At a conference in Oslo (Norwegian Artists Research Forum) I met a woman over breakfast also researching the 1890's in British history – she is writing about Dartington Hall. We spoke about the re-thinking of the body in modernist dance which began to emerge in that period – specifically women's bodies and also the odd relevance of Theosophy of this time. We drifted onto the conditions that allowed fascism to rise in the coming century and the right wing elements in turn of the last century avant-garde.
It is the politics of dance that interests me now – where dance touches politics, where its context and conditions reveal something about a culture and its permissions. Riefenstahl' s dance in Helgoland somehow embodied elements of National Socialism even though the roots of her movements were in a new freedom of expression, in gestures that erred towards something benign towards the human condition. My question is how does the dance differ between Isadora Duncan and LF – perhaps it doesn't much – so my answer is probably context (date,time,place, protagonist, motivation?). We shall see…
Body politic
I have been slowly, sloooowly digesting Elaine Scarry’s book: The Body in Pain.
Bodies are perhaps some of the most politically charged landscapes I can think of.
My first art practice was dance and now I want deeply to return to it. Confessionally, I feel entirely self conscious to begin, but trust that once I do-my body will move again with fluidity and perhaps some kind of quiver.
IN times of deep repression bodies adapt and perhaps lose all sense of memory for desire to move.
There is a difference in stillness that is chosen and stillness that is instilled.
A returning to the movement of the body, and referring back to the potential for a quiver, as a political act…as a form of strength in agency. Some believe we are our thoughts, this is some kind of new age phenomena. I think our bodies are incredible alchemical vessels of the creative process and by participating in dance, a body can exorcise 😉 some of the ideological beliefs of our time.
Dancing doesn’t have to be a special sacred activity, but it seems to have become this way in the industrial/post industrial time. Though far less repressed and formed than in victorian eras and back…there is an agape quality to witness and becoming a body that moves through space upon its own volition.
I can’t think of any act much more political than that.