Institutionen för musik- och teatervetenskap, Stockholms universitet

Teater- och dansvetenskap med inriktning dans

Påbyggnadskurs, vårterminen 2006

Persistence and Resistance of

Narrative in the Languages of Dance
Institutionen för musik- och teatervetenskap, Stockholms universitet

Teater- och dansvetenskap med inriktning dans

Påbyggnadskurs, vårterminen 2006

Persistence and Resistance of

Narrative in the Languages of Dance
 Persistence and Resistance of Narrative in the Languages of Dance

ABSTRACT

This essay deals with the notions of language and narrative in Western theatrical dance,
and it aims to show that the particular conditions of the dance medium constitute languages
which redefine traditional notions of narrative. Dance is presented as a poetic and
deconstructive language which speaks by means of metaphors, irony and contradictions; and
which favours the faculties of imagination and intuition over the faculties of reason. Using
some examples from Western dance history, I present different cases in which the
particularities of dance might resist certain notions of traditional narrative such as the
Aristotelian plot; but also cases in which these same particularities might enrich traditional
narrative notions such as that of characterization. Being bodily movement an essential
material of dance, this essay dedicates several sections to identify how some narrative
elements can be identified in what is perceived as ‘pure dancing’. Therefore, the question
addressed in this essay is not whether dance is a language or not, or whether it is narrative or
not; but rather how dance can be a language and a narrative form. The discussion is supported
by methods that emphasise experience and language as the contexts of knowledge; namely,
those methods derived from pragmatism and deconstructivism. Such an approach implies that
I will constantly change perspective and focus, and that I will rely on my own experiences as
a dancer, choreographer and dance spectator.

By Sara Regina Fonseca

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4
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................5

II. THE LANGUAGES OF DANCE........................................................................9

III. THE CASE OF MELO ................................................................................19

IV. NARRATIVE AND THE LANGUAGES OF DANCE..........................................24

V. CONCLUSION.............................................................................................40

I...............................................INTRODUCTION

1. Purpose and Motivation

This essay has been conceived as a presentation of reflections about language and narrative
in Western theatrical dance1, and it intends to make visible a variety of perspectives from
which dance might function as a communicative medium and as a narrative form. The initial
motivation to select this topic comes from my own artistic interests as a dancer and
choreographer, as well as from the intervention of a spectator who, during a forum that
followed one of the performances in the International Dance Festival Abundance 2004, asked
to the choreographers: Why is it that contemporary dance never tells stories, like for example,
Don Giovanni? In my opinion, the comment felt almost offensive to the artists who showed
rather little interest in giving a further thought to an apparently irrelevant question. Being
contemporary dancers, I thought, we have the feeling that dance has its own particular way of
telling stories; or that telling stories, as such, is not really the point with contemporary dance.
Such feelings are exactly what I mean to generalise, disclosure and analyse along the
following pages.

2. Argumentation
The reflections presented in this essay are shaped and organised according to the overall
argument sustaining that the dance medium provides a context in which traditional notions of
language and narrative are resisted or challenged, at the same time as they are redefined and
materialised in new forms. By presenting different perspectives from which dance might be
seen as a language, I will open a discussion which refers to the languages of dance, in plural,
rather than the language of dance, in singular, for the latter suggests that there is only one way
of conceiving dance as a communicative medium. Similarly, the issue of narrative will be

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approached as a presentation and discussion about several ways in which narrative can take
place within the context of dance.

As an implicit theoretical support, I will establish a parallel between what Kathleen M.

Wheeler considers to be important attempts to fight ‘the tyranny of reason’ in Western
philosophy, and what I consider to be a dynamic tension between a persistence of and a
resistance to traditional notions of language and narrative in dance. According to Wheeler,
‘romanticism’, ‘pragmatism’ and ‘deconstruction’ share a “common concern to challenge the
‘tyranny’ of reason and all that such tyranny implies” 2. This includes: the existence of
unquestionable and eternal truths beyond language, the view of language as a medium which
should strive to represent transcendental truths with maximum accuracy, the fixed and
arbitrary relationships between the word and the world, and the belief that there is a right way
of interpreting language and representing the world. In my opinion, seeing dance from such a
‘tyrannical’ perspective implies to treat dance as a medium to represent, in a ‘literal’ and
‘logical’ way, a preconceived story or theme that is external to the dancing itself. Similarly,
the challenges to ‘the tyranny of reason’ can be compared to the ways in which traditional
notions of language and narrative have been resisted or transformed by several artists in
history, if not by the very conditions provided by the medium of dance.

In her discussion, Wheeler adopts a rejecting position towards prevailing notions of reason,
arguing that despite the significant efforts of some thinkers during the last three centuries, the
‘tyranny’ persists and restricts the positive development of Western philosophy. Making a
connection with Wheeler’s arguments, I recognise the persistence of traditional conceptions
of language and narrative in dance. However, my opinion contrasts the author’s to certain
extent, when I suggest that, far from preserving traditional assumptions and restricting the
evolution of dance, the issue of narrative -and non-narrative- has generated a multiplicity of
ways of understanding language, narrative and dance, as well as a multiplicity of ways of
dancing.

Basing my arguments on the parallel between Wheeler’s view of Western philosophy

history and Western dance history, I will suggest that some of the notions and language
devices used in ‘romanticism’ and ‘deconstruction’, can be identified in certain forms -or
languages- of Western theatrical dance. Even though ‘pragmatism’ is the third pillar of
Wheeler’s argumentation, I will not explicitly refer to it in this discussion; but I will rather use
it as an implicit approach to method. The reason for this is that ‘romanticism’ and

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‘deconstruction’ deal directly with language, whilst ‘pragmatism’ seems to deal more
specifically with methodological approaches to science.

3. Method and Sources

Besides serving myself from Wheeler’s argumentation, I will adopt some of the methods
and theories presented by the author; namely, those derived from ‘romantic irony’,
‘pragmatism’ and ‘deconstruction’. Wheeler’s accounts of such theories and methods
emphasise ‘experience’ and ‘language’ as the contexts for knowledge, where knowledge is
understood as a subject in constant transformation, and where a kind of ‘agility’ is required in
order to redefine the world out of new experiences. Moreover, these methods advocate for an
embracement of contradictions, and for a sceptical attitude towards prevailing assumptions or
fixed truths. In this sense, ‘all assumptions are provisional’ and built out of received opinions,
whose validity depend on their adequacy to particular purposes and contexts. Although
‘romanticism’, ‘pragmatism’ and ‘deconstruction’ differ strongly in many ways, they share an
approach to method which is open to the questioning, re-questioning and changing of
perspectives. Such approaches to method seem to me to be appropriate for a discussion that
aims to unfold the richness of an issue, rather than coming to a definite conclusion like, for
example, that dance is narrative or that it is not. Providing that these methods emphasise
‘language’ and ‘experience’ as the contexts of knowledge, I will inform this discussion with
the actual experiences of creating, performing and seeing dance. Regarding this, I will
constantly alternate and relate purely theoretical sources with interviews, as well as with my
own experiences as choreographer, performer and dance spectator. Concerning the theoretical
sources, I will use, apart from Wheeler’s writings about philosophy, some relevant material
from literary criticism and dance scholarship.

4. Disposition
As I have explained earlier, this essay revolves around notions of language and narrative
within the context of dance. These issues will not be approached by questioning whether
dance is a language or not, or whether dance can be narrative or not; but rather ‘how’ dance
might work as a language and ‘how’ narrative might have a place within the context of dance
or, more specifically, of Western theatrical dance. Keeping this in mind, I have opted for the
following disposition: The first chapter corresponds to the Introduction, which concludes with
this section about the overall disposition of the essay. The second chapter is called The
Languages of Dance, and it provides a theoretical frame of ‘romanticism’ and

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‘deconstruction’, followed by a presentation of some ways in which dance can be perceived as
a language within such frames. As the titles of its sections suggest, this chapter presents three
perspectives of dance as a language: Dance as a Poetical Language, Dance as a Language of
Metaphors and Paradoxes, and Dance as a Language of Bodily Movement. The third chapter
is called The Case of Melo, and it presents the work of this Livekonstkollektiv as a case in
which the notions of language discussed in the second chapter can be identified. The fourth
chapter is called Narrative and the Languages of Dance, and it unfolds a discussion about the
difficulties and particularities of narrative in the context given by the languages of dance.
Following a similar logic to the one used in the second chapter, the fourth chapter introduces
the basic notions of ‘mimesis’, ‘plot’ and ‘narrative’, as well as some related concepts like
‘sequaciousness’, ‘peripety’ and ‘surprise’. Using these notions as points of departure, the
fourth chapter continues with the presentation of three cases in which narrative is either
intended or implicit in dance. The first case deals with dance’s resistance to narrative,
discussing the difficulties of achieving a traditional narrative form in the ballet d’action of the
18th century. The second case presents some perspectives from which dance, as a poetical
language, can function as a narrative form. The third case suggests that there is a persistence
of narrative elements in dance, when dance is perceived at the level of sheer bodily
movement. At this point, I will use the works of Martha Graham and Doris Humphrey, as
well as the example of dance improvisation and some of my own choreographic experiences;
in order to identify narrative structures and narrative elements at the level of bodily
movement. In the last couple of sections, I will present dance theatre as a performative form
in which traditional notions of narrative are maintained and challenged; and I will serve
myself from Rudolf Laban’s researches on bodily movement, in order to discuss the narrative-
related notions of sequatioussness and characterization. The conclusion of this essay is
conceived as a summary of reflections, rather than as a definite answer to an original question.

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 II. THE LANGUAGES OF DANCE
1
Western Theatrical Dance shall be understood as the Western dance forms, which are performed for an
audience and with artistic purposes. Conventionally, this kinds of dance are presented in theatres and performed
by professional dancers. However, some avant-garde dance forms can be performed in alternative spaces and
even with non professional dancers. In this essay, such cases will also be considered to belong to Western
Theatrical Dance, regarding that their purpose is artistic and not, for example, therapeutic. For practical reasons,
Western Theatrical Dance will be referred to as ‘dance’ only. Thus, as the essay develops, ‘dance’ should be
understood as Western Theatrical Dance, as this is defined above.
2
Kathleen M. Wheeler, Romanticism, pragmatism and deconstruction,Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993,
viii.

I suggest starting this discussion by provisionally accepting that dance is a language, that it
has communicative faculties, and that its material, bodily movement, can be consciously
loaded with meaning. I am aware of the vulnerability of this assumption, but let us stand here
and depart from the following question: If dance is a language, how does it communicate?
Which kind of language is it? The next sections present some notions belonging to
‘romanticism’ and ‘deconstruction’ which, in my opinion, provide an adequate theoretical
frame to describe dance as language.

5. Romanticism
Romanticism can be described as a Western European intellectual and artistic movement
which has its origins in the late 18h century, and its greatest developments during the 19th
century. In many ways, ‘romanticism’ reacted against the ‘enlightenment’, or the movement
which proclaimed the predominance of human reason in philosophy, science and art. Thus,
‘romanticism’ strived to legitimize values like human emotions, intuition, imagination and
other elements which challenged logical thinking. This is, indeed, why ‘romanticism’ is one
of the pillars in Wheeler’s argumentation against the ‘tyranny of reason’.

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 During ‘romanticism’ the literary trope of ‘irony’ acquired philosophical dimension, and
was conceived as a methodological attitude towards life. For the romantics, language comes
into being by means of an imaginative process in which concepts give form to the actual
world, and irony is understood as the original gap between the concepts -or words- and the
world. The existence of this gap was, in turn, considered to be characteristic of language in its
original and vital condition. In this context, all language is essentially figural and poetic or, in
other words, language is always different from what it refers to or represents. ‘Literal
language’ is in turn a denial or forgetting of ‘irony’:

If we think of our language as a simple one-to-one label or picture of the world, then we forget the creative
and disruptive birth of language. To see all language as ironic, the Romantics argued, would be to restore life to
its once open, fluid and productive past. Life would no longer be frozen into the fixed forms of grammar and
syntax, or reduced to what is sayable. Irony recognises a sense that is always other than what is said.3

Romantics stressed that ‘irony’ was not just signalling the opposite of what was said; but
that it was the expression of both sides and viewpoints at once in the form of contradiction or
paradox. As Schlegel put it: “Irony is the form of paradox”. Furthermore, the romantics see
life as a dynamic flux in which any subject, including human beings all ‘truths’, are
vulnerable to change. Doctor Claire Colebrook explains that in romanticism: “the subject ‘is’
nothing other than an ongoing process of creation/.../It is no longer a ground that precedes and
underlies judgements.”4

By challenging the stability of the subject, romantic ironists agree on the impossibility of a
‘true expression’ or ‘representation’ of a particular subject; namely, something that exists
beyond or before language. ‘Truth’, in this case, does not consist in finding the right
representations of the real world, but rather in playing with a multiplicity of representations of
reality. Furthermore, the world which is represented is already a figural world; it is already a
metaphor, or a representation of other representations. Originality, as well as absolute
conclusions and truths, are challenged by the flux of life, and by the fact that anything is but a
representation of something else. Figural language was for the romantics the supreme and
purest form. Nature was an ideal to be ‘imitated’, not so much in its particular appearances,
but in its vital transformation:

The poem is mimetic but it does not copy a thing so much as a process. It creates just as nature
creates, and in so creating itself we have the power to see the world in its becoming, not just its inert
being. (Schlegel)5

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 Intimately related to irony, is the trope of ‘metaphor’. Percy Bysshe Shelley6, one of the
major English romantic poets, understood metaphor as the process of imaginative synthesis,
in which we constitute knowledge by relating elements in unprecedented ways. Such elements
are in turn metaphors of previous experiences. By means of metaphorical relations, we do not
only recognise new elements, but also new ways of experiencing them and of viewing
experience itself. Such imaginative processes are continuously emerging and evolving during
experience, while producing and re-arranging all kinds of notions, including language, art and
culture. Therefore, to ask what there is ‘behind’ the basic material of experience, Shelley
believed, is an unintelligible question which implies an ‘outness prejudice’, and an apparent
need for such an ‘entity’. According to Shelley, there is not such a thing as an ultimate truth
beyond experience and its metaphorical products. ‘Every thing’ is but a metaphor created out
of experience, and life is a great poem created out of the experience of living.

However, Shelley, like the romantic ironists, warned us that metaphors might constitute the
world either in a lively or, let me call it, in a deadly way. When certain relations between
elements fall into mechanization and no longer apprehend ‘things’ as a synthesised product of
imagination; the original vitality of metaphors degenerates into what Shelley calls ‘dead
metaphors’7. These are words or phrases which have become signs for partialized and
dogmatic thought, where ‘a’ particular way of perceiving things becomes ‘the only way’.
This, for Shelley, is what we call ‘literal language’, and it implies that the ‘sign’ become ‘the
thing signified’; a worn-out metaphor. In this context, the task of the genuine poet or
philosopher is to revitalize the dead metaphors, thereby creating new hybrids that disturb the
already prevalent conceptions of the world.

6. Deconstruction
Deconstruction can be said to echo some key points of ‘romanticism’, in spite of the
approximately two hundred years that separate these two movements. As Wheeler shows in
her book, they share the use of paradox, as well as the embracement of constant change and
contradictions. The term ‘deconstruction’ was coined by French philosopher Jacques Derrida
in the 1960s, and it defines a movement which feeds itself from structuralistic8 researches on
the structures that support the production and interpretation of meaning in language.
However, deconstructivists react against structuralist movements that give absolute privilege
to reason and that conceive the relationships between the world and its representations as
being fixed and arbitrary. Where ‘romanticism’ is concerned with representations of life,

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nature and reality; ‘deconstruction’ is most concerned with the production and interpretation
of meaningful texts. ‘Text’, in this context, is understood as anything which is embedded with
meaning; namely, written texts, advertisements, social conventions, art works and so forth.

Echoing the romantics, deconstructionists see paradoxes not only as unavoidable but also
as valid and even desirable. In romanticism, paradoxes are revealed by means of irony, and
they aim to refresh the metaphors by which we understand the world. In deconstruction,
paradoxes aim to reveal the contradictions contained in arguably logical statements or
systems. Thus, deconstruction follows strict logical thinking to the point in which logicality
itself is exhausted and the paradoxes contained in its structures are apparent. In this way,
deconstruction aims to question and invert predominant moral and philosophical values,
considering all statements or systems to be provisional and vulnerable to disruption, as well as
being important and necessary for disruption to be possible.

The constant reinterpretation and reformulation of existing statements, encourages the

multiplication of meanings in a process known among deconstructionists as ‘dissemination’.
According to Derrida’s translator Gayatri Chockavorky, ‘dissemination’ refers to: “The seed
that neither inseminates nor is recovered by the father, but is scattered abroad” (Derrida,
1976).9 For deconstructionists, interpretations generate more interpretations, or as Derrida put
it: “writing always leads to more writing, and more, and still more.”10 In this way,
deconstruction rejects the idea of origin and therefore of the notions of ‘originality’ and
‘authorship’. Any text is but a reinterpretation of other texts, and texts penetrate each other in
a process of ‘intertextuality’: “The theory of which asserts that no text exists as an
autonomous and self-sufficient whole: the writer’s and the reader’s experience of other texts
conditions its form of interpretation”.11

One could state that, in deconstruction, the very action of writing or producing texts is
conceived as the means and purpose of language, if not of life itself. Active readings, this is,
active interpretations, might also be conceived as texts which synthesise experiences of
perception thereby creating new conceptions of the world. The world, in turn, dwells and is
itself created within the texts that exist, and that are constantly reinterpreted, multiplied and
disseminated. It seems to me that deconstruction takes further the romantic vision in which
the world is a great metaphorical conception. Where romantics still speak about ‘nature’ and
the ways of representing -and even imitating-, its dynamic flux; deconstructionists seem to
absolutely deny the existence of a reliable ‘nature’, ‘life’ or ‘reality’, which, though in
constant flux, can be represented by language. I suggest that where romantics would, for

1
example, play with different representations and aspects of ‘love’; deconstructionists would
scrutinise and reconstruct –or deconstruct- existing ‘texts about love’. There ‘is’, for
deconstructionists, only language; and within language, life and reality exist. As Derrida put
it: “there is nothing outside the text”12.

7. Dance as a Poetic Language

Of all the arts to which dance has been likened that of lyric poetry offers the most significant
analogies. Like dance, it is both rhythmic and expressive. It makes its statements in a manner that has
an important sensuous appeal. (Selma Jeanne-Cohen)13

When pointing out the lyrical-poetical nature of dance, Jeanne-Cohen sees dance’s
capability to both ‘make statements’ and have ‘sensuous appeal’. It could be said that, in
making statements, dance shares the essential communicative function of all languages;
whilst, in having a sensuous appeal, dance enters the ground of the poetic. I think of, for
example, Indian Kathakali14, as a dance which can be valued as much for its narrative and
highly codified character, as well as for the playfulness and magnificence of its appearance. I
also think of the way in which spectators often talk about what they see in dance
performances, using many ‘like if’ expressions and a verbal language which seems almost as
elusive and metaphorical as the dance itself. I think of classical ballet and the delight of losing
the thread of the fairy tale plots whilst admiring the delicate lines drawn by a ballerina’s body
in the space; or on the clarity with which dance can deploy emotions such as love, sorrow,
violence or happiness. Dance might be seen as language in the sense that it can be interpreted
and loaded with meaning. However, the messages contained in dance seem to be delivered in
a manner that is poetic; that stimulates the senses as much, if not more, than it stimulates the
brain; and that escapes the rules of logical thinking, thereby giving space for multiple
impressions and interpretations.

8. Dance as a Metaphorical and Ironical Language

Dance as metaphorical and ironical language might be identified in different ways.
Raymond W. Gibbs, for example, touches upon some key issues concerning the function of
metaphor in Contact Improvisation:

Although poets and dancers each employ language or perform bodily movements in ways that take us
by surprise, both poets and dancers are essentially elaborating in creative ways on body-based
metaphorical ideas that are possibly shared by all human beings... Dancers, like poets, do not
necessarily create de novo conceptualizations of experience each time they make a dance. We

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 appreciate Contact Improvisation not because something entirely new has been created but because
old ideas have been instantiated in new ways. 15

Here, Gibbs points out the process through which poets and dancers re-elaborate already
existing metaphors and present them in new ways. Dance is meaningful, because it embodies
metaphors that are accepted and understood, but it is poetic and touching because it plays
imaginatively with such metaphors. Gibbs explains that certain space related metaphors such
as that ‘Happiness is Up’, ‘Sadness is Down’, or ‘Life is a Journey’ take the spectator by
surprise, when they are embodied –presented in body actions-, re-arranged and even
challenged in the dance. This process clearly resembles the manner in which romantic ironists
and deconstructivists invert and relate pre-existing assumptions in new ways. Gibbs continues
his argumentation with a description of how irony serves itself from known metaphors during
the unfolding dance:

In fact, much of the creativity we see in Contact Improvisation/.../ rests on our multiple understanding
of embodied metaphors. For instance, there are moments of great power and happiness as Julyen and
Alito -the improvisers- move down across the floor, struggling to find harmony between them. Being
down close to the ground might seem to be the opposite of metaphorical notions that to be down is to
be sad, in ill-health, unconscious, or even dead. Yet, we can take joy in how even those who are
down, with great burdens upon their shoulders (as when Alito climbs onto Julyen’s back) actually
reverse the pre-existing metaphorical idea and express different emotional nuances than are
traditionally assumed by such body positions. Most important, though, we may be aware, as I was, of
how the new insights in an improvisational dance are rooted in established patterns of embodied
meaning; at the same time, these same conventional patterns of meaning are overturned and lead to
the sense of being “taken by surprise”. There is much irony in Contact improvisation, one of the
reasons why it is such a subversive force in dance. Part of our sense that some movements are
ironical comes from the tacit recognition that conventional, perhaps embodied meaning, have been
reversed. Thus, even when our reading of Contact Improvisation appears to be the opposite of what is
suggested by conceptual metaphors, these interpretations still depend on our understanding of the
normative quality of certain embodied metaphors.16

Another connection between theatrical dance and the romantic notion of metaphor might
be made through the work of theatre director Peter Brook, who distinguishes between
‘deadly’ and ‘living theatre’:

In a living theatre, we would each day approach the rehearsal putting yesterday’s discoveries to the
test, ready to believe that the true play has once again escaped us. But the Deadly theatre approaches
the classics from the viewpoint that somewhere, someone has found out and defined how the play
should be done17.

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 A play that escapes ‘once again’, and the questioning of ‘yesterday’s discoveries’ resemble
not only the romantic recognition of continuous change, but also the will to question and
redefine meanings, which is characteristic of deconstructive approaches to interpretation. A
‘deadly theatre’, as expressed by Brook, can be compared to the notions of ‘literal language’
and the ‘dead metaphors’ as understood by the romantic ironists and Shelley. Furthermore,
Brook explains that the ‘deadly theatre’:

/.../falls into an imitation of the externals of acting, -which- only perpetuates manner –a manner hard
to relate to anything at all. The latter, though, should not be confused with the great tradition, say,
Noh actors passing knowledge orally from father to son. There- in Noh Theatre tradition-, it is
meaning that is communicated –and meaning never belongs to the past. It can be checked in each
man’s own present experience.18

The process in which meaning is ‘communicated’ and then ‘checked in each man’s present
experience’, seems to me to emphasise the fact that an active -and acted- interpretation of an
existing text is itself a new text with renewed meaning. In other words, that meaningful texts
are produced during the very act of interpretation. Thus, from a deconstructive perspective, it
can be argued that each theatre performance, in its lively form, should function as a text,
where some existing structures, scripts and other elements are interpreted, re-written, and
made into a new, meaningful unity. Furthermore, this new unity or structure is to be re-
interpreted and re-written by new actors, or by the same actors in new performances. When
Brook points out that ‘meaning never belongs to the past’, he might well be implying that
meaning, in a ‘living theatre’, is contained in the moment of acting, within performance,
within the text.

By tracing this connection with theatre, my aim is to show another way in which romantic
and deconstructive notions of language might be appropriate to discuss theatrical dance. I
have chosen to temporarily ignore the borders between theatre and theatrical dance,
considering that these art forms share a visual and a kinaesthetic19 dimension. Brook’s theatre
is known for having given emphasis to ‘imagery’, and has even “been accused of wanting to
destroy the spoken word”20. His argument, is that “today [Brook said in the 60’s], writers
seem unable to make ideas and images collide through words with Elizabethan force” 21. It
might be claimed that images, in Brook’s view, have the power of renewing dead metaphors.
It is important to notice, though, that Brook was revolutionary in a context where verbal
language was predominant, namely, Western theatre in the 60’s. If we are to use Brooks’s
reflections to discuss the notions of metaphor presented in the first sections of this essay, it is

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important to think of the function of Brook’s theatre of images, instead of thinking of the
images for themselves. By saying this, I am suggesting that a discussion about the function of
‘metaphor’ in a certain work should proceed to identify those metaphors that seem to be dead
in the work’s particular context, as well as those devices which, in the same context, have the
power of refreshing people’s perception of language and the world.

Finally, I would like to remark that Brook’s theatre breaks, together with the verbal
language, the referential nature of meaning and the linear time of traditional narrative 22. When
breaking the referential nature of meaning, Brook’s works re-interpret stories thereby playing
with metaphorical associations; instead of literally representing stories’ events, places and
characters. In respect to the narrative time-line, Brook’s works tend to favour a non-linear
narrative form, in which narrative travels freely between past, present and future. This might
even give the illusion that the works are only dealing with the present, thereby magnifying
minimal sections of a linear time-line.23This non-linear type of narrative tends to emphasise
the psychological complexity of characters, the different aspects of a single theme, or the
imagery surrounding the actions of a story. In this sense, Peter Brook’s works can be
compared to certain dance works, such as those created by American choreographer Martha
Graham from the 1920’s to the 1980’s. Her choreographic pieces are often based on
mythology, where the display of human psychology is privileged over the display of logical
sequences of events; an approach that is common in much of contemporary dance. Thus, a
common emphasis on physicality, imagery and non-linear narrative, allows, in many cases, to
discuss certain types of theatre and dance under the same umbrella.

9. Dance as a Language of Bodily Movement

The true, the unique, the eternal subject of a ballet is dancing (Théophile Gautier)24.

The romantic ironists’ belief that ‘the only existing subject is movement’ seems to be
particularly true or visible in dance, where bodies present themselves under the very process
of becoming, never quite getting into one static position, but always getting into new,
ephemeral positions. Regardless of its more or less narrative character, movement is always
an implicit subject in dance.

In some cases, choreography is made so that the dance movements represent other
movements. For example, a ballerina’s pas de bourrée across the stage -quick and little steps
on the toes- might represent the movement of a swan floating in the water, or of a fairy
floating in the air. The big jumps of a male ballet dancer might represent the flight of a bird.

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But besides the illusion of floating and flying swans, fairies or birds, one sees women and
men who walk on the toes and jump high. Dance, in these cases, can be said to be both
movement and representation of movement; and when dance represents movement, it might
also represent actions, characters and stories. It might, in other words, be a narrative dance,
with all the peculiarities, potentials and difficulties that the context of dance offers as a
narrative medium.

In other cases, choreographers decide to display movements in such a way that they do not
create illusions of something else, but rather enhance viewers’ awareness of the physical
actions that the dancers are actually doing. A case in point is the work of American
choreographer Merce Cunningham, whose significant place in contemporary dance has much
to do with his attempt to free dance from narrative, specific meanings and performative
elements such as music and set design. In the 50’s, Cunningham stood in the field of
American modern dance as a pioneer of a new concept of choreography. His methods include,
among others, the random arrangement of movement sequences, the independent
development of music and choreography, the inclusion of pedestrian movements, and the
break of some conventional hierarchies like the privilege of the centre in the scenic space. In
her analysis of Cunningham’s work, Susan Leigh Foster writes that the choreographer:

/.../claims that his dances express nothing but themselves, that instead of telling a story they focus on
the physical facts of the body- what arms and legs, torso, and the head can do in relation to gravity,
time, and space.25

This deliberate consciousness of movement, which should not be seen as exclusive of

Cunningham, has resonances in the American generation of dancers who called themselves
‘the post-moderns’ during the 60’s. An intended disattachment from external references and
an emphasis on dance as ‘pure motion’ characterize not only post-modern dance
performances, but also post-modern dance training sessions. Here, dance sequences are hardly
ever described in terms of static positions or motivated by metaphorical images. Instead, the
instructions given during the sessions might well sound as if describing the dancers’ skeleton
in interaction with the forces of gravity. The next description could be an extract from a post-
modern dance training session: ‘Let your head drop until your left sit bone and leg release
from the floor, throw your right arm around your torso, and let your whole body turn around
until it looses its balance. Hold the suspension as long as possible and then let yourself fall
down into the floor. Once you are on floor, keep on falling.’ Moreover, these movements are

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often performed without music accompaniment, so that dancers are encouraged to follow
internal, rather than external rhythms.

Now, Is there place for narrative in such a self-contained and self-conscious type of dance?
I would like to suggest that there is. That narrative does not need to be referential and that
dance can be narrative without serving the purpose of representing stories that exist beyond
the dancing itself. The very body in motion, in my opinion, may materialise narrative
elements. The fourth chapter will deal with some basic notions of narrative, and with different
ways in which narrative might take place in bodily movement.

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 III. THE CASE OF MELO
I have chosen to dedicate this chapter to the work of the Swedish Life Art Collective
-livekonstkollektivet- ‘Melo’, because it seems to me that it connects, in a single example,
many of the points I have been dealing with up to now. The assumptions and opinions
presented in this chapter are based on my own experience as spectator of Melo’s production
This Power is Called Imagination, which I have seen twice during the last year; a personal
interview with Sara Svensson and Melina Mastrotanasi26, who are the founders of Melo; and
the brochures created by the group during its residence at Moderna Dansteatern in September
2005. Even though Melo is seen by its members as a life art collective instead of a dance
company, the group has some characteristics which make it fit well within the frames of
theatrical dance and, therefore, within the frames of this essay. These characteristics are the
emphatic presence of performing bodies, the great visibility and dramatic focus of the element
of dance, and the presentation of the work in conventional dance scenes like Moderna
Dansteatern.

However, it is important to give recognition to Melo’s cross-roads approach, which is

clearly felt in the way This Power is Called Imagination integrates different performative
elements, without showing an obvious relationship of constant submission or dependence
between them. Moreover, the cross-roads form of the collective is explicit in the variety of
roles played by the members of a rather substantial group -they are thirteen!-, and described
by Melo approximately like this: four are dancers, one is a light designer, two are architects,
one is a ceramic and glass work artist, three are musicians, one is a costume designer, and one
has diverse experiences in communication and media, technical devices of the theatre and
music27. Let me now present some reflections about Melo’s live art collective and the notions
of languages discussed earlier in this essay.

10. Deconstruction and a Collective Construction of

Language
In this section, I would like to argue that Melo’s work resembles a deconstructive approach
to language, which is, to a great extent, a result of the group’s approach to collective creation.
‘Collective’, in this case, means that there is no director, that all decisions are taken in
common agreement. It means that there is space for a multiplicity of mediums, ideas,

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suggestions, interpretations and subject-matters, which come from each one of the individuals
who constitute Melo. I was personally touched by the way this sense of collectivism was
visible on stage, as well as by the inclusions of Melo’s brochures, and the openness with
which Sara and Melina accepted to share with me some of their thoughts and experiences
during their working process.

Melo’s Working Process as a ‘Dissemination’ of Meaning

If there is a core or stable motivation in Melo’s creative process, it is probably the artists’
will to create together, rather than a certain subject-matter or theme. In my encounter with
Sara and Melina, they told me how each member of Melo came to rehearsals with several and
dissimilar suggestions to work on. They could be images, extracts from philosophical texts,
stories, ideas, or practical exercises to set off improvisations. The different subjects-matters
suggested by the artists might be said to work not so much as centres, but rather as elusive
references which are re-interpreted and re-created into new performative material. Or even
better, they could be said to be “the seed that neither inseminates nor is recovered by the
father, but is scattered abroad”28, to quote Chockavorky’s explanation of the deconstructive
process of dissemination. Thus, Melo’s creative process implies that texts -or meaningful
images, stories, etc- are re-interpreted and re-written in multiple ways; that they are
transformed into new texts – in this case performative texts-, thereby giving birth to a new
range of meanings. Meanings, which are in turn to be re-interpreted by other readers, namely,
the spectators.

According to Sara and Melina, their work is constantly open for new inputs and changes
even shortly before every performance, and the idea of the group is that spectators feel invited
to create their own interpretations. As in Derrida’s conception of writing, Melo’s working
process – which includes many discussions, rehearsals and performances- is not attempted to
achieve a final and correct representation of a certain truth, subject-matter or story. Each stage
of the process, including the performances, might be said to be part of an endless search for
collective production of meanings; a fertile game, where the game itself is the main purpose.
It seems to me that, in contrast to being an unconscious process that is arguably inherent in
any kind of text production and interpretation, dissemination is a deliberate or intended
process in Melo’s approach to work.

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The Deconstructed Author and the Collective Authorship

As I mentioned earlier, Melo does not follow the decisions of a director, for there is no a
particular director or any other figure to whom authorship might be adjudicated. In contrast,
the group assumes its thirteen members as collaborative authors, and it openly recognises the
conscious or unconscious participation of many people external to the group. This attitude is
reflected in the brochures that were delivered in Moderna Dansteatern before the performance
of This Power is Called Imagination, which contains direct allusions to a great number of
people and texts. By acknowledging the existence of multiple references and authors, Melo’s
work might be said to embrace a deconstructive form of authorship, where absolute subjects
and origins are denied.

Collectivity and Intertextual Awareness

Like the ideas of absolute origins and authorships, so are the ideas of absolute identities
and unique texts denied in deconstructivism. Every text is conditioned by ‘intertextuality’,
which means that the production and interpretation of any text is permeated by pre-existing
texts. There are characteristics which seem to me to manifest an open recognition and
embracement of intertextuality in Melo’s work: The collective creation implies that the
creative process is permeable not only to the artistic, but also the ideological inputs from each
member. Sara and Melina told me that, for example, the work was continuously questioned
and re-shaped by the gender awareness of the dancer Anders Jacobson. Here, gender
awareness can be considered to be a discursive text, or a body of beliefs, meanings and social
perceptions that partly conditions the textual artistic products of Melo. Furthermore, one can
see an embracement of intertextuality in the brochures, which are presented by Melo like this:

In this fanzine we have gathered texts and pictures which are in a way part of our process, or that we
simply think are interesting. We mix material from ourselves, from friends and from colleagues as
well as short interviews with amazing people within the field of dance and information about MELO
and This Power is Called Imagination. We hope this is interesting for you to read! Irresponsible
provider: MELO (my trans.) 29

This fanzine is indeed a miscellaneous of written texts –some of them handwritten copies,
which show even crossings, corrections and personal interventions-, pictures, interviews,
drawings, etc. There is not an apparently logical transition from text to text, nor is there a

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visible thematic or aesthetic unity that connects the different materials included in the
brochure. Writings and drawings are shown in their different formats and styles, so that one is
aware of the heterogeneity of the references that have somehow conditioned the artistic work
of the group. It is written in the fanzine that Melo is only an ‘irresponsible provider’, instead
of an absolute author. Thus, spectators are left with the responsibility of interpretation, and
with a collection of text fragments which illustrates the intertextual field underlining the
performance they are about to see.

11. The Power of Imagination over Reason

This Power is Called Imagination is both the title of Melo’s first piece and a direct
reference to Edmund Burke’s account of the imaginative potential of human beings. Melo’s
brochure includes the following quotation:

Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which are presented by the senses; the
mind of man possesses a sort of creative power of its own; either in representing at pleasure the
images of things in the order and manner in which they were received by the senses, or in combining
those images in a new manner, and according to a different order. This power is called imagination;
and to this belongs whatever is called wit, fancy, invention and the like. But it must be observed that
this power of imagination is incapable of producing anything absolutely new; it can only vary the
disposition of those ideas which it has received from the senses. Now the imagination is the most
extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our fears and our hopes, and of our
passions that are connected with them. Edmund Burke (1729-1797)

In the first chapter we saw that romanticism views imagination as the faculty by which
humans construct metaphors, relating elements in unprecedented ways. We saw that
romanticism emphasises the poetic ambiguity and dynamic flux of language –and life-,
thereby encouraging the free play of representations, and recognising the gap or ironical
relationship between language and the world. One might say that, by choosing texts –written,
visual, aural, etc. – and re-interpreting them by different mediums –for example, by dancing a
picture or by drawing a poem-, each of the thirteen artists in Melo makes up his/her own
metaphorical readings. The artists relate some given elements in new ways, using the faculties
of imagination.

Can this form of performance be called language? Can it be loaded with meaning or
communicate something to an audience? As we have mentioned before, poetic language
communicates by means of metaphors that relate recognisable elements in unprecedented
ways. There are, in This Power is Called Imagination, some recognisable elements on stage.

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One sees, for example, a ‘doorless wardrobe’; an element which might refer to a house, or to
the backstage of a theatre. One recognises ‘musicians’, for there are people playing musical
instruments, although in a somewhat awkward manner and in unusual positions. They
descend from the ceiling at the beginning of the piece; and somewhere in the middle they are
carried, whilst playing, by other people -dancers- who are running and jumping around the
stage. There is a scene of a woman moving forcefully in front of her own shadow projected
on the back wall. Is the shadow representing phantoms, her fears, the memories inhabiting an
old house? Towards the end of the piece, four of five people splash in water until complete
exhaustion. Finally, they disappear through the windows, and spectators are left alone for
some seconds with the image of a worn out space. All along the performance one recognises
virtual characters, elements, places; but the imaginative juxtaposition and combination of
these elements leaves the ‘gap’, or the space for multiple interpretations, stories and
meanings.

Finally, I would like to add a comment about the way in which Melo structures the
improvised material resulting from the rehearsals. During our encounter, Sara and Melina
told me that, something like one day before the premier, they wrote down on a board the
names of the different sections they had, so that the group could discuss the order in which
these sections should be performed. The criteria were based on collective intuition, and some
‘yeses!’ and ‘nos! defined the order of the piece for the premier. As opposed to being an easy
or non serious way of solving the structure of the work, I believe this procedure to be
completely coherent with the general approach of the group. There is no one trustful reference
which leads the process, being it a director, a story or the frames given by a single medium.
Similarly, the creative process does not aim to result in a definite, fixed product. The theme is
reborn in every rehearsal and in every mind of both performers and spectators. The order of
the sections should not be expected to be less mobile. In general, it seems to me that Melo
challenges what Wheeler calls ‘the tyranny of reason’, thereby constructing a language that
favours processes based on imaginative and intuitive, rather than logical, faculties.

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 IV. NARRATIVE AND THE LANGUAGES OF
DANCE
Up to now, I have presented some perspectives from which dance can be seen as language,
as well as some ways in which literary tropes, like metaphor and irony, might function in
dance. I will now introduce the notions of mimesis, plot and narrative, in order to discuss how
these concepts may take different forms within the context given by the languages of dance.

12. Mimesis, Plot and Narrative

The notions of mimesis, plot and narrative are closely related and often interchangeable.
However, it is important to establish some differences between these concepts, if we are to
scrutinise the ways in which they might exist, or not, in dance. Back in the fourth century
B.C. Aristotle wrote his Poetics, the first known treatise on the dramatic art. Since then, some
concepts like mimesis and plot have worked as core issues in researches and discussions
about drama, and about art in general. Let me present an overview and some remarks
concerning these concepts.

Aristotle considered tragedy, and art, as a form of mimesis, or imitation of life, human
actions, and stories. The concept of mimesis has been subject of different interpretations but,
in general, there is an agreement in that, by mimesis, Aristotle did not mean a photographic
representation of reality. Harry Blamires, for example, explains that in mimesis “Material
from life has to be selected and carefully organised. With this proviso/.../imaginative literature
will/../be imitation of real life.”30 Moreover, Stephen Halliwell argues that in mimesis, there is
“a discernment of likeness/.../an active and interpretative process of cognition/.../a
perspicacious discovery of significances in the world”31. From this, it could be argued that
imitation requires a process in which certain elements of ‘reality’ are related and synthesised
in new ways. In other words, that imitation involves the faculties of imagination and
metaphorical interpretation.

Further developments of the concept of mimesis have led to apply it to arguably less
narrative art forms like music, dance and poetry. A case in point is Paul Woodruff’s
definition: “Mimesis is the art of arranging one thing to have an effect that properly belongs
to another”.32 One can think, for example, of a piece of music consisting of cyclical repetitions
of a theme, and low pitch tones strongly accentuated towards the end of each musical phrase.

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Such music might be said to resemble the feeling one gets when contemplating the
movements of powerful sea waves; it might be said to imitate powerful sea waves.

The many variants of the meaning of mimesis depend partly on the selection of the
medium, as well as of the objects of imitation. Aristotelian mimesis was mainly concerned
with the art of drama, and specifically the form of tragedy. Here, the objects of imitation
should be events realized by human kind. These events should be related and organised in a
logical and appealing way, through the construction of a plot, or the structure that holds the
events together. Plot was, for Aristotle, the most important element of tragedy, followed in
order of importance by the next elements: character, thought, diction, melody and spectacle.
The logicality of plot can be said to consist in the causal relationship between events, where
there is a motivation or a reason for things to happen, and where things happen thanks to the
the actions of fictional or real characters. In his Poetics, Aristotle claimed that:

The first essential, the life and the soul, so to speak, of Tragedy is the Plot:...we maintain that
Tragedy is primarily an imitation of action, and that it is mainly for the sake of the action that it
imitates the personal agents33.

If one brings about the romantic thought that: “The poem is mimetic but it does not copy a
thing so much as a process” (Schlegel)”34, and the idea that dance might be an imitation of
movement35; it is possible to find a correspondence between plot, poetry and dance: While
plot imitates action, poetry imitates processes and dance imitates movement. I would suggest
that a plot might be poetic and a poem can have a plot, as well as that dance can both have a
plot and be poetic. Later in this chapter, I will discuss some ways in which dance movements
might relate and constitute plots and narrative actions.

According to Aristotle, the sense of wholeness is another essential condition of plot.

Generally, this implies a coherent articulation of beginning, middle and end; which reflects a
linear development of time from past to present and from present to future. Referring to this,
Blamires explains that: “a hazard or arbitrary arrangement of incidents will not do. There
must be cogency, naturalness, and what De Quincey called ‘sequaciousness’ in the placing
and sequence of events” 36. By ‘sequaciousness’ it is meant that one event follows closely in
time after the other, as it is expected from a logical or natural point of view. This coherent and
purposeful arrangement of incidents is what constitutes the meaningful action of a plot. As
Blamires explains:

The story must represent one action, a complete whole, with its several incidents so closely connected
that the transposal or withdrawal of any one of them will disjoin and dislocate the whole.37

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 The principle of wholeness has traditionally been related to the linear development of time
and the clear depiction of beginning, middle and end. However, the 20th century development
of non-linear narrative in film, theatre and dance, shows that a sense of wholeness can also be
fulfilled by aesthetic and thematic consistency.

Another Aristotelian condition for a good plot is that it maintains its appealing tension by
means of ‘peripety’ and ‘discovery’; two technical devices by which the unexpected occurs
within the logical sequence of things. In peripety, there is a reversal of fortune or of
predictable and successful culmination of an action; in discovery, there is a change from
ignorance to knowledge or the appearance of new elements that might alter the development
of the plot. Now, from a traditional perspective, it can be argued that where plot refers to the
way in which a selection of incidents is structured; narrative refers to the way in which a plot
is conveyed. This includes, for instance, who tells the story and from which point of view,
which mediums and elements are used to tell the story, and how the story line is depicted.

13. Dance’s Resistance to Narrative in the Ballet

d’Action
An apparently obvious example of narrative in Western Theatrical Dance is the work of
two choreographers from the 18th century: French Jean-George Noverre and Italian Gasparo
Angiolini. Both men are considered to be pioneers of the narrative form of ‘ballet d’action’, as
a reaction to what they perceived as decadence in the art of ballet. In his Letters on
Dancing38, Noverre condemned ballet’s artificiality, stating that it “sacrificed expression and
feeling to bodily skill and agility of the legs”. He believed that the expressive power of great
art lied in its “accuracy of representation” and its capacity of “imitating beautiful nature.” The
overuse of symmetry in ballet was, for instance, one of the points criticized by Noverre:
“symmetry should give place to nature”. Ballet was seemingly trapped in its technical
development, and was loosing ‘that’ which made it artistic, moving, expressive and different
from sport or any other physical activity with practical purposes. He, like Angiolini, and many
great figures in dance history, searched to refresh the ‘dead metaphors’ of his time.

Noverre believed that pure dance should be re-united to the lost tradition of pantomime, for
pantomime succeeded to be an art of ‘action’ and ‘imitation’:

If our ballets be feeble, monotonous and dull, if they be devoid of ideas, meaning, expression and
character, it is less, I repeat, the fault of the art than of the artist: does he ignore that dancing united to
pantomime is an imitative art?39

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 Here, one might perceive an implicit recognition of the failure of dance as a narrative art;
since the comment assures that dance on its own is unable to express dramatic action without
the help of pantomime, whilst pantomime excels the task on its own. It can be said that, for
Noverre, the notions of ‘meaning, expression and characters’ in dance are intimately linked
with the representation of stories that are generally taken from literary sources. Thus, the
presentation of sheer bodily movement would seem non-narrative, meaningless and surely
dull in the eyes of Noverre. Ballet, apparently the only existing artistic dance form for the
choreographer, should be conceived as a total work in which dance, pantomime, scenery,
music and costumes serve faithfully the depiction of a chosen plot.

The difficulty of depicting stories through dancing was readily noticed by Angiolini. He
shared with Noverre the interest in redefining theatrical ballet as an art form based on the
Aristotelian principles of drama and plot, but both choreographers disagreed in the ways such
an art form should be devised. In her article Noverre and Angiolini: Polemical Letters 40,
Laura Carones explains that Angiolini opted for simplifying the plots in order to make them
understable and suitable for ballet. Moreover, the author tells that Angiolini:

/.../was critical of the complexity and absurdity of some scenes in Noverre’s ballets. Indeed, he
considered that Noverre’s plot were too intricate to be made comprehensible through mere gestures
and without the aid of speech; and it is not without significance that Noverre was compelled to write
detailed programme notes to explain the action.

But, as Carones observes, Angiolini himself did not manage to do without programmes
either:

Although Angiolini condemned Noverre’s use of programmes, he himself was in the habit of writing
brief programme notes for his ballets, in which he gave a short summary of the action, mentioning
literary sources, if any, and pointing out his goals.41

The need for extensive programmes and representative costumes, scenery and music,
among others, might be said to prove the limitations of dance as a medium to literally
translate certain plot or story into bodily movement. Such a difficulty is, of course not
exclusive to Noverre’s and Angiolini’s ballet d’action. There are plenty of examples along
dance history. Other cases in point are the French court ballets of the 16th and 17th century,
where classical ballet is said to have its origins. Susan Au tells us that:

Most ballets themes derived from literary sources and the ballets themselves included spoken or sung
verses which were called ‘recits’. Printed librettos containing these verses, together with explanations
of the ballet’s intentions and symbolism, were often distributed to the audience.42

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 Ballet d’action, court ballets and numerous performing art productions during the last
century, have conceived the artistic integration of different mediums like poetry, music, dance
and design. This might respond to diverse reasons in different contexts and epochs; but it
seems to me that the integration of different art forms has much to do with the communicative
and narrative limitations provided by a single medium. Dance, conceived as sheer bodily
movement isolated from other elements, is often associated with a lack of content, meanings
and stories. ‘Pure dancing’, in other words, is often conceived as a non-narrative form.

14. Narratives in the Poetic Language of Dance

It is said that mind produces motion; and it might be said, that motion produces mind (Shelley)43.

Earlier in this essay, dance has been discussed as a poetic language in which the world is
interpreted and communicated by means of embodied metaphors. In the following quote,
Raymond W. Gibbs describes how these embodied metaphors might be narrative:

I like to think that dancers are communicating narratives or stories via a combination of various
bodily movements that are reflective of widely shared metaphors. The movements which dancers
make create the impression of stories that we can understand, not just in the local sense of watching
someone move across a stage, but in broader terms of relating to the human story, of our own
mundane lives as we struggle to find meaning between order and chaos.44

Gibbs is here commenting upon the experience of watching contact improvisation, where
movement is usually deprived of pre-determined plots. Here, the relationship between dancers
and occasional elements like costume, music, objects and sites, can be described as that of an
unfolding dialogue rather than that of representation or imitation. Gibbs argues that, despite
its apparent disattachment from external references and meanings, contact improvisation can
tell stories thanks to the fact that viewers interpret dancer’s movements as embodied
metaphors of the human life that goes on outside the dancing itself. One could almost say that
meaning is produced not so much by the dancers representing the world, but rather by the
viewers reading the world in the dancers’ movements.

15. Narrative Elements at the Micro-level of Bodily

Movement
Ballet d’action was seen as a narrative form of ballet, because all the elements of
performance were conceived to help the representation of stories. Thus, the dancing was
supported by pantomime, sceneries, costumes, music and even hand programmes which

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rendered literal information about the actions, places and characters of a certain plot. If we
were to make an analysis of narrative in the ballet d’action, we would need to take a close
look at the relationships between the different elements, as well as to the ways in which each
element helps the representation of plot by means of symbols, imitation, embodiment, etc.
However, I will not go into such an analysis now, but rather shift the focus to the single
element of ‘dancing’. In this section, I will present a closer look at bodily movement, and will
try to see dance in isolation from other performative elements and external references. I have
decided to give such a focus the name of ‘micro-level of bodily movement’, in allusion to the
section of Dance as a Language of Bodily Movement and to a micro-analysis of dance
published in 1976 by The Choreology Study Group of the International Folk Music Council
(IFMC).

Dancing the Narrative Action

As we saw earlier, the narrative ‘action’ is conceived as a unity which consists of a number
of incidents, whose interrelation and development lead towards the achievement -or failure- of
certain purpose. The ways in which ‘incidents’ relate to each other and unfold in time and
space can vary, thereby creating different kinds of narrative, for example, linear and non-
linear narrative. In a similar way, dance can be seen as an ensemble of minor movements
/incidents, which are integrated in a complex and purposeful unity, namely, a choreographic
work.

The method of analysis developed by the IFMC45 was widely used in research of folk
dance and then proved itself to be suitable for theatre works as well. It proposes a hierarchical
structure which divides the dance into movement unities. From the base to the top, ‘elements’
build ‘cells’, ‘cells’ build ‘motifs’, ‘motifs’ build ‘phrases’, ‘phrases’ build ‘sections’ and
‘sections’ build ‘parts’. My suggestion is that each movement unity, from the element to
the part, has an inner development which gives them a sense of wholeness and purposeness.
In this sense, dance movements unities could be considered to be the ‘incidents’ that build the
‘action’ in dance, or they could be considered to be themselves ‘actions’ at the micro-level of
bodily movement. It is, in some way, a matter of scale; but it is important to keep in mind that
a simple collection of movement unities cannot make a dance work. They need to be
connected in a meaningful or intentional way. They need to be ‘plotted’, or integrated into a
whole work. In the next sections I intend to present some examples in which movements
unities are structured in order to create meaningful actions in dance.

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Plotting Movement

The development of the structure or plot which holds incidents or events together has been
explained in different ways. As I mentioned before, Aristotle argued that plot should consist
of a beginning, a middle and an end which would give a sense of completeness to the
narrative form of drama. However, thinkers of the 20th century have used Aristotle’s premises
to question, develop and transform his notion of plot, as well as other narrative concepts
related to it. I will take two different examples: Bulgarian philosopher Tvzetan Todorov
argues that narrative is constituted by an equilibrium or a state of balance, a disequilibrium or
a disturbance of such a balance, and a new equilibrium or a recovery of balance. For French
anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, it is the constant creation of binary oppositions, that
which propels narrative. Such ‘binary oppositions’ can be visual or conceptual, and they are
supposed to be solved in narrative. In any case, Aristotle, Todorov, Lévi-Strauss and a few
other thinkers, seem to imply that ‘narrative action’ includes a process of transformation,
which is motivated by the emergence and solution of obstacles, conflicts, desequilibriums,
oppositions and so on. Let us see some specific dance examples.

Binary Oppositions in Graham’s Narrative Works

For Martha Graham, movement was generated by a binary opposition between tension and
relaxation, which started in the centre of the body and projected itself out to the limbs and the
surrounding space. In Graham dance technique, tension and relaxation are called ‘contraction’
and ‘release’, respectively. From single elements -like single contractions of the pelvis- to the
whole choreography, her works consist of a variety of movements which are motivated by the
principles of tension and relaxation. For Graham, the opposition between contraction and
release was a metaphor of human struggle. Following Gibbs’ observations about contact
improvisation, one might see that Graham’s dances tell stories thereby using embodied
metaphors, which viewers can relate to their own lives or, in some cases, to the lives of
characters taken from literary sources. However, the understanding of such embodied
metaphors requires the perception of what the body is physically doing. In other words,
perceiving the bodies moving between tension and relaxation is a basic condition to interpret
movement as a struggle between suffering and joy, pain and pleasure and so on. This struggle,
both in its physical and in its metaphorical dimensions, can be said to organise the way in
which movement unities relate to each other and build meaningful actions.

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 Binary oppositions can also be said to prompt the dramatic development of Graham’s
works, including the thematic and compositional elements like the use of lights and space.
Commenting on Graham’s American Provincial, Marcella Michel and Isabelle Ginot argue
that:

Her style is composed by plays of opposition between the individual and the group, the light and the
dark. Here, the soloist faces a group, powerful and threatening, in a dance which denounces the
exclusion of the individual with different beliefs by a certain group [my transl.]46.

Thus, one could argue that the unity and coherence of Graham’s non-linear narrative works
is partly achieved by a consistent use of binary oppositions. Furthermore, we could say that
the physical principles of contraction and release underline not only the dancers’ bodily
movement, but also the integration of other conceptual and aesthetic elements in Graham’s
works.

Equilibrium and Disequilibrium in Humphrey’s Arc

American choreographer and dancer Doris Humphrey based her work on a theory of ‘fall’
and ‘recovery’, which she described as ‘the arc between two deaths’. For Humphrey, the
dramatic tension of movement was built when the dancers played between the inertia or
surrender to gravity, and the achievement of balance or struggle against the forces of gravity.
This dramatic tension in movement was for Humphrey, as for Graham, a metaphor of human
situations. But Humphrey, in contrast to Graham, attempted in many occasions to abandon
plots, characters and other narrative elements, thereby concentrating on the bodily movement
itself. The dynamics created by the bodies playing with gravity make up dances full of
suspensions - the quiet instants before big actions or falls-, and of momentums -the impulses
of energy which produce an increasing development of speed or strength in the
movement/action-.

Using the terms of the IFMC’s method47 and the principles of fall and recovery, I will
provide an example of how movement unities might interconnect and build a movement
phrase in Humphrey’s choreographies. A standing performer surrenders to gravity, and in this
way performs a fall, ‘an element’. The impulse given by the fall takes the performer into
rolling on the floor, where each roll is an ‘element’, and several rolls are ‘a motif’, or the
incident of rolling. This impulsive rolling solves when the performer uses the last bit of
energy to unfold the body into a new standing position. Here, the unfolding is a ‘cell’,
constituted by a couple of minimal movement unities, or ‘elements’. With this ‘cell’, balance
3
is recovered and ‘the phrase’ is completed. The whole ‘action’ could be described like this: ‘I
lose my balance, I fall and get carried away by a speedy process of transformation. Finally, I
find my calm again and restore myself in a new place’.

Humphrey’s studies in group composition are also underlined by the tension between
equilibrium and disequilibrium. This is apparent in the way the scenic space is constantly
redesigned by the dancers who travel around, creating a dynamic flow between symmetrical
and asymmetrical spatial distributions. As in the case of Graham, Humphrey’s movement
principles seem to be an element which contributes to the integration of all the dramatic
elements, as well as to the sense of wholeness and unity of the works.

The Narrative Structure in Dance Improvisation

Western researches and developments in dance and contact improvisation as an art form
are arguably rooted in the U.S.A., with the choreographic experiments of Merce Cunningham
and the post-modern dance generation of the 60’s. This approach to dance requires certain
skills, which are somehow different from those required in traditional forms of theatrical
dance. The given instructions might be only few and even vague. In many occasions, they
consist of three cues which determine the beginning, the middle and the end of the
improvisation. The performers are usually trained and expected to create certain kind of order
in the middle of fruitful chaos, thereby filling loose structures with a body of purposeful
actions. There are not detailed scripts or stories to follow, nor are there specified characters as
those in traditional theatre. However, as Gibbs observes, the situations created during the
dancing can provide allusions to characters and stories. The limits of duration are generally
open or at least flexible, and dancers have significant freedom in their interaction with the
other dancers and the surrounding environment. As a dance which seems to have few rules
and limitations unfolds, performers strive to organise bodily movement in time and space, so
that the dance develops in a coherent and meaningful way.

All this is, of course, the result of much practice and improvising, where performers
sharpen the awareness of their own bodies, as well as of their relation to other dancers and the
surrounding spaces. Performers increase their capacity to react instantaneously to internal and
external stimuli, sometimes breaking the course of what is occurring in the improvisation, and
sometimes letting themselves to be transformed by what is happening. Their choices are, to a
great extent, determined by a developed sense of ‘timing’, ‘spacing’,‘propioception’ and
‘kinaesthesia’.

3
 The sense of ‘propioception’ allows dancers to know the spatial disposition of their own
bodies at every moment of the improvisation. It kind of orientates performers within their
own bodies. The sense of ‘kinaesthesia’ allows performers to know how a certain movement,
seen or imagined, might feel in the body; and also which consequences such a movement
might have. Thus, the senses of propioception and kinaesthesia can be said to inform the
performers about the inner situation of their own bodies; and about the ways in which bodily
movement can alter, break or develop the course of the incidents occurring in every moment
of the improvisation.

The sense of ‘spacing’ gives the dancers an understanding of spatial design. This includes,
for instance, notions of symmetry and asymmetry, linearity and circularity, and concentration
or distribution of the dancers in the scenic space. It is, then, up to the performers to create
spatial designs which contribute to the vitality of the improvisation, as well as to its sense of
meaningfulness. Thus, an improvisation might lose articulation and clarity when the space is
very busy for ‘too long’ or when performers travel all the time without allowing spectators to
catch a single moment of spatial composition. Also, a ‘long’ duet might need the irruption of
a third dancer in order for the improvisation to recover its vitality. A line of three dancers can
be a key to open a section of angular designs in space, and the exhaustion of such a section
can in turn be the key for the introduction of contrasting rounded forms.

Finally, it is the sense of ‘timing’, that which allows the improviser to know, for instance,
how long is ‘too long’ or ‘too short’, concerning the development of a dance improvisation. It
makes each dancer know when it is time to break the order and create obstacles that give new
energy to the dance; as well as it lets performers perceive when the unfolding incidents of the
improvisation should come to a conclusion, or to the end of the dance. Considering these
remarks, it could be argued that the skills acquired by dance improvisers make them able to
perform and connect incidents into a whole dance event or performance that unfolds as a
complete, meaningful action.

3
Phrasing, Movement Trajectories and the Notion of
Sequatiousness

Let me open this point by quoting Peggy Hackney’s explanation of ‘phrase’:

Phrases are perceivable units of movement which are in some sense meaningful. They begin and end
while containing a through line. Such a perceivable unity might be a full specific action such as
serving a tennis ball, a small gestural movement accompanying spoken words, or a “sense unit” of
movement in itself such as a “glissade-assemble” in ballet. These unities are usually preceded and
followed by momentary pauses. In Laban Movement Analysis we call each of these units of
movements a “phrase”. How an individual “phrases” his/her movement is a major aspect of
individual style. Two people might have the same combined Effort elements present, or the same
body parts utilized, but if they have organized and combined the elements differently the message
will be dissimilar. 48

Hackney’s account of ‘phrase’ mentions several points discussed earlier in this essay, like
the phrase’s sense of unity and meaningfulness, and the notions of beginning and end as the
frames of meaningful actions, in this case, of movement phrases. She also points out that the
phrase ‘contains a through line’, which might well be compared to the notion of
sequatiousness in narrative, understood as the condition under which events follow each
other, keeping a temporal-spatial unity, or a relationship of contiguity in time and space.
When Hackney assumes that movement contains ‘messages’, she admits the communicative
faculty of movement, adding that messages can vary depending on the ways in which each
individual ‘phrases’ it. This is, the ways in which each individual organises, combines and, I
would like to add, plots the elements of his/her movement phrases.

One of Hackney’s suggestions for a good phrasing is that movers identify the
beginning, the end, and the different phases of each phrase. The phases provided by Hackney
constitute a well structured and articulated phrase. These are: ‘preparation’, ‘initiation’, ‘main
action/exertion’, ‘follow-through /recuperation’ and ‘transition’. The preparation and
initiation constitute the beginning of the phrase, the main action/exertion constitutes its
middle, and the follow-through/recuperation constitutes its end. The transition works here as a
logical bridge between phrases. To follow each of these phases in the given order will
necessarily result in ‘sequatiousness’, as described within the context of traditional narrative
and plot. Without breaking the pattern, Hackney provides three examples of how the linear
construction of a phrase can be performed in different ways, and, thereby, communicate
3
different messages. These ways differ simply in the placement of the ‘points of emphasis’,
which are the most energetic moments of a phrase. Thus, maintaining their condition of
sequatioussness, the phrases might have their point of emphasis either at the beginning, at the
middle or at the end of their structure.

As in a non-linear narrative, this conventional structure of movement phrase can be altered

and played with. The notion of sequatioussness - and some alterations of it-, can be compared
with what in Labananalysis49 is known as the ‘sequencing of movement through the body’.
This refers to movement trajectories, or ways in which movement spreads out through the
body. Three different trajectories are provided in Labananalysis. The one which resembles
sequatiousness is called ‘successive’ trajectory; meaning that movement flows from one body
part into the next body part, as an apparently natural development. An altered version of
sequatiousness can be said to be the ‘sequential’ trajectory; where the movement of one body
part flows into a non-adjacent body part, for example, from head to leg and from leg to arm.
Here, the ‘natural’ development of movement seems to be broken and re-arranged in a
different way. The image might be quite challenging and the movements/incidents might
seem to arbitrarily jump between future, past and present. Finally, the ‘simultaneous’
trajectory requires that all active body parts move at once. If all active body parts move with
the same purpose, for example, if they intend to move towards the same direction; the
impression might be that of strong intention and directness. It would be as if, all at once,
every incident of a story aimed at a specific conclusion, instead of unfolding sequentially, one
after the other and in a logical development of cause-effect. In contrast, if different body parts
have different intentions, for example, if they move with completely different qualities and
shapes; the effect might be that of dissimilar movements happening at the same time, without
having any apparent connection between them. It would resemble narratives in which
different stories juxtapose or develop as parallel worlds. Compared to the other two
trajectories, it seems to me that simultaneous trajectory tends to depict a shorter horizontal
time-line development, and a more complex perspective of the ‘present time’.

Peripeties and Discoveries in Bodily Movement

Continuing with the focus on dance’s micro-level of bodily movement, I would like to
show examples of how ´peripety’ and ´discovery´ are used in dance to make movement more
varied and ‘interesting’. One can think of, say, a sharp and strong movement cell which is
introduced within a soft and floating phrase; or of a step travelling backwards which is

3
introduced within a long sequence which travels forwards. The former example works as a
contrast and might be seen as a discovery or surprise, whilst the latter example might be seen
as a reversal - an unpredictable reversal, or course-. Such a manipulation of movement can
indeed be of great importance in the creation of choreographic works.

Some years ago, I made a short dance piece in which I intended to express the feeling or
state of ‘vulnerability’. Having this as a point of departure, I proceeded to look for a physical
metaphor which could materialize ‘vulnerability’; arguably in the way that Graham and
Humphrey had done earlier in their own ways. I found the metaphor, and it was the situation
of ‘being hanging’. From that moment I named the piece Pendiente -the Spanish word for
‘pending’-, and decided to concentrate on the physical task of making my body look like if it
was hanging. By then, British choreographer Rosemary Butcher was my tutor, and as I recall
it, her suggestions often aimed to encourage students to avoid an excess of predictability in
their works. In Pendiente, I tried to behave as if hanging, letting most of my body collapse
underneath certain joints that I placed at a higher level in the space. In this way, I intended to
create a tension between these high points and the floor. I changed the high points, for
instance, from wrists to elbows, elbows to hip joins, hip joints to heel and so forth, trying to
draw attention to these joints thereby slightly rotating around them.

When watching Pendiente, Butcher suggested that I, for instance, could reverse the
direction of some turns, thereby making the movement more ‘interesting’. Since my choice of
direction was following the path that the action would have logically followed, a reversal of
such a path can be understood as a ‘peripety’. Moreover, I remember myself looking for
transitions which could be convincing and surprising at the same time. Convincing because I
still wanted spectators to feel the metaphorical action of hanging; and surprising because I
wanted the piece to be interesting to look at. Thus, I sometimes went from ‘hanging’ from the
right wrist to hanging from the hips, letting my upper body fall down suddenly, and leaving it
hanging down from the new, unpredictable body part.

With attentive eyes, a spectator might find it relatively easy to identify peripeties and
discoveries in different kinds of dance. For dancers and choreographers, peripeties and
discoveries are an essential part of their dancing, as far as they have a minimum concern for
what is otherwise called contrasts, colours, nuances or dynamics, among others.

3
 16. The Narrative in Dance Theatre
In this section, I would like to present ‘dance theatre’ 50 as a performative form which partly
fulfils and partly alters the Aristotelian notion of narrative. In contrast to dance as sheer
bodily movement, dance theatre portrays ‘characters’ which, after ‘plot’, constitute the most
important narrative element in the Aristotelian conception of tragedy. In this context,
portraying characters means to inform those agents who do the actions, or bodily movements,
with physical and psychological peculiarities. In dance theatre it is common to display
characters in situations that encourage audiences to question or reflect upon different subjects
that are relevant in contemporary society, or that concern big questions of human beings such
as love, death, life and so forth. In such cases, this performative form might work as social
criticism, as expression of human emotions and behaviours, or as a presentation of
philosophical reflections; all of which could be compared to what Aristotle defined as the
element of ‘thought’ in tragedy. In most cases, dance theatre works use verbal language and
music/sound to reinforce their emotional and psychological content. Here, words, sounds and
music might either reflect or contrast with irony the portrayed situations. Thus, the narrative
elements of ‘diction’ and ‘melody’ might also be identified in this performative form.

Interesting enough, ‘spectacle’, the least important element in Aristotle’s list, is of great
importance for dance theatre; whilst ‘plot’ seems to lose, in this performative form, the
consistency, unity and narrative privilege claimed by Aristotle. The structures underlining
dance theatre works often transgress the traditional rules of ‘sequaciousness’ and wholeness,
favouring features such as fragmentation and juxtaposition of scenes, and erasing the notion
of a great narrative action that entangles several incidents leading towards logical conclusions.

Thus, dance theatre might be a good illustration of how traditional narrative elements
might persist, whilst traditional hierarchies and functions might be resisted or challenged. In
my opinion, this results in the emergence of new forms of narrative, and is closely related to
an interest in focusing on the particular characteristics of performing bodies; this is, on their
limitations and on their potentials as narrative mediums. Arguably, the narrative form of
dance theatre exploits dance’s suitability to portray characters, giving up the strictness of
Aristotelian plot, which, as discussed earlier, proved to be an obstacle for Noverre’s and
Angiolini’s enterprise to create a narrative dance form.

3
 17. Laban’s Contributions to Characterization in
Dance
After having argued that dance is particularly suitable to portray the narrative element of
characterization, I will dedicate this section to present part of the work of Rudolf Laban
(1879-1958), and his contributions to characterization in dance. Laban was a dancer,
choreographer and dance/movement theoretician, who perceived bodily movement as a
holistic dimension containing the physical, psychological and intellectual aspects of human
beings. For him, the inner life of people, as well as the relation between inner life and the
outside world, were reflected in and affected by people’s bodily movement. These thoughts
motivated his researches, which, among others, resulted in the creation of a method to analyze
movement. The method is today known as Labananalysis, and it has proved to be very useful
for actors and dancers who work with theatrical forms such as dance theatre.

In Labananalysis, movement can be divided into four elements: ‘body’, ‘effort’, ‘shape’
and ‘space’. Each element consists of different aspects, and each aspect can be defined in
terms of qualities. I have chosen to present here the element ‘effort’, for it seems to me to
provide the best illustration of Labananalysis’ application to characterization. Effort refers to
internal attitudes towards four different aspects: ‘flow’, ‘weight’, ‘time’ and ‘space’. The
following diagram gives an overview of the different aspects and qualities of the element of
‘effort’51, and describes the different qualities with some characteristics related to them:

EFFORT (element)
Flow (aspect) Weight Time Space
Free(qua Bound Light Strong Sustained Sudden Indirect Direct
-lity)
outpouring controlled airy powerful leisurely urgent multi- single-
(characte- focused focused
ristic)
fluid careful delicate forceful gradual quick flexible channelled
attention
released contained fine firm touch lingering instanta- all-around pinpointed
touch neous awareness
liquid restrained buoyant impactful prolonging staccato all en- lazer-like
compassing

3
 The element of effort deals with personal approaches to life, rather than with external facts.
Let me give a simple example: if the characters ‘A’ and ‘B’ are given two extra minutes to
complete a task, it might be the case that ‘B’ thinks: ‘I must hurry, I only have two minutes
left’, and that ‘B’ thinks: ‘I can calm down, I still have two more minutes’. Their different
attitudes towards time will affect the ways these characters move. ‘A’ would be described as
having a ‘sudden’ movement quality, whilst ‘B’ would be described as having a ‘sustained’
movement quality. The two minutes have the same ‘real’ duration for both characters, but
their different efforts will attribute different qualities to their ways of moving, even though
they are doing the same task, or the ‘same movement’.

Concerning characterisation, the effort element can be used in different ways. On the one
hand, one can depart from an existing role and then select the qualities that seem to suit best
its psychological profile. This process might be partly determined by social conventions and
partly determined by the interpreter’s own subjectivity. Thus, in describing, let us say, a nurse
in terms of effort qualities, it would be likely to attribute her a ‘bound flow’, since the ‘bound’
quality is related to having control and precision - two requirements for a conventional nurse-.
On the other hand, it is possible to allow the psychological profile of characters come alive as
a consequence of playing with different combinations of effort qualities. Here, the resulting
characters might gain in complexity and unpredictability. One could, let us say, combine a
‘free flow’, a ‘strong weight’ and a ‘sustained time’; where the resulting character might look
as if he/she is having an epileptic seizure, but in slow motion. Similarly, a movement
performed with ‘sudden time’ and ‘direct space’ might resemble the head movements of a
bird. A character moving in the latter way might be interpreted as, for instance, being
paranoid, nervous, hyperactive or confused. It could be claimed that, in this kind of
characterization, it is not so important what performers do, but rather how they do what they
do. This is, their internal drives, their psychological inputs.

3
 V. CONCLUSION
Western theatrical dance can be said to challenge traditional conceptions of narrative,
and at the same time maintain traditional narrative elements. On the one hand, dance’s
resistance to narrative might have to do with the fact that dance evades literality and
favours poetic devises such as metaphor and irony. In this way, dance embraces
contradictions, ambiguities, subjective interpretations, and other characteristics which are
common to romantic and deconstructive approaches to language, and which challenge the
logicality required in traditional notions of narrative. An open acceptance and full use of
these conditions can be seen in the way some groups, like Livkonstkollektiv Melo,
approach their creative process. The question, in this case, would be if these kinds of works
manage, or even if they are intended, to be a narrative form. Arguably, the responsability
of making these works narrative or not is left to the audience. But, when dance is
decisively intended to tell stories, its particularites might prove to be an obstacle. The
historical attempt of ballet d’action illustrates dance’s difficulty in portraying traditional
plots. The stories could hardly be followed without the help of other performative
elements, especially costumes, pantomime and written explanations. On the other hand, the
particular languages of dance provide a specific context in which particular ways of dance
narrative can emerge. Indeed, one can follow the movements of a single dancing body, and
identify narrative notions such as sequatiousness, peripeties, discoveries, oppositions,
unity, and a sense of wholeness, among others. Certain dance forms, like dance theatre,
often include the whole list of the Aristotelian elements of tragedy -the ideal narrative form
according to Aristotle-. However, the particular languages of dance seem to invert the
hierarchical disposition of traditional narrative elements. The logicality of plot is
challenged, the real presence of the bodies is highly valued, and the characters’ inner world
often becomes the strongest element. Is dance really a narrative language? I would say that
it can be so, if one accepts that, in dance, narrative acquires different characteristics from
narrative in, say, traditional drama. Dance might fail to tell the historical adventures of, let
us say, Don Giovanni; but it might be significantly appropriate to express his emotional
journeys. Finally, I would argue that dance is a narrative language at its best, when it is
conceived to tell the living stories of moving bodies.

4
 Endnotes

3
Dr. Claire Colebrook “Irony Lecture: Quintilian, Paul de Man”, given in the University of Edinburgh,
http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergrd/english_lit_2/Handouts/cmc_irony.htm, 2006
4
Dr. Claire Colebrook “Irony Lecture: Quintilian, Paul de Man”, given in the University of Edinburgh,
http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergrd/english_lit_2/Handouts/cmc_irony.htm
5
Ibid.
6
Shelley is presented and discussed by Kathleen M. Wheeler in Romanticism, Pragmatism and
Deconstruction, Oxford, 1993.
7
Ibid.
8
Historically, ‘structuralism’ can be traced back to the close of the 19 th century, when the American
philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce coined the term to define a new field that studied the life of signs within
society. However, the apparently more concrete work of the Swiss Ferdinand Saussure has been the most
common reference in the development of structuralism.
9
Irena R. Makaryk (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Literary Theory. Approaches, Scholars, Terms,
Canada: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 1993, p.514
10
Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul Ltd., 1983, p.90
11
Susana Onega and José Ángel García Landa (ed.), Narratology, New York: Longman Group Limited,
1996, p.30
12
Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction. Theory and Criticism after Structuralism, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul Ltd. 1983, p.82
13
Selma Jeanne-Cohen, A Prolegomenon to an Aesthetics of Dance, in Myron Howard Nadel and Constance
Nadel Miller (ed.), The Dance Experience. Readings in Dance Appreciation, New York: Universe Books, 1978,
p.4

14
Kathakali is one of the oldest theatre forms in the world, originally conceived as a ritualistic dance. It
emerged in the area of south-western India, now known as the state of Kerala. Kathakali consists of a strict
codification of movements, facial gestures, make-up and costumes, all of which is meant to display particular
characters and plots taken from Indian mythology. The dancers, who were originally male priests, develop great
skills that allow them to perform in a highly stylized manner.

15
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., “Embodied Meanings. Performing, Interpreting and Talking about Dance
Improvisation”, in Ed. Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere, Taking by Surprise. A Dance Improvisation
Reader, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2003, p.192
16
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., “Embodied Meanings. Performing, Interpreting and Talking about Dance
Improvisation”, in Ed. Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere, Taking by Surprise. A Dance Improvisation
Reader, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2003, p.192

4
 17
Peter Brook, The Empty Space, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968, p.48
18
Ibid.
19
Kinaesthesia is the sense that allows humans to feel and perceive movement.
20
Peter Brook, The Empty Space, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968, p.12
21
Ibid., p.13
22
This might be true and remarkable only for certain cases. Being an icon of avant-gard theatre, Peter Brook
has produced works which might be perceived as making great use of verbal language, linear narrative, and
rather sober imageries. I am thinking of pieces like The Great Inquisitor, which I saw recently at Dramaten
Elverket in Stockholm.
23
Different kinds of narratives will be discussed further in chapter four: Narratives and the Languages of
Dance.
24
Théophile Gautier was an important French writer and art critic of the 19th century.
25
Susan Leigh Foster, Reading Dancing Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance, London:
University of California Press, 1986, p.32
26
Interview with Sara Svensson and Melina Mastrotanasi at the Punk Cafe, Stockholm, 8th of April 2005
27
The names of Melo’s members are: Andre Linder, Sara Svensson, Josef Palm, Melina Mastrotanasi, Linn
Bojing, Louis Hulten, Maria Larsson, Ola Hjelmberg, Anders Jacobson, Olle Svensson, Benite Rolandsdotter,
Erik Fridell and Petter Jacobson.
28
Irena R. Makaryk (ed.), Encyclopaedia of Contemporary Literary Theory. Approaches, Scholars, Term,
Canada: University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1993, p.514

29
This is the original text taken from the brochures handed out before the performance of This Power is
Called Imagination at Moderna Dansteatern, september 2005: ”I det här fanszinet har vi samlat texter och bilder
som på olika sätt är en del av vår process, eller som vi helt enkelt tycker är intressanta. Vin blandar eget material
med vänners och kollegors, korta intervjuer med spännande människor inom dansbranschen, och information om
MELO och This Power is Called Imagination. Vi hoppas att det är intressant läsning för dig! Oansvarig
utgivare: MELO”
30
Harry Blamires, A History of Literary Criticism, London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1991, p.9
31
Stephen Halliwell, quoted in Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis, Drama/Theatre/Performance London,
New York: Routledge, 2004, p.213
32
Ibid.
33
Aristotle quoted in Diana Theodores Taplin (ed.) New Directions in Dance, Toronto, Oxford, NY, Sydney,
Paris, Frankfurt: Pergamon Press, 1979, p.14
34
Dr. Claire Colebrook “Irony Lecture: Quintilian, Paul de Man”, given in the University of Edinburgh,
http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergrd/english_lit_2/Handouts/cmc_irony.htm

4
 35
The idea that dance might imitate movement is discussed in the second chapter, under the section Dance as
a Language of Bodily Movement.
36
Harry Blamires, A History of Literary Criticism, London: Macmillan Education Ltd., 1991, p.10
37
Ibid.
38
Jean-Georges Noverre, Letters on Dancing and Ballet trans. Cyril W Beaumont, Hampshire: Dance Books
Ltd., 2004, p.11
39
Ibid.
40
Laura Carones, Noverre and Angiolini: Polemical Letters, in Dance Research, vol. V, nr 1, 1987, p.50
41
Ibid.
42
Susan Au, Ballet and Modern Dance, London: Thames and Hudson, 1993, p. 28
43
Kathleen M. Wheeler, Romanticism, Pragmatism and Deconstruction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993,
p.3
44
Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., “Embodied Meanings. Performing, Interpreting and Talking about Dance
Improvisation”, in Ed. Ann Cooper Albright and David Gere, Taking by Surprise. A Dance Improvisation
Reader, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2003, p.193
45
IFMC stands for The Choreology Study Group of the International Folk Music Council.
46
Marcelle Michel and Isabelle Ginot, La Danse au XXe Siècle, Bordas: L’Imprimerie Hérissey à Évreux,
1995, p. 115
47
IFMC stands for The Choreology Study Group of the International Folk Music Council.
48
Peggy Hackney, Making Connections. Total Body Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals,
Singapore: Gordon and Breach Publishers, 1998, p.239
49
Labananalysis is the name given to a method to analyse movement that was created by Rudolf Laban
(1879-1958). The last section of this essay presents this method and uses it for further discussions about
characterization in dance.
50
‘Dance theatre’ is considered to have emerged in Germany after the First World War. Kurt Jooss, who was
a former student of Rudolf Laban, is considered to be its pioneer, with his master piece The Green Table (1932).
The new form was characterized by the use of Laban’s principles and classical ballet technique to create a
dramatic form which would make a critical comment upon society. The Green Table is in fact considered to be
one of the strongest protests against war, made in the history of Western theatrical dance. Nowadays, dance
theatre has taken a multiplicity of forms, and one of the its most important representatives is German
choreographer Pina Bausch with the Tanztheater of Wuppertal.
51
The diagram was written after Peggy Hackney’s exposition of Labananalysis in Peggy Hackney, Making
Connections. Total Body Integration through Bartenieff Fundamentals, Singapore: Gordon and Breach
Publishers, 1998, p. 219-221

4
 Sources and bibliography

Bibliography

Albright, Ann Cooper and Gere, David (ed.), Taking by Surprise. A Dance Improvisation
Reader, Middletown 2003

Au, Susan, Ballet and modern dance, London 1993

Blamires, Harry, A history of literary criticism, London 1991

Brook, Peter, The empty space, New York 1968

Culler, Jonathan, On deconstruction. Theory and criticism after structuralism, London 1983

Foster, Susan Leigh, Reading dancing bodies and subjects in contemporary American dance,
London 1986

Hackney, Peggy, Making connections. Total body integration through Bartenieff fundamentals,
Singapore 1998

Jeanne-Cohen, Selma, “A Prolegomenon to an aesthetics of dance”, Nadel, Myron Howard and

Nadel Miller, Constance (ed.), The dance experience. Readings in dance appreciation, New York 1978

Makaryk, Irena R (ed.), Encyclopaedia of contemporary literary theory. Approaches, scholars,

terms, Canada 1993

Michel, Marcelle and Ginot, Isabelle, La danse au XXe siècle, Bordas 1995

Noverre, Jean-Georges, Letters on dancing and ballet trans. Cyril W Beaumont, Hampshire
2004

Onega, Susana and García Landa, José Ángel (ed.), Narratology, New York 1996

Shepherd, Simon and Wallis, Mick, Drama/theatre/performance, London 2004

Taplin, Diana Theodores (ed.), New directions in dance, Toronto 1979

Wheeler, Kathleen M., Romanticism, Pragmatism and Deconstruction,Oxford1993

Magazines

Carones, Laura, “ Noverre and Angiolini: Polemical Letters”, Dance Research 1987, vol. V, nr 1

Unprinted Material

Interview with Sara Svensson and Melina Mastrotanasi, 2005-04-08, recorded in a video tape
that belongs to the writer of this essay.

4
 Homepages:

Colebrook, Claire, “Irony Lecture: Quintilian, Paul de Man”,

http://www.englit.ed.ac.uk/studying/undergrd/english_lit_2/Handouts/cmc_irony.htm, 2006

Other sources

Performance and hand programmes of This power is called imagination, by Livekonstkollektivet

Melo at Modernadans Teatern, Stockholm Sept. 2005