Modern dance Modern dance arises as a reaction to the forms of classical Ballet and probably as a need to express more freely with the body.
Emergence
Modern dance arises as a reaction to classical ballet forms and probably as a need to express oneself more freely with the body. Although modern dance continues to be based on the ballet of which it maintains specific forms, it adds another feeling, considering the dancer’s body differently. Expanding the range of movement, they began to dance with bare feet, with different costumes and using the space with greater possibilities.
Great exponents of modern dance
- Isadora Duncan
- Ruth Saint Denis
- Mary Wigman
- Martha graham
- Doris Humphrey
- Merce cunningham
- Jose Limon
- Alvin Ailey among others.
Modern dance in the US
Intimately linked to the development of modern music was a new art form, modern dance, which emerged in the early years of this century. By rejecting the techniques of classical ballet, its innovators sought to express the most elementary and immediate human feelings in practices appropriate to modern times. Among the first advocates of such an attitude was Isadora Duncan (1878] – [1927), who emphasized pure, unstructured movement, and longed to create a dance “that could be the divine expression of the human spirit through the movement of the body.”
However, the main trend in modern dance grew out of the work of another of the early dancers and choreographers, Ruth St. Denis ( 1877] – [[[1968]]), who with her husband and partner, Ted Shawn, found inspiration in Eastern thought and philosophy. The St. Denis Company produced dancers who would create the two dominant perspectives of modern dance. Doris Humphrey (1895] – [1958) for her inspiration she peered abroad, towards society and human conflicts. Martha Graham (1894] – [1991), whose [New York] company has become perhaps the best known in modern dance, emphasized the principles that lead to inner passion, founded on the act of breathing. Many of his best known works, such as “Spring in the Appalachians” (1945), were produced in collaboration with distinguished composers and artists from the United States. The younger choreographers kept looking for new movements and novel methods.Among them, Merce Cunningham, born in1915 ), who introduced improvisation and random forms in his work.
Alvin Ailey (born 1931 ) broke new ground in his exploration of elements of African dance and black music. And, in the 1970s and 1980s, a new generation of dancers-choreographers continued to search for new ideas. Perhaps the most eclectic has been Twyla Tharp (born 1941 ), who has created a dance from the most varied forms, such as experimental video, ballet, film and Broadway theater , for her own company and for others.
Choreographic style of Modern Cuban Dance
The choreographic style of Cuban Modern Dance was created by Ramiro Guerra and in it he adapted the foundations of the modern dance pedagogy; he conceived and designed the choreographic event, as a system of subsystems.
First stage: Use and elaboration of national folklore
In the first stage, which concludes with Suite Yoruba, there is another interesting work, which is Rítmicas by Amadeo Roldán, which was projected as an abstract dance, where no narrative element was used. It was a work divided into three sections, one performed by black dancers, the second by white dancers, and in the third both groups were mixed in a racial union, thus coming to pose one of the ideas of Cubanness that its predecessor had been promulgating for dance. from Cuba.
During this period Ramiro had a very strict musical dependence that went against him, works that he based on musical designs, although still without a counting job, since until that moment he rejected it because he felt that it limited him, in addition to the little experience I still had with music work.
On the other hand, in his speech there was a lot of literality in terms of the narrative and that caused him, as he calls, a poor “dance texture”, it was a time when as a creator he was more concerned with the characters and expressing conflicts, this limited him in his expansion both in movement and in his “dance textures” of his works.
One of the elements that make up the aesthetics of this first stage is the great clarity that it achieved in the exposition of what was wanted to say, and the establishment of a great communication with the public.
Suite Yoruba was the work that Ramiro left in the repertoire, considering that it achieved a balance, a more exact balance in terms of narrativity, dance texture, communication, and in terms of musical dependence, which was no longer so excessive.
Suite Yoruba was the most solid work that remained from that first repertoire; work that grew a lot in his historical life. In its beginnings there were four scenes, with four deities from the Yoruba pantheon: Yemayá, Shangó, Oshún and Oggún. These scenes were so excessively separated from each other that there was even a jute cloth curtain with the decoration of Yoruba ornamentation, which was closed and opened to present each deity. ‘
Second stage: Deep theatrical sense
In the second stage, the philosophical precept of the Yoruba culture gives place to the dramaturgical principle that is emerging, since within the Yoruba mythology all the gods are linked to each other. This new exhibition was achieved by rethinking a greater fluidity between those scenes, here the choreographic contribution is given, by making the next character enter before the one being presented ends, to establish a relationship between both.
This allows her to perform between the end of Yemayá and the presentation of Shangó, with the famous rumbita de Yemayá, the dance where she raises him and suckles him, immediately she disappears and the general atmosphere of the second scene remains, which is the painting of Shango, where he remains on top of the dancers in a kind of totem that choreographically mimics the mythical horse of Shango. Here the dancers disappear and Shangó is left alone in darkness.
He observes when Oshún enters with her veil, as if crossing the fog and developing the women’s dance, while she goes through the “waters” from one diagonal to another, presenting herself as the goddess of the river’s waters, already formed choreographically on stage. . Shango who was watching her, and subtly disappears and the general atmosphere of Oshún is restored. The scene recreates Oshún’s bath when he takes off his misty cloth, in a painting of exquisite sensuality with its gold necklaces and handcuffs, which culminates in the coronation dance with the men.
In the historic appearance of Eduardo Rivero, in his leading role, Oggún enters accompanied by dancers who carry branches and leaves in their hands to form the mythical Taimá tree, where he lives. Over the course of the Oggún scene, Ramiro introduces one of the theatrical elements of these myths of African origin: that of the wars, presenting the battle of Oggún and Shango. Oggún with his machete in hand and the women with their leaves that make up the forest, give the entrance to Shangó, for the first encounter between these two warrior deities.
From this moment on, contemporary Cuban choreography incorporates another novel aspect, such as the work of immobilizations and movements, which occurs when some move, others remain immobile and vice versa. That is to say, this form of intermission produced by the entrance of the next character, at the moment that the one who is on stage is ending, allowed a scenic game which led to the suspension of the curtains and paravans, from the beginning.
The counting system with a new meaning enters modern dance as a dramaturgical element, by proposing and developing both for technical work and for choreography, in addition to the traditional symmetric counting of 2, 4, 6 and 8, the asymmetric of 1, 3 , 5 and 7, accompanied by a (and) to precede the count as psychological preparation. This count takes place at the same time with the immobilizations and movements between Shango, Oggún and the dance corps. This mathematical system, a product of the rhythmic studies carried out by Ramiro, passed to the technical system of modern Cuban dance. Example of dramaturgy in the technical conception of Ramiro Guerra.
At this stage, most of the costumes designed in the beginning by Julio Mantilla were totally changed. The De Oggún and Shangó were simplified for a better development of the complicated choreographies of turns, jumps, falls, etc.
Like the other costumes, the Yemayá costume was developed much more stately and with a greater stage presence, by Eduardo Arrocha, who from now on became the designer of modern Cuban dance.
This process of incorporating dramaturgical elements continued with the making of the documentary Historia de un ballet, made in 1962 by José Massip, which narrates the research and production process, as well as the fabular system of this work. This is where Ramiro incorporates slow motion or slow motion, which he then opposes with outbursts of very fast moments, with very intense dynamics, within the same movements and spatial displacements. After the film these were incorporated into the choreography.
As a spectacular concept, the Yoruba Suite allowed a continuous development in its maturity as a work and in itself as a creator.
It can be appreciated that it is at this stage, Ramiro Guerra’s “aesthetics of the finish”, not only in the step, in the movement, but also in the choreographic phrase, in the sound effect, in the incorporation of any new element that enrich the work.
It is here, at that beginning, where he puts into practice his concept that a work is born in the premiere, and from there the choreographer begins to work it, makes it grow, educates it as a child is educated, as a child is made to grow up and cared for to be a beautiful being in life.
This stage also allows him to continue developing his works along with the artistic development of his dancers. Hence Eduardo Rivero, who danced the Oggún more than 500 times, states that the Suite that he premiered was not the same one that he danced in his last days, because his teacher allowed him due to his technical-artistic development, that he improvised at times and outside changing to increasingly complex elements.
According to Ramiro Guerra himself, it is he who incorporates the cast system in his figures and the dance corps in Cuba, this he did for reasons of an artistic and strategic nature within the operation of the Company. For example, he had three Oshún, with completely different characteristics from one another within the character.
He let Ernestina Quintana laugh out loud, because he considered that she had a crystalline laugh and it impregnated the character, the scene and the play a moment of climax. Silvia Bernabeu gave a very strong sensuality to the character, and Luz Maria Collazo incorporated her own natural beauty, a bit mysterious. Hence, he used those three casts, depending on the locations, on television, in the theater, or in an outdoor show.
In Medea, in his exhibition he presents this central character with three different characteristics: Medea mother, Medea lover and Medea avenger, that is, three dramaturgical conceptions for three interpreters of the same character, during the development of the work.
This allowed him to develop the experience of adapting the characters to each new interpreter; a conception that was transferred to subsequent generations that have absorbed it as strategic dramaturgical principles of modern Cuban dance.
Medea and the negreros are remembered from this second stage, with which a series of factors are synthesized that already frame a state of maturity, and a stylistic in the choreography of Cuban modern dance: its theatrical character; It is a much more extensive work based on a historical-cultural content, where it delves into the sense of a dance with a deep sense of national identity and consolidates a system, a methodological structure to the process of choreographic creation. On this aspect Eduardo Rivero has said:
«His work has greatly influenced my choreographic work. He was my first teacher, and the one who taught me the ways that I have walked, am walking and will walk. My choreographic work begins with the study of his works, especially with the Yoruba Suite, the work that I danced the most, that kept me on stage as a dancer the longest. ‘
The study of the Orpheus script was also for me a treatise on choreography, where each interpreter had to make a deep and meticulous study of the character, character, symbolism of each movement, of the costumes … In Medea, the Greek world had to be studied and his culture. There I stumbled upon the statuettes of Tanagra and the Hellenic verses when having to face my character Creonte. That was the germ of a work that I put together years later. In Chacona we made a meticulous study of the technique and movement in which the Company achieved a defined style as the culmination of a stage in which the Baroque is taken to show Cubanness, implicit in the undulating way of moving arms, hips, hands, etc. » .[1].
With Medea Ramiro, he continues his vocation of taking the myths of universal culture to project national culture and take it up again to speak of universal culture, through that strong contrast of ancient history, masterfully captured in the prologue and epilogue, where it is They present the characters, the tragedy of the work, and its final destination, in a choreographic environment with the archaic sculptural style of dance, and the masterful use of choirs in the style of Greek theater, worked musically by Dolores Torres.
He has explained that the text was used antiphonally, where a soloist says the text, answered by a female and a male choir, interchangeably. Here the male choir is accompanied by a kind of ancient instruments, where a concretion of the dance is achieved with the voices and the complicated rhythms of these instruments, recreating the ancient friezes, where the characters of the work will be presented.
Technically this work proposes a structure of A, B, C, D, E, F, Aa. A: the prologue, where the archaic style of ancient dance is used as I said before, with the vocal intention of the Greek choir; during the work the other sections B, C, D, E, F, and Aa appear, where the denouement takes place, with the lamentations of the choir.
Medea y los negreros is the pretext for the choreography of Cuban modern dance, to begin to bring together a series of elements that had already been developed in his previous works, such as the baroque sense in Chacona, purely folkloric and elaborate elements, as in the scene of Medea’s macuta to give one of the most climactic moments of the play together with the scene of sorcery, when Medea with her black men attract the forces of evil to be able to carry out their revenge.
In this work he developed a wide musical and sound system, from recorded, live, random music, as well as various musical and sound forms that are mixed during the work. In other words, in Medea, as Ramiro himself explains, he achieves the fusion of styles into one, where he reached a much more open, broader narrative, moving away from that initial literalism in his work.
Third stage: The need for critical humor as a language of dance expression
The three paradigmatic works of this stage are Impromptu gallante, the Decalogue of the Apocalypse, and for their importance for this study of dramaturgy in modern dance, De la memoria fragmentada.
Upon returning from the tour of Europe, Ramiro Guerra states that he proposed to make a new work with other ingredients outside of his previous themes; Although the only thing he had in his power was the idea of making a work in which the conflict was a contrast between the male group and the female group. With this new idea, he began to develop a system based on his studies and translations, regarding all the changes that were taking place in the world of dance in the sixties, the innovations of the spaces, the new motivations, the break with the characters, and with the scenic narrativity, the use of elements of the so-called total theater, the new theatrical trends, its deep theatrical sense, the use of objects, the surprise through, and not only to remove the work product of improvisation,always present in it, but rather improvisation sections that were to take place at the stage.
Out of all these ideas resulted the Decalogue of the Apocalypse and in Gallant Impromptu he began to experiment with everything he wanted to achieve completely in the Decalogue.
First, it was a choreography with a style of total break with his previous work, with which he was able to develop a reflective humor in its maximum power, a theme that he questioned, but had not found its stage repercussion.
As a creator of a great theatrical and dance experience, he makes a first-rate reflection:
I discovered that the stage humor had to be very based on the interpreter’s own contribution, that is, I could not impose the humor, but let it develop in the improvisations that the dancers offered me with respect to a theme that was being put together, Let’s say to the masculine and feminine opposition, that I took it to the Creole satire machismo-hembrismo
Due to the historical importance within the study of the dramaturgy of Cuban modern dance, Ramiro Guerra himself will expose with deep analysis the process of achieving these two works:
«This time I had the way to release the dancers on stage in a way that I had never done before, using the entire stage and theater space in its entirety, giving choreographic tasks to each of them that I later put together, and making a very open ending in which the same audience also took part, in the way of ending. This obliges us to three different purposes, and we never knew at the time of the ending which one the public was going to choose because it was established by means of luck, from some cartoons that a dancer gave to the public. This created a state of randomness within the work, which placed me in a new stage that should lead me to the Decalogue of the Apocalypse.
This was a work that led me to a tremendous expansion of all the scenic systems that I had handled up to now. It was a play that lasted two hours without intermission, in which the audience followed the show through a very large space, which was outside the National Theater.
The twelve scenes of the play were apparently unrelated to each other, and besides the music was of great freedom; He used many spoken texts, others half-cased, others sung, live music, with recorded music and a combination of one and the other.
The sound systems were also very complex, the same as the dance texture were very based on improvisations, which also depended on the architecture of the building. That is to say, there was a horizontal spatial use that was with very open spaces, others vertical, which was using ups and downs from one plane to another of the building, and also sometimes combined the two.
In given horizontal spaces of the building, but in high places, the dancers had to move to other lower spaces, even reaching the ground, in very unusual and also very dangerous ways. This gave an opportunity for the movement to take on characteristics alien to all the development that I had had in my previous stages, in which it was linked to known codes based on my studies, codes that I later built, and now, in this third stage I was Let’s say, deconstructing them, that is, breaking them down to look for some new ones, or keeping myself in a very eclectic line of use of many established codes, of others more open, and with the possibilities of always maintaining an open environment towards improvisation and dance randomism “.[3].
Consistent with his principle of constant renewal, years later he presents his new work De la memoria fragmentada, already within the principles of the so-called dance-theater, with a strongly theatrical approach, with great accuracy on his part. As he clarifies, minimalism here presents us with four scenes from different works: two from the Yoruba Suite, where he continues with the mathematical system as a dramaturgical strategy.
Indistinctly in this work there are sections of 16 bars of struggle between Shangó and Oggún, another 16 of Oshún with the three men, 16 bars of a scene from Orfeo Antilleno, at a time when Orpheus is chased by the imaginary Euridices (ghosts), and 16 bars of the Medea lynching scene.
This work begins with its postmodernist nuances, as a kind of introduction from the theater lobby; at the moment that the public is entering, to a notice from the choreographer himself to each group, they appeared and disappeared within the public.
Once the audience was seated, the curtain opened, on the smoke-filled stage a few words could be heard inviting to see the past with a sense of mockery and humor. Moment that reappeared in the corridors of the theater within the public, with the same dancers the reason that of the lobby.
This appearance takes place in an excessively re-encouraged dynamic, to get lost inside that smoke of the stage, and to start the work, with cinematographic projections where the battle of Oggún and Shangó appears on a 35 mm screen, successively another appears next to 16mm, and later a TV appears; forming a counterpoint between the three images with the same battle scene, until it ends in canon, just as it started: the 35 mm, then the 16 mm and finally the television; This resulted in a surprising and contrasting atmosphere within the work.
Then the complete scenes of each of those four great themes appear, which had already been presented twice, in the lobby and in the theater space.
These themes were presented as leitmotifs throughout the work, and in the end they are repeated in diagonal designs where some appear in opposition to the others, and the characters are interchanged with their movements, forming in their appearances great confusion and general chaos; in the end everyone is confused and they are rising from that amorphous group. This scene takes place with very sharp movements, resembling the ticking of the clock that is heard inside the sound ceiling of the scene that Berroa is performing with a live voice, accompanied by musical instruments, using phrases that recall and others that make fun of the past. others play with the absurd, but always related to time, as evocative stimuli of time and space.
Here breaks are given special treatment, where the stage fiction goes to another fiction, that is, for example: the disturbance between the dancers who are impersonating the characters, at the end of the Medea lynching scene, which remains lying on the ground, she stands up and becomes Silvia Bernabeu, who is complaining about an accident that occurred in one of the rehearsals, when a dancer hit her with the whip, thus establishing an argument in the middle of that scene between her and the dancers; the fiction of the work Medea is broken, to enter another type of fiction in rupture.
About this work Ramiro has also stated:
Well, after that discussion between Medea and the whiplash, one of them starts to come out on the side and it is simulated as if there were fire; this gives the danger, the dancers run through the audience, the whole theater is lit and of course, I did not think that the audience would believe that there was a fire, but there is an attempt to create an atmosphere that there is an accident on stage . It is from there that an atmosphere of suspense is created and that something is happening with that sound of an alarm, which is also heavy, because it lasted one minute and fifty seconds (studied by the clock), to create an atmosphere of tension in the public.
From that moment on, the allusive to the Decalogue of the Apocalypse begins, as some reproductions in slides of the Decalogue essays begin to appear and an absurd discussion that exists between one of the characters in the wheelchairs that have appeared, which are all those characters that I face in the scene (who attacked my work so much, attacked the Ensemble, attacked a whole era of work) and that I portray in the scene as invalids who are not always in a wheelchair and sometimes used as an aggressive element. There is also an absurd discussion there, of one of those characters crossing the stage in a wheelchair. So, this completely abrupt situation and rupture with the work is a very important part of the structure of this work.
On the other hand, the musical element is used in a very characteristic way. For example, I change the music of some works with those of others, that is, the same thing that memory confuses so much, that it has so many transpositions of some memories with others, I use music from one within the other, and of course! for that certain technical procedures were necessary; the dancers had to dance on stage to the original music because their choreography was mounted on that, and yet the audience received other music.
This work, in the hands of the sound engineer Miguelito Cova, who has always worked with me, was able to make the dancers hear the music with which they danced on stage and yet the one that reached the public was different. That established a very strong contrast, like watching Orfeo’s carnival scene with the music of the Chaconne, and thus in the different works I exchanged some music from my repertoire with those that was happening on the scene. Or, for example, the Oshún dance that was danced with the original drums, I also made a change to it, and then I put the modern versions that the Síntesis group has made with these songs; here they are already with an orchestral elaboration, in which electro-acoustic effects are used and then what the public hears is this modern version; but nevertheless,the dancers are dancing on stage with the original version with which it was made
The nightingale’s song, for the Camagüey Ballet
In El canto del moiseñor, already Guerra raises a series of new ideas from the creative point of view.
Knowing the different dance techniques, he proposed a work with the classical technique, but with his choreographic conception of modern dance, which made that group propitiate a work of great interest to him.
In working with the kurogo characters, he uses them to assemble and remove the scenery in front of the public, in the manner of the Kabuki Theater. This action was carried out in reference to removing it and moving it.
As for the voice work, it turned out to be interesting, since one of the kurogos tries to give an explanation to the audience in an extraverbal way, using the onomatopoeic sound of the Japanese language, with touches of humor in the style of the theater choir. Greek that nobody understands, and that through the gesture manages to place them within the atmosphere of the work.
The concept of surprise present in this choreographer, allowed him to incorporate into the work, an accident that occurred in a function, but that was so exact and resolved by the dancers that he made that decision.
The theatrical concept was transgressed, the entire theater was used, the orchestra space was almost completely closed, to give access to the dancers, as well as the stairs on the sides. The stage, the corridors, and the lunetario, he used as a single space.
Here the sound system was enriched, in comparison with his previous works. He claims that the original music was based on Stravinsky’s opera The Nightingale, at the same time there was an orchestral version conducted by Ansermet. Ramiro merged the two versions: he joined part of the opera in which the nightingale sings, with part of the orchestral version.
On that sound mantle, he uses live accessories in the style of Kabuki, which uses wooden plates to give climaxes or immobility, or for important moments. As he did not have these plates, he used the plate of the Babalú Ayé dance, resulting in a very interesting sound element.
In the dramatic section of the emperor, in which the music is quite long, he used a metronome, and that section of the ballet was performed about that time, not about the music, at the same time that it enveloped everything in a very dense atmosphere, very tragic, very mysterious, which gave it a special character.
A touch of postmodernism allows him in the scene of the false nightingale to do something terrible, very macabre. Ramiro affirms that for a classical dancer it is tremendous to do a dance only with all the most virtuous ballet drums, he assembled a section with those drums, but without coherence between one and the other, without preparation to go from one to another. Here he returns to the mathematical system of accounts, and he rides it to a dancer with almost no preparation. That, he said, gave the work a very mechanical texture, very arid, very cold, without losing the code of ballet, thus he wanted to mark the character of that character.
Ramiro Guerra establishes the foundations of the dramaturgy of dance in Cuba
In his dramaturgical conception Ramiro has taken into account the public to whom his work is directed, for this reason he did an educational job as a cultural promoter, in institutions with large concentrations of workers, students, soldiers, in schools, military units, the radio , and television.
Knowing the psychological character of the Cuban people, from the beginning his intention was to perform a distinctly Cuban dance, where that audience would be reflected, hence the national character that marked his work. Its cultural promotion was aimed at finding an audience that did not exist for this new way of seeing Cuban theater dance. On this subject, he responds in his interview with Roberto Pérez León:
From the beginning I raised with absolute dignity all the nuances of the scene, that made the audience feel reflected in each dance. I think that’s where a large part of the public’s acceptance resided. The national character of the works was an essential element for that acceptance. I did not feel modern dance as an esoteric or experimental laboratory style. I was looking for a very very Cuban expressiveness, very emotional »[5].
Ramiro Guerra is the one who establishes the foundations of the dramaturgy of dance in Cuba, through this psychological process in the treatment of each work, each scene, each character, the music, the light, the costumes. With the use of the text as an epochal, cultural transpolation; or the text as an effect, as a rhythm, as a musical tempo, or as live or recorded dramatic text.
His deep sense of movement, of racial interrelation, his conception of improvisation as a method of creation and dance expression, as a result of a meticulous study of the “Cuban as a body”, his methodical analysis of dance and theatrical styles and techniques, his avant-garde reflections in search of new dance codes and languages, lead him to constantly break with his own theatrical laws; all this, together with his deep study of dance in oriental theater and his carnival concept within, led him to the “theatrical nature of his work”
.
Dance theory and the dramaturgy of dance in Cuba
The study of dance theory allows, from the point of view of Anthropology, to order and specify the root elements that have defined the artistic and cultural direction of Cuban modern dance within the ethical, aesthetic, ideological and cultural thought of the second mid-twentieth century and early twenty-first of Cuban culture
In the historical process of artistic feedback, which Cuban modern dance has contributed to the history of universal dance, the influence and artistic, cultural and intellectual legacy of its predecessor Ramiro Guerra is observed .
Dance Dramaturgy
A careful dramaturgy is important to rule, especially in the open structure, lest the path of the thematic idea be lost. The choreographic dance dramaturgy raises the clarification of the conflictive opposition engine that must rule underground within the structure of the work, although there are bifurcations in the situations, atmospheres and possible characters of the work.
The strong presence that the other scenic systems have acquired: music, costumes, lights, spaces and open communication with the spectator have made the new structure of the so-called dance-theater emerged at the end of the 20th century, and with it, theatrical dramaturgy , has burst into the current dance scene with force.
Nowadays, choreographic dramaturgy becomes more and more urgent due to the irruption of strong significant themes with their corresponding and complex signifiers that the new dance trends have imposed with the postmodern cultural atmosphere of the last decades.
Openings towards new uses of the body have expanded the dance language that, without rejecting everything contributed by academicism, the techniques of contemporary dance and universal and popular folklore that is created day by day by mass culture, have broadened the dance reception in the mix of the most unexpected tendencies of the dance movement today.
La más amplia multiculturariedad danzaria ha incluido las técnicas de soltura con el uso de una baja energía física en la proyección danzaria. Los aportes de las artes marciales orientales (Aikido y Tai-chi-chuan), la Ideokinesis, la Contact improvisation de Steve Paxton y tantas otras maneras de afrontar el movimiento se han fundido en una mezcla, a veces quizás indiscriminada al extremo, pero de todas maneras enriquecedoras del lenguaje danzario universal del nuevo milenio.
All this has included a daily routine in themes, clothing and footwear, an acceptance of plural dance languages, an admission of improvisation as a technique, new concepts about gravity, body weight and mass, physical energy and energy power. To this can be added a greater interest in the creation process than in the results, a product of the philosophy of conceptualism, expanded in the thought of current culture.
All this mixture of techniques, concepts and ways of expressing the dance discourse has made it essential for a strong dramaturgy to highlight the central idea of the choreographic work, despite all the density of signs that it can emit to the viewer, in a way that it has enough information to capture the broadcast. The control of the fundamental thematic idea is necessary to maintain its line of progression throughout the choreographic stage time. Clarity, precision and accuracy of images concatenatedly exposed throughout the work will allow the viewer to follow the incidents, without the need for the creator to fall into pedestrian literalities.
A personal script made by the choreographer for your work will help you not stray from the main theme, whatever the twists and turns of your work, in order to avoid losing a production of meaning in what you want to express. A conflict, an opposition and an internal struggle in the thematic idea will be necessary to keep the scenic action alive, whether it is a narrative or symbolic choreography and even abstract. Of course, in the narrative all this becomes simpler, which is not so much when the work unfolds in the sphere of the symbolic or allegorical, in which the thematic idea is not too tied to the objective real, without being of the all unrelated to it.
Abstract choreography can be the most difficult to maintain within a theatrical dramaturgy, since it is not based only on the action of bodies without significations beyond those that can reproduce the oppositions of bodies against each other. A good example of achievement in that physical dramaturgy of dance action not dependent on objective thematic meanings can be found in the choreographies of William Forsythe, who develops a violence of opposition between the dancing figures without resorting to emotional actions of any kind.
The effectiveness of good dramaturgy
The proof of the efficacy of a good dramaturgy is found in the contemporary versions of the great narrative choreographic works of the 19th century, incorporated into contemporary visions alien to the characters of fantastic stories, although they cover up struggles between good and evil, or of psychological twists and turns that psychoanalysis in recent times has revealed. Thus in his version of Swan Lake, the Swedish choreographer Mats Ekt reveals Albretch’s oedipal conflicts with respect to his dominant mother, and the same choreographer has also turned the willis fantasy forest scene into a madhouse in which the Giselle’s fragile mind has found abode after the clash with reality before love.
There, the vengeful maidens killed before marriage are the sick orates of the insane hospital, who instead of executing him, strip him and practically rape him. Alongside these versions, other versions of Swan Lake can be found, where these birds appear under the male figure of dancers oblivious to the transparent tutus and the soft undulations of female arms: they are aggressive figures that move more closely to the personality of swans, mythologized by Romanticism into docile birds under the spells of some sorcerer or condemned to die irretrievably, despite their beautiful transparent image. So does the Englishman Matthew Bourne,in whom the love between the female swan and the prince becomes an alter ego situation between Albretch and the image of his other self ideally perceived in his childhood dreams, as a flight from maternal dependency and his sick love for the authoritarian mother . Frenchman Roland Petit also makes swans masculine but changes the prince’s sex to that of a princess, haunted by the curses of a paternal authority, from which the heroine flees to take refuge in the love of the prince of swans.from which the heroine flees to take refuge in the love of the prince of the swans.from which the heroine flees to take refuge in the love of the prince of the swans.
Dramaturgy implies a control of the choreographic saying in which a series of scenic dance events is established, with some type of organization that goes from a beginning to an end in which a transformation of diverse actions is reflected distributed in well-clarified sections that characterize capable nuclei to develop oppositions that generate a dialectical passage within the choreographic piece.
Dance and dramaturgy
There are two types of dance: one that does not capture any significant image, and another in which the movements of the dancer are in function of creating visible images. In imageless dance, from that of the most primitive shaman to the theatrical Pas de quatre, kinetic action prevails without pretending to expose any meaning, beyond pure movement. Its aesthetics are in the succession of kinetic designs, traced in space by the emotional activity of the body, without any evocation of the surrounding world. It can also be called abstract dance and its expression only requires the body that dances in a certain time. In front of her, another type of dance seeks the reference in the environment and its events, by somehow mimicking the reality that surrounds the dancer, and their emotions, by relating them to the outside world.For this, it includes the gesture, the personification, the conflict, the creation of atmosphere, and states of tension and distention in space and time, capable of revealing meanings. This is the so-called image or mimetic dance.
Curt Sachs has said of both:
Thus, the two types of dance in their marked contrast, participate in the great intellectual spheres that in violent and incessant conflict determine the culture of man “
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There is, on the other hand, between the two extreme cases, an intermediate dance in which the metaphor is built halfway between abstraction and mimesis. A territory in which images emerge with an expressive rhetoric akin to a poetics that, although committed to reality, is sufficiently distanced to be able to take licenses for greater intellectual freedom. Here images tend to emerge in the manner of chain associations, which can transform the initial icon into links of symbols or allegories, such as evocations, subjective atmospheres, humor, strange tensions, mysterious games.
It is necessary to understand these three categories to be able to reflect on the communication between dance and its audience, as material of expressive language. It is clear that abstract dance is an object of enjoyment in itself on the part of the receiver, without this having to exercise any process of interpretation on what he perceives, since the kinetic impact is communicated directly at the level of sensoriality between the dancer and your audience.
In the second category, the image or mimetic dance, there are numerous signs that are grouped into systems interrelated with the movement of the performer’s body and that need to be interpreted. Here dance is not only an object in itself, but also a producer of signs, which aims to go beyond kinetic action, at the level of production of meaning, which makes the emitter-receiver relationship more complex due to the semantic values or meanings that are displayed, and that need to be decoded.
In the third category, that of symbolic or allegorical dance, an intermediate field is established between abstraction and mimesis, in which the signs cease to be clearly mimetic to become less translucent due to the rhetorical use of dance language, with the metaphor , metonymy, synecdoche, irony and other transpolations of expressive saying. Thus, the metaphor or allegory transfers the content of one idea to another through a comparative process (the light of science, the flower of age). Metonymy designates one idea for another that is related to it, or that are related to each other (combing gray hair, iron will). The synecdoche makes use of the fragment or the part, to replace the whole or vice versa (as much for the head, ring the bronze).
To this can be added the sense of irony, when by mockery or sarcasm one thing is usually implied by its opposite (the luck of dying). It is very common to see the combination of all these tropes or rhetorical forms used within the same work of art. In the visual arts, some images from The Garden of Earthly Delights by Bosco can be cited as examples of these expressive mixtures: the naked man crucified on a huge harp, like the one condemned to hell for indulging in the pleasures of art, the image of the homosexual who places flowers with their stems in the anal cavity of his partner, who appears in a quadruped position, and its meaning could be the pleasure that transforms the genitals of one into a flowery bouquet that makes the other penetrate like a vase.
In literature, the mental adventures in the paraphrase of the return to the Hellenic myth with the vicissitudes of Joyce’s Ulysses can be cited as examples. In music, mention can be made of the marine sounds of La mer, Debussy, or the nocturnal atmospheres that Manuel de Falla captures in the piano games with the symphony orchestra in his Nights in the gardens of Spain.
In dance, also expressive meanings are rarely limited to a single trope, but rather a mixture of several of them is used in a new and more provocative combination. For example, in Metamorfosis, by Cuban Narciso Medina , metaphor coincides with metonymy and synecdoche. The metaphor appears in the evolution of man, from the darkest struggles of his genes to the light of homo erectus, of the thinking man; metonymy with the imitation of animal conflicts until reaching higher goals; and the synecdoche, with the image that the evolution of the human being (the part) shows the evolution of the universe (the whole) in its growth.
How do these rhetorical games come to define images before the viewer’s perception? In order to penetrate this inquiry, it will be necessary to venture in some way, albeit brief, into the theory of reception developed in the cultural space of our time. According to her, the artistic work is expressed through what Umberto Eco has called a “poetic message”, which is nothing more than the concretion emanating from a system of systems, some of which refer to the internal formal relations of the work. , while others refer to its relations with those who enjoy it, and still others, have to do with their relations between the cultural context in which they originate and the work itself. This “poetic message” has, like any other emanated from the universal communications network,four fundamental factors: the author, the receiver, the subject and the code in which it is stated. The latter is constituted through “a system of conventionalized institutions”: in the case of the literary message, it is the language of any language; in the plastic arts it will be the conjunction of forms (lines, colors) that express an iconic image; the sounds organized in a sound language will constitute the musical code. And the kinetics of the movements, in conjunction with other scenic signs, will make up the code of theater dance especially.colors) that express an iconic image; the sounds organized in a sound language will constitute the musical code. And the kinetics of the movements, in conjunction with other scenic signs, will make up the code of theatrical dance especially.colors) that express an iconic image; the sounds organized in a sound language will constitute the musical code. And the kinetics of the movements, in conjunction with other scenic signs, will make up the code of theatrical dance especially.
When this code is interpreted by the reception to penetrate the meanings of the different signs that make up the work’s systems, decoding takes place, through which the communicative message is assimilated by the receiver. One of the ways that the author also has to make himself understood, in addition to the aforementioned rhetorical forms, may be the use of redundancy, in which the repetition of signs allows to enunciate a univocal message, with which “an absolute identity, in the relationship posed by the author between signified and signifier, and that posed by the decoder ”.
However, according to Eco, the message will become more poetic to the extent that a character of ambiguity is established through which the receiver can choose between several meanings. The game, once established between sender and receiver, makes the latter see the work “as a continuous source of meanings never immobilized in a single direction”, is stimulated towards a continuous decoding, and forces him to always question the fidelity of his own interpretation. This is what Eco has called “open work”, a statement that continues an idea that Meyerhold had already advocated: the power of association of ideas that the viewer can develop when faced with a theatrical staging. Eco continues to present his theory of the open work in this way:
The characteristic of the poetic message consists in having an ambiguity of structure, which, by stimulating multiple interpretations, forces us to focus on its own structure. The message can convey precise meanings, but the first meaning always refers to itself. Therefore, the fact of not constituting a precise semantic system does not nullify the validity of a certain artistic form, such as music (in general) or serial music or abstract painting (and naturally not figurative).
It is necessary to bear in mind that if literature, music and the plastic arts have been included in the meaningful process of the “open work”, dance for its part has been ignored. Why has an art of vital cultural importance not been included within the possibilities of interpretation through this theory? Many theorists have worked on the inclusion of the theatrical text and its staging within these premises. Patrice Pavis is perhaps the one who has been most concerned with incorporating the theory of the “open work” into the field of performing arts. The dance, however, has presented difficulties, apparently not entirely insurmountable but debatable. In the case of theatrical art, the existence of a text, which when brought to the scene can be fragmented, deformed, reinforced or even ignored,it always refers to a matrix that allows it to be conceptualized within the interpretive paths of an adventure of the intellect, which according to Eco “when performed as an offense to the code, generates a surprise”.
The dance, by not having any text other than that of the expressive movement, carries the danger, due to its speed of emission and the impossibility of immediate verification, that the structure of its poetic message does not give enough clues for a decoding based on the ambiguity. And easily fall into the vacuum of the cryptic, and / or the confusing of perception. Perhaps this may be the reason why the dance-theater genre has appeared within postmodernity, in which the appearance of texts in the mouths of dancers creates signs that constitute landing strips, towards a rapid and permissible decoding of the poetic message, in which ambiguity can have an optional position within the emission-reception of the piece.
However, dance-theater – traumatized in a certain way by the rejection of narrativity, which the world of dance has experienced in recent decades – has been forced to renounce the element of coherence, possessing so much force. binder. Current dance, including the so-called dance-theater, has known how to take advantage of the concepts of dramaturgy to enter a safe harbor with respect to meanings, poetic messages and possibilities of using the concept of “open work”.
Dramaturgy
Dramaturgy is understood as the internal link that is established between all the systems of the choreographic work, constituting a guide capable of pushing it in an unequivocal direction, that protects it against the marasmus of perceptual confusion through the thematic magnet. The latter also protects it against the dispersion of signs that may threaten a decoding by the viewer.
The term dramaturgy comes from dramatic art and defines the internal organization technique of a theatrical work, by trying to establish rules or norms, principles and even laws, which should govern the making of a text. From Aristotle to Brecht, passing through Corneille and Lope de Vega, many dramatic authors have tried to define the norms by which it is possible to express a theatrical idea through a literary text. Many of these rules have governed creation throughout the history of theater in the West. At present, many of them have become obsolete because the staging has acquired a primacy, capable of absorbing the total emission of the dramatic poetic message, even going “above” the text, and sometimes canceling it, if we see it from a traditional perspective.
However, despite the fact that many of the norms and rules established by tradition have gone to the ground, it is important to know its principles, since precisely the fact of the rupture is what has forced the creation of new directions capable of governing a new one. dramaturgy. The conventional norms of presentation, development and outcome continue to be valid even when some of them have been distorted, inverted or eliminated. In short, nothing concrete can exist that does not have a beginning, a growth and an end. And this will always be through one or more actions that will impose an opposition of opposites. A theatrical performance in which nothing happens through a defined time and space would seem to lack theatrical efficacy.
Doris Humphrey has said about it: “No matter what the subject is, the first test you have to undergo is in one word: action. Does the theme inherently have the motive to take on a movement? We always have to bear in mind that the art of dance is unique in terms of its medium, which is movement ”. It cannot be forgotten that theatrical narration had its origin in the primitive ritual image dance, which later became spectacular.
Dance dramaturgy highlights a series of basic principles from image dance, and even from symbolic-allegorical dance, in which the signs, although they may be more opaque, have a certain level of communicative transparency that offers a good perspective. to the choreographic speech. It can also be said that even non-image or abstract dance – as long as it is taken to a theatrical level – will be coupled with other scenic signs that allow it to approach a spectacular conception.
Alvin nikolaisemphasizes in the signs provided by the costumes, lighting and electroacoustic music, everything that allows him to show a spectacularity of strong sensorial vividness, without any approach to specific readings. The titles of his works: Totem, Prisma, Tent, Sanctum, Tower, Scenario, Masks, props and mobiles offer revealing clues to a thematic idea that he later develops into visual images, in which the dance action merges with the plastic elements. The dancers’ bodies are intertwined in the scene with color and sound in an effective avoidance of emotionality, when geometric elements merge with the bodies, the fabrics of their clothing and the lights, they achieve a total fusion and visuality. abstract. With this, Nikolais captures his aesthetic that “Dance is motion and not emotion”.
The dehumanization of dancing bodies enters another dimension in which theatrical actions form new dramaturgical perspectives well differentiated from those of image dance.
The visual and sound fantasy with its signs mixed with the kinetic action of the bodies builds a dramaturgy different from that established as a scenic parameter in the image dance and the symbolic-allegorical. The abstract images that Nikolais builds in his dances emerge kaleidoscopically, being self-sufficient; they establish a scenic adventure alien to emotion, but rich in visual plastic impact, and in atmospheres with strong scenic mystery, well penetrated by the ancient magical roots of imageless dance.
Merce Cunningham , for her part, violates dramaturgy based on the thematic idea, breaks the progression of the stage action and turns this fact into the true theme of her works, which she will call events. In them, events break the cause-effect relationship. This premeditated imbalance creates an opposition to the logic of reception, by making a distance interest rate work in which the unforeseen (chance, chance) occupies vital importance. His titles – like those of Nikolais – announce thematic atmospheres: Rain Forest alludes to humid forests where telluric transformations can occur, although they do not appear in dance, but are only evoked.
In these cases, the reception is not stimulated by conflicts that produce action, and can only respond to the curiosity of what can happen in the scene determined by the unforeseen. Expectation can appear as a communication formula by being able to establish a surprise break in the stage logic.
George Balanchine in Agon prepares stage entrances and exits, encounters and misunderstandings of couples, groups and soloists, who delve into the difficult sounds of musical serialism. Create arid atmospheres where dancing bodies intertwine without emotional relationships of any kind.
These proposals that allude to a dance abstractionism do not seem to be committed to the concept of poetic message, but neither do they renounce certain metaphorical games that can evoke thematic ideas, either with humor, as Cunningham does with respect to mythical archaism in Antic Meet, or Nikolais, when he evokes science fiction spaces with phantasmagorical dancers fused within scenic mobiles of such symmetry that they seem to obey competitive playful stimuli between couples.
But it is in the real space of image dance and in the symbolic-allegorical that dramaturgy establishes its strength as an organizer of perception, when the stage choreographic writings must be deciphered or decoded. As soon as the viewer begins to notice the display of scenic signs mixed with dance kinetics, he begins a search for meanings. This process leads to the capture of what Pavis calls the production of meaning. If the receiver does not find enough signal clues to break through to possible meanings, it is very likely that he will feel incapable and fall into a state of frustration, which leads to boredom, as the emission-reception relationship will be interrupted by the deafening noise of solitary confinement.
The scenic magnetism will fall into a vacuum, and the work will have stopped producing emission currents. This is what frequently happens when an allegorical image or symbolic dance is interfered with by the absence of solid dramaturgy, and nothing significant can grab the attention of the reception on the scene. The signs may not be entirely transparent to promote the mystery caused by the fantasy displayed by the associations. But this procedure must start from a conscious dramaturgical manipulation, which prevents the viewer from falling into emotional or intellectual inertia. The provocation of sensoriality in the reception is part of the dramaturgy, which links all the strands of attention in a definitive direction, despite wanting to maintain a suspense in the final goal.
In Metamorphosis, the two characters, one in opposition to the other, submerged inside the barrel, immediately create a state of interrogation that will be maintained throughout the work, and that will have a final solution in the strong scenic image of the procession that marks the journey from animal to man, topped off by the cry of triumph that closes the piece. Here the dramaturgy is exact and compulsive: an idea that is discovered surprisingly at the end, but that has managed to remain in suspense from the beginning, when the three bodies have appeared and begun to move within the narrow enclosure of the solitary barrel. Conflict, opposition and struggle mark the development of a physical adventure of bodies that link, unlink, unite or repel each other until forming a new product, emanating from the internal dialectic of the work.
What the barrel means, the howling head of the cubicle dweller, the naked bodies, the turns of the barrel on the ground, etc. they are stimuli to personal readings of reflection in the face of mysterious metaphors that evoke the stages of struggle that occur in nature, a thematic idea that is presented, developed, and reaches its climax through the work and the concretion of its dramaturgy.
The fish of the tower swims on the asphalt, by Marianela Boán
An analysis of the dramaturgical guidelines of The fish in the tower swims in the asphalt, by Marianela Boán, reveals other aspects. The beginning and the end are markedly revealing of the thematic development. It begins with the dancers in the hall of the theater proposing to exchange things for things, until they perch on the stage at the edge of the proscenium. From there they establish the image of figures sitting on the edge of the Havana seawall, incorporating mimetic actions of the flow of the sea into their bodies. At the end, a strong line of naked bodies, also from the proscenium, advances towards the back of the stage while the curtain closes.
The development raises a transformation or polarity of the initial situation, which through the events that occurred in its ten sections will revert one reality into another quite different one. Each of these sections shows the characters as individuals on the side of a reality that only makes them capable of buying, selling, and bartering as a means of struggle within an empty survival. The evasion, escapism, lamentation, physical and moral frivolity, and other circumstances of their harsh experiences, will transform them from empty beings in search of pitanza, into reflective beings seeking a truth more solid than that of consumable things.
Each of the sections has strong contrasts between them, with underlined climaxes that mark high points within the work (the rumbón, the cabaret show) along with other low points (exodus from suitcases). The atmospheres follow one another from the slow group movements of despair to the frenzy of the rumba catharsis, or the frivolous display of cabaret costumes. The element of surprise works, for example, when the characters discover tulle and sequins under their threadbare clothes, or find the guaracheras inside their exile suitcases. The overall rhythm or dynamics of the work goes from the violent to the humorous, from the ironic to the sarcastic.
The dancers are constantly transformed according to the situations and atmospheres, going from the tragic to the frivolous depending on the theme developed, and they do not skimp on the use of texts such as the fragments of dialogues from Aire Frio, by Virgilio Piñera. The theme of the difficult adjustment to a reality, by different and labyrinthine paths, until reaching a reflective conclusion, is evoked in the title of Piñera’s verse contained in one of his texts. Dramaturgy expands that idea, makes it evolve through the long journey of the piece to arrive at a conclusion with strong communicative impact. The audience has been able to follow the process step by step, led and brought by the profusion of scenic signs that have shaped its poetic message.
The work of Pina Bausch
All the work of Pina Bausch moves repeatedly within a small number of themes related to each other. These themes, according to Norbert Servos, 1 are listed as the uncomfortable world of personal relationships between the couple, through which “the strong desire to be loved; along with fear, as the main problems of our time ”. These basic ideas provide a plot and starting point for many associations. Servos continues to refer to Bausch’s dramaturgy as having a logic that does not adhere to the laws of causality, but rather to those of analogy, since according to her, the logic of emotions and affects does not depend on reason. . That is why it is expressed within a fragmentary sense, and exhibits its rejection of continuity within the choreographic structure.Her themes lead her to antagonism between the sexes, the need for love, the helpless lack of understanding, and the empty phrases of isolation. His dramaturgy puts the narrative in crisis, which becomes brittle. His works are not fortified by the power of the narrative thread, but are developed in cyclical arcs, in which visual images are interpolated in an apparently infinite spiral. To do this, he goes to a magazine dramaturgy, in which the succession of one issue after another makes it possible to expose episodes that are apparently disconnected from each other, although unified by the theme:rather, they develop in cyclical arcs, in which visual images are interpolated in an apparently infinite spiral. To do this, he goes to a magazine dramaturgy, in which the succession of one issue after another makes it possible to expose episodes that are apparently disconnected from each other, although unified by the theme:rather, they develop in cyclical arcs, in which visual images are interpolated in an apparently infinite spiral. To do this, he goes to a magazine dramaturgy, in which the succession of one issue after another makes it possible to expose episodes that are apparently disconnected from each other, although unified by the theme:
“The levels float within each other, and interfere in a complex scenic progression of images dramatically motivated by the alternation between ascents and falls (for example: sadness with frantically hysterical activity), fast with slow, tense with how relaxed. “
According to Servos, this very open dramaturgy needed a type of restriction, since in some of Bausch’s pieces such as Leyenda de Chastidad, the dramatic and conceptual consistency, fine and delicately balanced, of the previous works is weakened, by losing the dramaturgical principle of contrasts. In another of his works: 1980 the foundations based on authentic experiences seemed to have reached an exhaustive climax over time, and the development of a contextual substance seemed to have reached a dead end. So in Waltzes, for the first time, Pina Bausch used a playwright for the montage. The subject was precisely his working method, the work revealed the work process of the rehearsals. Valses came to reveal the internal status of the company at that time, including Pina herself.All the dancers were shown as tightrope walkers walking on a cable stretched in the air, the piece became a type of exorcism against the process of exhaustion.
The dramaturgy of the Wuppertal Dance Theater claimed to be interpreted as an iconography of the conflicts that can arise within the limits of the real and the possible. The internal and external world, the past and the present meet to be experienced as one. The tour of the dramaturgical paths of the Bausch illustrates in a coherent way that dramaturgy as the common thread of the choreographic work, is not a limited path with “danger” signs on both sides of the path, but rather a comfortable and quite manageable direction for the discourse of the dance, since it avoids dispersion and chaos by pressing the floodgates of motivation of the work.
Fragmented Memory, by Fidel Pajares Santiesteban
In La memoria fragmentada, the presence of a latent conflict is obvious throughout its sixty-minute duration. The conflict materializes in two contending nuclei; on the one hand, that of an artistic endeavor shown by fragments of works that are linked in the piece, and on the other, a platoon of disabled people, symbolic images of the cultural depredation that prevailed in the 70s. The conflict metonymically exerts a force of opposition to the fragmentary images that appear throughout the piece. Other dramatic levels, also oppositional, establish the sub-theme of the generational struggle. The traditional progression through exposition, development and conclusion is not constituted as the structural base of the piece, but rather a parallelism of actions that guide the different focuses of theatricality appears,which are energetically driven by the channel of the oppositions already exposed.
The generational sub-theme bursts into sharp outbursts that change the identity of the characters, interpreted by the dancers themselves, acting themselves, who are projected in situations of acceptance, rejection, or open contradiction, desertion or abandonment. Scenic metaphors allude to live events, actions and events in the collective unconscious. The biographical character of the work metaphorically or metonymically transforms the theatrical images into contenders that denote forces in frank confrontation, conflicts and consequent contradictory actions, even though the play itself does not have characters with proper roles.
The appearances are rather at the level of the internal structure in the internalization of the signifiers. The production of meaning seeks to bring into evidence the dialectical oppositions within cultural ideologies and their frequent and dire effects. An apparent nostalgic “retro” in search of lost time ironically turns into acid commentary with a critical attitude towards ominous manipulations within ideologies. The work does not pretend to have messages or to respond to conflicts, however, the dramaturgical system clearly presents an ideological conflict, or a clash of ideas that has had dangerous consequences in our environment.
Choreographer’s Manual, by Lin Durán
Durán states that the biggest problem a choreography faces is the clarity with which it must be transmitted to the receiver. That problem has to do with the thematic material, through which something very personal wants to communicate. “The viewer tends to identify with the content that is filtered through the choreographic fabric,” he says. Hence, the receiver “does not accept to hide the personal opinions of the creator under the veil of confusion and darkness.” Antidote to the contamination of the cryptic can be “a non-analytical aesthetic thought process based on unity, clarity, contrast, conflict and coherence.
The theme, according to Durán, is the generating and organizing material of ideas that acts through the consciousness of the choreographer, and clarity, one of the primary aesthetic conditions of art, whose antipode is confusion, which causes a bad mood in the audience . It is clear, of course, that clarity is not synonymous with obviousness or literality, and that it does not renounce the mystery and magic of the artistic work that usually reveals truths through poetic ways, sometimes intricate, but not inaccessible. All these issues related to choreographic writing pointed out by Durán, can be located in the disputed terrain of the dramaturgical problem.
The first sign or traffic signal towards a receptive road – which causes us to discover an unknown – is the subject. A beautiful suspense regarding the theme in the title can reach the emotional or simply kinetic fibers of the viewer, and propel them to move from track to track until they apprehend the exact conduction, through the unknown field of a choreographic creation seen for the first time.
The leitmotif can be a green light that encourages you to travel through unknown paths and preserve against the abysses of emptiness or dispersion. This is where the dramaturgy raises the unity of the work in which “everything is relevant, and nothing is left over or lacking …” (Durán). Of course, there are pitfalls that can openly threaten dance dramaturgy: they are usually the creator’s enthusiasm for isolated images of the subject, which can fascinate within the choreographic work, but which can become islets without roads, creators of dark holes that later necessary to fill in at all costs, or worse, remain as objects adrift.
Another negative avatar occurs when the choreographer allows himself to be seduced by the dancer’s personality, either by his technical charisma or by the physical beauty of the bodies. This can lead to the creation of loose threads that undermine the unity of the overall dramaturgical fabric. The elimination of what is unnecessary to take control of the choreographic discourse requires not leaving anything here or there, which can become decorative touches without significance for the poetic message.
Concretion is synonymous with good internal rhythm in a choreography, says Durán, and this “depends a lot on the opportunity in which changes, variations, pauses, dissolves, climaxes occur”. All this must be in line with what has happened before and will happen later. I add, for my part, that the passage of a work on the exciting tightrope of the dangerous and unforeseen, based on surprise, is a secret that is not sold in the pharmacy. It is a green medicine that the choreographic creator must discover, at the cost of research and exploration of himself and the world around him.
Durán ends by insisting that the theme is the matter in question and the generating nucleus of a choreographic composition: there resides what you want to transmit to the viewer, and that it will serve as a guiding thread or structured element. I add that one of the secrets of a good dramaturgy is the possession of a good subject in the first place; knowing how to manipulate it is another; and the third is to exercise the ability to communicate with the viewer through dance language.
Those three pillars that are the dramaturgy of a theatrical dance, do not always appear in current choreographies, which rather seem to soothe themselves in the constant search, exploration and unveiling of the creative processes of the laboratory, asking the public to join. The current situation seems to be ready to leave contemporary dance halls deserted. Unless the creators take measures in this regard, without eliminating the restlessness and searches in the unexplored, they seem to lead contemporary dance towards a possible dead end.
Dance dramaturgy presupposes a series of scenic events, with some type of organization that will take place from the beginning to the end in which a thematic idea is developed in precise images that imply a transformation or variant of this. The events involve actions that generally take shape through nuclei of conflict capable of unleashing contradictions, struggles of opposites and consequent oppositions that generate a dialectic within the choreographic piece (Pina Bausch).
The organization places one event after another, in such a way that a coherence is established between the different avatars or events, a location that generally creates a type of structure, which exerts great power in the general conformation of the work, and acts as a support or vertebral column, with its necessary bridges and contrasts that mark the development of the piece (fragmented memory).
The beginning and the end are two borders or limits that mark the birth and death, the rise and fall of any activity. From one extreme to another, the stage time passes in which the signifiers of the work unfold. Generally, between one and the other of these definitive poles, a concatenated event occurs that implies the conversion of one thing into another (Metamorphosis).
The transformation is the engine or internal energy of the work that changes, alters, subverts or struggles to become something different from something else (The fish in the tower swims on the asphalt).
Images are plastic visualizations that generally conform meanings beyond what is shown by moving bodies. They are the promoters of associations that, based on a visible sensoriality, provoke in the imagination of the receiver the impulse to delve into their own experiences to find sensations or paths of reflection in a post-communicative internalization process (Fragmented memory).
The theme is a central ideation that may have other neighboring ones, but that prevails and establishes links of supremacy over the others. The good development of the theme allows the piece to walk from milestone to milestone, from its primary exposure to the final concretion. Repetition and leitmotif are procedures that help reveal and fix the primary theme, and bring it to the fore before the public’s attention. The theme, in addition, can provide important ingredients, such as atmosphere, characters, surprise and suspense (The fish of the tower swims on the asphalt).
Following the map of these constellations can be a good guide to understand and put into practice dance dramaturgy, an important aspect in the complex universe of choreographic work, and which is capable of explaining many phenomena not visible to the naked eye, but that of not being taken into account can undermine the communication and perceptual capacity of the viewer.