 |
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||||||||
 |
 |
|
||||||||||||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
||||||||||
The origins of modern dance are difficult, perhaps impossible, to pinpoint exactly. A variety of ideas, both socio-political and aesthetic, inspired
artists to re-think and re-invent dance, altering it from a commercial entertainment into a relevant artistic medium. Changes in the political and social
andscape of Europe and America at the end of the 19th century called for a revision of ideas about the body, movement, and dance’s role in the world.
As men and women’s roles in society began to change, dance reflected the new leadership of women, the re-inventing of the masculine body, and new
aesthetics never before seen on the performance stage. This paper will focus on the social, political, and aesthetic changes that modern dance brought to
the perception of gender and the body on stage, and some of the residual affects this had on ballet.
The Ballet Stage
The status of concert dance had gradually declined throughout the 19th century in Western Europe and America. Ballet became centered entirely on the
female form on stage, often with dancers having little talent for the technique. Great emphasis was placed on the physical beauty and sexuality of the
ballerina. Portrayed as either ethereal seducers or exotic foreigners, the image of women on stage became a great attraction of the ballet and was even
the essential element. However, the portrayal of the ideal female on stage and the reality of a ballerina's life off stage were vastly different.
Where a dancer was a professional and even glamorous star on stage, she was one of the impoverished lower classes in reality, relying on prostitution
to make ends meet. Entrepreneurial ballet directors heightened publicity about the ballerinas through lithographs, commemorative pamphlets, and
even scandal. Louis Véron, director of the Paris Opera Ballet, opened The Foyer de la Danse to season subscribers and balletomanes, establishing a
precedent of prostitution among the seriously impoverished dancers (Garafola, Rethinking 82-83). And yet, as Joellen Meglin points out, Véron
profited doubly by this maneuver for he would publicize the immodesty of the dancers' lives after having tacitly encouraged such behavior (Garafola,
Rethinking 82-83).
Where the ballerina was also the revered poetic ideal of Romanticism, she was also a scantily clad female body, exhibiting for an eager male audience.
The traditional ballet tutu was, after all, little more than a corset with gauzy see-through layers of tulle revealing the legs. Even the characters of such
productions were full of dichotomy, being strong but submissive or sensual but chaste (Jowitt, 59-60). Critics of the period declared that the Romantic
ideal was intrinsically feminine, and male dancers had no place in this new aesthetic. “The unpleasant thing” wrote Edouard de Beaumont, “about a
danseuse is that she sometimes brings along a male dancer” (Burt, Moving 44). Gautier even took this one step further by describing the perfection
of beauty as being "sexless" (Garafola, “Travesty” 38). This fetish for androgynous roles and all-female casts found its height in the travesty dancers
of the late 19th century, when men were totally removed from the ballet stage and women performed the male roles.
Politically during this period, women were believed to be "...constitutionally incapable of assembling for the purposes of self-determination"
(Meglin, Rethinking 75). Yet a mistrust of women (and their sexuality) would ensure that they became increasingly repressed and rendered
powerless in society, especially as they began to voice their discontent. In the Tribune des Femmes, Christine-Sophie argued that women of both
the working and privileged classes were forced to prostitute themselves, either through want of decent wages or by being forced to marry for money.
She wanted to "expose male hypocrisy, rehabilitate women in the eyes of society, and champion female equality in a new social order" (Meglin,
Rethinking 81). The bordello politics of the ballet world were a clear reflection of larger societal problems. These issues were challenged as
women began to organize and demand equal political rights during the Women’s Movement and Suffrage. Modern dance would see the genesis of
the female choreographer and female artistic director, placing dance in the forefront of the Suffragette movement.
Duncan and the Female Body
In other art forms and intellectual circles, a revival of interest in Ancient Greece was beginning (Kirstein 198). Philosophical ideas about achieving
perfect balance between body, mind, and spirit were investigated anew. Emphasis was placed on what was considered “natural,” leading to
reforms in dress and physical education. In The Art of Beauty from 1878, Mrs. H. R. Haweis wrote that “The Greeks were proud of their beautiful
bodies, as we are of a beautiful face, and a bare leg was no more to them than a bare arm is to us…But what was harmless in the early Greeks would
|be impossible in nations who have lost to a great extent the simple instinct of natural beauty, whilst they have grown abnormally self-conscious and
reflective” (Daly, Done 170). Dance was heralded in the United States as a new form of wholesome exercise, especially for women (Anderson 166).
New ideas about the body and movement began to emerge during this period, specifically the ideas of François Delsarte. He was interested in
enhancing performance through gesture and bearing. His theories taught that every human gesture had some kind of emotional significance (Cohen
118). Movement, he believed, was the outward manifestation of inner feelings (Anderson 168).
These new philosophical and practical ideas about the body were a major influence on one of the foremost pioneers of Modern dance, Isadora Duncan.
Duncan had little classical training in ballet, but had certainly taken classes in Delsarte from local teachers in her native California (Jowitt 78-80). As
she tried to enter the world of the theater, she was disappointed with the skirt dancing and chorus girls, chosen for their physical attributes rather than
their ability to dance (Daly, Done 157). The sexually charged spectacle of the theater did not align with Duncan’s new ideas about the Natural body
and ideal beauty. She held the natural female body, bare of flesh-colored tights or restrictive undergarments, as the epitome of natural beauty and
movement. She therefore costumed herself in light robes that often resembled a toga, and danced with bare legs and feet. This “bareness” of the body
was reflected in her choice of staging, the proscenium emptied of all adornment but a simple flowing piece of fabric. Duncan wished to de-fetishize
women’s sexuality, a commodity so strictly regulated at the time by traditional roles of wifehood and motherhood. Duncan wanted her sexuality to
simply be an integral part of her dancing body on stage, and therefore an integral part of the human condition, without eroticizing or objectifying it
for the desires or consumption of a male audience (Daly, Done 170). For these reasons she was adamantly opposed to ballet, stating “The ballet
condemns itself by enforcing the deformation of the beautiful woman’s body! No historical, no choreographic reasons can prevail against that!”
(Cohen 125).
Though Duncan saw her aesthetic art as being intrinsically feminine, she often explored the role of gender in her work. She presented a distinctly
female form on stage, but in such works as Pan and Echo of 1903, or Orpheus around 1905-1908, she enacted both the male and female character
roles. In her later works, she used the idea of the Greek Chorus, representing a “universal being” or humanity that was not specifically male or
female (Daly, Done 170). This visual representation of humanity through the female figure harkened back to her use of classical art for inspiration.
She linked the physical with the metaphysical on stage through her emotive female form. In her 1903 speech about the “Dance of the Future,” she
argued that dance “…will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, is mere
merchandise” (Daly, Done 32).
Duncan also exemplified the shift of women’s roles in society, leaving the home to forge her own success in the public eye and living a controversial
new lifestyle (Dils 233). Duncan was influenced by the radical new ideas of the women’s emancipation movement and Feminism. Women began
voicing their right for equality with men in all spheres, including the sexual and the economic (Daly, Done 168). Though Duncan was not officially
aligned with any of these movements, she advocated women’s freedom to individuality and autonomy. She did not believe that freedom could come
from the state or from political action, but through the expression of the individual (Daly, Done 163). Ducan’s dancing body was exciting to
proponents of these new ideas because it represented the potential defeat of archaic social order and it transgressed traditional cultural ideas (Daly,
Done 174). Through Duncan, much of the groundwork had been laid for future generations of strong independent female dancers appearing on stage,
and creating and directing off stage.
The Male Body
The prejudice against male dancers from the 19th century had serious repercussions on future generations. Victorian ideas about gender behavior
and construction led to the removal of the male body as a fitting subject for artistic expression. The “spectacle of the male body” became problematic
as middle-class morality covered up the male body in the plain “black, bourgeois suit” (Burt, Moving 46). The male nude was no longer a subject in
art, and the male body was no longer a subject for the dance stage. “Gender representations in cultural forms, including theatre dance, do not merely
reflect changing social definitions of femininity and masculinity but are actively involved in the processes through which gender is constructed (Burt,
Moving 45-46). This gender construction meant that there was a particular way for men to interact, and it did not include seeing an expressive male
body on stage. This “homophobia” generated so long ago is still affecting how the male body is seen on the dance stage and in society today.
Around the time of Duncan, the male American dancer also made efforts to reclaim dance as a masculine art. Ted Shawn was one of the first
instrumental male performers/choreographers to emphasize the masculine body on stage. Like Duncan and his partner Ruth St. Denis, Shawn began
his endeavor by looking to classical images of men from books, artwork, or other cultures (Siegel 306). He was interested primarily in the heroic
male body, and his works presented men laboring, fighting, and conquering. He used the upper body in strong angular lines, showing virility and
strength; a pointed contrast to the soft rounded port de bras of the European male ballet dancer. In the 1930s Shawn began a group of all male dancers
who toured and performed for seven years throughout the United States, unheard of up to that point in history (Siegel 307).
Choreographically, Shawn’s work was simple and lacked the crafting that later choreographers would bring to the stage. José Limón, a dancer who
came out of the Humphrey/Weidman Company, was one of the first major male choreographers to be interested in the masculine body. Limón believed
that intelligent ideas, humor, pathos, and a sensitive aesthetic could be portrayed in a distinctly masculine body. His urge to create work that emphasized
masculine identity was also a way to preserve the male image during the “general surge of feminism…[that had become] the dominant creative factor in
the dance” (Reynolds 329). He had more choreographic ability than Shawn, and had learned more about craft from his years with Doris Humphrey.
His chosen movement was more abstract than Shawn’s, but still explored the strength of a male dancer. The use of gesture was powerful, with emphasis
still on the upper body (Siegel 309). His vocabulary was effortful and weighted, and largely defined by his own physique and physical presence on stage.
Limón created roles for men that were more psychologically complex than they had ever been on the theater or ballet stages. Traditional male roles in
ballet portrayed effete men whose greatest display of feeling or conflict was generally fighting over a woman or some other trivial prize. Limón’s male
characters displayed roles of social power and responsibility including kings, soldiers, and other leaders, very much in contrast to the ballet’s fop or
exotic half-slave half sex-object fantasy (Siegel 311). For Limón, the burden of responsibility and leadership that would lead to the well being of society
lay on the male character’s shoulders. He explored philosophical ideas in his work including love, betrayal, cultural struggles, and morality (Reynolds
331). Man was the struggling heroic archetype for Limón.
While male dancers and choreographers were struggling with the identity of the masculine dancing body, another issue was brought into play with
Alvin Ailey. As a young man, Ailey was inspired by the athletic, masculine, and down-to-earth style of Gene Kelly in Hollywood movies, and by
the dynamic technique of Lester Horton, with whom he studied (DeFrantz, Words 113). As a performer, Ailey created “a simmering, hyper-masculine
persona” placing the African-American male body in the center of a discourse about sexual and social politics (DeFrantz, Words 113). By presenting
his body as erotic and macho, Ailey brought up questions about the stereotypes placed on African-American men and their sexuality. African-American
dancing was seen to be “primitive” or “animalistic” and male sexuality was assumed to be overtly heterosexual, aggressive, and insatiable (DeFrantz,
Words 112). Clearly sexual identity and behavior as well as racial stereotypes were issues surrounding his work.
Ailey was uninterested in new experimental ideas about dance during the 1960s, but cultivated a unique blend of diverse ethnicities and styles
(Reynolds 348). He presented the black dancing body as an “authentic” carrier of African-American history and culture (DeFrantz, Words 114). By
intersecting African-American social dance styles with modern concert dance, Ailey created a vehicle for revealing the social experience and political
dilemma of African-Americans while still making dance entertaining (Reynolds 351). However, while his work found a place within the Civil Rights
Movement, the cultural homophobia about the male dancer still affected his work. His on-stage persona of the erotic heterosexual male was a far cry
from the reality of his own homosexuality (DeFrantz, Words 116). His work often reflected the “traditional” heterosexual gender roles, such as in
Blues Suite, but did not explore connected relationships between male dancers.
The De-Humanized and Neutral Body
With issues about gender and sexuality playing such an important role in the development of the body on the modern dance stage, new reactionary
choreographers began working with a different attitude towards body image. Alwin Nikolais, one of the first to respond to these common themes
of modern dance, rejected the psychological drama of modern dance pioneers such as Martha Graham or José Limón. He believed that concert
dance had become nothing more than “glorified sexuality—what he called… the ‘foetal, fertile and phallic’ neuroticism of modern dance”
(Siegel 319). He also found the dancer ego problematic, claiming that they acted “as if one’s presence was a self-induced miracle, and each
gesture was a radiant gift bestowed upon the environment and whatever existed within it” (Siegel 320).
Nikolais began experimenting with how the body could be used as an object of specific shape, weight, or architecture. He was interested in how
the body could be used as a prop, or how it interacted with props. With visual spectacle and theatrical “magic” as a primary interest, Nikolais
created environments in which dancers became creatures or forces of movement. Men and women wore the same costumes, which virtually
eliminated the physical difference between the sexes. Costuming often altered the shape of the dancers’ bodies, or concealed the body with props,
or made the body an instrument for reflecting light and color (Jowitt 354). To further the desexed look, the dancers’ faces were often painted or
masked, and costume, wig, or other accessory covered their hair. The choreographed movement often made the bodies look angular, flat, or stiff,
and the dancers seamlessly blended into the environment of the stage. They manipulated objects, or were themselves moved and interacted with
as objects. Physical contact between performers was functional and impersonal, and traditional gender roles of women being lifted or supported
by men were broken (Siegel 320).
Nikolais had essentially desexed the dancers, if not actually dehumanizing them (Siegel 320). The creation of a non-human creature or alien
inhabitant removed the traditional or prescribed social roles associated with gender and body image. Movement experimentation and inhabitation
of a particular space became the focus of his work. These desexed “creatures” however, offered another possibility for a male dancer to appear
on stage without compromising his masculinity or sexual identity (Siegel 321). It also, in a way, neutralized the playing field and gave both men
and women equal status on stage by “removing” their specific gender images.
Another approach to the body came from Merce Cunningham. Cunningham had been a lead dancer in Martha Graham’s company for many
years, and while performing with her, trained in ballet at George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet (Brown 89). He became interested in
the mechanics of the body and its movement potential, rather than attempting to give every movement an emotional meaning as Graham had done
(Reynolds 355). Cunningham’s aesthetic, based on elements of chance, became about logic and efficiency. He stripped dance of unnecessary
adornment, and simply “let the dancers dance” (Siegel 322). This presented the body in a way that was candid but understated. Gender or sexual
identity was simply another element in the landscape created in his work, present but not emphasized (Siegel 322). A dancer, he believed, could
be viewed from any angle with interest, and the audience should be free to let their gaze wander in a landscape of activity, as it would in everyday
life (Reynolds 359). In the same way that indeterminacy brought music, set, and dance together randomly, gender was a reality of the dancing
bodies and their work to be considered (or not) as the audience chose.
Cunningham’s radical approach to dance-making inspired a new generation of dancers to continue to experiment and question the nature of
dance and the creative process. This group, eventually performing as the Judson Dance Theater, questioned dancer as “virtuoso” performer or
athlete, and the new choreographers often prized using non-dancers in their work (Banes 16-17). The use of non-dancers in dance began to
change the idea of what the dancing body should/can look like. Dancers began wearing ordinary street clothing to practice and perform in,
instead of the traditional leotard and tights. This aesthetic choice was to eliminate any glamorizing of the body, but to present it in as
straightforward and honest a manner as possible (Jowitt 319).
The next logical extension of the non-glamorized body was to explore nudity. Rather than being used as a means to entice an audience,
nudity was used to call attention to gender perception and identity. For example, Steve Paxton and Yvonne Rainer performed Word Words
in 1963 in which each dancer performed the same series of movements wearing almost nothing. After performing the sequence individually,
they performed together. The choice of wearing almost no costume asked questions about if/how gender effected their performance.
Questions about differences in bodily structure, temperament, and the audiences’ potential level of distraction were raised (Jowitt 319).
Gender and sexuality issues were not ignored or hidden, but openly explored. Partnering and physical contact lost the traditional roles of
men lifting or supporting women. Women lifted men, men lifted men, and women lifted women. These non-traditional partnering techniques
eventually led to the development of Contact Improvisation in which dancers constantly share their body weight and through physical contact
negotiate the improvised dance. The neutral body, the task-oriented pedestrian gestures of this post-modern period, and contact improvisation
all had a powerful influence on the dance-making of the 1980s and 1990s.
Re-defining Gender Roles
With the new fields of research in gender and performance studies, dance has continued to be on the cutting edge of body image issues.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Mark Morris continued the tradition of questioning traditional gender roles on the dance stage. Even in his
early works cross-dressing and ideas about androgyny were present. Morris himself exploits the “performative” practice of gender,
presenting an often-confusing jumble of masculine and feminine attributes simultaneously in his own person (i.e., “beer drinking and
chain smoking coupled with effeminate gesture and shoulder length curls”) (Morris 142).
Dido and Aeneas represents his most specific challenge to dichotomous gender roles (Morris 145). In this classic story of love and
abandonment set to the Purcell score, Morris dances both of the main female character roles, Dido the queen and the Sorceress villain.
Morris’s performance in this work is not a “drag” performance, however, because he makes no attempt to hide the masculinity of his
body while performing female gender cues (Morris 146). The presentation of Morris’s masculine body enacting the gender specific
movements of “woman” immediately questions traditional perceptions of gender (Morris 145). All the dancers, including Morris,
wear plain black sleeveless tops and black skirts and earrings. The costume serves to both reveal gender and nullify it through
uniformity. Morris also displays long painted fingernails, simultaneously feminine for Dido and grotesque for the Sorceress (Dido).
This mix of gender signifiers puts the question of sexuality at the forefront of the piece. When Dido and Aeneas begin their
courtship, the audience then sees two male dancers intimately connected on stage, but also the male and female “roles” being acted
out (Morris 147). Questions about heterosexual and homosexual relationships and traditional gender roles are a recurring theme
in much of the Morris repertoire.
Ballet throughout the 20th century, while seeing many reforms in aesthetic and contextual concerns, had little comment to offer
on issues of the body and gender. The value of the male danseur was reasserted through virtuoso performers such as Vaslav
Nijinsky, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. However, the 19th century belief in the feminization of ballet was still a
strong component of the neo-classical tradition under Balanchine (Daly, Critical 292). Only a few ballet works dealt with issues
of sexuality and gender, such as Antony Tudor’s male psychosexual drama Undertow from 1945 (Siegel 315).
One of the most blatant dealings with gender and the ballet body come from The Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo, a comic
all-male ballet company. Beginning in the mid 1970s, the company presents classic works of the ballet stage, but performed
en travesti. Rather than women dressing as men as in the 19th century ballets, here the men dress as women in the traditional
tutu, tights, and pointe shoes. The effect can be astonishing because the character of the ballets they perform remains intact
despite the cross-dressing dancers. It demonstrates how clearly the feminine identity of the ballerina is as much a performance
as any character, and the Trockadero dancers often do a more convincing job of “playing the part” than actual ballerinas. Their
work also calls specific attention to other traditional gender problems ballet presents, often emphasizing how little the male
danseurs have to do (or how empty-headed their characters may be) (Trockadero). Though the presentation of these ballets is
set in a humorous light, the image of masculine bodies performing almost iconic roles of femininity can be unsettling for
viewers even today. In her review of the company from 1974, Arlene Croce states that “Drag ballet provides one answer to
the question of why men impersonating women are funny, while women impersonating men are not; it has to do with gravity.
(A heavy thing trying to become light is automatically funnier than a light thing trying to become heavy.) And watching the
two Trockaderos forced me to ponder certain aspects of sex in regard to ballet. It is partly because a ballerina is the woman
and not an abstraction at all” (Croce). The Ballet Trockadero directly points out the gender and sexuality issues surrounding
the dancing body, but does so with tongue in cheek.
The dance stage has always been a reflection of society’s views about morality, ideology, and image. The dancing body is
a venue for awareness and discussion of those cultural ideas and traditions. Modern dance has especially challenged the
social, political, and aesthetic values about the body and offered new methods for looking, thinking, and accepting. Issues
of gender construction, sexual identity and preference, or traditional dichotomous roles of masculine and feminine are
constantly being evaluated and challenged through dance. Innovations in the modern dance genre clearly led to re-evaluations
in ballet, even though many reforms were slow to happen and ballet still lives in the shadow of its 19th century history.
Works Cited
Anderson, Jack. Ballet and Modern Dance: A Concise History. Hightown: Princeton, 1992.
Banes, Sally. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-modern Dance. Middletown: Wesleyan U. P., 1977.
Brown, Jean Morrison, Naomi Mindlin, and Charles H. Woodford, eds. The Vision of Modern Dance: In the Words
of Its Creators. Hightown: Princeton, 1979.
Burt, Ramsay. “The trouble with the male dancer is…” Moving History, Dancing Cultures. Ann Dils & Ann Cooper
Albright. Middletown: Wesleyan U. P., 2001. Pg 44-55
Cohen, Selma Jeanne. Dance as a Theatre Art; Source Readings in Dance History from 1581 to the Present.
Princeton: Princeton, 1992 (second edition).
Croce, Arlene. “Les Ballets Trockadero Reviewed.” Ballet Trockadero Online. May 2006.
<http://www.trockadero.org/Reviews/1974%20Reviews/arlene.html>
Dale, Monica. “Mistaken Identities: François Delsarte.” MusiKinesis Online. April 2006.
<http://www.musikinesis.com/Delsarte.htm>.
Daly, Ann. Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture. Middletown: Wesleyan U. P., 2002.
-----. Done Into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Middletown: Wesleyan U. P., 1995.
DeFrantz, Thomas. “Simmering Passivity: The Black Male Body in Concert Dance.” Moving Words:
Re-writing Dance. ed., Gay Morris. London: Routledge, 1996. Pg 107-120
Dido and Aeneas. Dir. Barbara Willis Sweete. Chor. Mark Morris. Perf. Mark Morris Dance Group.
Image Entertainment, 1995.
Dils, Ann and Ann Cooper Albright. Moving History/Dancing Cultures. Middletown: Wesleyan U. P., 2001.
Garafola, Lynn. Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. New York: Oxford U. P., 1989.
----, ed. Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet. Hanover: Wesleyan U. P., 1997.
-----. "The Travesty Dancer in the Nineteenth Century Ballet." Dance Research Journal. 17/2 and 18/1 (1985-86): 35-40.
Jowitt, Deborah. Time and the Dancing Image. New York: Morrow, 1988.
Kirstein, Lincoln. Four Centuries of Ballet: Fifty Masterworks. New York: Dover, 1984.
Les Ballets Trockcadero. Dir. Luc Riolon. Perf. Les Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo. TDK Recording Media, 2002.
Meglin, Joellen A. “Feminism or Fetishism: La Révolt des femmes and Women’s Liberation in France in the
1830s.” Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet. ed. Lynn Garafola.
Hanover: Wesleyan U. P., 1997. Pg 69-91
Morris, Gay. Moving Words: Re-writing Dance. London: Routledge, 1996.
Reynolds, Nancy and Malcolm McCormick. No Fixed Points: Dance in the Twentieth Century.
London: Yale U. P., 2003.
Siegel, Marcia B. The Shapes of Change: Images of American Dance. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1979.