having racist connotations. He went on to say: 'We want to dedicate our tneans of expression and

tasts of our volk.With unswerving clarity our F tilver points tlu way.' (quoted Manning 1988 p.320) I think it would be simplistic to say that he and Wigman were politically naive and only really concerned with the

development of ttreir arl. It is perhaps more useful to see them as part of an influenrial 6lite whose work probably

contributed educated an

gY bY the ofculture Wigman's

s

and society

work and writings were those which the Nazis were able to mobilise to ttreir advantage. In looking at the influence of Nietzsche's philosophy on ttreir dance ttreory and practice, it is ttrerefore necessary to evaluate the political,significance of their normuive irrational view of the individual as embodied being which it will be seen is cenral b Nietzsche's thinking about the body.

24

ff,

tlu

articulatbn of our Wwer to thc service of tlw great

ti:

o

The Body in Nietzsche's Writings

beings were more'traturall than Kleistperceived them be in 1810. His csrclusion is that we will find gace at its

This section considers Nietzsche's thinking about &e body, showing how itcontinued earlierideas aboutthebody developed by German Romantics, of which one example is Heimich von Kleist's essay 'On the ldarioneue Theatrt'.

purest '...in a body which is entirely devoid of cqrsciousness or which possesses it in an infinite degree; that is in the marioneue a the god.' (Copeland 1983 p.l&4) This conclusion is very muchatodds wittt the qthodox Christian view of ttre body. Rather than a dualistic qplit between mind ard body - the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak - Kleistproposes ttrat Bre embodimentof consciousness is a source of gmd, not of sinful temptation: the more conscious the body becomes, the morc the individual approrches the condition of god. This is an earthly, human divinity not a ranscendental one. In ftis Kleist anticipates much of Nieesche's philosophy. The implications for dance are significanr The hisorically low saurs of dancing as a profession in 0te west has been due o its association with the supposedly sinful body.

Like the Romantics, Nietzsche rejected proposals during theEnlightenment that humans are ultimatelyradonal beings, sressing instead the physical, ernotional and expressive side of human consciouness. This Dionysian spirit, as he cdled it, had been repressed by rational and metaphysical thought and systems of belief from the time of Sarate.s o Nietzsche's own day. What is repressed, for Nieesche, will never0relessreurn - one ofNietzsche'spsychological ideas which J.P. Stsrm maintains Freud lnew and admfu€d ( I 978

p.l3). This insight of Nietzsche's into poychology, it will later be argued, was important for Wigman.Iaban, on the ottrer han( was m(re intere,sted in the way Nietrsche's thinking about the body led to a radical critique of metaphysics, deconstructing (to use a more modem expression) dualistic ideas andbeliefs that constitute barriers to people's understanding and app,reciation of the potentials of human expression.

Kleist and.the irrational body The idea that the naturalness of the human body is in conflict with rationalism, and with scientific and technologrcal progress has is roots in the reaction of Romantic philosophers and artists, especially in Germany, against the ideals of the Enlightenment A particularly clear example of this position is Heinrich von Kleist's l8l0 essay. 'On the lvlarionette Theatre' discusses whether a finely machined lifesize puppet might not dance beuer than Vesnis - the most celebrated dancer of the day. A puppet's movements are made tlrough manipulating is centre of balance; Kleist says is centre of balance is the puppet's soul. In human dancers, he argues, the consciousness of their loss of inno-

cence can deract frorn 0reir ability to dance unselfconsciously, when their soul and theircenureof balance are not in the same place. This self-conscious fallibility of humanity is further alluded to in two examples. One concerns a Russian bear and a Gernran swordsman. Fencing with his bare paw, the bear ounvis the Gsrman's most sophisticated passes and feins. Ftr all his civilised and cultured sophistication, the swordsrnan qrnnot fml nuure. Kleist implies that culnre and civilisatbn have lead to a loss of natural viality. The oher exarnph is of a beautiful and charming young man. Orrc day, *tile @ving himself after bathing, he catches sight of his rt{lccti:n in a mirror and remarks to Kleist 0rat he appeas lo have aken up the pose of the classical Greek scutpue rclresenting a boy pulling a thorn out of his foot. Kkist ph)ftXb' replies that ttre lad might not be able to take up dnt g.ccfui po6e a second time. Sure enough,ttre ladfafu ad fuoog! repeated failuresbecomes irrcreasingly distraugtl, charm. Just as the

#ptl1'

bsing his beauty and

fem r nar! trsp o6 the nah[alness

bcm

aufilslod. so the story of the man tns given up to young man implies ftrt fu rfurk re perceive in the arts of ancient Greece deriw fmm gridca age when human

r

Nietzsche and the return of the repressed The body, and by implication dancing, have a similarly equivocal staurs in Classical Greek thoughr In classical mimesis, poetry is considered ttre highest from of art, because of its verbal nature. For Plato, words remind us of truths already wriuen on our souls. In Plato's PHlebus, Socrates says that painters can evoke for us objects that remind us of truths written on our souls, although Plato is suspiciou of the painter's ability to imitate and deceive. We have no evidence that Plato considered the staurs of dancing, but it is clearly abodily non-verbal mode of expression whose representations would for Plao be imitative and deceptive. ln Tlp Birth of Tragedy Nietzsche challenges this powerful bias owards verbal ralher tlnn non-verbal

o

forms within the classical radition. Nietzsche lmks back a period before Plato and Socrates, when he suggests that what we now lnow as differentiated art forms, initially coexisted in a state of equality. He is hypothesising the existence of a time befoe reason and intellect were placed above physicality and emotion. He calls the former Apollo-

nian and the latter Dionysian. The Apollonian is order, intellect, social strucure and conrol. The Dionysian is primordial chaos, fruifulness, ecstasy and terror - a desire !o retum to a state of primitive oneness with nature. Nietzsche recounts how the Greek theatre originated from the processional hymn to Dionysus - the dithyramb which was performed during the fe,stival of Dionysus. This was danced, sung, mimed, and as time went by a monologue and then a dialogue between the leader and the other dancers

Fs Nieesche this was an undifferentiated fusion of yet unspecialised art forms. The dithyramb was the origin of the chons in Greek plays when procession tnansferred from street !o theaue. For Nietzsche the chorus was Dionysian while the actors' verse speeches were Apollonian. Nieusche proposes that the power of the great tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophales resides in this conflicu in their expression of the powers of horror through' order - Dionysus harnessed by Apollo - and that a decline sets in when Euripides increases the realism of the spoken text while reducing the role of he chorus. Nietzsche's was added.

concept

of the Dionysian spirit, and his notion of

the

25

dithyranrb are signifrcant as will be seen for the development of modem dance in Aermany. As has been norcd the dualistic separatiut of body and spirit is apartof Ouistian dogma. ForNiegsche, God is dead, ard one of his main p,reoccupations is 0re revaluation of all values: the wor*ing out of &e consoquences of 0tis gap at the cenfe of our system of values. Aeshetics took on a more cenral rcle: 'Only as an resthetic phenomanon is the world ard the existence of man eternally justifred' (Nietzsche 1967 p.l7). But fa Nieusche aesthetics becomes appreciation of the teirible as well as the beautiful, for he does not intend that meaning, o,rder, completeness - the Apollutian - should be reinstated but that a space be made for what had previously been repressed - the Dionysian. In the opera of his day, or at least in Wagner to whom Tlp Birth of Tragedy was initially dedicaM, Nietzsche thought he saw a reawakening of the Diurysian spirit of Greek ragedy, as can be seen in his description of a Wagnerian "musical tragedy'; 'As wc watch tlu rhythmhally rrcing claracters of tlu stage norgc wilh tlu indcpendeuly nuing lircs of nuldy iuo a shgle movkg liru ofnution,we etEerience tlu most &licate lumwny of sotnd ardvisual narcnunl. Tlw relationsHps ol things tltt$ becorrc @ailable a thc scrutcs, and we realise tlat in these relationships tlv cssence

of a claracter and d a nuldic liru oe

fu

sinultaneously nanifcst. And as nwsicforce s us to sec more and nore inwardly tlan tuual, and spreads bcfore us likc a delicue tissru thc curtain of tlu scerc, our spiritualisedvision belplds tlu worW of tlu stage at oncc itfinile$ eryanded and illumilated fron within. What arulogtu could tlu verM pet possiblyfwnish hc wlo tries to bring about tlut inward eryansion ottlw visi b le s t a g e w orld, it s i ruu r ill umirutia n, by nuc h mo r e

hdir e c t and imperfe ct rnearut, notnly

w ords attd concept? But, once musical tragedy has appropiated tlc word, it

can at tle sanE tine present thc birthplace and srbsoil of t lu w or d and il lutninate t he gene sis of tlu wor d lr om

within.' (Nietzsche

1956 p.129)

This passage clearly links a performance of an opera with what Nietzsche has identified as 0re character of the choru within Greek trqgedy. By rrct dealing with the meaning communicated thrugh 0re words of the arias, choruses etc., Nietzsche is suessing the expressive and affective aspecs of aesthetic experience. As an account of music, visual effecs and rhythmical movement it could almost be a description of a dance production. Nieesche emphasises the physical and emotional experierrce as an indispensable part of the overall meaning. Dionysus harnessed by Apollo. Wh,at is sublime in geat tragedy is this hamessing or sublimation of the ernotionally and physically exprassive means by the verbal and intellecural material. The concep of sublimation is familiar today through is being part of the vocabulary ofpsychoanalysis, and this is one aspect of Nietzsche's philosqhy which becomes important for Wigman. For Nietzsche dance also has radical oonnotations: 'Dancing in any form cannot be diwrced from noble educatbn, being able o funce with tlw feet, wit h conce p s, withword,s: b I still lave to s6! tlat orre las a be &lc to dance with tlu Wn - tlat wriling las to be learru?' i

(Nictzsclw 1968 p.66)

26

HelE, as lus already been observed' all our higher actions fc Nietzsche aspire to the condition of dancing. Thus dancing with the fct is valued alongside cmc@B (philosophy), words ud dre pen (writing). It is signilicant that Nietzsche mentions writing and not languagc. Language is more abstrrct and pure, like houghtand in much western philoso,phy is credited with being a transparent, authentic exprcssion. Philcqhen sirce Plato have been suspiciors uwriting (the argumentis Denida's) because it is not uanspuent but material and obtrusive and a bodily activity. If dance in the same philosophical traditim has been consideredan inferiorart form compared with poetry, this isbecarselike writing it is abodily rctivity. Nieesche wanB words to dance and have their own effect and not be too easily pinned down. This is in opposition to the idea within the Greek and Christian tradition that the body is a deadening encumbrance !o the spirit. Nietzsche was a vialist philosophec for him the Apol-

lonian would be turgid without ttre viality of the Dionysian. The supernran is of course a dancer, who sublimated ttre Dionysian within ttre Apollonian thus overpoming and ranscending his humanity. To spell this outbaldly in relation tothear,e dance, the strucure and ordering of a danceis Apollonian, while thedancer's fleshing outof this by perfcnring it is Dionysian. Dancers arB human, all too human, ernbodied beings and dancing is the spontaneity and falibilityof this embodiment- theexcitementof risk. The will o darrce is the embrrcing of this risk. The opposite of a sponuneous perfanrance is a lifeless one: one that is mechanical, loo p€rfect, too controlled, too ratiqnl.. So there is an equation between the rational, meaningful dance, and the irrational, risky dancing body. I have called ttris an equation o imply that the nvo sides are not dualistic opposites, but are equal and dependent sides of the same thing. As W.B. Yeats wrote: 'How can we know the dancer from the dance?' (Yeats, 1928)

Eurhythmics and Eurythmy Eurhythmics and Eurythmy were two of many forms of dance exercise or theatre dance that developed as part of the general interest in physical culture in German speaking countries around tlre urn of the cenury. This interestand pleasrne in exercising and developing the body is in line with theRomantic vbw of thebody identified in Kleist's essay. On a theoretical level,Eurhythmics and Eurythmy are similar o Nietzsche's conceptof thedithymrnb, movement as an insepoable part of human expression.

Eurhythmics As a professa of harmony at the Conservatoire of Music in Creneva in he 1890's, Dalcroze noticedthat some sodens could ccrceive of complicated sequences of chords by folbwing radernic rules without being able o imagine what they sounded like through what he calls 'inner hearing'. Suntying ttre prrctice of music education in his day, he felt har what was lrcking was an appreciation of the ptr,rsizlrt, of music - 'the gamut ef sensations called into plaf' bl' the consonance of musical feeling'. To remedy

this he devised a series of rhythmical gymnastic exercises. Vlriting in 1898 he looked forward 'a series of rnusical education

o

in which tlu body itself slwll

pW a role of internudiary between sowrds and thought,

becoming in time tlu direct medirntof owfeelings - antral s e ns atio

be in g r eir{or

rc

ce

d

by

the multiple agents of vibratio n and re s onance lytn g dorrnant in our bodies; tlw br e at hin g sy s t em p un

the rhythms of

muscular

ct

uati n g

words, dynamics

iruerpreting tlose dictated by musical emotions.' (laqucsDaluoze, 1921 p.6). There are similarities here wittr

Nietzsche's ideas about music that come out of his notion of ttp dithy-

ramb. In one of his last bool$ Nietzsche drew attention to what has been lost

through separating the

ara into discrete disciplines. 'To make mwic possible as a art one lws to

separate

immobilise a number of se nse s, abov e all

tlw mtucular

sense (at least relatively;

fo,

all rhytlwt still sryab to our muscles to a certain extent): so that man no longer sraightaway imitates and represents bodily everything lrc feels.' (Nietzschc, 1968 p.73)

To 'imitate and represent bod-

Thomas Dancingby Adam Benjamin, charcoal, 19t9.

ily'

is surely to dance. Nietzsche is equating dancing with a reclaiming of a number of senses, that have presumably been dulled by an ex-

cessively intellectual and verbal culuue. This is srely what Dalcroze felt caused some of his students to lack ttrat sense of mnsical feeling which glves rise !o "innetr hearing". RolandBarthes must srrely have been thinking of this ffi a Yery similar passage by Nietzsche when wri ting his own essay 'The Grain of his Voice" (1977) t I I . In this he rries

o

analyse his own remembered feeling of pleasure when Usening ro the voice of Panrglra" a French ballad

singer of the 1920's; in conrast Barttres felt a sense of empruness when listening to recordinEs by

Dietrich Fischer Diskau.

BarLhes

admis that Diskau's singing seems to be almost perfect in intonation, drama, passion, musicality - in dl the things with which one could conventionally assess a musical performance. It nevertheless, in Barthes' estimation, lacks a particular quality which he calls a grain of the voice, and it is this qualily which Barthes finds inPanzera'ssinging.ForBarthes,Diskau'ssinging"lacksbody". Eurhythmicscan be seen as a method for fostering this bodily musicality. Mary Wigman and Susanne Perrotet both rained with Dalcroze before discovering Laban, and in their reminiscences Dalcroze comes off worse by comparison. For Perrotet, Dalcroze' s work was too harmonious and raditionaL 'At that time I was looking fq dissonance, in order !o express my character and that was not possible with his altogether harmonious strucure.' (Green, 1986 p.9Q. Wigman recalls that she did what she was lold to do during the day and danced for herself without music in her rmm at night [2]. Dalcroze's work was nevertheless seen by manyatthetimeasinnovativeandprogressive. MichaelSadlerin l9l2fulsomely compared Dalcroze's contribution to movement with the then little known painter Kandinsky's contribution to painting. 'They are leading the way to tlu trwst art, and ultimately to tlw truzst life of all, which is a syntlesis of the collective arts and enotions of all nations, wWch is, at tlu same time, based on hdiifualiry, becawe it represents the inner being of each one of its devotees' (Sadler, 1912 p.64).

27

Eurythmy qr Nietzsche Steiner wnote trte of the earliest books wrcng with a was what characterising (Steiner 1895). By-CoA in Nieesche found Steiner is dead, ro.it y for whom (spelt Eurythmy steiner's times. new .r, ogurnrnt part of a is orn Eurhythmics) from Dalcroze's

fc

Aff.rlnrfy

much tarier Anthrorposophical way of life whose formulation was iteiner's liie work. In Munich between 1907 and

lgl2hewas involved in producing three mystery plays' The last of these in l9l2 'contained beings who perfmned

dance-like movements' which were the ftrstEurythmy tobe shown' (Raffe, 1974 p.8). Eurythmy subsequently became prt of the Waldorf Education which S teiner devised' and is

performeA in the Goetheanum in Dornach' Switzerland bornach is themain Anthroposophicalcommrurity - andby o0rer Anttuoposophical groups around the world' Euryttrmy is an e1p'reision through movement of ttre sound of poetry and/o occasionally of music. It repesents a rehrn -o the origins of Greek theare and the dithyramb as proposed by Nietzsche. Within a short passage of poery a few consonants or vowels may be felt to be the dominant exp'ressive sounds: in making an interpretation of this passage in Eurythmy, the movements that correspond o these letters would predominarc. Steiner devised a movement for each leuer of the alphabet which he felt was the gesural equivalent of the embodied feeling of speaking the letter sorurd - puring the body into the sound in a way that parallels Nietzsche and Barttres' ideas. For example L is a continuous liquid sound, which for Steiner was life giving, found in words such as "allelulia". The movernent fs this has the hands starting in front of the naval, tumed so that the backs face each other, fingers loose; the hands are carried vertically up as far as the arms will extend, then down the ouside of the body curling round back in front of the somach again. On a spiritrul level energy is given out on the way up and then the hands go down to collect it in again. Steiner said of this d ' T lw wlo I e bo dy must r ev e al an upw u d and downwar gesture must pulsate between inwardtuss -flow.....the and outwaidness, between gravity fu scending to tlw euth, and lightruss or leity wffich we experience in

tlw periphery' (Rafl:e,1974 P25). Ttris isctraracteristic of the way Anthroposophiss see Eurythmy as balancing earttrly with spiriural and cosmic experience. They criticise modem dance for being too

much concerned with ttre body and the gravity which confines modem dancers to the earth (Raffe 1974 p'8)' Eurythmy developed at the same time as Ausdnrcktarz' Laban, forinstance, was livingand working in Munich from 1907 and is very likely o have seen Steiner's plays' Yet Eurythmy subsequently soems to have tnd little impact on the modern dance world. I have not seen an Eurythmy

justasPerrotet found Dalcroze's work too performancebut, -harmonious and conservative, I suspect Eurythmy may with perhaps be too balanced and pure for those not in n'rne living. an anthroposophical way of These-are the similarities beween Eurhythmics utd of Eurythmy, andNietzsche's notion of the Dionysian sprit of just mauer a not is ttp dithyramb. What is at stake

28

human aesthetics, but of wtr,at it is to be a wholly fulfiUed which from "eurythmy' being. The orign of ttre concept word Greek a wffi names, both movement fonns derive their balanced good and a used by Phto to figrrratively describe lifestyie - one whiitr has a good rhyttrm. This is ttrercfore

tte immediate background for the radical break with artistic tradition made by I-aban and Wigman'

Laban and Wigman A photograph ftom abour 1916 shows a hillside at

plays Ascona on *hich a bearded I-aban, in reformed dress, Green Ivlanin a flute to a chain of barefoot female dancers.

links this pictgre tJo a passage in 'Die Modern eTmz' (1920) by Laban;s friend Hans Brandenburg (see Green, 1986). In this Brandenburg quotes a description of a satyr from Tlu Birth of rragedy a^sexemplary of modern dance 'The origiDionysian is ttre bearded satyr, in him nal image o1 existence expresses itself more truly, really, fully than in the

tr

man of cultule.' (Ibid.P.l07). Twenty years later Goebbels wrote in his diary, after cancelling I-aban's 1936 performance piece for the olym-

pic Dance Festival 'Rehearsal of dance work: freely based on Nietzsche, a bad, contrived and affected piece. I forbid That a great deal. It is all so intellecnlal. I did not, like nottring is because it is dressed up in our clothes and has

ir

whatever to do wittr us.' (Pres6n Dunlop, 1987). Iaban, more than Steiner and Dalcroilq, e&rns to have been part of an artistic gfouping whose world view was rfongty Nietzschean. It is for his ttreory and philosophy of dancJ (or choreosophy as he called i0 and for his system of notation, thatl,aban is remembered now, rather than for his work as a dancer and choreographer. His is a philosophy not of dance as artbut of dance as life itself, recalling Nietzsche's aphorism that only as an aesthetic phenomenon is the and the existence of man eternally justified

wuld

In his first book Die Welt Des Tanzers (1920)

he

proposed that the fundamenul principles of dance are antidualistic, and he refers to Nietzsche's view of ttre dancer as (see Maletic, a complete being nThw spala hrathustra of dance is view this that s€en have lggT p.tsl1. *. In fact the work steiner's and Dalcrorc, co*putible with

dance work that1-aban was developing at Ascona at ttre time of the l9l 4 - lglg war has much in common with Eurhythmics andEurythmy. All three arerooted inreactions against

an increasingly scienrific and rational civilisation, and all were concerned *'ith rediscovering natural viulity and emotional expressiveness through movemenl But whereas I-aban (and wigman) were concerned to free dance from subordinarion to other art forms, we have seen ttratEurhytttsubordination to traditional western mics conrinued

is

mgsical rhlrhms. and that Steiner's Euiythmy effectively tied mor'€Inent, to interpreting poetry Or music. Laban, by rcaching d,ance *"ithout music, orby seEing music late in the choreograf*ric process, allowed the body to explore and deve1cp irs o*n rhy'thms and find movement possibilities thar \*'e!r caircnr"ise inhibited. Acccr,Crng to Wigman and Perrotet, Iaban's teaching elrc{rragC them m find ttreir own way of moving, and there r*,tsS annay s grea emphasis in his and his followers' teach-

n

h

d d a

v at

\,

ing on imp,rovisation. His work on movement, space effct eE., can be seen as guides to help the dancer more deeply ino their own experience of these areas. Iaban's aim can be seen as errouraging a dynamic and detenninately chaotic dance. The same motivation can be discerned in his

system

of notation which aims to record dance without ir Vera Maletic says that in Cloreographic

petrifying

r s n

)

t ?

; t

r

t t t ,)

(1926) I$an attempted to glve a dynamic rather than a satic description of dance elements andoutlines (1987 p5 l) Maletic has also shown 8ry28-32) that one of the frequent criticisrns of I-aban has been that he took up so many aparently diverse projects, often leaving them for his many collaboratrs to finish off. Wigman obserrred this charac' teristic too, but saw in it a different tendency, describing kban as 'a gleat wanderer, who after entering an unlmown country andhaving found whathe wanted c whathappened to meet his ne€d, would soon leave it for the next one to be explored' (Sorrel 197 5 p32). This is a very Nietzschean passage: Zarathusra describes himself as a wanderer, and the wanderer is arecurring image throughout Nieesche's bmks. I-aban se,ems !o have encouraged dancers to seek theirown unknown countries rather than inhabit his own: as he himself put it 'My aim is not o establish norms and dogmas, but to reawaken dance insighs' (Maletic 1987 p32). It is in this ttnt Laban mostresembles Nietzsche. Neitherpresented a fully wcked out and consistent theory. Their aims were libertarian:

o

undermine and deconstruct forms and conventions that intribit the free flow of 0rought and vitality. The scope of Wigman's work was much more sharpty focused. From l9l3 until 1942 she was fust and fuemost a dancer and choreographer. Like Isadora Duncan she is supposed to have always had a copy of Nietzsche's lhzs Spoke Tarathnsrra on her bedside table, and itisNietrsche's cmcept of the Dionysian that both dancen develqed in their wo*. Indeed the phrase "Dionysian dance" might conjure up the image of Isadora Duncan dancing

-a

passion-

ate, inloxicating flow of romantically sensuous moyemenl

But Nieusche indicated that the Dionysian sensibility was morepowerful and less palatable than this, usingthephrase '0re powers of horror'. In many of Wigman's pieces - her wirch dances, several dances of death, Totenmaal and ceremonial dance - she explored a gotesqw and demonic vision whose irrationalism surely exemplifies the Dionysian sensibility much more deeply than Duncan's aestheticism orlaban's flute-playing satyr. Wigman's nightmare dances come from unlocking the repressed and irrational @ionysian) powers of he unconscious mind. lvlartin Green tells us of Wigman's interest in psychology and her affain with psychoanalysts }Ians hinzhorn and

Heftert Binswanger. In writing of her creation of the horrifying figure of death in her 1926 Dance of Death, tllr^ lir*age between her notion of the Dionysian powers of horror and 0re psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious are eviden[ 'There it was: a play of unchained fantasy, capure( framed, realised in an artistic form - unique and final. I ask myself: What about the creative ideas which we be ours? How strong are 0re uncontrollable claim influences, shreds of memory or fractions of our knowledge kept in the storehouse of our minds, as they become part of

o

our vision?' (Screl 1975 p98) She goas qr frrom this to connectthe figueof death with German rrce memqies of the invading hoards of Genghis Khan: she had oured ttre part of Silesia that these had reachedjustbefae making thepiece. Thus hernotion of the collective rmconsciors is pervaded by the nationalistic sssentialisrn referred o earlier. But if one ignores this fa a moment, her concem with urrconfollable urrconsciors drives and with fantasy is remarkably similar o the ideas being developed at the same time by avant-garde theorists on the fringes of the sunealist movement like Artaud and Bataille who werc dso interested in Nietzsche's ideas. What Wigman shares wi0r 0rem is a similar rejection of the idea of the rational irdividual. But whereas Bataille was for a time a lv{arxist and was in the 1930's generally altgned wittr the left, Wigman belongedo aclass and generation of Germans whoconsidered that no self-respecting person had anything o do with politics. Whereas Bataille can consider 'The psychological srucure of fascism' (1985) it would never occur o Wigman that ttre 'strong uncontrollable influences......in the slore house of the mind' or which she writes might unconsciously condition one's political beliefs, or that art might be one way in which such influences worked. Laban and Wigman were, despite their artistic radicalism, conservatives in their social and political outlook at at time when the body urd dance itself were being politicised. Both ttrey and theNazis followedNietzsche's aphorism that it is only as an aesthetic phenomenon that the world and the existence of man is eternally justified. Walter Benjamin seems !o have been taking issue with this when he wrote in 1936 that whereas fascism renders politics aesthetic, lvlarxism responds by politicisin Eut(1973 p24). It is here that the similarities between Laban's mass movement choirs and the chceography of mass Nazi party rallies is significanL

We have seen ttrat Laban, Wigman and others found in Nietzsche' s writings a way out of what they perceived o be the impenonal, scientiflrc rationalism of modern civilisa-

tion, by exploring a libertarian irrationalism

expnessed

through the dancing body. In their aclnowledgment of he irrational pull of the emotions and of fanusy and desire which act physically on the body, they were rejecting the enlightenment notion that the individual is a being govemed by reason. What is at issue is whether opposition o fascism depends upon rational enlightened thought. To believe this in a &urow way is implicitly o seetheemotional and expressivepotential of thebody as irreducible torational thought and therefore potentially fascist. It would therefore follow that both ttre Nazis and l-aban and Wigmur shared a similar Nietzschean irrationalism in theirapproach to thebody and that this necessarily led to the terors of fascism. But one can think of examples of political leaders of the left such as Stalin and Mao who have elicited an emotional response similar to that generated by Hitler, and there have been choreographed mass political rallies in China and other communist countries. To call all this fascist would be highly inaccurate. tnstead one should conclude that emotional and physical response is part ofpeople's experience

29

of political involvement and that the body is a political entity" There is always a political level to our experience of dance. Our bodies are bottr the object of our subjective experience, of social Fessure - neittrer of which, it is suggested, arc necessarily rational. As an individual learns to dance, she or he find out about the limis of what their body can

sincerity and humanity' (Dalcru e1921

plafl. Dalctoze

was clearly not part of the counter+ulture which Green hypottresises.

and the sub!rct

do.

These limits are not only internally and subjectively

experierrced, they are also conditioned by received ideas which are the socially produced norms of what is sttpposed to be possible, and thus of what is permissible. Datrce is political in that it is aprivileged area in which these norrns are defined and contested. I-aban, Wigman and others believed ttrat they were

breaking away alogether from tte lifeless rationalism of their times - liberating dancers from the constricting conventions of a civilisation fr,om whose values ttrey felt increasingly estranged. It is very depressing, but fascinating also, ttrat what started out as an utopian ideal, should, through hisoricd circumstances have ended up contributing to a climate of acceptance and submission !o an evil political system. While Laban and Wigman possessed a sophisticated awareness of the irrational expressive potential of the body, they did not properly understand is social and ideological context, and mistakenly believed they could escape iS political implications.

Footnotes tU Alftough it is beyond the scope of ttris essay, Barttres is one of a group of French stnrcturalist and post-sEucturalist writers forwhom a formative experience was an early acquaintance with Nietzsche's ideas, and who have a view of the body which in some ways resembles that of ttre Gerrnan dancers. Barttres, FoucaulE Kristeva, Deleuse and Guauari all share a view of ttre body as subversive of the enlightenment view of humans as rational beings, ild whereas the German dancers were artistic radicals, nrriters like Barttres and Kristeva implicitly or explicitly supported avant garde anistic practices. Interesting also in this context is the work of Klaus Theweleit which using a view of thebody derived from Deleuse and Guattari and radical psychotherapy to criticise fascism and male sexuality. [2] Dalcroze's conservatism can be seen in his essay "How o Revive Dance" writren in 1912. There he recognised that dance as art was in a state of decay, but that Isadora Duncan and

her disciples offered hope for is renewal. He argues that the new dance should be 'founded on principles of beauty, purity,

30

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