ABOUT THE LIGHTNESS OF DANCE – HOW WE SEE, DESCRIBE AND PRESERVE DANCE TODAY?

Prof. Dr. Gabriele Brandstetter
Free University Berlin
Lecture delivered during the Festival of Opera and Ballet Art – Stara Zagora on 2 December, 2024.
Dear Madam Ballet Director, dear Ivet, Ladies and Gentlemen,
What do we see while watching a dance?
On the stage, in the hall, in a variety theater or in a museum?
Furthermore, what do we see, what are we doing, what do we feel when we ourselves are dancing – and also when “we are watching a dance performance”?
Before going into detail in the theme, I would like to convey the words of a philosopher:
Jean-Luc Nancy, who has dealt with dance many times, reflects on the connection between thought and movement, between heaviness and lightness – and puts forward questions about the heaviness, the importance of philosophical thought:
“What happens in the cave of Plato when you let free a prisoner? This is something which is never said: at the beginning the prisoners stay at the same place while the philosophical matter begins going round, starts, flies away… It seems that everything is led and finishes with what we see, but still, at the beginning it starts with the whirl and the very movement. Nancy adds: “By the way, Plato lived in a world where people danced and practiced gymnastics”.
The aim of this lecture is to deal with basic questions about dance as a form of the art of movement. In other words, we will do what is already familiar to you from other artistic disciplines, namely we will present the knowledge – for example about how movements are created, what materials and techniques are applied, as well as about the history and aesthetics of dance, using the methods of speaking and writing.
Dance is ephemeral /transient/ form of art. Transient, transitional – what we see for example this evening as practice of the dance movement /in a given dance spectacle/, will never be repeated again. And what we see and perceive, is the concrete materialness of dance: its physique and bodiness.
In other words, the focus today is not on the analysis of separate works, i.e. on the already completed choreographies /not even on “Coppelia”, a masterpiece of the classical ballet/. It is rather about the processes which happen before the staging of the works and which become tangible during the time of the very spectacles, namely the dance practice and the connected with it work on and with the body.
Why is this so useful for the perception of dance?
Because it gives an idea about the practice of studies of the movement. Because this is what dancers do – and at the same time, this is what is a theme and subject of the science of the dance art and the topical studies in the field of dance.
This practice contains knowledge, which we all share – knowledge which in most of the cases we are not conscious of. But despite this, it talks to us subconsciously when we are watching a dance. Our knowledge is activated when we are watching a dance, and it enters our aesthetic perception.
Let us view the common aspect of the bodies, which is specific for the dance as well, namely gravity. The Gravity.
All bodies in the world are subjected to gravity. In the process of the birth of the human body, as well as of almost all mammals there occurs a deep disparity in the experience of gravity, which acts on our physical body: the change from carrying and swimming in the fluid of the mother’s womb to the exposure of our own weight; a naked body, in the air, between the sky and the earth.
The dancer Steve Paxton, founder of the “contact improvisation”, because of his life dance experience and precise work with gravity says:
„Birth is not so much a beginning as it is an abrupt change in which suddenly there are different factors than those in the womb, and there is gravity. With gravity a new negotiation begins, and these terms condition us for the rest of our lives.”
This evolutionary developed „human state“ is a movement from a horizontal to a vertical position. From lying, sitting and getting up to a straight position and walking or a two-legs movement.
Much research has been done about the importance of standing up and walking in a straight position: in palaeography and evolutionary research, in anthropology, medicine and anatomy, in philosophy and culturology. Since birth till death each human being deals with movement between the positions of lying and standing in his daily way of existence. With different experiences in the self-perception – from joy and lightness of „standing up“ to he pain of walking because of he wearing out of he body over time. This human state refers tot he dancers as well, and to all other people, but in a different way. Because exactly this physical state – i.e. the experiencing of gravity – to turning into a basic factor in the research of he possibilities of movement.
How does movement appear? What effect does gravity cause on the development of he dance styles? And how is it conveyed to all those who watch and perceive dance as an aesthetic and kinesthetic experience?
Further, I would like to highlight two dimensions of the dance approach to gravity /although, of course, there are many intermediary stages/:
First is the perspective of the vertical, i.e. the movement to the sky.
After that is the perspective of going down /landing/ or discovery /meeting with/ the floor surface.
This is a polarized orientation of the dance – directed upwards or to the floor. Contrary pressure, which in the 20s of the 20th century the dancer and dance theoretician Rudolf von Laban in his ground-laying of the dance principles, called by him “choreology” distinguishes between “high dances”, for example ballet and “low dances”, as for example the expressive dance or the different kinds of folk dances.
In his text “The Vertical” the dance anthropologist A. K. Volinsky assigns the emotional dimension of the movement in a vertical direction to the related with it glance directed upwards: human buildings for example, which aspire to the sky like cathedrals, obelisks, skyscrapers “stand up”.
“With the vertical begins human culture and the gradual invasion of the sky and earth.”
According to Volinsky, ballet is the dance form in which the orientation to the vertical is developed to the slightest detail:
“Only ballet contains all aspects of the vertical in its precise mathematically formed and universally captured expression.”
Verticality is a quality of dance which literally goes on top of the ballet of the 19th century: the balance, the directing upwards through dance figures, jumps and the ballerina floating on her tips of the toes, touching the floor only with a slight surface.
Is this the reason why ballet, founded in its artistic and academic form in the court of Louis XIV in the 17th century enjoys such popularity on the stages all over the world till modern times? This dance on a vertical lifting, on the tips of the toes. Its changeable lightness and power in the jumps and liftings? The graceful balance in the difficult poses and figures.
Namely the aspiration upwards, the lightness and gracefulness – ready to fly – is what Hans Christian Andersen senses in the dancer Fanny Cerrito. Her appearance is “like a flying in the dance swallow, a play of the psyche, a flight”.
Ballet acts on the audience through this embodiment of /false/ anti-gravity lightness – movement which promises freedom and which we as spectators can co-experience, though we ourselves cannot perform. /In the theory of dance we are talking about kinesthetic empathy, and in neurology – about mirror neurons/.
The idea of aesthetics of lightness, agility and anti-gravity was formulated mostly in the 18th century in philosophical and artistic aesthetic debates and was defined as a particular quality of beauty: the gracefulness as beauty of movement /Friedrich Schiller/; a quality of beauty which moves inside and outside – in the sense of “movere” /in Latin it means “to move”/.
Even today the ballet technique is practiced not only by ballet dancers and troupes – the principles of the ballet practice are studied under a specific form /called for example “floor barre work”/ in the field of the modern and contemporary dance as well.
„floor barre work“ – The ballet on the floor is a technique in ballet training, where the basic in the ballet practice is the transfer of the lying position on the floor and displaces the effort, necessary in a straight position.
For example Steve Paxton /whom I mentioned earlier/, dancer from the New York dance stage “Judson Dance”, explains when asked why he conducts “workshop on barre” /i.e. practice on a bar/ although the dancers were not ballet-dancers:
„because exercises have something… kind of extension, or reaching, going to the limit of your leverage and then operating there.”
In a similar way the choreographer from the field of dance theater Susanne Linke, who was trained together with Pina Bausch in the studio “Volkwang” and who has practiced dance and teaching activity, also integrates the technique of verticality and orientation of the body from the ballet in her system of training – “internal hanging” – thus she calls the developed by her system of movement practice. Similarly to Pina Bausch and Reinhild Hoffmann, Linke also takes ballet lessons during her training alongside other dance techniques.
These are only two examples – and of course, nowadays there are training conceptions which entirely discard ballet and its verticality and system of bodily orientation as well as some other training elements.
But which are the specific parameters of movement and physical orientation of the body which build up this specific verticality of ballet – its lightness and elegance?
The practice and the connected with it physical technique, called in the ballet “exercise”, were codified for the aesthetics of the ballet by the Italian dancer and ballet-master Carlo Blasis at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries /valid in practice now too/: he called his basic theoretical work “Code of Terpsichore” /1828/. Blasis develops a conception of mechanics, kinetics and autonomy as a theory of movement – it can also be called grammar, which causes a specific aesthetic performance, namely movement of gracefulness, of lightness. He developed a theory of balance: of balance and unbalance, of stability of the pose and of its instability.
Terpsichore /from Greek: τέρψη – “pleasure” and χoρός – ‘dance”: “enjoying the dances”/ in the Ancient Greek mythology is the Muse of dances and choir singing.
What does it mean for the forming of the body of the dancer in this unnatural form? The study requires from the dancer to measure his own body from a double perspective – from the point of view of himself and of the movement. The mechanical-kinetic challenge consists in studying the work on the weight, balance, the play between instability and temporary stability of the poses and movements related to geometrical principles, as well as the balancing of the body with the help of what Blasis calls perpendicular line. So, it is not enough to imitate or feel the body.
As an example of a pose of gracefulness and lightness – as a movement in the vertical – Carlo Blasis points out the pose of the arabesque and attitude /position/ – and views it in its unstable construction, like linea serpentina, using the example of Mercury by Giovanni da Bologna.
Figura serpentinata /Italian serpentinato “snake-like”, serpentina “snake-like line” or line with a spiral motif/
What, however, we have not mentioned yet:
For a flight you need the earth. The earth is the reason for taking off. It provides the base for the pressure in the vertical. Dancers use the floor to go up in a jump and floating in the dance on toes. The lightness of flying, as well as the light and noiseless landing come from a movement which through folding of the knees gives a power impulse directed to the floor. Thus, before the rising in the vertical there is sinking or a movement downwards. In the ballet this preparation for flying /”préparation“/ is called plié: – folding of the knees.
Or again a set of codified movements, which prepare the dancer in different ways for the moment of lifting and turning into lightness: a landing as preparation and beginning of the movement of lightness.
100 years later Rudolf von Laban called this movement “counter-pressure” /it is still applied in contemporary dance as well/.
This describes exactly that relation of contrary forces – simultaneously to the earth and the sky, which can be dosed in many different ways. And so, the factor of dynamics is also included in the analytical conception, developed by Laban – the exhaustion of power, which is used for the preparation of a long or high jump; or elastic and soft, deep hanging of the body, which can be used for circling or wavy movement of the whole torso, a twist directed upwards.
When watching, we co-experience what the dancers practice in order to show it in the performance, as an exciting double movement: we feel it intuitively and in a kinesthetic-empathic way in our own bodies: like delight in the agility and elasticity.
The theme of lightness and the image of flying are reflected in the very dance.
For example in “Sylphides” /choreography by Filippo Taglioni, 1832, Paris/, one of the first Romantic ballets at the beginning of 19th century, the theme is not only the weightless of these airy creatures, the Sylphides, but also their very appearance on the stage: the dance on toes of the ballerina /this is one of the first ballets where Marie Taglioni dances on her toes/; and simultaneously the introduction as a scenic technique – of flying objects: the sylphides rise up in the air and float freely in space.
At the end of the 19th century there appears another example of flight: “Firebird” – fairy-tale choreography of the Russian ballet in which the transformation into another creature and the flight of the bird are embodied in brilliant jumps and of course the dance on toes.
And finally, in the 20th century, when flying becomes a technical reality and simultaneously falling down is a real risk, dancers like Deborah Hay reflect on how far the old idea of floating and flying in dance is still contemporary; at the same time this is connected with a political statement, sort of “Manifesto of Opposition” to the old aesthetic of ballet. Deborah Hay comes from the New York Dance Judson Stage and the minimalistic art; in 2010 she developed a play, created after the bank crisis and the depression in 2008, entitled “No Time to Fly”.
Thus we reach the contrary action of flying: to orientation on and upon the earth. It took a significantly long time of the European artistic dance until gravity, in particular the weight of the body was taken into account as an important, positive factor for the dance movement.
It is exactly the free and expressive dance since the beginning of 20th century which has turned the movement on the floor, the diverse use of the weight of the body, as well as the related to this dynamics and orientation into basic characteristics of a different aesthetics – the idea of the modern dance.
An exceptional example for this is “Witch Dance” of Mary Wigman.
She showed her work for the first time in 1914 – the year when the Fist World War started.
And in this short solo one can notice something of the dynamics, rage and despair – in counter-action of the so-called mobilization.
You can find a short video piece in the Internet, which fortunately is preserved and can be watched in YouTube /but from the later version of the 20s of the 20th century/.
The decisive and unheard of till now novelty of this dance is in the fact that this choreography is performed only in a sitting position on the floor, with a different degree of energy and movement: spreading of the legs, sliding forwards and backwards, drawing a circle around yourself sitting:
The discovery of the floor and the work with it and on it turns into a fundamental structure – a real revolution or at least a reform of the idea of dance in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The affirmation of the heaviness, gravity and movement on and along the floor is connected with different aesthetic and bodily-practical solutions and changes in dance.
Today we accept a large part of them as granted, while it is impossible here to consider all the aspects.
Despite this, there are several things which I would like to include&
The movement on and with the floor – such as lying, getting up, standing straight – and after that the inclusion most of all of movements like “walking” in different strides and running as an element of movement and the dynamics of the dance, – all this is based on forms of training: starting, for example, with the way in which Martha Graham uses the center of the body and the connection with the floor and the related to this dynamics of “contract and release”, to the sequences of running in the choreographies of the dancers from Judson for example of Wim Vandekeybus, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and others.
Translation Iveta Marinova
The event is realized with the support of the National Culture Fund.