HAL Id: hal-02293872 https://hal-univ-paris8.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02293872

HAL Id: hal-02293872 https://hal-univ-paris8.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02293872 Submitted on 25 Oct 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- entific research documents, whether they are pub- lished or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés. Steal, duplicate, unmask, stretch, connect, intoxicate a dance-image. From “Hexentanz” (“Witch Dance”) by Mary Wigman (film, 1930) to “Écran somnambule” by Latifa Laâbissi (2012) Isabelle Launay To cite this version: Isabelle Launay. Steal, duplicate, unmask, stretch, connect, intoxicate a dance- image. From “Hexentanz” (“Witch Dance”) by Mary Wigman (film, 1930) to “Écran som- nambule” by Latifa Laâbissi (2012). Noémie Solomon (ed.). Danse : An Anthology, Les Presses du réel, p. 209-222, 2014. ￿hal-02293872￿ SITE DES ETUDES ET RECHERCHES EN DANSE A PARIS 8 STEAL, DU PLICATE, UNMASK, STRETCH, CONNECT, INTOXICATE A DANCE-IMAGE FROM HEXENTANZ (WITCH DANCE) BY MARY WIGMAN (FILM, 1930) TO ÉCRAN SOMNAMBULE BY LATIFA LAÂBISSI (2012) Isabelle LAUNAY in Noémie Solomon (ed.), Danse : An An­ thology, Les Presses du Réel / New York series, 2014, p. 209-222. Translated from « Voler, doubler, démasquer, distendre, relier, intoxiquer une image-danse. De Hexentanz de Mary Wigman (film, 1930) à Ecran somnambule de Latifa Laâbissi (2012) », in Anne Benichou (dir.), Re­ créer/Scripter, Mémoires et transmissions des œuvres performatives et chorégra­ phiques contemporaines, Dijon, Presses du Réel, 2015, p. 333-350. SITE DES ETUDES ET RECHERCHES EN DANSE A PARIS 8 1 STEAL, DUPLICATE, UNMASK, STRETCH, CONNECT, INTOXICATE A DANCE-IMAGE : FROM HEXENTANZ (WITCH DANCE) BY MARY WIGMAN (FILM, 1930) TO ÉCRAN SOMNAMBULE BY LATIFA LAÂBISSI (2012) Isabelle LAUNAY in Noémie Solomon (ed.), Danse : An An­ thology, Les Presses du Réel / New York series, 2014, p. 209-222. Translated from « Voler, doubler, démasquer, distendre, relier, intoxiquer une image-danse. De Hexentanz de Mary Wigman (film, 1930) à Ecran somnambule de Latifa Laâbissi (2012) », in Anne Benichou (dir.), Re­ créer/Scripter, Mémoires et transmissions des œuvres performatives et chorégra­ phiques contemporaines, Dijon, Presses du Réel, 2015, p. 333-350. The development of a dance work sometimes takes mischievous turns. Under the influence of what we shall call here, for lack of a better alternative, the historical gestural subconscious, going back to an earlier piece may take a detour via a different work. And, when this occurs, which forms of oblivion, untimely migrations, unexpected moments, deformed masks, and unsuspected overdetermination can a dance from the past be reactivated in accordance with? There are indeed some re-creations of dance pieces that reveal completely unexpected aesthetic potentials and political impacts, while illuminating a part of unknown history.1 The revival of Mary Wigman’s Hexentanz by Latifa Laâbissi in Écran somnambule is one of these. What is it that she documents as much as she produces in aesthetic terms? What kind of history, at once discontinuous and transnational, recomposing the geographic regions and chronologies stated by histo­ 1 On this perspective, see André Lepecki, “The Body as Archive: Will to Re-enact and the Afterlives of Dances,” Dance Research Journal 42:2 (Winter 2010) and Mark Franko, “Reproduction, reconstruction et par-delà,” Degrés, Le texte spectaculaire 63 (Fall 1990). For a broader examination of dance practices and history, see Ramsay Burt, “Memory, Repetition and Critical Intervention, the Politics of Historical Reference in Recent European Dance Performance,” Performance Research 8:2 (2001); Marina Nordera and Susanne Franco, Ricordanze, Memoria in movimento e coregrafie della storia (Turin: UTET, 2010); and Isabelle Launay and Sylviane Pagès, Mémoires et histoire en danse (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2010). 2 Steal, duplicate, unmask, stretch, connect, intoxicate a dance-image - université Paris 8 Saint-Denis - Musidanse - Isabelle Launay - 2019 [2014] riography, does she invite us to tell? And at what price? More precisely, what modalities does this French artist of Moroccan origin—a dancer and choreographer who trained at the Cunningham studio, a performer for numerous French artists (Jean-Claude Gallotta, Georges Appaix, and Loïc Touzé, among others), and a priori miles from the aesthetic and political issues that concerned Mary Wigman at the end of the 1920s in Germany—see in the few minutes of this film? The film is as much of an aesthetic shock as a resource, since it possesses critical potential for the production of a reproduction that is polysemic, fascinating and hypno­ tic, sardonic and monstrous, an obsessive fear, and illustrative of the contemporary unease of the minority. In the context of France, the expressionist dance that arrived from Germany (Audruckstanz) experienced a crisis or rupture in the transmission of its experience.2 Whereas before the war it had been received partly with interest and partly repugnance, during the post-war period, set against the landscape dominated by the neo-classicism of Serge Lifar, it was rejected outright since it had come from France’s old enemy Ger­ many. This repression repeated what had taken place in Germany when the heritage of Weimar was rejected from the intellectual and artistic scene for having been involved in the excesses of the National Socialists. Then, during the 1970s and ‘80s, it suffered a second rejection due to the appeal of young artists in the American choreographic scene, in particular that of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolaïs—and then again in the ‘90s, under postmodern dance’s influence on the new generation. It was only in the wake of the increasing success of Pina Bausch, from the early ‘80s on, that choreographic art from Germany began to receive recognition, and even then more in its relation to the work of Kurt Jooss, which differs from expres­ sionist dance in many respects. In spite of the sustained efforts and recognition of a few artists influenced by this current, expressionist dance in France was unable to find neither performers nor a large public.3 Thus, for expressionist dance to achieve a new vitality, three conditions were required: first, that the oblivion it had fallen into could be considered a virtue, with confidence placed in the power [puissance] of art’s memory traces; second, that stealing ideas or even an entire work from an author could be interpreted as necessary for the other and trust placed in the reasons underlying such an act; and third, for copying to be appreciated as a form of artistic work and creative transfer, even in the art of elaborating toxic figures. We’ll come back to that. Like various twentieth-century choreographic works, the Witch Dance can be appreciated through the cinema medium. In using films as reference, dancers immediately transform the history of cinema into a depository of dance archives, movement scores, and a vast repository of attitudes and behaviors. The history of dance is thus partly mixed up with that of the cinema to which it is linked, and in so doing transforms cinema into a technique of the body. From this standpoint, in the choreographic field it is possible to develop Walter Benjamin’s notion that modernity requires a new kind of relation to the past, and that the tradition of continual experience should be replaced by the appropriation of a citation that has already occurred.4 This lineage-free citation is paradoxical: it is as much a place where memory is exercised (there is indeed a sort of return) as it is a place of an impossible transmission (since it is no longer linked to the continuity of a body-to-body experience): in other terms, it is made in spite of everything. 2 On this, see Susanne Franco, “Ausdruckstanz: traditions, translations, transmissions,” in Discourses, Keywords in Dance Re­ search, eds. Susanne Franco and Marina Nordera (London: Routledge, 2007); Isabelle Launay, “Poétiques de l’extase, mémoire et oubli en danse dans l’Allemagne des années 20,” in Destruction, Création, Rythme, l’expressionnisme, une esthétique du conflit, ed. Georges Bloess (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009). 3 Françoise and Dominique Dupuy were influenced by Hans Weidt, and Jacqueline Robinson and Karin Waehner by Wigman in particular. 4 See Hannah Arendt, Vies politiques [Walter Benjamin] (Paris: Gallimard, 1974). 3 Steal, duplicate, unmask, stretch, connect, intoxicate a dance-image - université Paris 8 Saint-Denis - Musidanse - Isabelle Launay - 2019 [2014] Possessing one’s dance First, let us recall a few elements. The Witch Dance was created in 1926 (following a first version in 1914), and it was the fourth solo in a cycle of eight titled Visions created between 1925 and 1928. An extract from the dance was filmed four years after its creation, in 1930, as part of a promotional film called Mary Wigman tanzt. The career of Mary Wigman, who was then aged 44, was then, from various points of view, on the rise: as an artist, her first group pieces in Germany were well received, and her status as a soloist was boosted internationally by her tours in the United States; as a teacher, her school in Dresden had several hundred professional and amateur students, employed new teachers (notably Hanya Holm), and other schools would uploads/s3/ isabelle-launay-steal-duplicate.pdf

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• Publié le Jul 21, 2021
• Catégorie Creative Arts / Ar...
• Langue French
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