Defigurative Choreography: From Marcel Duchamp to William Forsythe

Author(s): Gabriele Brandstetter and Marta Ulvaeus

Source: TDR (1988-), Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1998), pp. 37-55
Published by: The MIT Press
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Defigurative Choreography
From Marcel
Duchamp
to William
Forsythe
Gabriele Brandstetter
Modern dance
presents
itself to the viewer as a text whose matrix absorbs
and
transfigures
a
variety
of codes. Three of these
codes-image, body,
and
language-will
be considered in terms of distinct notions of the
concept
of
"figure"
and the
strategies
of its
integration
into the
choreographic
text.
Choreography-with
theatrical
performance
forms that are
loosely
classified
into different
genres
with such terms as
ballet,
modern
dance,
postmodern
dance,
and dance
theatre-brings
into view the
problematic
of what is cur-
rently being
debated in the discourse of "the crisis of
representation."
The
question
"Are we conscious of the
ways
in which we
represent things
with
our bodies?" serves as the
starting point again
and
again
for the work of the
Frankfurt-based
choreographer
William
Forsythe
(in
Odenthal
I994:37).
And
it is the code of classical ballet from which he draws his
interrogation-ballet
that in the 20th
century,
in the
process
of its
rejection,'
its restoration as a
"pure,"
formal dance,2 and its
hybridization
as it is combined and cross-bred
with
multiple
other movement codes-that has
undergone myriad
transfor-
mations and therefore is
always present
in
Forsythe's choreography
if
only
as
the matrix of a
performance
convention.
The
questioning
of the
possibility
of
representation
is tied to the notion of
the
figure.
In what
follows,
the
concept
of
"figure"
will be used in four con-
texts:
first,
in the sense of the
physical
form of the
body,
in reference to the
corresponding
convention in the visual
arts,
particularly sculpture; secondly,
as
rhetorical
figure,
but here understood
specifically
as the
unity
of a movement
figure
and its rules of combination in the
vocabulary
of
ballet; third,
as inter-
pretive unity,
in Erich Auerbach's sense of the
"figura"
of the
figural principle
as it relates to the
dramaturgy
of the
choreographic
text in
Forsythe's
works
(see
Auerbach
I953);
and
finally,
in the
processual sense,
as
perceptual phe-
nomenon
(as
in the
phenomena
of the
"figure-ground
relation" and the
"fig-
ured
after-effect").
"Figure"
marks a
unity
of the
prevailing language
materials in
representation.
Derived from the
Latinfingere, "figure"
stands for the external
shape
of a
body
and,
in a broader
sense,
for
sculpture
as well. The
spatial
form of the dancer's
The Drama Review
42, 4 (T16o),
Winter
1998. Copyright
?
1998
New York
University
and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology.
37
38
Gabriele Brandstetter
body presents "figure"
as a
unity.
In theatrical
performance
conventions,
figure
has
traditionally
been the bearer of
identity.
But in relation to the choreo-
graphic
text,
figure
also means the
unity
of a movement
figure
and the deriva-
tive
possibilities
of its
positioning
in the
syntax
of movement
sequences.
The
task of
choreography-with
which
Forsythe
confronts himself in his works-is
to abandon this notion of
"figure"
as
unity (or,
as he
says,
as
"operative unity"),
to
stage
this dissolution within and
by
means of the
choreographic presentation
of
figure.
"One
springs
out of one's own
body
into
nothingness,
into 'Man wei3
nicht'
[one
doesn't
know]" (Forsythe
in Odenthal
I994:34).
Before I follow this
process-the
dissolution of
figure,
which
presents
itself
as
defiguration-in Forsythe's work,
I would like to show certain
possibilities
of
representation
and dissolution
(and
dissolution within
representation)
of
"figure" using
the model of the "Transformer"
(see
Hawthorne
1989
and
Lyotard 1977).
A Transformer is a small
figure,
a
toy
statue,
made of:
connected
pieces,
which in one form look like a
robot,
while in a sec-
ond,
they
resemble
something
different: a vehicle
(truck, car,
motor-
cycle),
an animal
(insect
or
dinosaur),
or one of the inanimate
objects (a
cassette,
a
tape recorder)
that
increasingly
have been
making
their
way
into
preteen
culture.
(Hawthorne I989:2)3
Transformers are two different
figures
in
one,
two
corporeal manifestations,
which
through
certain
manipulations-through slip
mechanisms and
snap
de-
vices-are converted into one another
by
means of
hinges.
The term "Trans-
former" describes the
changing
of
form,
which is not a
metamorphosis,
but a
folding
of
prefigured patterns
into a
mechanically equipped
alter
ego. They
are cars or radios
anthropomorphosized. Through
a few
"opening"
move-
ments
they
are concealed or revealed as fantastic robots. An ad
states,
"Trans-
formers-more than meets the
eyes.
Transformers-robots in
disguise"
(in
Hawthorne
I989:6).
The Transformer becomes the
figure
of a
form-changing
and
-disappearing
in which a back and forth
(fort/da) game
of
defiguration
and
refiguration
becomes visible-an illusion in which the Transformer is
staged
as
performer.
The ad
slogan
refers not
only
to the doubled form but also to
the
necessity
of a double vision. The manifestation of the Transformer that is
in view doesn't let its alternate
figure disappear completely.
This
one,
on the
horizon of
anticipated repetition,
lies at the
periphery
of the visual field-it is
absent and
yet
still
barely present
on the horizon of the transformative act. But
the mechanics of
folding
into the one or the other without an intermediate
space entering
as a
gap
between them in the moment of
twisting,
a mechanics
which
thereby
admits no deviation from the cliches of the
product,
neverthe-
less reinforces a
preset binary pattern
in that it "reduces all
relationships
to
confrontations"
(6).
The fascination of the transformer is
simple-Porsche
as
Batman,
Batman as Porsche.
As
processes
of
defiguration
and
refiguration
in
choreography,
"trans-
former/transformation"
suggests something
different.
Forsythe's pieces
work
at the
opening
of such
simple folding
structures.
Choreographer
and dancer
become transformers of
open figures,
transformers of themselves: "You're in
the situation that
you
watch a
piece
that isn't
yours.
I called it
Alie/nA(c)tion.
I
created a
piece
that's a
stranger
to me. I don't know the
choreography"
(Forsythe
in Odenthal
1994:36).
Alie/nA(c)tion,
like
Forsythe's
other
choreographies,
has to do with this act of
the
foreignness
of "the same" as a
modality
of not
knowing;4
it has to do with
the
experience
of
otherness,
strangeness,
and alienation as
performance,
as "ac-
tion,"
and as
process.
The dissolution-de- and
refiguration-of "figure"
in
Defigurative Choreography 39
choreography
is not
possible
without
giving up
the idea of
identity that, in the
performance
of
signs,
is
coupled
with
"representation."
I will trace these as-
pects along
two lines: first of
all,
in terms of the surrender of
"figure"
as the
formula for
identity
and
pictorial unity
in artistic
representation-a transgres-
sion of the borders of art as a
system
and its
presentation
in the artifact-which
is
prominent
in the works of Marcel
Duchamp.
As an
example,
I will consider
his work
usually
referred to as the
Large
Glass
(I915-1923),
as well as its cho-
reographic transcriptions.
The relation of
"figure"
at the interface of
image
and
movement is evident in the work's actual
title,
La Mariee mise a nu
par
ses
celibataires,
meme
(The
Bride
Stripped
Bare
by
Her
Bachelors, Even),
a title
which no
longer
acts as the
topos
of
identity indicating unity,
but rather enters
into a
choreographic
translation with the
decentering
and
marginalization
of
meme,
the
topographical figure
of
identity.
I will then follow the
processes
of
defigurative choreographing
in various works of William
Forsythe.
Meme-or Decentered Movement
With Marcel
Duchamp's
work The
Large
Glass-which he worked on from
I915
to
1922
and
officially
declared
"definitively
unfinished" in
I9235-the
notion of the "work" in its
insularity
moves out of the center of
representa-
tional conventions. With this work
Duchamp
formulated the
question
of
whether there exists between the
designations
of art and anti-art a third
possi-
bility-a
locus of indifference in aesthetic
specification.
The work of the artist
begins
at this site of
indetermination,
out of the
not-deciding,
as
movement,
a
movement that-"as
critique
of
painting"6-becomes
an
open-ended passage
from the center to the
margin
of the field of determination in art.
Duchamp
spoke
of a
"great delay"-a process
which in no
way
refers to
production.
It
doesn't have to do with the time or
tempo
of the creative
process,
but rather
with the movement itself as the structure of
representation. "Delay,"
as end-
lessly
slowed-down
movement, replaces
the
appearance
of the
image.
Move-
ment becomes
image.
In the notes to the Green Box
(1934) Duchamp
wrote:
"Use
'delay'
instead of
picture
or
painting; picture
on
glass
becomes
delay
in
glass-but delay
in
glass
does not mean
picture
on
glass"
(in
Sanouillet and
Peterson
I973:26). Thereby
neither the
category
of the
presentation
itself
(art
as the
representational form)
nor the
genre (picture, painting, sculpture)
is
nameable:
Time,
which can in no
way
be
fixed,
alone
steps
into the
gap
of in-
determination-"A
delay
in
glass" (Daniels 1992:73). Delay, referring
to what?
Correlative sizes of the
site,
the relative
time,
and fixed coordinates are not
discernable. In terms of the motionless and static connotations of
glass,
this
formula of retardation works like an ironic reversal of the
dynamism
of the
avantgarde (the "Dynamo"
of the
Futurists,
for
example)-the process
of end-
less
slowing
down until the
melting point
is reached.
Octavio Paz considered this
"glass"
and its enclosures-and here even the
spectator
is
enclosed,
since he can't
perceive
this
glass "sculpture"
without
seeing
himself in it-as "one of the most hermetic works of our
century"
(1978:29).
But I am not concerned here with an
analysis
of the
many interpre-
tations of the
Large
Glass,
the Machines Celibataires
(see Carrouges 1954;
see
also Szeemann
I975). Rather,
I am
considering
the act of
staging
as
staging
of
the act-of the act in the sense of action and
acting
as well as in the sense of
nude
portraiture
in the visual arts.
Duchamp began
his career with his scandal-
provoking painting
Nu descendant un escalier
(Nude Descending
a
Staircase,
19I2)-a
presentation
of
nudity literally
set in motion. The
choreography
in
Duchamp's
work,
which moves the
figure
of the nude
(as
a
unity)
out of the
center and into an undefined border
zone,
already begins
with this
early
I
Defigurative Choreography 41
painting;
mise a nu7-a
staging (mise-en-scene)
of the nude as act of the act
and as
staging
of the
staging,
meme.
The movement of
delay
also
appears
in the title La Mariee mise a nu
par
ses
celibataires, mmem... itself.8
The title
stages
a
figure
of decenteredness. In the
winding
movement of the
phrase,
there is a
pull
toward the
periphery-glid-
ing
out to the
margin
and over the
edge
in the
ellipsis
of an
interrupted
line,
as an undefinable rallentando
[gradual slowing].
The adverb
meme,
pushed
to
the
edge,
after the
comma,
was added later
by Duchamp (Paz 1978:33; Daniels
1992:97 ff)-this
too a
delay.
Used as an
adjective,
the word meme
signals
an
almost
emphatic
intonation of
identity. According
to Maurice
Grevisse, meme
stands as
"adjectif 'indefini'
et variable" for that instance that is "not the other"
("qui
n'est
pas autre") (I980:514). Meme,
whose
etymological
roots
go
back to
the Latin
egomet ipse ("moi-meme
en
personne"),9
stresses
identity
in more
ways
than one. Le
grand
Robert lists the
following
uses for meme: l'identite absolue of
the one and the
same;
simultaneity (la simultaneite);
similarity (la similitude);
and
equality (l'egalite) (Robert 1985:353)-the absolutely homogeneous,
af-
firmed as a
figure
of
unity
with the term meme.
Does meme as a
figure
of
identity
now
slip
out of the center of the
Large
Glass
(the
center that
displays love-m'aime)'I
to the
periphery?
As an adverb
following
the
sentence," meme, "self/even,"
moves to the
edge,
into a
marginal
position,
in which not
identity
but
uncertainty
and
openness
are indicated. As
an
adverb,
meme becomes a
particle
of
indeterminacy,
the
supplemental word,
which
Duchamp,
in interviews with Pierre
Cabanne,
claimed he added
precisely
because it had no
significance
and had
nothing
to do with the title or the art-
work: "The
adverb,
a
magnificent
demonstration of
'adverbiality'
meant noth-
ing" (Paz I978:33).
The
particle's
ambivalent
position-as
a
figure
of
uncertainty-at
the
margin
of the
sentence,
enables movement: the
pull away
from the center-the
point
that in
choreographic
terms marks the
midpoint (of
the
circle)
as the locus of
identity
of the
figure (Forsythe
sets
up
and disturbs this
ballet
topos
in his
choreography
for In the
Middle,
Somewhat
Elevated, I988)-
into the
open produces
a curious suction. This
movement-always,
of
course,
slowed
down-appears
as
repeated thrusts, as,
perhaps,
in the
many supplemen-
tal
notes,
the texts from the so-called Green
Box,
which enabled the
Large
Glass
to become a
book'2 and an exhibition room
(en
miniature).'3
This movement of
supplements
to the text of the
Large Glass,
which
stages
the "nude" anew as "eros'
matrix,"
continues on the
stage
in the works of
Merce
Cunningham
and
Jan Fabre,
which I shall
briefly
examine.
First,
con-
sider Merce
Cunningham's choreography
in Walkaround Time
(1968),
for
which
Jasper Johns reproduced Duchamp's
La Mariee mise a nu
par
ses
celibataires, meme. The
Large
Glass was divided
up
and screened on
individual,
mobile,
clear
plastic
boxes that were scattered
throughout
the room
(see
Sontag I990:30 fi).
This
time,
the
Large
Glass
(which by I93I
had been bro-
ken in
transport),
has
stepped out, scattered,
from its own center. In the
movement of the nine dancers
(an
analogy
to the nine celibataires in
Duchamp's Large Glass)
between the
transparent "glass" cubes,
the
figures
are
staged
to be next to each other and after each other at one and the same time.
Their bodies show
through
the
glass,
and in a constant
exchanging
of
posi-
tions,
a
proliferation
of the
figures
occurs:
they
are
alternately placed
in front
of or behind the
transparent geometric bodies,
appearing
as if
they
are embed-
ded in exhibition cases.
Following Cunningham's choreographic principle
of
taking every
location and
every figure
in the room as
equal
and
equally
en-
titled,
using
chance to situate the bodies as
"points
in
space
and time"
(see
Cunningham
in Kostelanetz
I992:37-39)
and
allowing
all viewer
perspectives
in this
spatial arrangement,
the
multiplied glass
becomes a
staggered
frame of
movement. A
frame, however,
which-as mise-en-scene of the
figures-itself
1. The Bride
Stripped
Bare
by
Her
Bachelors,
Even
(The Large Glass)
by
Marcel
Duchamp (1915-
1923). Oil, varnish,
lead
foil,
lead wire.
Philadelphia
Museum
of
Art:
Bequest of
Katherine S. Dreier.
(Photo
courtesy of
the
Philadelphia
Museum
of Art)
42
Gabriele Brandstetter
participates
in the movement. The
displayed transparency
of the
glass
allows
the bodies of the dancers to
appear incorporeal, transparent, comparable
to the
exhibitive and mirror effect of
shop
windows.'4
The view
through
the ex-
posed figures
becomes the mise-en-scene of the mise a nu-of the act of
movement and of the unclothed
figure. Cunningham
sets
Duchamp's cut-up
love-machine into
separate geometrical figures
within his
choreography,
and
the movement of the dancers in the
gaps
becomes the
hinge
of the decentered
parts.
15
"The
logic
of the
hinge,"
writes
Paz,
rules the world of
Duchamp's
work:
What
unites,
separates; by uncovering
the
object, transparency interposes
itself between that
object
and
my gaze [...I]t
is the
glass
that
separates
us
from the desired
object
but which at the same time makes it visible. The
glass
of otherness and of sameness: we cannot break it or
escape
from it
because the
image
that reveals us is our own
image
as we watch it watch.
(Paz 1978:152-53)
Always gliding
toward the
periphery-in
the border
position
of the self/
meme,
into the
out(side)
of the
identity-figure-the
dancers walk
(sit, stand,
pause)
in the circle of time.16 The
alphabet
of the
Cunninghamesque
movement
figures,
the elements of his
training
such as the "roll
ups," everyday movements,
as well as
complex jump
combinations and balance
positions, step
into the trans-
parent image-space
of the
glass:
motion
inclusions,
implements
of time.
"Delay,"
the deceleration of the
relationship
between text and
production,
appears
to
apply
to the aforementioned
transcriptions
of the
Large
Glass as well
as to the
Large
Glass itself.'7 The
circularity
of the
process
in the erotic ma-
chinery
of the
Large
Glass-the Walkaround Time of a never resolved
suspense
of desire-becomes the motor that drives
Jan
Fabre's
piece
Elle etait et elle
est,
mmem
(She
Was and She
Is, Even, 1991).
Fabre,
who counts
Duchamp among
the artists who have influenced his
work,
staged
the
Large
Glass as an
incessantly cycling speech-movement (see
Mattenklott
1993).
The Bride as
"sex-cylinder" (Duchamp)
in La Mariee mise
nu
par
ses
celibataires, meme becomes a
speech
machine in Fabre's
transcrip-
tion. In
Duchamp's
Glass,
the "letter box" of the
alphabet
forms the
hinge
between the vertical and the horizontal
parts
of the Bride: "The line of
sepa-
ration between above and below/ is
my desire-magnet" (Fabre I99I:37).
Sub-
sequently,
in
delay,
the mixture of letters is
expelled.
Fabre's
nonstop speech
from the mouth of the Bride-the subtitle reads: "Solo for a
Young (Mary
Ascending)
Woman"-exhibits an
ejaculate
of
never-changing
words
issuing
from desire's "machine celibataire."
My only
function consists of
making
love
again
and
again
and
again
and
again,
and
again,
and
again
in
many
different forms.
(Fabre I991:30)
In a monotonous
voice,
the
Bride,
"sous toutes sortes de
figures," spells
out
text from
Duchamp's Large
Glass,
ordering
its elements into an
assemblage
of
quotations:
the "chocolate
grinder," "fly wheel,"
"pistons"
and
"buffers,"
"cylinders," "tin,
cords and iron
wire,"
"illuminating gas"
and "love
gaso-
line";
men/spectators-"the poor suckers...voyeurs/
with a stolen
glance/
in
wait for
my undressing" (Fabre I991:33).
Mise a nu de
"moi-meme,"
and
yet
Defigurative Choreography 43
"no
exposed
I"
(33)-a
meme that is
marked,
and that indicates the "identite
absolue"-is revealed
here;
there is
only emptiness.
Fabre's
choreography stages
this
"exposing" (of emptiness) through
the
posi-
tioning
of the bodies and
spaces.
In the
production
of She Was and She
Is,
Even
he
staged
three
spaces
in a
specific relationship:
on one
side,
the inner
stage
space,
on the
other,
the audience
space-as
"a
long,
narrow,
dark
body
for the
'voyeurs"'
(in
Hoet and de Greef
1994:127).
In between lies another
space,
a
"no-man's-land"
separated by
a lit surface: the
space
of the
enraptured
figure
of
the woman
(Assomption),
Mariee/Maria. "The
in-between-space
as eternal
pas-
sage
between
longing
and fulfillment"
(127).
This
space,
which remains
empty-blank-becomes
the
objet
trouve of the
choreography.
The "lit surface"
is forced
open
as the locus of
transparency;
cut in as
figure,
and in there the "in-
sect" of the
Bride'8 presents itself as
(glass)
enclosure. In
France,
"mariee" is the
popular
name for a moth: "noctuelle"
(owl moth)
in
"glass" (Paz 1978:33-34).
With the idea of the insect Fabre makes another connection to
Duchamp,
to
both the
Large
Glass and the most famous of his
Readymades,'9
the urinal titled
Fontain
(1917):
to the
one,
with his
object Passage
I
(1993),
a
sculpture
of a uri-
nal
completely
covered with
preserved, large, shimmering-blue beetles;
and the
other,
with a series of female
figures
that are exhibited as an installation entitled
Wall
of
the
Climbing Angel (I994). Here,
Fabre works with wire
sculptures
that
resemble female
mannequins
and are covered with dresses made of
shimmering
beetle shells.
Suspended
in the
emptiness
of the
gallery space,
these suits of ar-
mor-a frozen
metamorphosis
between nature and
art-again
etch the
space
of
the Mariee
(the virgin/the insect)
into the
glass:
"Transformers in the Skies."
Fabre's interest in
working
with
insects,
which from the
very beginning
and
in
many ways
has informed his creative
activity,
can be traced back to his
study
of the research done
by
his
grandfather,
renowned
entomologist
Jean-
Henri Fabre
(Hoet
and de Greef
1994:19, 48).
For
Fabre,
even
drawing
is asso-
ciated with the
image
of the insect: in the
activity
of
etching
and in the idea of
metamorphosis.
His works in the visual arts arise from the
cutting
of tracks
into a surface: the endless
scribbling
of the Bic
ballpoint pen
on cloth and
pa-
per.
In
Changing Leaves,
a series in which he mounts insects on Bic-blue
paper,
a reversible encounter occurs-the insect as
paper,
the
paper
as insect
(Hoet
and de Greef
I994:4I).
The idea of
etching
in
space
also dominates Fabre's
choreography.
The
etching
cuts the
physical form,
the
unity
of the
figure,
in
two. The
"insect,"
as the
figure
of the
divided,
segmented form,
replaces
the
"individual" as a
figure
of indivisible
unity
of form. In Fabre's ballet works De
danssecties
(The
Dance
Sections, 1987)
and The Sound
of
One Hand
Clapping
(I990,
a collaboration with
Forsythe),
the
figures
of the dancers-some of
them in
armor,
appearing
like
shining
insects-cuts
through
the
space
in ex-
tremely
slowed
down,
extremely precise
movements and
poses.
Fabre calls
these
performers
of intersection "warriors of
beauty":
"The warriors of
beauty
are
insect,
actors and dancers. We are all social insects"
(Hoet
and de Greef
I994:13).
In the
theatre,
the work of
choreographing
on the "insect"
body
of
incision in the end is directed toward the zone between the
sharp edges
of the
outline,
which-like the
contingent
movement of the
scribbling
of blue sur-
faces-no
longer
derives from the
workings
of the rational codes of ballet. As
in the
drawings,
which he makes
aggressive through "rips" (51),
Fabre also
seeks to
"rip open"
the
space
with the
staging
of movement: as a tear in the
fissure in which "the
space
between the dancers
begins
to dance"
(II7).
Such reflection of the
self-mirroring open space points
to the
choreographic
search for the bottom of the bottom-the mise en
abyme2?
of the dance-which
Forsythe again
and
again stages
in his
works,
literally,
in the
destabilizing
of
the foundation of the movement in a
gaping
crack in the floor.
44
Gabriele Brandstetter
2. William
Forsythe's
Alien/A(c)tion.
Ballet
Frankfurt, 1993. (Photo
?
Self
Meant to Govern
Dominik
Mentzos)
William
Forsythe's Choreography
William
Forsythe's
works reflect
always
anew that the
beginning
and the
end of the text of
choreography
are not
representable.
The
gesture
of
pointing
toward this
nonrepresentability
is
imaginable,
however-as
performance.
At
the "end" of
Alie/nA(c)tion,
the curtain rises and falls four
times,
in
repetition
of the
punning
word
game
that a
dancer/speaker (the
choice of
"languages"
in
Forsythe's choreography
releases all conventional
patterns
of
ascription,
roles,
or
figures,
of theatrical
presentation)
scans
along
with the
rising
and
falling
of
the cloth black-box:
"Cut, Schnitt, Shit,
Schnitzel..." The end as a "cut" and
the
beginning
of a
piece
as the
preview
of a
(technical)
rehearsal, in which ev-
erything
has
already happened
and been
repeated.
For
example,
"Firstext,"
the
first
part
of
Dreiteiligen
Ballettabend
(A
Ballet
Evening
in Three
Parts, 1995),
whose title announces itself as the "first
text,"
is dissimulated in a
choreogra-
phy
"without a
beginning."
In
Forsythe's
words: "In
Slingerland
I
spin
in all
directions like
crazy. Beginnings
are dark and there is no end in
sight.
No
fixed
points, lines,
or
planes:
no
balance,
no
justice"
(in
Horowitz
1989).
In his
choreography, Forsythe attempts
to
bring
to
performance
those ideas
about text that have been
put
forth in the discourse of
poststructuralism.
A
passage
from Roland Barthes's
S/Z,
about the
inconclusiveness,
the multi-
vocality,
the endless
reinscription
and translation of
text,
was
printed
in the
program
of
Forsythe's
ballet
Impressing
the Czar
(1988):
In
fact,
the
meaning
of a text can be
nothing
but the
plurality
of its
sys-
tems,
its infinite
(circular) "transcribability":
one
system
transcribes an-
other,
but
reciprocally
as well: with
regard
to the
text,
there is no
Defigurative
Choreography 45
"primary,"
"natural," "national,"
"mother" critical
language:
from the
outset,
as it is
created,
the text is
multilingual;
there is no entrance lan-
guage
or exit
language
for the textual
dictionary,
since it is not the
dictionary's (closed)
definitional
power
that the text
possesses,
but its in-
finite structure.
(Barthes 1974:120)
The
entry
into a movement
text,
the
picking up
and
rewriting
of it as cho-
reographic process,
looks different in
Forsythe's
work than is usual in ballet re-
hearsals. In the search for new combinations and
positions
of the dance
figures,
he instructs his dancers to renounce the idea of
"meaning":
"You have to
get
used to
simply babbling
these words and
developing
a sense of
being
confronted
with them in the middle of the sentence"
(in
Fischer
i993:n.p.).2'
In order to
show his
process,
to
penetrate
the
transversality
of
languages (speech, writing,
step), Forsythe
relies on the
system
of
(verbal) speech
in
nearly
all his
stagework.
Reaching
for the thesaurus is
part
of the
choreographic
work. In
Artifact (1984)
Forsythe presents
a "lexicon" of words and a structure scheme based on a
syntax
that was
developed
in the rehearsal
process (see
R6mer
1993:27-46);
in Eidos:
Telos
(I995),
definitions and
etymological
references are
juxtaposed.
What does the term
"figure"
mean in this context?
In the
representational
domain of dance
movement,
primarily
two
meanings
of the term
"figure"
are involved. In
one,
"figure"
means the
spatial
form of
the
dancer,
that
is,
the
statue,
the outline of the
performing body.
And in the
other,
the term refers to
specific
movement unities.
Forsythe speaks
of the
fig-
ure as
"operative unity."
Ballet
presents
a
system
of such
operative
unities as
smoothly
connected
figures.
Yet even within the
terminology
of
ballet,
the
term
"figure"
is not
singularly
defined. Since the
I7th century, "figura"
has
been used in social dance and in the dance of the theatre
(ballet)
to connote
specific step
combinations
(danzefigurate)
as well as the
con-figuration
of danc-
ers ordered
according
to a
specific pattern.22
And in the
early
I8th
century,
Raoul-Auger
Feuillet defined
"figura"
as an element of
choreo-graphy
in the
senses of both word and
writing
in his
system
of dance notation for ballet:
"fig-
ure,"
"le chemin
que
l'on suit en dansant,"23 in which he
designates
"le chemin" as
"line,"
the
prewritten
line of
choreography
that the
steps
follow-"La
ligne
sur
laquelle
on danse."
Jean
Georges
Noverre in Lettres sur la danse
([1760] 1966)
used
the term in the sense of tableau. So the idea of the
"figure"
in ballet
appears
to
waffle
indecisively
between
image
and
writing,
between
body
and
line,
statue
and ornament.
Basically, however,
the
following
holds: In classical
ballet,
the
logic
of how
steps
and turs are
combined,
the rules that connect elements of
preparation, pirouette,
and final
position
with the
corresponding port
de bras-
all follow the aesthetic
principle
of the
(beautiful)
unbroken line.
Choreography,
as
practiced by Forsythe,
considers this
unity
of
figure
de-
ceptive,
the unbroken line a
pretense. Forsythe's operations
of de- and
refiguration
do not aim for a
superficial splitting
or destruction of the code.
Rather,
they
direct our
gaze
toward the basic
disconnectedness,
toward the
gaps
in the
unity
of the
figure.
The architect Daniel
Libeskind,
with whom
Forsythe collaborates,
formulates this as follows: "What is revealed at different
points
in different
ways
is the
gap
between the moments in time. The
parts
that ensure that
something
continues are those
parts
that cannot be
shown,
because
they
are
missing" (Libeskind I989:I4).
Forsythe's choreography stages
the absence of these
connecting joints
in the
figure,
the hairline cracks in the line: the
disappearance
of the
copula.
He
starts with a classical
pose,
a ballet
step
or an
enchatnement, disarticulates this
figure,
distances or shifts the
hinges by setting
each line in relation to each
angle,
and so arrives at a movement series that is
defigured through multiple
joint locations,
which "does not look like ballet at all":
46
Gabriele Brandstetter
But we
began
with a familiar ballet
position
because we
always
orient
ourselves to
it,
we can
always
use it as
point
of reference.
By continually
approaching
such a
figure differently, plucking
it
apart
and
putting
it
back
together
in different
sequences,
I can
bring
forth a tremendous vari-
ety
of information with
very
little material.
(in
Fischer
1993)
The mortar between
figures disintegrates,
the elision of
transitioning parts,
the
extremely rapid
reversals in direction and counterdirection
put synaptic
barbs into the
gliding,
into the
appearance
of seamless ballet
figures.
The ele-
ments are inverted,
juxtaposed,
and
put
next to one another-often in
pastings
and
clumpings
with indistinct
edges, following
a
grammar
of discon-
tinuity: figures
of a
"steptext" (the
title of an
early Forsythe choreography)
whose seams remain visible. It is those moments of
congestion,
of harsh ar-
rangement,
of vibration
(the gap-jumping rhythm
almost too fast to
perceive)
in the
choreographic
line,
that are so
extraordinary
about this dance
piece.
The
dancers,
trained in the
system
of classical
ballet,
learn to work with it in
such a
way
that
they
rewrite,
decompose,
and build
in,
deviate
from,
or en-
large interruptions
of the
interlacings
in the
code,
each in his or her own im-
provisatory experiment.
An
exchange
of
speaking (of
the common
code)
and
spelling (of
one's "own"
defigured alphabet)
takes
place:
"The dancers learn
to
spell
back their own
language"
(in Fischer
1993). Elsewhere,
Forsythe
stresses that the dancers should create their own
personal
"ballet
slang."
Amanda
Miller,
choreographer
and
long-term
collaborator with
Forsythe,
speaks
in this context of
"doodling"-scribbling
and
scrawling.
The
speaking
and
writing
of the movement text as a form of a
parole,
which-like scrawl-
ing
and
babbling-transform
the
langue
of the fixed ballet code. Thus the
dancers
develop
a lexicon of
multiply
branched
transcriptions
of
single
ballet
figures
and their combination
possibilities.
This results in the
nearly exponen-
tial
growth
of movement
lexemes,
whose
collection, selection,
and recombi-
nation-with all the
choreographic possibilities, (de)figuring
with catachrestic
and
metaleptic operations-can
now be stored in a
specially developed
CD-
ROM
program,
from which dancers and
choreographers
can draw. In works
like
Self
Meant to Govern
(1994)
or Eidos:Telos
(I995)
and
Dreiteiliger
Ballettabend
(1995),
the
choreographic patterns
are based on these
defigurative
operations:
[I]n
other
words,
positions suggest
movements within an associative
chain or
organization,
which is based on where the limbs are
placed
in
relation to each other. Your
kinesphere
functions as a
memory-say,
for
example, your
hands are near
your
knee,
and
you
remember that that is
where the movement
sequence
"A"
begins
or ends. You then
perform
"A" no
longer
in its
original
orientation,
as it is
prescribed
in the move-
ment
vocabulary.
This
unoriginal
orientation
puts your body
into
yet
an-
other
orientation,
accessing
some other
sequence
of
movements;
but
you
keep trying
to
re-adjust yourself
back and forth between states of dis- and
re-orientation.
(Forsythe 1995:39)
The movement of an
oscillating
"dis- and re-orientation"
organizes
the
structure as a
constantly
reversible
process.
The
pro-
and
retrogression
of
memory-the remembering
of the order in the movement
sequence,
the me-
moria of the
passing
of time and
space-become
the
generators
of a
vocabulary
that
appears
like an
alternating
current. "Reversals" of
direction,
metaleptic
exchanges complicate nearly every
motion of the dancers. It is this effect that
not
infrequently
awakens in the
spectator
the
impression
that a
figure
or line is
growing
out of the
impulse
of both an inward and outward mobilization.
Defigurative Choreography 47
Up
to now we have been
discussing "figure" primarily
as a movement
sign
in the
choreography
and its
defiguration
in the
transcription process
of
Forsythe's
work. But what has been said also
applies
in a
comparable way
to
the
"figure"
of the
body:
the dancers'
spatial
form,
the
"figura"
of their out-
line,
and the
configurative
form of their movement
relationships
fall under the
transformation
processes
of the code as well. In
subverting
the art
figure
of
their ballet bodies-molded into instruments of
presentation through
labori-
ous
procedures
of
inscription-the
dancers become "transformers" of them-
selves. A
dissolving
of the outlines of and connections between the
parts
of
the
body
occurs
through
the continual isolation of
single parts
and their con-
ventional coordination.
Screwings, twistings,
and
multiple
initiation centers of
movement
impulses
allow the bodies to
appear
as
polymorphous figures.
Their
fragmentation imparts upon
the viewer the
impression,
as critic Edith
Boxberger
writes,
that the elements of the movement deform into a "mean-
dering
flow of contortions and intertwined
convolutions,
which
frays
in all di-
rections at once and
spreads
out amoebalike
[...],
an
oscillating construction,
fickle and
fragile,
full of unrest"
(I994:32).
The
unity
of
figure,
even as
"operative unity,"
is not
given. Despite
the
implication
of the title
Self
Meant to
Govern,
in
Forsythe's choreography
a cen-
ter of
operation
that
governs
the movement cannot be discerned: it is
grounded
in the loss of
linking
elements that are still
capable
of
demarcating
the
identity
of the
figure
as a
representational unity.
Meme,
as a
particle
that
signifies
an identite
absolue,
is also
displaced
in
Forsythe's
text work: In the
verbal
paradigm
that forms the
choreographic
matrix of
Artifact,
"THE
SAME" stands isolated-in the middle
yet pushed
to the
edge,
as a term in
the function of a shifter: "'THE SAME' as
stage
direction,
'THE SAME' as
infinite
principle,
'THE SAME' as the
eternally repeating,
the
indistinguish-
able,
the end of the
exceptional
and the
unique" (R6mer I993:36).
The arti-
fact,
whose
working
contours are ever
dissolving
in the dance.
The same occurs with the
vocabulary
of the dance. A
figure
that could to
such an extent be read as a concrete
unity
would be a ballet
position,
for ex-
3. "Despite
the
implication
of
the title Self Meant to
Govern,
in
Forsythe's
cho-
reography
a center
of opera-
tion that
governs
the
movement cannot be dis-
cerned;
it is
grounded
in the
loss
of linking
elements that
are
capable of demarcating
the
identity of thefigure
as a
representational
unity."
Bal-
let
Frankfurt, 1994. (Photo
? Dominik
Mentzos)
48
Gabriele Brandstetter
ample,
or a
pose
like the
arabesque-with
the extension of the
supporting leg
and the stretch, back and
up high,
of the free
leg-a fragile
structure sus-
pended
in
gravitational
and
antigravitational countertension, whose immanent
sustaining dynamic
lies in the
play
of balance. The
place
of the "self" that
gov-
erns the
figure
is the center of
gravity,
as the center of the distribution of the
lines of
strength.
It is in this area of construction and control of the movement
figure
that
Forsythe's
work
begins-namely by turning
to Rudolf von Laban's
"Choreutik,"
his
theory
of the relation between
body, movement,
and
space:
I am in the
process
of
approaching
movement in a
completely
new
way,
in which I am
thinking
about inner
crystalline
structures.
According
to
traditional
opinion,
movement in ballet moves from the center of the
body
out into a
hypothetical space.
But I
presuppose
an
internal,
crystal
geometry
that occurs
naturally
in the
body,
which in turn influences the
movement in the
space. (in
Fischer
1993)
Here
Forsythe
follows ideas
developed
in the
I92os
by
the
expressionist
dancer
and dance theoretician Rudolf von
Laban,
who
systematically
researched the
body
and its
relationship
to the immediate environment
(kinesphere)
and
thereby
discovered the
regular crystals
of both the dodecahedron and foremost the icosa-
hedron to be those stereometrical
figures
that could be used as models for the
plateaus
and
angular
relations of movement
(Laban 1991).
The
crystalline
struc-
ture of the icosahedron enables a multilateral
description
of
body
movement in
the environment of the
kinesphere,
which takes several
perspectives
into account
simultaneously.
Yet the lines and
planes
of movement direction thus described
and the
"swings"
articulated
by
the
body
and carried out
according
to these di-
rections all emanate from one
center,
a
midpoint
between the
spatial
orientation
and the movement coordination. This is where
Forsythe's choreographic analyses
begin.
What
happens,
he
asks,
when
multiple
axes,
planes,
and
points
of the
kinesphere
are activated and become the
initiating point
of movement? When
every point
of the
kinespheric figure
of the
body
can become the center of
movement,
a network of
interfering systems develops.
No
longer
does one
single
center of
gravity govern
the movement
figure,
as is the case in classical ballet.
Rather,
a multicentric
agglomerate
of
points
distributed over the
body
initiates
and conducts the motions in the
space.
For
example,
the solo in In the
Middle,
Somewhat Elevated
plays
with this
figure
of the center-of the one
point
of
gravity
and its control-with the
topos
in ballet's
hierarchy
that celebrates the
prima
bal-
lerina as etoile in this "elevated
position."
In
Forsythe's choreography
the soloist
defigures
this
topos;
she
falls,
so to
speak,
out of the discursive
space.
She dis-
mantles the
pose,
for
example, by gliding
out of a balanced
arabesque, extending
the
figure
to its
tipping point,
and then
slipping
into an
extremely rapid pirou-
ette-as with
falling, passing
over the conventional
preparation
and instead mo-
bilizing
the
port
de bras from the
shoulder,
in an isolated
spasmodic
outstretched
movement,
followed
by
a head movement of the
epaulement,
of a torsion of the
torso in the
opposite direction,
while
teetering
on her
point
shoe.
The
synchronization
of such
defigurations
of the ballet
vocabulary
in the
course of a
sequence
no
longer
welds unities
together.
This
choreography
is
simultaneously
its own
metachoreography,
in the
analysis
of movement and
space
of the
given
matrix. The
figures generated
in this
way during
the course
of transformation become similar to one
another,
they
take on the visual
qual-
ity
of fractals: "Fractal
geometries [...]
are the
images
of the
way things
fold
and
unfold,
feeding
back into each other and themselves"
(Forsythe 1995).
In
terms of the relation of
figure
and
space,
the
patterns
of such
choreography
reveal a
similarity
with the
designs
that are known as
"parquet
deformations"
(Hofstadter I985:I95-2I8): gradually developing
transformations of divisions
Defigurative Choreography 49
of the
plane,
or
tessellations, which,
through
the
lengthening
or
rotating
of a
line or
through
the introduction of a
hinge,
result in a
complete
distortion or
regrouping-like
a
type
of ornamental
morphing.
In
Forsythe's choreography
the
complexity
of the
spatial figures
and their
interferences is of course much
greater:
Our
gaze
would be confronted with a
space
filled with a dense concen-
tration of
angularity, complex circularity, symmetry, laterality,
sphericality, contraposition, convexity, concavity, rectilinearity,
and dis-
tortion
[...;]
the
extraordinary proliferation
and
perfect
disorder of these
marks
may bring
to mind the
appearance
of a
page
covered with incom-
prehensible glyphs. (Forsythe
and Levine
1987)
In the
polyphony
of the
figures
in
space,
the line or the definable network
of movement
signs
falls
apart.
Their
linking
is
disturbed,
the
stability
of the
figure-as body
and as movement
sequence-begins
to wobble. With each
step
a fall is
implied.
Laurie Anderson describes
walking
as
falling:
You walk...and
you
don't
always
notice
it,
but
you're constantly falling.
With
every step...you
fall. You fall forward a little bit and
you
catch
yourself.
You
keep falling
and
catching yourself.
And in this
way you
walk and fall at the same time.
(Anderson 1989:13)
Every step
is a
falling.
The
choreography
inscribes the
fall,
not in an obvious
falling
into one another of the
dancers,
as in the movement theatre of the Ca-
nadian
group
Lalala Human
Steps,
but in one of the
patterns
that derive from
the basic structure: in the
exploration
of the borderline between
stability
and
fragility,
between centeredness and decenteredness. At this
point
of
equilib-
rium,
which is
displaced
with
every step,
the conditions of the
presentation
of
"figure"-as
a mode of
choreographic representation-are put
in
question.
Marcel
Duchamp
was aware of this in the
Large
Glass. The
exposition
of the
eros' matrix
(matrice d'e'ros)
in La Marie'e mise a nu
par
ses
celibataires,
meme acts as
a
critique
of the
myth
of Eros and at the same time marks its never definitive
affirmation. A
"delay
in
glass,"
in terms of
equilibrium.
Or in
Duchamp's
words:
"Et-qui-libre? Equilibre"
(in
Paz
I978:72).
Forsythe's choreography exposes disequilibrium.
The
copula's falling
out of
the order of the
figures
conceals and reveals the fall out of the center of
grav-
ity-a
constant subversion of the balance structure that creates the illusion of
elevation and stable
geometry
in classical ballet. The movement
pattern
in
Forsythe's choreography
consists of
ellipses.
In the network of the
slipping,
destabilizing
centers of
gravity
that are thrown all over the
figure
and-in
myriad points
of interference-into the
space,
there nest
gaps, holes,
tears.
Here
Forsythe
follows the
concept
of a
postmodern
architecture that
stages
Sturz und
Rif [collapse
and
tear]:
subversive structures that
display
the mo-
ments in which their stasis is threatened
(Jonak 1989:7).
The outline of
Forsythe's choreographic
structures articulates a similar ar-
chitecture of imbalance. In his
analysis
of Daniel Libeskind's
works,
Forsythe
comes to
comparable conclusions;
when the
underlying
model and its con-
ventionalized axioms are
corrupted, hybridized,
the structures
proliferate:
"The
rational,
orderly grid actually
turns out to be made
up
of a series of
decentered
spaces" (1989:19).
The
process
of
defiguration
therefore also relates to the total structure of a
"piece"-whatever
is to be
signified
with this formula of the
performance
of a
movement
representation
of a certain duration in a certain
place.
A ballet
work with a
beginning
and an end and a
dramaturgy
of
repeatable figures
and
50
Gabriele Brandstetter
climaxes can no
longer
be
described.
So there is no
"figura"
of
representation
in the sense of a
figural
routine of
expectable
structures that are fulfilled ac-
cording
to the
logic
of the code.
Instead, each
performance
realizes a different
possibility
for the
presentation
of the
figures-the body
and the movement
fig-
ures. Each
repetition
shows another surface of the
text;
each
reading refigures
a new variant of how the
figures
can be linked. In the structure of the
pieces,
choreographic, precisely
established
parts
alternate
with
gaps,
which the danc-
ers fill anew in each
performance (for
which a time indicator behind the
stage
serves in
guiding
the orientation in
space
and the
temporal coordination).
Some of these
choreographies
seem to consist
exclusively
of such
gaps,
in
whose intervals the actual "sentences" are
inscribed, as,
for
example,
in
Self
Meant to
Govern,
whose matrix is
organized
in such a
way
that each of the
dancers has to
manage
her own
parcours.
And so she has various structural
pos-
sibilities to consider: there are clocks
onstage,
whose hands
point
toward letters
instead of numbers. Each letter denotes a movement
sequence
that consists of
figures,
which are collected in a lexicon that was
compiled specifically
for this
choreography.
For the dancers
onstage,
a certain movement
(which
can be
chosen out of her own
"ballet-slang")
is
suggested by
the letter that is indi-
cated. In this
way,
the
performers
transform the
figures
and their
interlacings.
Comparable processes-simultaneous
and
postponed
within the
grid
of these
movement
figures
that are
coming
into contact with one another-concern the
complete
score of the
staging: sound,
light, projections
of
pictures, objects
in
constant coordination and isolation. But
I'll
leave this
aspect
for another time.
Finally,
considered in the sense of
perceptual unity, "figura" disintegrates
even in the
spectators' perception.
In the
growing entropy
of the choreo-
graphic
textual weave there no
longer
are
any
fixed
spectatorial vantage
points.
Even the
spectator
falls out of the balance of his or her
position:
"But
recent
spatial
transformation has
brought
about an unforeseen
difficulty:
it is
no
longer possible
to see the entire text from one
position.
It seems that the
characters
suspended
in the
foreground
obstruct our view of the characters lo-
cated behind them"
(Forsythe
and Levine
1989).
The
stability
of the observation-from what Fabre calls the
"king's perspec-
tive" in theatre-is subverted: a disturbed
equilibrium
of
seeing. Forsythe
stages
and thematizes the
physiological perception phenomenon
of
parallax
(also
the title of a
1989 ballet):
an
apparent
substitution or
change
in the direc-
tion of the observed
object,
which seems to shift between the
angles
of
sight
lines. The
spectator
is-in the network of the
signs
and
figures
of the text-
constantly
confronted with
parallactic displacement. Furthermore,
in the third
part
of
Alie/nA(c)tion,
a translation of this
perceptual phenomenon
is
staged,
which is known as
"figural
after-effect": the alteration of the
figural
or
spatial
attributes of
figures (their apparent slipping
or
tipping
to the
opposite side),
after a
specific figure
has for a while been fixed in the same
region
of the vi-
sual field.
Forsythe plays
with such
perceptual phenomena:
The sentence "Ev-
erything
is all
right," spoken by
a black
dancer,
gradually spills
into a narration
of
catastrophes,
while the
group
of dancers
synchronously
translates the word
"right" spatially by dancing
on the
"right
side." That it is a black dancer is
significant,
since
Forsythe
is
choreographically critiquing
the
polarization
of
the
political
left and
right
as well as those who claim to know what should
and shouldn't be considered
"politically
correct." The
spectator
is faced with
the
question:
Who stands or moves on the
right
side of which text? The
words
displace
the
figures,
and the
figures
the words. In "Of
Any
If
And,"
the
third
part
of Gemischter Ballettabend
(Mixed Ballet
Evening, I995),
two
speak-
ers sit at the back of the
stage, incessantly
and
nearly inaudibly whispering
a
text,
while at the front of the
stage
a
couple
of dancers
repeatedly
begin
and
break off movements in an
attempt
to
"con-figure"
themselves. Out of the
Defigurative Choreography 5
I
4.
William
Forsythe's
In the
Middle,
Somewhat Elevated in
1992:
"Afigure
that could to such an extent be read
as a concrete
unity
would be a ballet
position, for example,
or a
pose
like the
arabesque [...,] afragile
structure sus-
pended
in
gravitational
and
antigravitational countertension,
whose immanent
sustaining dynamic
lies in the
play of
balance. "
(Photo
? Dominik
Mentzos)
52
Gabriele Brandstetter
flies, staggered
tiers of blackboards descend at
specific
intervals,
on which are
written
single,
disconnected words
separated by spaces-elements
of a "uni-
versal
writing" (Forsythe 1989:14)
whose rules of
syntax
seem to be lost: a
spatial letter-box,
which
keeps pushing
in front of the
figures
of the
dancers;
a
chiasmus24 of
speech,
movement,
and
writing
elements.
Forsythe continually
works with various rhetorical and
poetic processes
within the text. For Im-
pressing
the
Czar,
he included one of Oscar Pastior's
"anagram" poems
in his
choreographic textwork,
whose title "Misverstand oder der
Wegweiser?" (Misun-
derstanding
or the
Signpost?)
likewise marks theme and
anathema,
lexicon
and
material,
in the context of
"choreography."
The
gaps
in the text-its blurred zones-demand from the reader of this
text the search for another
way
of
seeing. Forsythe's suggestion:
"So,
in order
not to miss
relationships
that could
provide
the
key
to
understanding
this lan-
guage,
let us move into the text"
(1988).
Thus the
spectator
him- or herself
becomes a
figure
in the
choreographic
text,
no more
integrated
than the other
existing
text elements left over from the
process
of
transformation;
an inter-
rupted process,
an act of
writing
with disturbance
factors,
as is reflected in the
title of another
Forsythe piece: Enemy
in the
Figure (1992).
-translated
by
Marta Ulvaeus
Notes
I.
The
passatismo
of
ballet,
which was
judged
to be both an
aesthetically
and
technically
"decadent" form of theatrical
performance movement, was,
in a
repeated Querelle
des
anciennes et des moderes
(the
aesthetic
quarrel
that has taken
place
in France since the Re-
naissance over the
question
of which should take
precedence,
the ancient or the mod-
em),
a
topos
of new dance
concepts
in the
early
20th
century.
See Brandstetter
(1995).
2. Since the era of the Ballet Russes under
Serge Diaghilev,
the aesthetic and the
perfor-
mance conventions of ballet have
undergone
massive
change.
One of most
profound
of
these was the elimination of narrative. The destruction of the traditional
dramaturgy
of
Igth-century
ballet is a "wound"
that,
as we can see in current civic theatre
produc-
tions,
is still
healing.
3.
Hawthorne
interprets
the
phenomenon
of the Transformer in
light
of cultural and me-
dia/technological change
and the associated
political implications
as a
sign
of the "irre-
vocable
penetration
of
cybernetic
into
popular
culture" and as a
signal
of the
"militarization of childhood"
(1989:2).
4. In
Forsythe's choreography Artifact,
the
following
lines are
repeated uninterrupted
as a
monotonous
poem
of no
longer knowing: "they
will never remember where/
they
al-
ways forgot
which/
they
never remember how/
they always forgot
where
[...]."
5.
The
giving up
of the idea of a
completable
work leads to another
concept
of the "art-
ist,"
still within the romantic
dichotomy
of art and life. See Dieter Daniels
(1992:82)
and
Thierry
de Duve
(1989).
6. Marcel
Duchamp: "Painting
is the
critique
of
movement,
but movement is the
critique
of
painting" (in
Paz
1978:2).
7. In his above cited
analysis,
Octavio Paz comments that the translation of mise a nu as
"denuded" or "unclothed" falls short:
"[I]t
is a much more
energetic expression-
stripped bare,
exposed.
It is
impossible
not to associate it with a
public
act or a ritual-
the theatre
(mise
en
scene)
or an execution
(mise
a
mort)" (I978:32).
8. Here I am
using
the title with the
ellipses,
which are sometimes
included,
other times not.
9. Meesme and
medisme,
meisme
(IIth century)
comes from
metipsimus (from
the Latin
metipse [the same],
which followed the model of
superlatives
like
maximus,
minimus.
Io.
This
homophony (meme/m'aime)
has been
suggested
as the
interpretation
of the
title,
but while
Duchamp disputed this,
he also
played
with it
(Paz I978:33).
I .
Duchamp
said in an interview that meme reminded him of the famous double mono-
syllable
of
Bosse-de-Nage,
Dr. Faustroll's
monkey:
Ha-Ha
(Paz I978:33).
12. After the first exhibition of the
Large
Glass
(New York, 1926), Duchamp
issued the
notes he made as he was
creating
the
work,
which were
reproduced
as exact facsimiles.
Defigurative Choreography 53
The Green Box
appeared
in
I934
under the same
(meme)
title as the
Large
Glass: The
Bride
Stripped
Bare
by
Her
Bachelors,
Even. See Daniels
(I992:I02 ff).
13. Later,
Duchamp produced
La Botte-en-Valise
(I935-I94I),
a numbered series of what
he called
"portable
museums": cardboard boxes with miniature
replicas, photographs,
and color
reproductions
of
single pictures, Readymades,
and the
Large
Glass.
I4.
In reference to this effect of the
Large Glass,
Duchamp
noted in the White Box
(A
l'infinitif):
"i. Show case with
sliding glass panes-place somefragile objects
inside.
-
Inconvenience-narrowness-reduction of a
space,
i.e.
way
of
being
able to
experi-
ment in
3
dim. as one
operates
on
planes
in
plane geometry."
And further: "No
obstinacy,
ad
absurdum,
of
hiding
the coition
through
a
glass pane
with one or
many
objects
of the
shop
window"
(in Sanouillet and Peterson
I973:74).
IS.
For
Cunningham's choreographic concept
of
space/time
as "inbetween
space,"
see
Brandstetter
(1991).
I6. How to
Pass, Kick, Fall,
and Run
(1965)
is another
example
of
Cunningham's
choreo-
graphing
of
everyday
movement as
performance.
I7. In the text of
Jan
Fabre's
transcription
of The
Large
Glass for the theatre this is stated as
follows: "I fulfill
my
function/
Very slowly...
I
give my
best and create
sparks
with/
my desire-magnet" (Fabre I99I:39).
i8. "The bride's names are
Motor-Desire,
Wasp,
and
Hanged
Female"
(Paz I978:33).
For
H.P.
Roche,
the Bride in
Duchamp's Large
Glass is half
dragonfly,
half
praying
mantis.
I9.
Duchamp's
ideas lead to a further connection between the
Readymade
and dance of the
'9os.
Meg
Stuart
presents
the
body
itself as
"readymade"
in her solo
Thought Object, Ready
Made
(1992).
The
dancer,
who doesn't "dance" or move out of her fixed
position,
stands
at the center of the
stage.
Her movement consists of "transmissions." She transfers docu-
ments,
bits of
paper, alphabet
letters
(like
those taken from
Duchamp's box)
from one
jacket pocket
into the
other-"memory junk"
from the
story
of the self that the
figura/
persona
of her
identity (soi-meme)
can't find in her
memory
traces. The
becoming
trans-
parent
and
disappearing
of consciousness remains as faceless
readymade,
an eternal deferral.
20.
Regarding
this and other notions of "mise en
abyme,"
see
Jacques
Derrida's The Truth in
Painting (1987)
and Lucien Dallenbach's Le recit
speculaire:
essai sur la mise en
abyme (I977).
21.
Forsythe
further comments:
The most
important thing
is that
you may
not
try
to make out a
meaning,
as little as I
try
to
put
forth a
meaning
when I
continuously
recombine
these
steps.
I look for a result
through mathematical,
in this
case,
new
grammatical
combinations. This result will look unnatural since I want no
naturalness. (in Fischer
1987)
22. The
history
of the
concept
of
"figure"
in dance and its
many
branches hasn't been suf-
ficiently
researched. It seems that the
concept "figura" (first
referred to
following
a ballo
a cavallo
[horse ballet] by
A.
Carducchi,
called II
Mondofesteggiante [1641])
was first asso-
ciated with
specific "figures"
of the
popular
contredanse in the second half of the
I7th
century. "Figure"
in this case means
step
combination and the
configuration
of the
dancers' relation to one another
(Desrat [I895] I977:I44).
23.
This characterization of
"figure"
can also be
found,
following
the French
tradition,
in
early-I8th-century German-language
dance
publications. See,
for
example, Johann
Pasch,
Beschreibung
wahrer Tanz-Kunst
([1707] 1978:40).
24.
The
figure
of the chiasmus
appears
in
many
deconstructionist
writings.
Derrida visits
this
switching
of
positions
in
"Parergon":
"Pas sans
pas [step
without
step/step
without
not/not without
step/not
without
not]" (I987:33).
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Gabriele Brandstetter is
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Universitdt Basel. Her research interests include classical and
contemporary
German mu-
sical theatre and dance. Her most recent books include Tanz-Lektiiren:
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Sprache: Komponisten
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