Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps

Jarvinen, Hanna
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du
Printemps: Responses to Dance Modernism
Jarvinen, Hanna, (2006) "Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps: Responses to Dance
Modernism" from Senses and society, 1 (1) pp.71-79, Abingdon: Routledge ©
Staff and students of the University of Roehampton are reminded that copyright subsists in this extract and
the work from which it was taken. This Digital Copy has been made under the terms of a CLA licence
which allows you to:
* access and download a copy;
* print out a copy;
Please note that this material is for use ONLY by students registered on the course of study as
stated in the section below. All other staff and students are only entitled to browse the material and
should not download and/or print out a copy.
This Digital Copy and any digital or printed copy supplied to or made by you under the terms of this
Licence are for use in connection with this Course of Study. You may retain such copies after the end of
the course, but strictly for your own personal use.
All copies (including electronic copies) shall include this Copyright Notice and shall be destroyed and/or
deleted if and when required by the University of Roehampton.
Except as provided for by copyright law, no further copying, storage or distribution (including by e-mail)
is permitted without the consent of the copyright holder.
The author (which term includes artists and other visual creators) has moral rights in the work and neither
staff nor students may cause, or permit, the distortion, mutilation or other modification of the work, or any
other derogatory treatment of it, which would be prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author.
This is a digital version of copyright material made under licence from the rightsholder, and its accuracy
cannot be guaranteed. Please refer to the original published edition.
Licensed for use for the course: "DAN020L414S - Boundaries of the Body: Ritual, Dance and
Performance".
Digitisation authorised by Susan Scorey
ISSN: 1745-8927
Your order details
Your shipping address:
Our Order Ref: 01391992-001
Your Ref:
Despatched on: 12/1/2016
University of Roehampton - EHESS
United Kingdom
Your item details
UIN:
Title:
Publisher:
ISSN:
Year:
Issue:
Pages:
Author name(s):
Article title
words:
BLL01013051790
The senses & society.
[Abingdon] : [Routledge]
1745-8927
2006
Volume:
1
1
71-92
J?rvinen, Hanna
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre
du Printemps: Responses to Dance
Modernism
Comments
University of Roehampton - EHESS
United Kingdom
Copyright Statement
Unless out of copyright, the contents of the document(s) attached to or accompanying this page are protected by copyright. They are supplied on condition that, except to
enable a single paper copy to be printed out by or for the individual who originally requested the document(s), you may not copy (even for internal purposes), store or retain
any electronic medium, retransmit, resell, or hire the contents (including the single paper copy referred to above). However these rules do not apply where:
1. you have written permission of the copyright owner to do otherwise;
2. you have the permission of The Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, or similar licensing body;
3. the document benefits from a free and open licence issued with the consent of the copyright owner;
4. the intended usage is covered by statute.
Breach of the terms of this notice is enforceable against you by the copyright owner or their representative.
This document has been supplied under our Copyright Fee Paid service. You are therefore agreeing to the terms of supply for our Copyright Fee Paid service, available at:
http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/atyourdesk/docsupply/help/terms/index.html
The British Library, On Demand, Boston Spa, Wetherby, United Kingdom, LS23 7BQ
OnDemand.bl.uk
Senses & Society
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
pp 71-91
REPRINTS AVAILABLE
DIRECTLY FROM THE
PUBLISHERS.
PHOTOCOPYING
PERMITTED BY
LICENSE ONLY
BERG 2006
PRINTED IN THE UK
(!:)
Kinesthesia,
Synesthesia and Le
Sacre du Printemps:
Responses to Dance
Modernism
Hanna Jarvinen
Hanna Jarvinen, Research
Fellow at the Helsinki
Collegium for Advanced
Studies at the University
of Helsinki, Finland,
holds a Ph.D. in Cultural
History from the University
of Turku and an MA in
Performance Studies from
New York University.
ABSTRACT "Kinesthesia, Synesthesia
and Le Sacre du Printemps: Responses
to Dance Modernism" discusses the
reception of Vaslav Nijinsky's controversial
choreography to Igor Stravinsky's Le
Sacre du Printemps (1913) in the light
of kinesthesia, or movement sense, and
synesthesia or the merging of the senses.
Dr. Jarvinen argues that the invention of
kinesthetic sense and particularly the
theory of expression linked with this notion,
kinesthetic sympathy, were historically and
culturally specific responses to increasing
abstraction as a goal in the arts, also seen
in Le Sacre du Printemps, a work aiming
to produce synesthetic experiences in the
spectators.
I
Hanna Jarvinen
Synesthesia find Kinesthesia
+
-%
g
Cl)
06
en
Q)
en
cQ)
Cl)
•
Through focusing on one of the watershed pieces of
modernism, Vaslav Nijinsky's (1889-1950) choreography
to Igor Stravinsky's (1882-1971) Le Sacre du Printemps
(1913), this article addresses two notions that are- interlinked in early
twentieth-century discourse on dance. These are the idea of synesthesia, or the merging of sensory impressions, which was a central
factor in the positive response to Sergei Oiaghilev's (1872-1929)
Ballets Russes (1909-1929) in Western Europe and the notion of
kinesthesia, or rather, kinesthetic sympathy, through which dance was
understood at the time, and which continues to resonate in dance
research , particularly in phenomenological accounts of dance.
Throughout the nineteenth century, "The Art-Work of the Future"
was a frequently used term in the theatrical arts. Simply put, it meant
the balanced product of artistic collaboration by several individuals,
an artwork in which all the elements support one another. Often, the
supposed "origin" for the ideal was found in Ancient Greece, where,
it was believed, the arts had enjoyed the same importance as politics,
ethics and religious practices, with which they were also integrated.
All this aimed at raising the prestige of theatrical arts.
Richard Wagner (1813-1883) has been credited with bringing
about a new kind of totality for "the total work of art" through insisting
upon the role of a singular genius directing and imagining the end
result (Wagner [1849]1895: esp.195-21 0; Oeak 1993: 94-133). This
move from the collaborative effort of a group to the authorship of a
singular genius allowed for the theatrical artwork to be evaluated as
a totality, a reflection of the transcendental truth perceived by the
genius, who in turn qualified the art as art.
This is also why late-nineteenth-century aesthetic theory relied so
strongly on the idea of synesthesia, the mixing or merging of sensory experiences in the mind, a notion credited to Arthur Rimbaud
(1854-1891) . Synesthesia owed much to early nineteenth-century
physiological research on misperceptions (such as optical illusions
and afterimages) and sensory stimuli (for example, how the ear
registered electrical impulses as sound, the eye as light), which, while
understood to make the senses unreliable reflections of the external
world, also enabled the conclusion that the transcendental could be
found through synesthetic experiences (Crary [1990] 1999: 88-96;
Kern [1983]2000: 136-8,202-3; Classen 1998: 17,22, 109-37).
The sense of the body and its movement, kinesthesia, did not
figure in this physiological project until the early twentieth century
- for instance Wagner still associates the body with sight, that is
exteroception, in his "The Art-Work of the Fugue" [Wagner [1849]
1895) - when public attention came to be focused on the discovery
of means to perfect the bodies of individuals and through them, the
social body. The body was understood to register the moral condition
of the individual, the class and the entire society: the shocks of
modern life overburdened the senses, railways wrecked the spine,
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
and the idle life of the leisured class led to epidemics of neurasthenia
and sexual perversions (Foucault [1976)1990; Eksteins 1989: 36-9,
83-4).
This new attention to bodies generated a heightened interest
in diets, physical exercise and movement, including dance (Malnig
1999; Burns [1996L 1998). Paradoxically, much of this interest was
essentially retrospective and conservative: if movement could act as
a "cure" for the ills of modernization, then contemporary life must
somehow be a perversion of the glorious and/or pastoral past, usually
an "Ancient Greek" past, as in the Olympic movement. This is to say
that the "progressive" dancers of the early twentieth century generally
thought of dance in very anti modernist ways: the dance that could
be a "cure" for the ailments of modernization only allowed for certain
kinds of movements to be used - those perceived as "correct,"
"harmonious" and "natural" for the body (e.g. Duncan [1928)1977:
esp. 56-8; von Laban [1950)1992: esp. 83, 129). These included
the serpentine, wavy lines typical of the contemporary art nouveau
aesthetic with its idea(l)s of nature, lots of circles and curves, and
even more theatrical posing and mimicry (Thomas 1995: 46-71 ;
Olsson 1999; Daly 2001 : esp. 292-3).
The beautiful bodies that never stopped moving (or rather, only
stopped moving at appropriate places) were reassuring in the midst
of a world perceived as accelerating madly and breaking apart; they
reproduced the ease and flow of modern life without the dangers
of shock, tension and accident that interested contemporary
modernists (e.g . Kern [1983) 2000: esp. 24-8). Indeed, part of the
reason the Ballets Russes could become so hegemonic in earlytwentieth-century dance was because it asserted the healing powers
of movement in the total work of art, at the expense of the disturbing
qualities of prewar modernism. The Russians were atavistic - they
had retained the vital connection to nature which had been lost in
the urban, civilized West. But precisely because they had not progressed or "evolved," they were capable of "melding their souls," to
quote Riviere in La Nouvelle revue franr;;aise (1913) , and thus creating
a synesthetic total work of art not directed by Wagnerian singular
genius. This had interesting consequences for the reception and later
reputation of Le Sacre du Printemps, one of the novelties of the 1913
season . But to understand the riotous and now notorious reactions
of the audience, we must first look at how kinesthesia or movement
sense figures in the conservative ideology of movement as a cure.
tE
'(3
Kinesthetic Sense and Kinesthetic Sympathy
The existence of a kinesthetic sense is far less obvious to us than the
existence of sight or hearing, although some form of proprioception,
whether conscious or unconscious, certainly exists for us to move at
all . Yet, for someone lacking the necessary credentials in medicine,
an ontological analysis of kinesthesia becomes very difficult because
it does not include all forms of sensory perception of the body.
o
(j)
06
[f)
Q)
[f)
cQ)
(j)
I
Hanna Jarvinen
c
'g
Q)
rJ)
Kinesthesia, by,definition, is independent of sight, hearing and touch
and is not limited to the sense of balance controlled by the vestibular
functions of the inner ear. It is, however, delimited by sensations
that are of relevance to the body position and the movement of the
body in space, as opposed to false feelings about the body and its
movement such as vertigo .
Furthermore, even those who would maintain that there is specifically a kinesthetic sense admit that beyond relatively simple movements most people do not have a clue about what their body is
actually doing , nor can their muscles "remember" particular poses
or series of movements without specialized training. We can touch
our noses with our eyes closed but few of us can tell (as those who
uphold the existence of a kinesthetic sense would seem to believe is
possible) the height of our free leg when attempting an arabesque.
Thus , regardless of the existence of proprioception in general, the
formation of a kinesthetic sense actually requires a lot of exclusion
and "blocking out" of other physical sensations, even ones that
meet the definition of kinesthesia as a sense of movement and body
position - think of, for example, sensations of pain and discomfort,
particularly when these arise from not moving a muscle (Sparshott
1995: 360; Sheets-Johnstone 1998). Kinesthesia is therefore not
only a sense of movement but a moving sense, and a particularly
vague one at that.
However, physiological proof of the existence of a particular
kinesthetic sense (McFee 1992: 265-70) is actually irrelevant to my
argument, since the primary function of the notion is proprietary: it
guards the territory of dance from various unwanted incursions. As
Francis Sparshott (1995: 343, 515n 2) notes, kinesthesia is used to
de-emphasize the visual quality of (theatrical) dance, that is dance as
a spectacle, and to focus attention on the dancer's rather than the
spectator's experience of the dance. Sally Gardner (n.d.) has argued
that this reveals a fundamental fault in the logic of kinesthesia, since
"the physical (as opposed to textual) aspect of conventional theatre ,
derives largely from a pictorial or visual sense." This is interesting if
we remember the emphasis given to still poses and tableaux (literally
"painting ") in the theatrical arts, including early feature films (Brewster
and Jacobs 1997: esp. 4-13, 81-96; also Johnson 1995: esp .
35- 50, 206-8, 212).
Both Gardner and Sparshott point out that dancers do not actually
learn through kinesthetic body feelings - they stare at themselves in
the mirrors of the dance studio or learn from the repeated instruction
of a teacher watching what they do:
o1l
(fJ
Q)
(fJ
c
Q)
rJ)
a trained dancer learns to feel in the kinesthetic body-feelings,
and in [whatever) other internal "sensations" there may be, only
those that are relevant to the dance as visibly danced, and to
feel in them precisely the direct testimony to that visible dance.
(Sparshott 1995: 359)
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
Although one could easily argue that the visual is not quite this
crucial to learning all forms of dancing, particularly those outside
of the Western theatrical conventions, Gardner (n.d.) has a point in
stressing the selective quality of kinesthesia, its choice of only some
bodily sensations as relevant to the movement sense.
Now, I am not claiming that other senses are not learned - we do
learn to see through a process of distinguishing shapes - but it is an
altogether different thing to speak of "learning to see" as an ability
to distinguish a good painting (or correct movement) from a bad
(aesthetically displeasing) one. Unlike sensory perception, aesthetic
evaluation relies upon a preexisting set of values, including those
dealing with technical execution . Any technique disciplines the body
in ways that make a certain set of actions correct and others incorrect.
For example, one's understanding of Western classical music is, no
doubt, greatly increased by training oneself to hear the perfect pitch,
but this ability may actually hamper one's understanding of the music
of other traditions, where different rules govern what is "right" and
"wrong " in music. As Sparshott (1995 : 259-60) amongst others has
noted, different dance styles similarly require "making the body over"
to fit the aesthetic (the right/wrong way of dOing things) of a particular
style. What is right in ballet can be wrong in Graham technique and
vice versa.
To evade the claim that kinesthesia is purely learned behavior,
those who hold that it exists as a natural category tend to revert to
claims about an "original" set of "correct," "natural " movements for
the body that are inherent but lost as children grow into adulthood
in a culture that does not promote the cultivation of kinesthesia. This
is where we come to the historical roots of kinesthesia in the late
nineteenth -century and early twentieth-century ideas of movement
as cure for modernization. For example, F. Matthias Alexander's
famous technique, developed between 1890 and 1900, starts from
the premise that the kinesthetic sense of most people is "debauched":
that we gradually learn, through incorrect advice from our parents,
bad example from our teachers , through injuries and habit, to move in
all the wrong ways, which distorts our sense of our own bodies; that
as a result , our body gives us the wrong signals about its position,
and we then react to these signals in ways that make them "a selffulfilling prophecy" (Pawley 2005; also Arnold [n.d .]) .
But this is to claim that there exists a pastoral, natural movement
that is universally true in all cultures and at all times. It is also to claim
that such natural attitudes of the body can be somehow miraculously
discovered through a particular technique, that is through learned
behavior. Without wanting to criticize the Alexander technique as a
therapeutic system, I would like to point out this logical contradiction
as an indication of the historical specificity of the system and its
understanding of movement as cure. 1
The same historical background also makes the notion of kinesthetic sympathy (a.k.a. kinesthetic empathy, even metakinesis)
I
Hanna Ji::irvinen
problematic as a tool for understanding dance. Kinesthetic sympathy
is essentially a theory about how (theatrical) dance, in the absence
of words written or spoken, transmits its meaning to the spectators.
Whereas kinesthesia is a proprioceptive sense, literally relating to how
we perceive ourselves, kinesthetic sympathy deals with exteroception:
it is to claim that movements made on stage kindle certain sensory
experiences in the bodies of the spectators because the spectators
unconsciously sympathize with the bodies they witness. For example,
depending on the characterization of the dancer, a leap across the
stage can either make one feel elevated (if the dancer executes it
without any apparent effort) or strained (if actually feeling the forces
gravity produces in the body).
Without going into whether or not dancers actually have to think
of themselves as light to appear light on stage, it should be noted
that the experience of a spectator can never be equated with or even
understood in terms of the work of the artist.2 More importantly, as
Gardner notices:
The whole notion of empathy begs the question of how one
can enter into the (bodily) experiences of another across [cultura' social, gender etc.] difference. In the absence of any
development of the kinesthetic as a (cultural) mode of knowledge the idea of empathy must rest on an assumption that
bodily "expressions" are natural and therefore accessible and
recognisable to everyone. (Gardner [n.d .])
~
'g
(fJ
06
CIJ
Q)
CIJ
C
Q)
(fJ
That is, because kinesthesia is assumed to be a natural, universal
sense, kinesthetic sympathy assumes that all bodies, regardless of
their familiarity with movement as a means of (self-)expression, would
react to movement and think of it in essentially similar ways. Xet, it
is obvious that in comparison to an average spectator, experienced
dancers are always far more attuned to expressing themselves
through their bodies and through movement, and are thus more likely
to interpret the movements of others as their self-expression than
would those "lay" spectators who do not possess the same physical
familiarity with the practice of the art form.
As with kinesthesia, the logic of kinesthetic sympathy aims to
exclude all analyses of dance not made by dance practitioners,
since it assumes a universal meaning for dance based on personal
experience of the act of creating a dance (Mc Fee 1992: 264-81).
This explains why the idea became so important to some of the most
influential experts of dance (e.g. Martin 1946: esp. 6-26) at precisely
the moment it did - the interwar years when non-narrative dancing
and abstraction became ends in themselves. The less important the
plot (i.e. narrative) and the mimicry used to convey the narrative of
theatrical dance to the audiences, the more prominent the theories
that explained the transmission of authorial intention without recourse
to words. As dance sought to justify itself as an art form beyond the
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
confines of long: since institutionalized forms like ballet, theoretical
discussion increased its significance as a justification for the practice
of dance. At its most extreme, these authorities exclude language
itself from the discourse.
The Language of Dance and Modernism
This proprietary interest brings us to the phenomenological defense of
dance as a special art ignored by academia because of its essentially
nonverbal quality - a quality that makes dance a particularly difficult
topic for discussion because it cannot be translated into words. 3
Kinesthesia is used to emphasize this impossibility of expressing
dance verbally, and to support the notion that dance can only be truly
experienced and studied in live performance (kinesthetic sympathy
being at its most powerful in this original instant). In a reductio ad
absurdum, this antilinguistic bias means that dance cannot be known
outside of the dancing act, and thus all our attempts at communicating
the essential meaning of dance are impossible - even the danced
act itself - since we cannot know anything outside our own bodily
experience.
At the same time, in order to maintain its universality, kinesthetic
sympathy actually has to claim that gestures are a language the
meaning of which is rather simple and straightforward: if you are
attuned to the bodies you see, you can "read " them correctly. Again,
only those "in the know" about the language of dance and the
particular language of the specific dance technique can truly "read"
a dance correctly. This neatly excludes any criticism that happens to
be unwanted. But were we to think of, say, words in this manner, we
would find ourselves claiming that the meaning of words is actually
singular and stable!
Personally, I cannot accept such a limited view of danced gestures:
rather, I would claim that any dance, regardless of the meanings
intended by its makers, gains its significance for the art form from
the plurality and flexibility of meanings attached to it regardless of
whether the people constructing these meanings have actually
seen the work or not. Sacre is a case in point: not only was the
contemporary opinion divided, but the meanings attached to it have
changed several times since 1913 with each new interpretation of the
myth, including the so-called "reconstruction," supporting whatever
agendas happen to be relevant at the time .
It should also be noted that thinking of dance as a language was
precisely the approach in the nineteenth century, and particularly
gestures and mime used in dance. Fran90is Delsarte's (1811-1871)
theory of gestures as conveying specific emotions greatly influenced
the pioneers of "free-form " dance, who linked them with their ideas
of what was "natural " movement, and how this "natural" movement
should be evaluated . (Thomas 1995: 61-5; Brewster and Jacobs
1997: 81-96, 140-1). To quote one of the most famous Delsartians,
Isadora Duncan (quoted in Flitch 1912: 107): "All gestures have a
.c
Cl)
'0
o
(f)
06
(/)
Cl)
(/)
cCl)
(f)
•
Hanna Jarvinen
moral resonance, and thus can directly express every possible
moral state." This, of course, is why movement could act as a cure.
However, it also results in a division of gestures into "correct" and
"beautiful" versus "incorrect" and "ugly," evident in the statements
of other turn-of-the-century figures in dance (e.g. Mikhail Mordkin
quoted in The Literary Digest 1912; Fokine 1916).
This is also where Nijinsky parted ways with his contemporaries
by proclaiming he had no use for such "language of gesture" (The
Times 1914). In fact, his rather drastic redefinition of what belonged
on stage - including his insistence (for instance in Cahusac 1913)
that contemporary quotidian life was beautiful - explains much of the
hostility he encountered from his audiences, since the latter could no
longer "read" the stage in the manner to which they were accustomed.
As Leonard Inkster (1913) put it for The New Statesman , the problem
with a work such as Jeux was that tennis balls or flowerbeds were not
yet considered beautiful in themselves. Nijinsky's works required a
new kind of approach to dance as something suitable for intellectual
investigation, which went against much of how dance was understood
at the time, and also, since.
Paradoxically, Nijinsky's emphasis on the formal qualities of dance,
his authoritative fragmentation of the dancer's body for the use of the
choreographer, and the relative irrelevance of narrative in his oeuvre,
all worked to create in abstraction the highest goal for dance - dance
for the sake of dancing. He complained :
I am forced to cry for a "partition of movements" where to place
my instruments - which are the human bodies - in a manner
that is in absolute accordance with a white canvas for Bakst or a
group of violins for Oebussy. My composition is even less simple
because the human body does not possess just four strings
but an infinite multitude of sensitive and expressive elements.
(Cahusac 1913)
~
'Cj
o
(f)
06
en
ID
en
c
ID
(f)
Speaking of the expressive power of the human body, Nijinsky fragments this body into parts that can be treated as instruments in
their own right, something to be orchestrated from without by the
choreographer, the singular author. In this way, the dance becomes,
by itself, the total work of art. This total work of art is no longer a
collective collaboration but the Wagnerian work of a singular genius,
and this genius is the choreographic author.
Choreographic authorship and non-narrative dance were to become the cornerstones of formalism in dance, and formalism, in turn ,
required a new theory of artistic expression to explain how dance
transmitted its meaning to the spectator. As noted above, this is
where kinesthesia came in. However, kinesthesia was based not on
an analysis of this kind of new dance but an effort to make sense of
this new dance in the old, existing ideology of curative movement.
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
Paradoxically, Sacre acquired its status as a modernist masterpiece
precisely because it - unlike Nijinsky's other works - could be fitted
into this existing framework.
Natural Dancing
As a notion, kinesthesia postdates Nijinsky's career, but we could say
that some contemporary responses to the choreography of Sacre
evoke the notion of kinesthetic sympathy because both this notion
and the responses to it stem from the same cultl}ral background:
the Western context in which movement produced universal feelings
and in which some movements could act as a "cure." Some dance
experts have even claimed that Sacre "forced" the opening-night
audience to riot because of their instinctive kinesthetic sympathy with
the dancers, and that through this kinesthetic sympathy, we could still
connect with the experiences of the original spectators of 1913. 4
Leaving aside such Rankean beliefs, the recorded experiences
of contemporary audiences would at first seem to corroborate the
existence of kinesthetic sympathy. Many of the negative reviews of
Sacre describe the spectator's uncomfortable feelings during and
after the performance. This was especially true of the solo of the
Chosen Maiden in the second act, the sacrificial culmination of
both the narrative (what there was of one) and the choreographic
dissolution of "ballet" as understood at the time (Scholl 1994: 73;
Acocella, et al.1992: 68-9). "It is quite impossible to describe this
'dance' which it is an uncomfortable experience to watch - not for
any offence that it contains, but for the feeling of sympathy with the
unfortunate dancer," claimed A.E. Johnson (1913: 206). Similarly,
Cyril Beaumont ([1940]1951: 74) reminisced; "When, at last, Piltz [in
her role as the Chosen Maiden] collapsed in simulation of death, the
spectators showed the relaxation of the emotional tension produced
in them by her dancing by giving involuntary sighs of relief." Even
Waiter Pro pert ([1921] 1972: 80), who loved the ballet, noted the
uncomfortable feeling this solo created .
However, if these contemporary responses to Sacre are read in full,
it is actually less than clear whether the discomfort of the audience
arose from any kind of sympathy with the dancers. The spectators of
the Ballets Russes had always separated themselves quite explicitly
from the Russians on stage by reference to race, that is to say by
essential and irreversible difference. The Russians, in short, were
seen as barbarians or savages whose atavistic nature guaranteed an
authenticity and novelty in artworks that were imitating an essentially
Western innovation - ballet. Even the synesthetic experiences the
Russians produced, particularly with Sacre, were deeply racialized :
as an undeveloped lower race, the Russians were assumed to have
preserved a spiritual and sensory unity that enabled them to think
as a collective (a view exemplified, for instance, by Jacques Riviere
in La Nouvelle revue franr;aise in 1913). Thus, the audience reaction
displays a marked lack of empathy with the whole work, due to the
j:;o
Q)
'u
o
(f)
06
gJ
(/)
c
Q)
(f)
I
Hanna jarvinen
work's failure tb comply with what is expected, and the disturbing
implications evoked by its modernity.
Yet, what is truly remarkable about the Nijinsky works is that, for the
first time, the spectators had to express, analyze and discuss what
they felt and why, even when they chose to take recourse to existing
prejudices. Reviews of the Ballets Russes spectacles prior to Sacre
consisted mostly of laudatory cliches, a few notes on music and
scenery, and long abstracts of the plots printed in the program notes.
The marked lack of critical analysis concerning the construction of
the ballet spectacles and the synesthetic experiences they produced
had everything to do with the assumption that the barbarian, like the
woman, was irrational as well as natural, and that rational analysis
would inevitably fail to explain that which was natural. Dance, as one
contemporary writer explained :
can contribute neither message nor criticism. It seeks not to
reform us but only to please. It recalls us to the joy of life which
the other arts had almost persuaded us to forget. It has but
a single purpose - to quicken our pulses 'with beauty and to
renew our life with its own untiring ecstasy. (Flitch 1912: 24)
Aside from noting how such arguments encouraged critics to escape
rationalizing and analyzing dance, it is particularly important to notice
how dance was here restricted to the production of a certain set
of feelings, notably joy and delight (see, for example, Suares 1912;
Moses 1916). Hence, Russian barbarism, in order to be admirable,
had to be beautiful and graceful, because it was an expression of an
ideal nature:
[Dance] has ever been the outward and visible sign of an
inward and spiritual grace, of the health and happiness of a
virile people .. . As an expression of the joy of life, the glory of
existence and the beauty of the human body the work of the
Russian dancers is perfect. (Applin [1911]: 12-13)
~
'0
The "natural" flowing lines of the Russian dancers indicated that their
dancing stemmed from natural instincts - the ideal nature was theirs
to express, because they expressed their own nature. Importantly,
when dance was no longer something "natural" for the body, it
became morally, physically and politically dangerous.
o
The Stamping Masses
c<l
As a dancer, Nijinsky's roles had confirmed contemporary aesthetic
notions of smooth and continuous movement, of physical prowess
that seemed easy and natural, no matter how difficult or strenuous
it was or how reliant on exercises and technical training (Jarvinen
2003: esp. 148-50, 163-5, 193-207). Indeed, there was something
deeply disturbing about someone so obviously capable of dancing
(j)
(J)
Q)
(J)
cQ)
(j)
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
as Nijinsky abandoning what was understood as dancing and forcing
the company dancers to distort their bodies.
In this way, Nijinsky's new aesthetic pointed attention to the
choreographer as the author of the dance and as an authority on
dance. Many critics used Nijinsky's dancing to justify his choices as
a choreographer, bec ause contemporary aesthetic preferences were
inextricable from the definitions of Nijinsky's genius just as genius was
inextricable from the expertise of the critic. For this reason, it was
impossible for even the most hostile of critics to dispute Nijinsky's
genius - to do so would have been to admit that one's own expertise
was questionable, and that dance might not be art at all.
As a result, for the first time, the reviews discussed what took place
on stage in terms of the dancers' bodies and their relationships to
other bodies on stage - although often they did this to complain the
work was not dance (see, for example, Lalo 1913). For an audience
that expected virtuoso feats of dancing, melodramatic plot and a
comforting moral message, these works seemed angular and jerky,
full of disturbing lack of movement, stops, repetition and asymmetry.
Instead of lightness and ease, the dancers of Sacre were attracted
to the earth, drawn by it: they fell down, threw themselves on the
ground, were defined, in the case of the Chosen One, through falling
(Stravinsky 1969: 36-8; and Rambert's notes reproduced in Hodson
1996, esp. 19). Nijinsky also used unexpected stillness as a means
to counterpoint groups or individuals on stage or simply to negate
the expectations of the audience - the only soloist of the work, the
Chosen One, stands still for nearly a fifth of the entire work. 5
Together with breaking the laws of aesthetics (the grace and charm
that Nijinsky declared in The Daily Mail (1913) made him "seasick")
this inertia went against what was seen as natural, healthy and sane,
and it quite literally got on the nerves. According to one critic, the
work consisted of stamping, no doubt emphasized by the unyielding
rhythm of the orchestra:
they paw the ground, they stamp, they stamp, they stamp, they
stamp and they stamp . . . Flash! They break into two groups
and salute each other. And they stamp, and they stamp, and
they stamp . .. Flash! A little old lady falls on her head and shows
us her third petticoat. And they stamp, they stamp . .. (Boschot
in L'Echo de Paris, quoted Bullard 1971: ii : 12)
In view of contemporary theories of movement, this stamping was
not simply irritating - it was physically darigerous. Seven weeks after
the premiere, The Daily Telegraph (1913) claimed Marie Piltz's doctor
had forbidden her to perform the Chosen One any more. Regardless
of whether the story has any basis in fact, it restates the idea that
movement, as long as it was harmonious, could act as a cure for
physical and mental pathology - and that "ugly" movements could
equally well cause physical harm and insanity.
~
T;
o
(f)
06
Cl)
ID
Cl)
C
ID
(f)
•
.
Hanna Jarvinen
The old connection between madness and genius was further
emphasized with modernism. In the prewar years , modernist emphasis
on feeling, intuition, private language of expression and truthfulness
in expression and in materials led to a questio[ling of conventions
that had been seen as essential to the art form, like perspective in
painting, harmony in music, or, with Nijinsky, movement in dance.
Although both this new art and the theories created to explain it
were often regarded as too abstract and "cerebral," they encouraged
placing rationality and logic in doubt. (Butler [1994] 1996: 16, 29,
52-3, 72-7; also Jarvinen 2003: 270-2).
The metaphors of madness associated with modernist art also
encompassed Nijinsky and his new dance. Nijinsky was famous
for the noiseless landings of his leaps, which had given a quality
of ethereal lightness to his dance (see The Athenaeum 1912; Burt
1995: 81). Years later, the "ugly" movements he had had the dancers
execute in Sacre became symptomatic of the choreographer's
insanity. Nijinsky's madness both confirmed the destructive effect of
the choreography - its madness - and proved that the genius had
created the masterwork at the risk of his own life. This legend was so
powerful that even people wishing to downplay Nijinsky's significance
to his art form became caught in its lure (e.g. Haske1l1938: 53, 66-7,
93-5).
In 1913, however, the stamping was seen as more of a danger to
the audience who were:
caught up in a maelstrom of rhythm, immensely vital and as
dominating, as remorseless, and as irritating to the nervous
system as the continuous thudding of a savage's tom-tom . ..
There were not a few members of the audience who in the
interval after the ballet complained bitterly of splitting headaches.
(Beaumont [1940]1951 : 75)
~
'0
o
(f)
06
gJ
(/)
c
Q)
(f)
•
Similar feelings were even expressed by the conductor of the first
performance, Pierre Monteux (quoted in Schouvaloff 1997: 293). As
many reviewers saw it, Sacre expected the audience to be willing
to be swept away with its barbarism - the critic of the SIM Revue
musicale (June 1913) described how the work tied the spectator to
itself like Mazeppa to his horse, hurled along by the centrifugal force
onstage and the cyclone in the orchestra. But this was to relinquish
all appearance of civilization and sanity, and consequently, most
critics vehemently attacked Sacre as a barbarian excess of sensuality
that boded ill for all art, and for society at large ("An Englishman" in
The Daily Mail [1 913] listed Nijinsky's choreographies, the art of the
Futurists and "the militant suffragette" as signs of the same contempt
of order that pervaded the politics of the day).
Another option was to see Sacre as a truly novel departure in
the art form. However, this would have been to admit that Russians
could be capable of modernity, which threatened the safe distance
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
between auditorium and stage, constructed through ideas of the
naturally dancing Russian barbarians known for what they really were
by the superior Western spectators. If the Russians were capable
of modernism, then the Western audiences had misunderstood
what Russia was, and the feudal absolutist empire of the tsar had
succeeded where lhe Western liberal democracies had failed - a
frightening prospect, indeed. 6
This is related to the larger cultural trajectory of Sacre as a "prophesy" of a coming madness - that of the World War (e.g. Cocteau
1918: 63; La Revue bleue of July 11, 1914 quoted in Eksteins 1989:
53-4 and La Baionette of April 18, 1918 quoted in Silver 1989: 20-2).
Of particular importance to this association was the ending of the
work in a sacrificial dance culminating in the death of an innocent
maiden that apparently lacked purpose: no villain was vanquished, no
catastrophe averted by her suffering. Although the work itself and its
choreographer were later seen as the victims of the primitive instinct
that had caused the war (Kirstein 1983: 7; Acocella, et a1.1992:
69), contemporary opinion tended to see the work as the result of
the violent nature of the Russians, who had been represented as
warmongers in the Balkans (Hobsbawm [1987]1989: esp . 312-15;
Kern [1983] 2000: 252, 261 , 280-4).
Reviews of the first night "battle" in the theatre were seeped in
metaphors of war, and in the June 2 front-page editorial of Le Figaro
in 1913, Alfred Capus joked that the French should make a peace
treaty with the Russian barbarians led by Nijinsky, a "sort of Attila of
the dance" (my translation) . The Russians had been associated with
both barbarism and (cultural) invasion since the first ballet season
in Paris in 1909, but only with Nijinsky's choreographies did these
allusions acquire a decidedly negative emphasis. This also applied
to the analogies drawn between Sacre and other modernist works
of art, particularly Cubism and Futurism, often portrayed as ugly,
degenerate and foreign. 7 But here we come to a strange cultural
difference ignored in most research on the Ballets Russes : the same
association to modernism was also made in Russia, but with a
decidedly different emphasis. Prince Volkonsky wrote in his review
in Apollon of how:
One of our critics, in all amity, favorably described it as "cubist
icon-painting" where the archaic angularity of the movement
unravels itself in front of us to the pipes of "Slavonic Pan ."
(Volkonsky 1913, my translation .)
C
Ql
'C;
o
UJ
For the Russians, the modernism of Sacre was not a foreign threat to
be eliminated at all cost but a seamless joining of national traditions
(the icon) and international trends (Cubism). It was also aesthetically
perceptive: Nijinsky himself claimed he would "apply to choreography
the theory of Cubist painters" (Peterburgskaia gazeta 1912 quoted
in Zilberstein and Samkov 1982: i: 448, my translation) , to the extent
06
CIl
Ql
CIl
C
Ql
UJ
•
.
Hanna JaNinen
of excluding it from what was termed "ballet." Although this is not to
say that Russians did not find things to criticize in Sacre, they tended
to greet it with praise that, as Taruskin (1996: 1018-31) notes, was
primarily directed at the choreography.
In Russia, the Ballets Russes had been criticized for giving the
Western audiences a false, distorted and even outright wrong idea
of Russia and Russians (e.g. Teatr i iskusstvo 1909; Binshtok 1910;
Minskii 1910). For most Russian critics, regardless of their political
or aesthetic orientation, Nijinsky's works were far more advisable,
healthy and sane than any of the other works in the repertory of
the company thus far. Indeed, the Russian critics lauded Nijinsky in
particular for promising to bring about a new spring in Russian art,
revealing how Russia was, for the first time, in advance of Europe
and independent of Western aesthetic norms or critical opinion
(e.g. Minskii 1913; Pann 1913-1914). Even the staunchest critic
of the Diaghilev enterprise, Andre [Andrei] Levinson (1913) greeted
Nijinsky's cheography in Rech (1913) with approval. This is to say that
the myth of Sacre is also a Western myth designed to support what
is essentially a Western interpretation of the Ballets Russes and of
Russians in general.
Forward by Way of the Past
~
'[;
o
UJ
06
(/J
Q)
(/J
cQ)
UJ
•
Sacre succeeded in creating a synesthetic work where the dance
played with the orchestra that reflected the colors on stage. However,
it simultaneously broke apart the total work of art through pointing
attention to dance as something designed by a new author - the
choreographer. Together with the disturbing modernist elements of
the piece, this necessitated a new way of perceiving, conceptualizing
and discussing the art form. Nijinsky's new dance required a theory
of expression, and kinesthetic sympathy came to fill the void, But
as I have pointed out, the notion of kinesthesia and the theory of
kinesthetic sympathy were fundamentally conservative, supporting an
ontology incompatible with Nijinsky's works. Even today, kinesthesia
and kinesthetic sympathy are used as a proprietary means to disable
criticism and to refute the possibility that formal criteria and Western
opinions are not universally true.
In today's discourse of the dance, kinesthetic sympathy has also
become a good excuse for not looking into contemporary source
materials that might overturn the canonized, hegemonic interpretation of dance: as long as the meaning of dance is already known,
and when this meaning is fundamentally inexpressible, it needs not
be questioned. But with the suppression of Nijinsky's choreographic
work, the ontological issues that other art forms dealt with in the
prewar modernism were also excluded from the histories and canons
of dance. Consequently, certain forms of contemporary dance today
are again being excluded from dance as their nature as dance is
called into question. And what is excluded from "dance" is remarkably
similar to what was said almost a century ago: excessive repetition of
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
movements, standing/lying still or not moving in a "correct" manner
are not dance, and dance should not dabble with disturbing social
or political ideas (except perhaps in an effort to support the status
quo), The audience is "cheated" by unfinished works , by deliberate
attribution of authorship to the wrong person, by disturbing images of
physical violence and vulnerability, even by lack of pretty costumes. s
The challenge that today's best dance works pose to the
hegemonic understanding of the entire history of the art form has
already enticed researchers to look at dance from new perspectives.
However, I think it is very telling that much of the truly interesting
discussion on the ontology of dance comes from individuals situated
on the margins of or outside of dance departments. But I would
also add that ontology requires an epistemological inquiry through
which we can see our understanding of both present practices and
past history as something changing, a temporally specific discursive
formation governed by a hegemonic narrative about what dance is
and should be. The danger in ignoring this epistemological critique
lies in the naturalization of historically changing concepts integral to
the ontology, particularly notions like "dance," "choreography, " and
"authorship."
Notes
1. Many teachers of the Alexander technique pose it as an objective
and value-free system, though they all too often fall prey to
notions familiar from turn-of-the-century discussions on "nature"
and "primitives" (see, for instance, Brennan [n .d .) on the "natural
posture" of "indigenous races") that are anything but.
2. This is to say kinesthesia is linked with, to quote Nochlin (1995:
149), "the naive idea that art is the direct, personal expression
of individual emotional experience, a translation of personal life
into visual terms. Art is almost never that , great art never is." To
reduce an artistic masterpiece either to its formal qualities or to
the author's personal life is to seriously limit the possibilities of
signification in art, i.e. what makes an artwork meaningful to its
audiences. See also Moxey 1994: 101-2, 110.
3. Kinesthesia and kinesthetic sympathy are used to support the
ontological myth in which dance is seen not only to be somehow
impossible to translate into words but even to have existed before
language. Often this is done via recourse to Lacanian notions
of the presymbolic as the unindividuated, feminine and bodily
phase (for example Preston-Dunlop and Sanchez-Colberg 2002) .
Paradoxically, these were the nineteenth-century arguments
against dance (or any art) as unworthy of serious attention (as
discussed in Jarvinen 2005: esp. 68 fn 11 and 12). Dance is no
more ephemeral than any number of human actions, nor is it any
more difficult to discuss intelligibly and analytically than any art.
4. The set designer of the work, Nicholas Roerich, later explained
that the audience reaction was due to Sacre releasing mystical
~
'0
o
UJ
06
(f)
Q)
(f)
cQ)
UJ
I
Hanna Jarvinen
5,
6.
7.
8.
powers, becoming an authentic ritual. This is also the starting
point of Hodson 1985; her "reconstruction" ; and e.g. Hoogen
1997: esp. p.5. Given that many dance researchers still seem to
think that "Kinetic empathy can connect us to,the total experience
of other times and places" (Bloch 1991 : 11), it is hardly surprising
to find Hodson (e.g. 2000: 118n13) claiming she has recreated
the past "as it really was," despite the vast gaps in her research
(see Fink 1999: esp. 300-3; Acocella 1991). Cf. Jarvinen 2003,
15,302-6.
"Until the sacrificial dance the Chosen One stands immobile. "
Printed on the musical score Hodson (1996: 137) uses. Contrary to
what Hodson seems to think, stillness appears to have pervaded
Sacre and greatly disturbed the spectators, much in the manner
of Nijinsky's other works. See e.g. Carraud (1913); Stravinsky
(1969: 36-43) and Krasovskaia (1971 : i: 440-2) quoting Nijinska's
recollection . Also Taruskin (1995 : 18) on the music interpreted as
stillness; Fink (1999: esp. 338); Jarvinen (2003: 227-230, 272-6,
324-38).
Prior to Nijinsky's modernism, the novelty of the Ballets Russes
had been explained as being due to their revolutionary nature,
exiled by the tsar "as hastily as if they had been political agitators."
(Flitch 1912: 129). This flattered the Western audience and their
political system, while also vindicating the Ballet, in actuality seen
as not deserving the venerable title "Russian ballet" in Russia (see
Jarvinen 2003: esp. 137-73).
See e.g . Vuillermoz (1913); or in La Critique Independante of
June 15, 1913 quoted in Bullard 1971 (ii: 144-6); similar to the
chauvinistic attacks on foreign influences in fine arts (Frappa
1912; and Werth 1912), or music (Celte 1912); cf. the rare positive
views expressed by, for example, Marnold (1913) in Mercure de
France .
I have heard or read all of these opinions within the past year,
mostly about Finnish or French contemporary dance - works
by Jenni Kivela, Jerome Be~, Xavier LeRoy, Marie La Ribot and
others although the one about the costumes dealt with a ballet
production.
References
Newspapers and Magazines
Athenaeum. 1912 (June 5),
Binshtok, v.L. 1910. "Parizhskiia pisma." Rampa i zhizn (August
15/28), p. 547.
Cahusac, Hector. 1913. "Oebussy et Nijinsky." Le Figaro (May 14),
p.1 .
Capus, Alfred . 1913. "Courrier de Paris." Le Figaro (June 2), p. 1.
Carraud, Gaston. 1913. "Theatres." La Uberte (May 31).
Celte, Jean . 1912. "La Lutte pour la Moralite." La Nouvelle revue
(May 15), pp. 245-8.
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
Daily Mail. 1913. "M. Nijinsky's Critics." (July 14).
Daily Telegraph. 1913 (July 26).
"An Englishman." 1913. "M. Nijinski on Beauty." (July 19).
Fokine, Michel. 1916. "The Ballet and Its Creed." Boston Evening
Transcript (January 8).
Frappa, Jean-Jose~ 1912. "Salon d 'Automne: 11 faut defendre I'Art
fran<;ais." Le Monde illustre (October).
Inkster, Leonard . 1913. "Music: The Russian Ballet." The New
Statesman (July 5), pp. 406-7 .
Lalo, Pierre. 1913. "La Musique." Le Temps (June 3).
Legge, Robin H. 1913. The Daily Telegraph (July 26).
Levinson, Andrei. 1913. "Russkii balet v Parizhe." Rech (June 3/ 16).
Literary Digest. 1912. "The Silent Language of the Ballet" (February
2), pp. 268-9.
Marnold, Jean. 1913. "Musique." Mercure de France (October 1),
pp. 623-30.
Minskii, N. 1910. "Itogi russkavo baleta." Utro Rossii (August 1/14).
- - . 1913. "Prazdnik vesni. " Utro Rossii (May 30/June 12).
Moses, Montrose J. 1916. "The Russian Ballet Triumphant. " The
Bellman (January 29), pp. 121-6.
Pann, E. 1913-1914. "Russkii sezon v Parizhe." Maski 7-8/19131914 (double issue), pp. 58-75.
Riviere, Jacques. 1913. "Le Sacre du Printemps." La Nouvelle revue
franc;aise (August 1), pp. 309-13.
Suares, Andre, 1912. "Chronique de Caerdal. " La Nouvelle revue
franc;aise (August 1), pp 328-44.
Teatr iiskusstvo. 1909. "Russkie spektakli v Parizhe." (June 17/30),
pp. 358-60.
The Times. 1914. "M. Nijinsky's Return ." (February 25).
Volkonski , S. 1913. "Russkii balet v Parizhe." Apollon 6, pp. 70-4.
Vuillermoz, Emile. 1913. "La Saison Russe au Theatre des ChampsElysees." SIM Revue musicale (June), pp. 49-56.
Werth, Leon 1912. "A travers la Quinzaine: Le Cubisme et le Salon
d'Automne." La Grande revue (October 25), pp. 833-6.
Books
Acocella, Joan. 1991. "Nijinsky/Nijinska Revivals: The Rite Stuff." In
Art in America, 79: 128-37, 167, 169, 171.
- - , Garafola, Lynn and Greene, Jonnie. 1992. 'The Rite of Spring
Considered as a Nineteenth-Century Ballet." in Ballet Review, 20 :
68-71 .
Applin , Arthur. [1911). The Stories of the Russian Ballet. London:
Everett & Co.
Arnold , Joan. n.d.
"Alexander Technique,"
http://www.
alexandertechnique.com/aV (accessed April 21, 2005).
Beaumont, Cyril W. [1940) 1951 . The Diaghilev Ballet in London: A
Personal Record. London : Adam and Charles Black.
~
'8
(f)
06
(J)
Q)
(J)
c
Q)
(f)
I
Hanna Jarvinen
~
Ti
o
Cl)
06
(/)
3lc
Q)
Cl)
I..·
Bloch, Alice. 1991 . "Isadora Duncan and Vaslav Nijinsky: Dancing
on the Brink. An Exhibition of the Art and Lives of Isadora Duncan
and Vaslav Nijinsky as a Means of Exploring Dance as Facilitator
and Indicator of the Role of the Body in Cultural Transformation."
PhD. thesis Temple University.
Brennan, Richard. n.d. "What is the Alexander Technique?" http://
www.alexandertechnique.com/articles/brennan/ (accessed April
21,2005).
Brewster, Ben and Jacobs, Lea. 1997. Theatre to Cinema: Stage
Pictorialism and the Early Feature Film. Oxford and New York:
Oxford University Press.
Bullard, Truman Campbell. 1971. "The First Performance of Igor
Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps." PhD. thesis , 3 vols., Eastman
School of Music, University of Rochester.
Burns, Judy. 1998. "The Culture of NobilitylThe Nobility of SelfCultivation." In Gay Morris (ed .) Moving Words: Re-writing Dance,
London and New York: Routledge.
Burt, Ramsay. 1995. The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities .
London and New York: Routledge.
Butler, Christopher. [1994)1996. Early Modernism: Literature, Music
and Painting in Europe 1900-1916. London: Oxford University
Press.
Classen, Constance. 1998. The Color of Angels: Cosmology,
Gender and the Aesthetic Imagination. London and New York:
Routledge.
Cocteau, Jean. 1918. Le Coq et L'Arlequin: Notes autour de la
musique. Paris: Editions de la Sirene.
Crary, Jonathan. [1990)1999. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision
and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, MA and
London: October, MIT Press.
Daly, Ann . 2001 . "The Natural Body." In Ann Dils and Ann Cooper
Albright (eds), Moving History/ Dancing Cultures: A Dance History
Reader. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Deak, Frantisek. 1993. Symbolist Theater: The Formation of an AvantGarde. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Duncan, Isadora. [1928) 1977. The Art of the Dance. New York:
Theatre Arts Books.
Eksteins, Modris. 1989. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth
of the Modern Age. New York: Bantam Doubleday.
Fink, Robert. 1999. "'Rigoroso (1 / 8=126)': The Rite of Spring and
the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style. " In Journal of the
American Musicological Society, 52 : 299-362.
Flitch , J .E. Crawford . 1912. Modern Dancing and Dancers . Philadelphia and London: J.B. Lippincott Co. and Grant Richards Ltd.
Foucault, Michel. [1976) 1990. The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An
Introduction. London: Penguin Books.
Gardner, Sally. n.d. "Lying Down in the Air: Feminism, New Dance
and Representation ." In Hysteric: body/ medicine/text #4 Writing
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
dancing. http://www.latrobe.edu.au/english/hysteric/gardner.html
(accessed August 12, 2004).
Haskell, Arnold , 1938. Ballet: A Complete Guide To Appreciation:
History, Aesthetics, Ballets, Dancers . Harmondsworth, England :
Penguin Books. _
Hobsbawm , E.J . [1987J 1989. The Age of Empire 1875-1914.
London: Sphere Books.
Hodson, Millicent Kaye. 1985. "Nijinsky's New Dance: Rediscovery
of Ritual Design in Sacre du Printemps. " PhD. thesis, University
of California, Berkeley.
- - 1996. Nijinsky's Crime Against Grace: Reconstruction Score of
the Original Choreography for Le Sacre du Printemps. Stuyvesant,
New York: Pendragon Press.
- - 2000. "Flesh as Stone: Nijinsky's Choreography." In Erik
Naslund (ed.), Nijinsky Legend and Modernist - The Dancer Who
Changed the World. Stockholm : Dansmuseet.
Hoogen, Marilyn Meyer. 1997. "Igor Stravinsky, Nikolai Roerich, and
the Healing Power of Paganism: The Rite of Spring as Ecstatic
Ritual ofRenewal forthe Twentieth Century." PhD. thesis, University
of Washington. http://www.ac. wwu .edu/ -kritika/MariIDis.pdf
(accessed May 20, 2003).
Johnson. A.E . 1913. The Russian Ballet. London: Constable & Co.
Johnson, James H. 1995. Listening in Paris: A Cultural History.
Berkeley, University of California Press. History e-book project
http://name.umdl.umich.edu/ heb00154 (accessed July 21,
2004).
Jarvinen, Hanna. 2003. The Myth of Genius in Movement: Historical
Deconstruction of the Nijinsky Legend. Turku : University of
Turku .
- - 2005. "Dance Technique and the Natural Genius." In Eeva
Anttila, Soili Hamalainen, Teija L6yt6nen and Leena Rouhiainen
(eds), Ethics and Politics Embodied in Dance: Conference
Proceedings .
http://www.dancethics.com/eng/purpose.html
(accessed April 20, 2004).
Kern, Stephen . [1983J 2000. The Culture of Time and Space, 18801918, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kirstein, Lincoln. 1983. Ballet: Bias & Belief.' Three Pamphlets
Collected and Other Dance Writings of Lincoln Kirstein . New York:
Dance Horizons.
Krasovskaya, Vera. 1971 . Ruskii baletniiteatrnachala XXveka, 2 vols .
Leningrad : Iskusstvo.
Laban, Rudolf von. [1950J 1992. The Mastery of Movement. Plymouth:
Northcote House Publishers.
Malnig, Julie. 1999. "Athena Meets Venus: Visions of Women in Social
Dance in the Teens and Early 1920s." in Dance Research Journal,
31: 34-62.
Martin, John. 1946. The Dance: The Story of the Dance Told in
Pictures and Text. New York: Tudor Publishing Company.
•
Hanna Jarvinen
~
'0
o
Cl)
06
gJ
(/)
C
ID
Cl)
I
McFee, Graham. 1992. Understanding Dance. London and New
York: Routledge.
Moxey, Keith . 1994. The Practice of Theory: Poststructuralism,
Cultural Politics and Art History. Ithaca ar:ld London: Corneli
University Press.
Nochlin, Linda. 1995. Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays.
New York: Harper & Row.
Olsson, Cecilia. 1999. "Rena kroppar - smutsiga rorelser. " In E.
Gronlund, L. Hammergren, C. Olsson and A. Wigert (eds), Forskning i rore/se: Tio texter om dans. Carlssons: Stockholm.
Pawley, Philip. [2004]2005. "The Problem of Unreliable Kinesthesia."
http://www.alexanderworks.org.uklkinesthesia.html(accessed
April 21,2005).
Preston-Dunlop, Valerie and Sanchez-Colberg, Ana. 2002. Dance
and the Performative: A Choreological Perspective - Laban and
Beyond. London: Verve Publishing .
Propert, W. A. [1921]1972. The Russian Ballet in Western Europe,
1909-1920. New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc.
Pyman, Avril. 1994. A History of Russian Symbolism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Scholi, Tim. 1994. From Petipa to Balanchine: Classical Revival and
the Modernisation of Ballet. London and New York: Routledge.
Schouvaloff, Alexander. 1997. The Art of Ballets Russes: The Serge
Lifar Collection of Theater Designs, Costumes, and Paintings at
the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. New Haven
and London: Yale University Press and Wadsworth Atheneum .
Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1998. "Consciousness:ANatural History."
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 5.3: 260-94. http://www.
meta-religion.com/Psychiatry/Consciousness/consciousness_a_
natural_history.htm (accessed April 21 , 2005).
Silver, Kenneth E. 1989. Espirit de Corps: The Art of the Parisian
Avant-Garde and the First World War, 1914-1925, London and
Princeton : Thames and Hudson and Princeton University Press.
Sparshott, Francis. 1995. A Measured Pace: Toward a Philosophical
Understanding of the Arts of Dance . Toronto, Buffalo, London:
University of Toronto Press.
Stravinsky, Igor. 1969. The Rite of Spring - Le Sacre du Printemps:
Sketches 1911-1913. n.l.: Bosey & Hawkes.
Taruskin, Richard. 1995. "A Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rite
of Spring , the Tradition of the New, and "The Music Itself." in
Modernism/ Modernity, 2: 1-26.
- - 1996. Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography
of the Works through Mavra . Berkeley and Oxford: University of
California Press and Oxford University Press.
Thomas, Helen. 1995. Dance, Modernity and Culture . London and
New York: Routledge.
Wagner, Richard. [1849] 1895. "The Art-Work of the Future." In
Richard Wagner's Prose Works, vol. 1. n.l. : the Wagner Library:
Kinesthesia, Synesthesia and Le Sacre du Printemps
http ://users.belgacom.net/wagnerlibrary/prose/wagartfut .htm
(accessed July 21, 2005).
Zilberstein , I.S. and Samkov, v.A. 1982. Sergei Oiagilev i russkoe
iskusstvo. Moskva: Iskusstvo .
.c
Cl)
g
if)
eel
en
Cl)
en
cCl)
if)
I
SENSORY DESIGN