Prof. Dr. Gabriele Brandstetter Free University - Berlin

Lecture given during the Festival of Opera and Ballet Art - Stara Zagora on December 2, 2024.

Dear Director of the Ballet, dear Iveta, ladies and gentlemen, What do we see when we watch a dance? On the stage, in the salon, in the variety theatre or in the museum? And also: what do we see, what do we do, what do we feel when we ourselves dance - and also when we "watch a dance performance"?

Before I go into the subject in more detail, I would like to pass on the words of a philosopher

Jean-Luc Nancy, who has often dealt with dance, reflects on the relationship between thought and movement, between weight and lightness - and raises questions about weight, about the importance of philosophical thought: 'What happens in Plato's cave when you set a prisoner free? This is something that is never said: at the beginning the prisoners stand still, and the philosophical matter begins to whirl, to take flight, to take off ... Everything seems to be guided and ends with what we see, and yet the beginning begins with the whirling and the movement itself. Nancy adds, "By the way, Plato lived in a world where people danced and did gymnastics." The purpose of this lecture is to address basic questions about dance as an art form of movement. In other words, we will do what you are already familiar with from other art disciplines, which is to present knowledge - for example, about how movements are created, what materials and techniques are used, and the history and aesthetics of dance, using the methods of speaking and writing to do so. Dance is an ephemeral (transitory) art form. Fleeting, transient - what we see, for example tonight, as the practice of dance movement (in a dance performance) will never happen again. And what we see and perceive is the concrete materiality of dance: its physicality and corporeality. In other words, what is in focus today is not the analysis of individual works, i.e. of choreographies already completed (not even Coppelia, a masterpiece of classical ballet). Rather, it is about the processes that take place prior to the staging of the works and that become tangible during the performances themselves, namely dance practice and the related work on and with the body. Why is this so useful for the perception of dance? Because it gives insight into the practice of movement research. Because this is what dancers do - and at the same time what is the topic and subject of dance scholarship and current dance research. This practice contains a knowledge that we all share; a knowledge that we are mostly unaware of. Yet, it speaks to us subconsciously when we watch dance. Our knowledge is activated when we watch dance, and enters our aesthetic perception.

Let us consider a general aspect of bodies that is also specific to dance, namely gravity

All bodies on earth are subject to gravity. In the process of birth, for the human body, as for almost all mammals, there is a profound rupture in the experience of gravity acting on our physical body: the change from being carried and floating in the amniotic fluid of the mother's womb to being exposed to our own weight; a naked body, in the air, between heaven and earth. Dancer Steve Paxton, founder of "contact improvisation," says, through the lens of his life dance experience and precise work with gravity, "Birth is not so much a beginning as an abrupt change where suddenly factors other than those in the womb come into play and gravity is already present. New arrangements begin with gravity, and these conditions define us for the rest of our lives." This evolutionarily developed "human condition" is a movement from a horizontal to a vertical position. From lying down, sitting and rising to standing and walking or bipedal movement. There is much research on the importance of standing and walking upright: in paleontology and evolutionary studies, in anthropology, medicine and anatomy, in philosophy and cultural studies. From birth to death, every human being is concerned with the movement between lying down and standing up in their daily way of being. With different experiences in self-perception, from the joy and ease of "standing up" to the pain of walking due to the wear and tear of the body over the years. This human condition applies to dancers as well as all other people, but in a different way. For it is this physical condition - namely the experience of gravity - that becomes a major factor in exploring the possibilities of movement. How does movement manifest itself? What effect does gravity have on the development of dance styles? And how is it transmitted to all those who view and perceive dance as an aesthetic and kinaesthetic experience? Next, I would like to focus on two dimensions of dance's approach to gravity (though of course there are many intermediate stages): First is the perspective of the vertical, namely movement toward the sky. Then the perspective of grounding (landing on) or finding (meeting with) the floor. This is the polarized orientation of the dance - directed upwards or towards the floor. A contrasting tension that the 1920s dancer and dance theorist Rudolf von Laban, in his founding of dance principles, which he called "choreology," distinguished between "high dances," such as ballet, and "low dances," such as expressive dance or various types of folk dance. In his text "Vertical" the dance anthropologist A. К. Volynsky attributes an emotional dimension to movement in a vertical direction and the associated upward gaze: human buildings, for example, which are directed towards the sky such as cathedrals, obelisks, skyscrapers "soar":

"With the vertical begins human culture and the gradual conquest of heaven and earth."

According to Wolinski, ballet is the dance form in which the orientation toward verticality is developed to the last detail: "Only in ballet are all aspects of verticality contained in its precise mathematically shaped and universally perceptible expression." Verticality is a quality of dance that literally came to the top in nineteenth-century ballet: balancing, pointing upward through dance figures, leaps, and the ballerina floating on her tiptoes, touching the floor with only a small surface. Is this why ballet, founded in its artistic and academic form at the court of Louis XIV in the 17th century, enjoys such popularity on stages around the world to this day? That dance of vertical ascent, of tiptoeing. Its variable ease and power in the leaps and lifts? The graceful balance in the difficult poses and figures? It is the upward striving, the lightness and grace - ready for flight - that Hans Christian Andersen senses in the dancer Fanny Cerrito. Her appearance is "like a swallow flying in the dance, a play of the psyche, a flight". Ballet affects the audience through this embodiment of (seemingly) anti-gravitational lightness; a movement that promises freedom and that we as spectators can empathise with, even if we cannot perform ourselves. (In dance theory we speak of kinetic empathy, in neuroscience of mirror neurons). The idea of an aesthetics of lightness, flexibility and antigravity was formulated mostly in the 18th century in philosophical and artistic aesthetic debates, and was defined as a particular quality of beauty: grace as the beauty of movement (Friedrich Schiller); a quality of beauty that moves inward and outward - in the sense of "movere" (from Latin meaning "to move"). To this day, ballet technique is not only practiced by ballet dancers and companies; the principles of ballet practice are also studied in a special form (called, for example, "floor barre work") in the field of modern and contemporary dance.

Floor ballet

"Floor barre work" - Floor ballet is a technique in ballet training that takes the basic ballet workout from standing to lying on the floor and removes the effort required in a standing position For example, Steve Paxton (whom I mentioned earlier), a dancer with New York's Judson Dance Stage, explains when asked why he conducts a "floor barre workshop" (ie."because there's something in the exercises... sort of stretching or reaching, getting to the limit of our own strength and then operating there." Similarly, Susanne Linke, a dance theatre choreographer who trained with Pina Bausch at the Folkwang Studio and who practices dance and teaches, also integrates the verticality and body orientation techniques of ballet into her training system - "internal suspension" - which is what she calls the movement practice system she developed. Like Pina Bausch and Reinhild Hoffmann, Linke also received daily ballet lessons during her training, among other dance techniques. These are just two examples - and of course there are training concepts these days that completely reject ballet and its verticality and body orientation system as well as its other training elements. But what are the specific parameters of movement and body orientation that make up this specific verticality of ballet - of its lightness and elegance? The practice and the associated physical technique, referred to in ballet as "Exercise", were codified for the aesthetics of ballet by the Italian dancer and balletmaster Carlo Blaise in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (still basically valid today): he called his main theoretical work the Codex Terpsichore (1828). Blasis developed a conception of mechanics, kinetics and anatomy as a theory of movement - one could also say a grammar - that gave rise to a specific aesthetic performance, namely a movement of grace, of lightness. He developed a theory of equilibrium: of equilibrium and disequilibrium, of the stability of posture and its instability. Terpsichore (from Greek: τέρψη, "pleasure" and χoρός, "dance"; "enjoying the dance") in ancient Greek mythology is the muse of dancing and choral singing. What does this mean for the formation of the dancer's body in its unnatural form? The study requires the dancer to measure his own body from a dual perspective, that of the self and that of the movement. The mechanical-kinetic challenge consists of studying weight work, balance, the play between instability and temporal stability of postures and movements against geometric principles, and balancing the body using what Blasis calls the perpendicular line. So it's not enough just to imitate or feel the body. As an example of a posture with grace and ease - as a movement in the vertical - Carlo Blazis points to the posture of arabesque and atitudes (position) - and considers it in its unstable construction, as a linea serpentina, using the example of Giovanni da Bologna's Mercurius. Figura serpentinata (Italian serpentinato "serpentine", to serpentina "serpentine line" or line with a spiral motif) However, what we have not yet mentioned: the ground is necessary for the serpentine. The ground is the cause of the takeoff. It provides the basis of tension in the vertical. The dancers use the floor to rise in the jump and relays in the thumb dance. The ease of flying, and the light and silent landing, come from the movement, which by bending the knees gives a force impulse directed to the floor. So there is a sinking or downward movement before the rise in the vertical. In ballet this preparation for flying ("préparation") is called plié: - bending the knees. Or, again, a set of codified movements that prepare in different ways for the moment of pushing off and becoming light: a grounding as preparation and beginning for the movement of lightness. 100 years later, Rudolf von Laban called this movement "counter tension" (it is still applied in modern dance). It describes exactly that relationship of opposing forces - both to the ground and to the heights - that can be dosed in many different ways. And so the factor of dynamics is also included in the analytical concept developed by Laban - the expenditure of force that is used to prepare a long or high jump; or the elastic and soft, deep suspension of the body that can be used to rotate or undulate the whole torso, an upward screw. As we watch, we empathize with what the dancers are practicing to show in performance as an exciting double movement: we feel it intuitively and kinesthetically-empathically in our own bodies: as a delight in flexibility and elasticity.

The theme of lightness and the image of flying are reflected in the dance itself

For example, in the Sylphide (choreography by Filippo Taglioni, 1832, Paris), one of the first Romantic ballets of the early 19th century, the theme is not only the weightlessness of these aerial creatures, the sylphs, but also their very appearance on stage: the dancing on the toes of the ballerina (this is one of the first ballets in which Marie Taglioni danced on her toes); and at the same time the introduction - as a stage technique - of flying objects: the sylphs rise into the air and float freely in space. At the end of the 19th century, another example of flight appeared: the Firebird, a fabulous choreography of Russian ballet in which the magic of transformation into another being and the flight of the bird are embodied in brilliant leaps and, of course, in a dance on tiptoe. Finally, in the 20th century, when flying became a technical reality and at the same time falling was a real risk, dancers such as Deborah Hay reflected on the extent to which the old idea of carrying and flying in dance was still contemporary; at the same time, it was also linked to a political statement, a kind of "Manifesto of Opposition" to the old aesthetics of ballet. Deborah Hay comes from the New York tnz Judson scene and minimalist art. In 2010, she developed a piece created after the banking crash and depression of 2008 entitled No Time to Fly. This brings us to the counterpoint of flying: an orientation on and to the ground. European artistic dance has taken a considerably long time to account for gravity, in particular the weight of the body, as an important, positive factor for dance movement. It was the free and expressive dance of the early 20th century that transformed floor movement, the varied use of body weight, and the dynamics and orientation associated with it into the essential characteristics of a different aesthetic - the idea of modern dance. Mary Wigman's The Witch's Dance is an outstanding example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtLSSuFlJ5c

She first showed the work in 1914, the year World War I broke out. And in this short solo one can see something of the dynamism, anger and despair - in defiance of the so-called mobilisation. The decisive and previously unheard of novelty of this dance lies in the fact that this choreography is performed only in a seated position on the floor, with varying degrees of vigour and movement: swinging the legs, slipping forward and back, describing a circle around oneself sitting:

Discovering the floor and working with and on it becomes a fundamental structure

It's a real revolution, or at least reform, of the idea of dance in the 20th and 21st centuries. The affirmation of gravity, gravity and movement on and across the floor is linked to various aesthetic and body-practice solutions and changes in dance. Today we take most of these for granted, and it is not even possible to address all aspects here. However, there are a few things that I would like to include: movement on and with the floor - such as lying down, getting up, standing up - and then incorporating mostly movements such as "walking" with different gaits and running as an element of the movement and dynamics of dance, - all based on new forms of training: Starting, for example, with the way Martha Graham uses the centre of the body and the relationship with the floor and the associated dynamics of contraction and release, of "contract and release", to the sequences of running in the choreographies of the Judson dancers, for example, or of Wim VandeKeybus, Anna Teresa de Keersmaeker and others. There are in particular two parameters that define a radically different idea of the creation of the choreography itself and the relationship with the spectator: either it is a question of what is called the democratization of dance (the body of democracy, Sally Baines...); which in short means a rejection of the hierarchical structure of the court ballet and its corresponding order that is characteristic of state and national ballets in their internal structure and also in the construction of the stage for the audience. It has been replaced by other varied arrangements created through collaborative processes in the development of the pieces, as well as through a more varied distribution of the dancers on the stage in relation to the audience (who sit or stand upright on all four sides of the stage space, for example). A famous example of a critical examination of the hierarchical structure of ballet - as an institution (with the positioning of the dancers, from the star to the group dancer of the company) - is the performance Veronique Doineau (2004) by the French choreographer Jérôme Bel. Bell, a well-known representative of so-called conceptual dance, was commissioned to create a piece for the Paris Opera Ballet. He decides NOT to engage the entire ensemble, but instead chooses one dancer from the entire corps de ballet, Veronique Doiano. She is all alone on stage - the play is about her life and work as a dancer. At one point she shows how during the big solo and pas de deux in Swan Lake she has to stay in one pose for a long time; explains how painful this is; and that she has to behave like a living stage set in the corps de ballet; a set on the edge of the choreography. Bell and the dancer manage to show one side of the aesthetic and institution of "ballet" - in a very moving way: the lostness of the individual dancer who is finally allowed to be an "object" (as she says) on stage. The "democratization" in contemporary dance mentioned above rejects the difficulties of rigid discipline on the way to ballet, and also the idea of stylizing the body; democratization also means: incorporating movements and bodies from everyday life, namely walking, running, carrying objects, creating a connection between dancers through improvisational movements, and much more. The focus here is on conscious, attentive and at the same time analytical reflection on the movements themselves. One example that is repeatedly mentioned here is walking.

Awareness of gravity goes hand in hand with awareness of sinking, falling and taking down

Laurie Anderson succinctly puts it this way, "You walk (...) and you are not always aware of it, but you are constantly falling. With every step (...) you fall. You fall a little further and catch yourself again. You fall again and again and again you catch yourself as you fall. And in this way you walk and fall at the same time." This draws attention in a different way to the nature of the floor and its materiality - and even the creation of resistance with the flooring; think of the different designs of the stage floor by Pina Bausch and her set designers Rolf Borzig and Peter Pabst: a floor covered with autumn leaves, with earth, with water, with carnations. This leads to new perspectives on the aesthetics and practice of movement. In the discovery of gravity, not only the relation to the floor changes. Above all, it also affects the relationship between the dancers! Among other things, it is the discovery of touch in contact improvisation that makes possible the use of body weight, gravity and related forces - from light impulses to powerful use of pressure and resistance - as an important movement factor in duets and groups. It opens up the possibility for fascinating exploration of and in dance interrelationships because it is the transfer of weight that sets the decisive impulse for movement. In this way, the most subtle attention is drawn to one's own body and the kinetic response of the partners: thus the effects of centrifugal force, gravity, the control and deflection of movements, of impulses and their direction become the material and at the same time the theme of the performances. Dancer Nancy Stark-Smith emphasises that it is also about: 'replacing ambition with curiosity'; and learning to 'fail successfully'. The research fields of dance practice shown here are very closely related to the forms of training process that come from so-called somatic practices. I will mention the most important of them here - to give you an idea of how dancers today are transforming their way of training into a more eclectic and personalized procedure. All somatic practices are related to the concepts of awareness and mindfulness. Techniques such as Feldenkrais, Body Mind Centering (Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen), Alexander Technique, Klein Technique and others related to Asian martial arts practices are part of the dancers' knowledge and individual training sessions themselves. This, in turn, is a set of physical orientation inward and outward that is drawn upon for staging the performances and for choreographing together. To what we described earlier as the 'posture' of the body we also add the opposing tension between earth and sky - in standing and walking, the tension in the body itself, the gestures and the energy that also for us as spectators impacts in a kinaesthetic/bodily and emotional way. Going back to the beginning of this lecture, we can now ask and add: What dance can show us is the variety of dance dynamics. Implicit in this is an invitation to continually rethink our expectations related to our judgments of beauty, pleasure, even those of lightness and flying. And so, if we think again that we have come out of Plato's cave, then perhaps it is not just the step, the upright walk the spin or the "turn" that leads us to the light. The dance doesn't end when we can no longer walk or see. Director Robert Wilson sought out the Japanese dancer Suzuki Hanayagi, with whom he had worked for many years in New York, and finally found her in a home in Japan. She was sitting in an armchair: she had Alzheimer's and didn't recognize it. He talked to her; he tried to remind her of previous choreographies they had done together, using gestures and hand movements. When he said goodbye to her, she raised her frail, weak hands, moving them like leaves in autumn - and when he was already at the door, she said to him. "I am dancing in my mind." "I'm dancing in my mind." Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we see, understand and describe when we watch a dance. And that's why we need dance more than ever in a world like this. And so I would like to leave to you and to all of us the question of this discussion: how do we keep the dance? How can we record it, preserve it, and pass it on? How do choreographers and ballet masters put, for example, a 19th century choreography like Coppelia with today's dancers? The ballet is based on E.T.A.'s story. Hoffman and tells how an inanimate puppet comes to life. The performing arts, especially dance, have no permanent, i.e., objectively permanent form. Moreover, what has ended up in the archive as a document (a letter, an image, a record, a material relic) - as very often the great gaps in the material - must be reconstructed from contexts and rethought in relation to the present. What in early music is called "historically informed performance practice" also applies in a modified way to dance and the other performing arts. So, does the survival of the 'classical' in dance depend on the status of the 'work'? And if so, what would be the character of the work? What continuity of the canon would ensure this? And of what relevance to the survival of dance heritage today? And how to deal with the fact that the tradition is incomplete? None of the so-called classics we see in the ballet repertoire today are original works. The classics in the dance canon are made up of elements, additions and variations that have been added in the course of oral tradition. Newer rehearsals today also draw on documents from archives (dance and opera) to present a historically grounded version on stage. This raises many exciting questions about dance today: what does the handling of material, movement, laboratory knowledge and the passage of time mean in relation to the idea of canon? How can the already tried and preserved open up to something new, and how can the all too familiar come to life - like the puppet in Coppelia? And in doing so, inspire audiences and win over younger generations? The enchantment of dance is a promise for the future! And we urgently need that in dark times like today! Thank you for your attention!

Translation from German Iveta Marinova

The event is in cooperation with the National Culture Fund