Читать книгу Dance and Costumes - Elna Matamoros - Страница 13

This American dancer made her audience forget the traditional costume of the ballerina –the tutu– and soon that aesthetic, in some aspects cruel and out-of-date, disappeared thanks to a tunic of a variable length –depending on the performance and on her own physique, changing with the passing of time–, which allowed her legs to be seen; for the first time, a barefoot dancer performed professionally on stage. During her early years, the audience approached Isadora more physically than spiritually, something she used to vindicate the liberty of her art… and the way she showed her body as a free woman.⁴⁵ Duncan, without being a suffragette, did dictate a specific doctrine of liberty with her behaviour –her opposition to marriage or her defence of planned motherhood– and her dress was a fundamental symbol.⁴⁶ Years later, choreographer Ted Shawn⁴⁷ would explain: “Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis⁴⁸ freed the female human body from the ugly, crippling, unhealthy clothes that prevailed around the turn of the century, and women of today should be profoundly grateful, because it is due largely to these two women enduring ridicule, antagonism, even persecution, that they can wear the free, healthier (though not much more beautiful) clothes of today. It is true that many other influences were at work, and the time had come for a change in attitude toward the human body, but these two great women were the forerunners and the advance guard of a whole movement. And modern dancers take for granted the use of the free, impeded body, bare feet and near nudity, as the rightful necessity for expression through body; it is accepted by dancers, public and critics as an integral part of modern dance.”⁴⁹

3.8 - Isadora Duncan, portrait. Photo: Arnold Genthe, 1916-18.

In her later years, Isadora went even further proclaiming that only the movements of a naked body –which she considered ‘sacred’– could be perfectly beautiful.⁵⁰ In her enthusiasm to combine her art with that of other disciplines, she wrote: “The noblest art is the nude. This is recognized by all, and followed by painters, sculptors, and poets. Only the dancer has forgotten it, who should remember it, as the instrument of the art of dance is the human body itself.”⁵¹ Evidently, showing her unrestricted body was an important ingredient of her image of voluptuous serenity and slightly archaic insolence. Moreover, most of the times she performed very close to the audience; it should be noted that it was in 1901 when she got her first contract to dance on a conventional stage⁵² so until then her dances took place in halls, aristocratic parties or intellectual meetings. It is not difficult to imagine the impression that the dancer would make on her spectators, who for the first time were next to a woman with no corset or make-up, hair down: carried away by the movement of a body only covered with thin layers of silk.

One of the models of tunic that Isadora usually wore –also of Greek inspiration– left her arms completely uncovered and showed her legs under a skirt with enough fabric to let the tunic flow at mid length, lifting the front part –or even all around– above the knees. Another double-folding hold by two ribbons crisscrossed around the torso, below the chest, accentuated the roundness of her breasts and cleared the line of her neck and shoulders, while focusing all the attention on her legs and back. A pleat of the fabric fell over her chest, folding the fabric outwards. On other occasions, the always intelligent Isadora flirted with asymmetrical neckline designs showing a bare shoulder, often when posing for her favourite photographers⁵³ or as performing her most vigorous pieces; her Marseillaise,⁵⁴ for example, stimulated the revolutionary instincts of the audience by her provocative rhythm but also by the rebelliousness that invoked her bare shoulder. Even Isadora managed to find the most appropriate patterns to let the audience only guess her body under the layers of fabric, and used them both as performing and as street cloths;⁵⁵ in the same way, she found the best movements to move her tunics so that the public could barely see the hidden body underneath.⁵⁶ In her last years, Isadora’s image was not only considered lewd or obscene by the most sanctimonious sectors of the audience –as happened in her performances in New England, after she came back from her stay in Russia– but they also considered her body, already aged, unsuitable to be shown in public.⁵⁷

3.9 - Vaslav Nijinsky as the Golden Slave, in Schéhérazade. Photo: Auguste Bert, Paris, 1910.

3.10 - Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina in Cléopâtre, 1913. Unidentif. photogr.

Soon Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes would come to the West to present the excellencies of their musical and choreographic creations, but also to overcome barriers and, in a certain way, to scandalize. Manager Sergei Diaghilev specialized in disturbing the viewers presenting ballets of an oriental nature in which the dancers seemed to show more skin than they actually revealed, but Michel Fokine’s choreographies and Léon Bakst’s spectacular designs led the public to believe that they were truly in the depraved salons of slaves and maidens who indulged in all kind of pleasures. In Cléopâtre, for example, Fokine appeared as Amun wearing a dark-coloured unitard that left only his head and hands uncovered, simulating his naked body. He only appeared ‘dressed’ by a costume inspired by the traditional Egyptian outfit which included a short chest guard made up of strips crossing his upper torso perpendicularly and a short tunic, also crossed, made of cloth. A necklace hanging from his neck and a black wig of braided hair, as well as Egyptian-style bracelets on wrists and ankles complemented his attire.

3.11 - Vaslav Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose, by Fokine. Photo: Auguste Bert, 1911.

Contrary to the full unitard seen under the costume in some of these images, Bronislava Nijinska –dancer and choreographer of Les Ballets Russes; sister of the famous Vaslav Nijinky– wrote years later in her memoirs how Fokine had to spend almost an hour removing the brown makeup of his arms and legs after the first shows of Une Nuit d’Egypte,⁵⁸ so he had to ask a very young Vaslav Nijinksy to perform his part in the next ballet of the night, Rêverie Romantique.⁵⁹ The choreographer himself explained this incident several times throughout his life.⁶⁰ It would certainly be too bold to show the naked body on stage and the brown unitards were the perfect solution not only to prevent some sectors of the audience from feeling insulted –in fact, and as we have already commented, part of the success of Les Ballets Russes de Diaghilev was precisely the scandal caused by the choreographies they performed– but also so that the performers, and especially the female dancers who used to wear shorter costumes, had to feel uninhibited and comfortable enough on stage to dance and express themselves with total freedom. It is unlikely that in his first performances of Cléopâtre Fokine would have managed without the dark unitard to simulate his naked body under the costume; in the photographs of the first performances of this ballet –under any of its different titles– and of other oriental type choreographies of the company, the unitard is noticed,⁶¹ particularly in the wrinkles of the elbows and the end of the fabric on wrists and ankles.⁶² In later images,⁶³ it is evident that the couple formed by Michel Fokine and his wife Vera Fokina wore similar costumes on their bare skin without using any unitard underneath; nevertheless, in the inventory of Les Ballets Russes there were, as part of the wardrobe catalogue, a list of unitards of different tones (chestnut, hazelnut, cotton or grey silk… depending on the ballet and the characters to be performed) that the dancers wore under the stage costume, not only for moral but also for practical reasons: Fokine’s ballets didn’t last an entire night and the dancers had to change their costumes and make-up quickly for the next choreography during the brief intervals of the performance, so it would have been much less practical to have to remove make-up at full speed with the scarce washing facilities that the theatres had at the time.⁶⁴

Another ballet, also choreographed by Michel Fokine and designed by Bakst, would finally show the rotundity of the male body on stage. In Le Spectre de la rose, premiered in 1911, Vaslav Nijinsky wore a maillot in very thin silk tights dyed in pink with green spirals (simulating rose stems) painted on top, covering his upper legs. The maillot had attached silk cut-out, shaped like rose petals, made of silk of different shades between pale pink and violet, so that it seemed that some of them belonged to newly opened roses and others to almost withered flowers. Nijinsky’s arms and part of his chest would be fully exposed while bracelets built of petals adorned the upper part of his arms. A small cap on his head hid the dancer’s hair, camouflaging it under the trimmed petals.⁶⁵

The costume worn by Nijinsky was so tight to his body that on the day of the dress rehearsal, the dressmaker Maria Stepanova had to sew the petals on the maillot the dancer was already wearing, under the watchful gaze of Bakst and Diaghilev, who were nervously waiting in the wings to start the performance.⁶⁶ Nijinksy’s characterization included careful make-up that made him look like an insect⁶⁷ by raising his eyebrows and marking his lips, which stood out on his pale skin. His androgynous appearance, his round musculature –unusual for a dancer of his time– his short limbs and the expressiveness of his hands further accentuated his extraordinary jump, which Fokine took advantage of in every second of this piece.

Historically, this costume designed by Léon Bakst has been considered to incorporate the first fitted tights worn by a male dancer, and was an important turning point in dance costume design. The use of dyed silk for male leotards allowed the audience to truly appreciate the well-built musculature of the dancers and for them to have a freedom of movement never experienced before.

In 1910, Alexandre Benois designed all the costumes and sets for a production of the ballet Giselle that premiered Les Ballets Russes. The costume created for Nijinsky⁶⁸ was used on stage without problems in Paris but, once back at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, it was certainly shameless to the eyes of its conservative Russian audience.⁶⁹ Benois would tell years later that it was Diaghilev who shortened even more the jacket of the costume of Act I, so it turned out that the culottes worn by Nijinsky under the tights were too evident; Bakst and Diaghilev decided that he should take them off, and therefore the lower part of the dancer became even more revealing. The fact that the Empress was in the audience did not help the case go unnoticed and the next day Nijinsky was dismissed from the Imperial Ballets.⁷⁰

3.12 - Photograph of Benois’s costume design for Albrecht in Giselle, Act I, 1910.Unidentif. photogr.

Both Bakst and Benois, with their intelligent designs, knew how to make the most of each dancer’s physique; of Nijinsky himself, of whom we know he had short stature and hyper-developed musculature in the lower half, they managed to make him seem to have “the figure of Apollo”, as Prince Lieven recalls in his book on Les Ballets Russes.⁷¹ It seems logical to think that wide jackets and fitted tights were the theatrical tools to compensate for the imbalance of his body proportions and that, unexpectedly, this outfit then caused a drastic change in what will be the male dancer’s clothing from then on. Not only the dancer would move more comfortably on stage, but he would also look more attractive to the audience.

A few years later, Nijinksy faced his work as a choreographer encouraged by Diaghilev and it was indeed his personal sexual touch –which other choreographers had previously explored– that became his greatest merit as a creator. Nijinsky’s tights in his ballet Afternoon of a Faun⁷² uncovered his anatomy without modesty and inevitably revealed the silhouette of his genitals as performing profile positions… which were the poses mainly used in most part of the ballet.⁷³ Moreover, according to the chronicles of the time, Nijinksy/Faune used the nymph’s stolen handkerchief to, in the last scene of the ballet –when he dances on the empty stage–, lie down on it and, as part of the audience understood, reach the sexual climax.

The next day, the Critic Gaston Calmette published a review on the first page of Le Figaro under the eloquent title “A false step” complaining of Nijinsky’s expressive excesses without reference to his daring costume, accusing him of “erotic bestiality” and impudent gestures.⁷⁴ However, other manifestations diminished significance from the scandal, highlighting its artistic virtues. The sculptor Auguste Rodin praised the qualities of the ballet, and its conjunction between the mime and the plastic in an article –also published on the front page– in the newspaper Le Matin, where he also highlighted the innovations of Loïe Fuller and Isadora Duncan:⁷⁵ the next day, Gaston Calmette scolded Rodin⁷⁶ in his response to a ‘letter to the director’ signed by Diaghilev in which he included the very favourable opinion of Odilon Redon⁷⁷ and a long fragment of the quoted article in Le Matin. Nijinksy agreed to pose for Rodin in July of the same year in appreciation for his support during the Afternoon of a Faun scandal. Curiously, in the 1980s the initial attribution of the sculpture –today at the Musée Rodin in Paris– to this choreography began to be questioned since the pose performed by Nijinsky and captured by Rodin is not part of that ballet.

3.13 - Danseuse et Nijinsky. Collotype by Adolphe (baron) de Meyer, 1914.

Like Rodin, other viewers did not perceive such provocation. Dancer Lydia Sokolova –who played prominent roles in Les Ballets Russes during those years– recalled in her memoirs Nijinsky’s “absolutely restrained, virile and powerful movements” in this piece, and explained: “There was an unforgettable moment just before his final amorous descent upon the scarf when he knelt on one knee on top of the hill, with his other leg stretched out behind him. Suddenly he threw back his head, opened his mouth and silently laughed. It was superb acting.”⁷⁸ Sokolova’s testimony attests the sexuality implicit in the piece, but there is not a hint of what the critique suggests. Once again, perhaps the costumes incited some to think much more than what the artist pretended… and the imagination was triggered. In later revivals of Afternoon of a Faun, the dancer who plays the main role simply lies down on the handkerchief, with a pleased gesture. Of the many versions of this piece that will be choreographed over the years, the one premiered by the New York City Ballet in 1953 created by Jerome Robbins masterfully maintains the same erotic tension as Nijinksy’s original, but with a diametrically opposite setting, and without any showing or insinuating. In the solitude of a dance studio, a couple of dancers in rehearsal clothes, man and woman, find themselves and dance together looking through the mirror, which turns out to be the ‘fourth wall’ between the stage and the audience. The mere fact of being able to witness the action –which takes place in a space normally inaccessible to the dance audience– and almost like being part of it throughout the connection and the illusion of the false mirror, has a magnetic effect on the viewer.⁷⁹

3.14 - Rudolf von Laban and his dancers at Lake Maggiore in Ascona. From right to left, Laban, Betty Baaron Samao, Maja Laderer, Käthe Wulff, Suzanne Perrottet and Karl Waysel. Autochrome photographic plate by Johann Adam Meisenbach, 1914.

3.15 - Laban Dancers. Autochrome photographic plate by Johann Adam Meisenbach, 1914.

Almost in the same years, a student of the moving body, Rudolf von Laban,⁸⁰ went far beyond what all those above mentioned had proposed, totally undressing his disciples; Laban lived in moral freedom and sexual permissiveness, both in his professional and personal existence,⁸¹ as he revealed in his work; it is not rare to find images in which some of his dancers appear totally naked, something that we never saw in the works of Isadora.

A collection of images taken in the summer of 1914 by the Lake Maggiore in Ascona, Switzerland, show Rudolf von Laban and six of his disciples in an interesting series of choreographic evolutions; in some of them they are all dressed, playing group games whilst holding hands in what seems to be an experiment on different planes of space. In others, however, some of the dancers are naked as they continue to be part of the same group and explore the same movements as their colleagues.⁸² Nothing has changed in their behaviour or attitude; they only uncover their bodies ignoring the colourful tunics worn now by the other dancers, without having incorporated any eroticism to the scene.⁸³

In another two images, only those dancers unclothed are pictured: in one of the portraits they hold their hands at different heights, as in a basic wheel dance;⁸⁴ in another image one of the dancers is shown frontally, without any modesty, while holding in her hand the tunic she previously wore –draping it across the floor– as in a conspiratorial sign to the dress that was covering her body before.

The naturalness of the naked body in motion was not uncommon in Germany at the time. At the beginning of Leni Riefenstahl’s famous film about the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games,⁸⁵ the images of the dance montage on the sports grounds were replaced by nude shots of young people practicing Eurythmia⁸⁶ something that Laban had already developed.⁸⁷ The poster of the film itself exhibited the image of a naked woman celebrating the glorification of her uncovered body, in which there is no inherent modesty or excessive exhibition; only a harmonious body in full exercise of its movement proficiency.⁸⁸

Laban changed the way we understand and perceive human movement today; his disciples would follow his footsteps and even those who later distanced themselves from his aseptic intellectual method in pursuit of a more dramatic stage work that led to expressionism, would inevitably be influenced by his long-awaited study of the body itself. Mary Wigman, the greatest exponent of Ausdruckstanz⁸⁹ gave priority to these ideas: the memories of one of her students in Berlin, the American Emma Lewis Thomas, embodies the choreographer’s concept of the use of the body. Wigman, Lewis Thomas said, advised her students to look themselves in the mirror, naked, and “learn to know it and to love it, for through this body you will speak for others for the rest of your life, and thank the gods for giving you such a remarkable instrument.”⁹⁰ On the other hand, Wigman explored the individualism that the women of her time seemed unwilling to give up. “I believe that all young females today experience a strong healthy pleasure in pure movement. I also believe that all these young women are entitled to a healthy dose of egoism, which begins by exploring itself before trying to change turning to the world around it. Seek yourself, feel yourself, experience yourself!.”⁹¹

3.16 - Leni Riefenstahl in the advertisement of the first part (Fest der Völker) of Olympia, 1938, her film about the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936. Photo probably by Willy Zielke.

In a conference by designers Jesús del Pozo and Lydia Azzopardi, in March 2008, Azzopardi admitted that she considered it unnecessary to show a naked dancer on stage “if it is for sensationalism” because, as she said, “it has been seen so many times, already….” Jesús del Pozo stated, in the same dialogue, that it is “very difficult” to dance naked and also that he could not imagine “a naked man dancing; a woman, perhaps […] Those kind of things are either done well, or they are terrible, and to do it well is very complicated.” For Lydia Azzopardi, as a designer and dancer, the interesting work is always “to dress the dancers, not to strip them.”⁹²

In 1951, the American Jerome Robbins created for the New York City Ballet a piece entitled The Cage, based on Stravinsky’s Concerto in D for strings, in which he depicted a community of female creatures where, after mating, the male was left as prey to feed the group.⁹³ The costumes, designed by Ruth Sobotka –a company dancer since 1946– featured nude maillots with a black line crossing the torso both for men and women; the women, including the protagonist –called “the novice”–, danced on pointe and performed some groups parts and pas de deux with the only two men of the piece –called “first intruder” and “second intruder”– that include movements bordering animal attitudes. The pre-release review of The Cage noted that “its subject is dramatic, and its action, according to rumour [sic], is pretty violent.”⁹⁴

“I portray the novice, which is sort of a new-born baby into a tribe of amazons; the tribe initiates her, so I have to hunt other animals or men… or whatever comes my way”, says the dancer Wendy Whelan, who made out of this character one of the biggest hits of her career. “There is some innocence in the character, she doesn’t really know her own strength; her instincts tell her to kill and then she realizes… [she laughs] I didn’t know that was in me!.” One of the pas de deux, Whelan explains, implies that the protagonist “has feelings for one of her victims and she doesn’t really know what to do.” The choreographer, Jerome Robbins, “just kept repeating that I really didn’t have a mind, but physically it was in my blood; animal instinct was something interesting to think about”, remembers the dancer.⁹⁵ The strangled movements of the character fit perfectly with a minimalist wardrobe that, in addition to insinuating the naked body of an invertebrate, included a short-haired wig for the dancer who starred in it, Nora Kaye;⁹⁶ that hair à la garçonne symbolized not only the freedom of the females of this strange species, but also turned the ballerina on pointe into a surprising and unpredictable creature. The critics of the premiere defined the ballet as “a little horror”, called Ruth Sobotka’s debut as a designer “admirable” and said of Robbins that, although “always manifestly gifted, now seems likely to become the first major choreographer in the field of American ballet.”⁹⁷ Robbins had used the almost naked human body to turn dancers, paradoxically, into creatures difficult to identify, perhaps insects.

3.17 - Heather Watts and Bart Cook in The Cage, by Jerome Robbins. Photo: Martha Swope, 1982.

In general, the naked body has been a regular tool of many 20^th century choreographers to the point of no longer provoking any moral scandal or special reaction in the audience. In the last decades, choreographers like Mats Ek or Wim Vanderkeybus have presented naked dancers before the public. The nude is no longer a surprise or a social achievement, but just another aesthetic possibility on stage.

1 Still today we find spontaneous cases of differentiation before a nude man or woman; vid. infra, chap. 3.

2 vid. supra, chap. 2.

3 “[…] in a nutshell, a little more naked than if she were naked, all the more naked because she wears a necklace of pearls and bracelets; we can assume that these jewels are only there to hide the lines of the maillot. This m aillot, i f t here w as a m aillot, w as v ery transparent, since it allowed seeing the iridescent flower of the breasts and the black spot of the navel, this eye of the torso, according to Ingres,” commented Arsène Houssaye; cit. pos WITKOWSKI-NASS, Le nu au théâtre… 1909, p. 53. .

4 fig. 3.1 - Armande Béjart “saying the prologue to entertain the King.” The bracelets and the pearl necklace make one think that perhaps she only simulated nudity, and the ending seals of her costume in neckline, hands and feet, were concealed by her jewels. It is a resource that the designers of Les Ballets Russes would use later to dissimulate the end of sleeves and leotards in the nude maillots that the dancers wore under their costumes; vid. chap. 3.

5 WITKOWSKI-NASS, Le nu…, p. 58.

6 CHAZIN-BENNAHUM, The Lure of Perfection… 2004, p. 105.

7 vid. supra, chap. 2 & fig. 2.3.

8 CHAZIN-BENNAHUM, The Lure…, p. 44.

9 In English, security bloomers. About this conflict, ibid., p. 242.

10 vid. infra, fig. 7.6 - Fifth position sur la pointe. The legs are kept very close together, keeping the purity of the position even on pointe.

11 WILLET-CUNNINGHTON, The History of Underclothes… 1992, p. 68.

12 JENYNS, The Art of Dancing… 1729, p. 12. Willet and Cunninghton, op. cit., p. 69, includes it, referring to a later edition (1730), with some minor changes.

13 WITKOWSKI-NASS, Le nu au théâtre…, p. 76.

14 GUEST, Le Ballet de l’Opéra… 1976, transl, p. 18. In no case can we consider the affirmation of La Ca margo as a re sponse to Ca sanova, wh ose Memoirs, wh ere th e anecdote is collected, were written between 1789 and 1798, several years after the death of La Camargo, and published after the death of the writer himself, first in a German transl.: Aus den Memoiren des Venetianers Jacob Casanova… 1822-28 [in 12 vols.], and then in French [a paradoxical French translation from the German one, after the original French manuscripts which the latter publisher had not been able to obtain]: Mémoires du Vénitien J. Casanova… 1825-29 [14 vols.].

15 vid. supra, chap. 2.

16 fig. 3.2 - The Graces of 1794. Female figures parodying late 18^th century fashion. Those on the left and in the centre show, both, how the women let the totality of the breasts uncovered by the dress; the lady on the right, with her back and one hand in an indiscreet position, covers her face with a veil. Another example of those same years –in this case, on stage– can be found in a popular etching by James Gillray, Modern Grace, or the Operatical Finale to the ballet of Alonzo e caro! [sic] printed in 1796, in which Jean Parisot appears showing her right breast. Parisot is frequently pictured with a breast visible while dancing, but it is not clear whether this happened only once or whether it was habitual in her performances.

17 CHAZIN-BENNHAUM, The lure of perfection…, p. 100.

18 fig. 3.3 - Compare with fig. 4.7, infra, which shows a smaller décolleté.

19 LEVINSON, Marie Taglioni… 1929; transl. (by C.W. Beaumont) 1930, reed., p. 23.

20 vid. supra, fig. 2.10 - Arabesque à la lyre. The tunic discovers the dancer’s left chest.

21 Representing the “main group of a Bacchanal.” BLASIS, Traité élémentaire… 1820, planche XIV, fig. 4.

22 BLASIS, The Code of Terpsichore… [revis. ed., greatly enriched and with new plates of the Traité élémentaire…, cit.] 1828; plate I, fig. 4; pl. XII, fig. 2; pl. XIII, figs. 2 & 3; pl. XIV, fig. 1.

23 Les Femmes de bonne humeur, choreography by Massine, based on the comedy Le donne di buon umore by Carlo Goldoni; set and costumes by Léon Bakst and music by Domenico Scarlatti, orchestrated by Vincenzo Tomassini. First performed at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, April 1917.

24 fig. 3.4 - Bakst’s costume design for Felicita shows a generous neckline and an overskirt in the shape of flower petals reminiscent of dresses that, at the time, hid a mechanism of laces for, when the woman wished, lifting the overskirt and showing the petticoat with coquetry.

25 CHRISTOUT, Le Merveilleux… 1965, p. 95.

26 vid. supra, fig. 2.7 - Marie Sallé’s expression of abandonment both on her face and her body posture is evident, and contrasts with the curious look of the masculine profile carved into the leg of the furniture to her left.

27 BLASIS, The Code…, p. 95.

28 Composer and violinist (1713-1797); Maître of the Chambre du Roi, he had a major influence on the development of the French opéra comique, and was director of the Académie Royale de Musique (later, Opéra de Paris) for three times between 1769 and 1790.

29 cit. pos WITKOWSKI-NASS, Le nu au théâtre… p. 77. The criterion for praising the dancer’s performance is surprising.

30 vid. e.g. fig. 3.5 - Parisot in arabesque. At the bottom: “A Peep at the Parisot! with Q [referring to Queensberry] in the corner.” The dancer performs impassively before the inquisitive public that surrounds her.

31 CHAZIN-BENNHAUM, The lure of perfection…, p. 116.

32 KAHANE, Opéra côté costume… 1995, p. 76.

33 “Maillot”, in La Grande Encyclopédie Larousse… 2018.

34 WITKOWSKI-NASS, Le nu au théâtre…, p. 75.

35 Massenet’s opera, with libretto by Paul Milliet and Henri Grémont, premiered in December 1881 at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels; reprogrammed in autumn 1903 at La Gaîté.

36 WITKOWSKI-NASS, Le nu…, p. 138; vid. infra, chap. 8, nt. 33.

37 “Almée” is the word, currently out of use [cfr. Littré, Dictionnaire… 1873], written by Gautier.

38 GAUTIER, Voyage en Espagne… (orig. “Sur les chemins…”, 1840), reed. 1873, pp. 328-329.

39 vid. infra, chap. 6.

40 BLASIS, Traité…, pp. 125 & ss.; vid. infra, chap. 4. However, in his Code of Terpsichore… published eight years later these images no longer appear, being replaced by those of men and women dressed for dance.

41 vid. e.g. fig. 3.6 - “Manières différentes de se poser en attitude.”

42 vid. infra, fig. 11.1 - Studies of body expression in static poses.

43 vid. infra, chap. 9.

44 fig. 3.7 - This drawing of Isadora by Clará, from the catalogue of the Museo Reina Sofía is not linked to any particular choreography (as it is the case with other portraits of her; vid. infra, fig. 9.3). It is described, in its current title, as “Female Nude;” however, Isadora is not naked. Clará has been explicit in shading the parts of the body that Isadora exposed to the public: the arms, part of her back and her thighs; we even seem to guess part of her hip, although it would be covered under a thin layer of cloth. A further showing of how her body, although only partially exposed, seems to be seen completely by the spectator.

45 DALY, Done into Dance… 1995, p. 163.

46 TERRY, Isadora Duncan… 1963, p. 133. Her defence of femininity made her, however, ignore the man in dance.

47 vid. infra, chap. 13.

48 Ibidem.

49 SHAWN, Every Little Movement… 1954, augm. 1963, pp. 81-82.

50 DALY, Done into Dance…, p. 31. Probably, points out the author, her idea of ‘naked body’ would not reveal the body totally undressed, only unveiled in its forms, but with the details discreetly blurred.

51 Cit. pos MAYNARD, American Modern Dancers… 1965, p. 43.

52 DUNCAN, My Life… 1927, revis., p. 74.

53 vid. e.g. fig. 3.8 - photography by Arnold Genthe; part of an extensive collection made between 1915 and 1923.

54 vid. infra, chap. 9.

55 See in chap. 9, how she wore Mariano Fortuny’s Delphos tunic, whose folds revealed her curves.

56 For example, ‘skipping’ and other light jumps.

57 About the physical degradation and excesses of her libertine life, we find numerous anecdotes and eloquent data; vid. Stern, Isadora Duncan und Sergei Yessennin… 1996.

58 Title of the first version of Cléopâtre (vid. infra, chap. 12), premiered in March 1908 at the Mariinsky Theatre.

59 B. NIJINSKA, Early Memoirs… 1981, reed., p. 228. Translated into English by her daughter, Irina NIJINSKA, these Early Memoirs collect Bronislava Nijinska’s remembrances from childhood till 1914. Rêverie Romantique, also premiered in the performances of March 1908, was a new version of Chopiniana (1907), incorporating parts from that previous piece and from Danses sur la musique de Chopin (1908).

60 JOWITT, Time and the Dancing Image… 1988, p. 106.

61 Thus we see, for example, in the un-retouched photographs of Nijinsky characterized for the ballet Schéhérazade, 1910; e.g. fig. 3.9 - Vaslav Nijninsky as the Golden Slave.

62 cfr. infra, fig. 12.4 - Mikhail Mordkin, partner of Pavlova in The Pharaoh’s Daughter, in 1908; he also wore a unitard simulating bare arms and legs under his Egyptian costume.

63 fig. 3.10 - Michel Fokine and Vera Fokina in Cléopâtre, in 1913; both wear the costume on bare skin.

64 WOODCOCK, “Wardrobe”… 2010, p. 143.

65 fig. 3.11 - Nijinsky in Le Spectre de la Rose. “Romola Nijinsky described the costume as consisting of a close-fitting fine elastic silk jersey, covering his entire body, except part of his breast and arms, where bracelets of silk rose-petals bound his biceps… petals ‘some were ragged as from a dying flower; others were stiff and firm’… ‘Nijinsky’s make-up was conceived to personify a rose. His face was like that of a celestial insect, his eyebrows suggesting some beautiful beetle, which one might expect to find closest to the heart of the rose, and his mouth was like rose-petals’…”, we read in the informative card of the costume, today conserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum; cfr. “Theatre costume. Bakst” in V&A…, online.

66 WOODCOCK, “Wardrobe”…, p. 143.

67 R. NIJINSKY, Nijinsky… 1980, p. 136.

68 fig. 3.12 - Costume design by Benois for the character of Albrecht. It was the cause of Nijinsky’s dismissal from the Imperial Theatres.

69 For years, dancers in Russia continued to wear discreet shorts under the jacket, or a skirt that lengthened it.

70 That’s how the designer remembered the scene. BENOIS, not without reason, also wondered if the naughty Diaghilev had not been aware, when he altered the dancer’s costume, of the scandal he was causing. The impresario saw in any provocation new reasons for success for his company. cfr. LIEVEN, The birth of the Ballets-Russes… 1956, reed., pp. 127-128.

71 “The top half of his body seemed to belong to one person and the lower half to another.” Ibid., p. 323.

72 L’Après-midi d’un faune. Choreography by Nijinsky with music by Claude Debussy. (Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune), inspired by the poem by Stetéphane Mallarmé. First performed in the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, in May 1912.

73 fig. 3.13 - Dancer and Nijinsky in Afternoon of a Faun.

74 “Those who talk to us about art and poetry about this show are laughing at us. It is neither a graceful ego nor a deep production. We had an inappropriate faun with vile movements of erotic bestiality and gestures of heavy impudence. That’s all. And just whistles welcomed the over-expressive pantomime of this poorly constructed beast body, hideous from the front, even more hideous in profile. Th ese animal re alities, th e re al public will never accept them.” CALMETTE, “Un faux pas”, Le Figaro, 30.05.1912.

75 “No role has shown Nijinsky as extraordinary as his latest creation of L’Après-Midi d’un Faune. No more greetings, no more jumps, just the attitudes and gestures of a half-conscious animal: he lies down, elbows, crouching, straightens up, moves forward, moves backwards with movements that are sometimes slow, sometimes jerky, nervous, angular; his eyes spy, his arms stretch out, his hand opens wide, his fingers together tight against each other, his head turns away with a lust of deliberate clumsiness and that one would think natural. Between mimicry and plastic, the harmony is absolute: the whole body means what the mind wants; it reaches the character that animates it; it has the beauty of ancient fresco and statuary; it is the ideal model according to which one wants to draw, to sculpt. You would say of Nijinsky a statue, when at the raising of the curtain he lies all the way down on the ground, with his leg bent down, his reed flute on his lips; and nothing is more striking than his élan when, at the end, he stretches out, face down, on the stolen veil he kisses and embraces with the fervour of a passionate voluptuousness.” Rodin, “La Rénovation de la Danse…”, Le Matin, 30.05.1912.

76 “…the sick mimicry that a dancer presented to us the other night on the stage is much less outrageous than the show given every day by Mr. Rodin, in the old convent of Sacré- Coeur, to legions of satisfied swallowed admirers or snobs.” CALMETTE, [untitled, open letter], Le Figaro, 31.05.1912.

77 Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was not just an important and renowned painter, but “a close friend and confidant of Stéphane Mallarmé”, as Diaghilev pointed out to give more value to his testimony.

78 [SOKOLOVA], Dancing for Diaghilev… 1960, p. 125.

79 MAGGIE, “L’après midi d’un faune”, in Dictionnaire du Ballet Moderne… 1957.

80 vid. infra, chap. 11.

81 In fact, for some time he kept an open ménage à trois living in the same house with his wife Maja Lederer and his lover Suzanne Perrottet; they both even got pregnant at the same time. PRESTON-DUNLOP, Rudolf Laban… 2008, p. 39.

82 It is peculiar, in any case, that it is precisely Laban and his lovers those who keep their clothes in front of the camera.

83 fig. 3.14 - Rudolf von Laban and his dancers at Lake Maggiore in Ascona. Laban’s gaze, looking at the camera, reveals naturalness.

84 fig. 3.15 - Naked dancers in outdoor exercises.

85 The feature film was produced in t wo parts: 1. Fest der Völker and 2. Fest der Schönheit. Olympia. Leni Riefenstahl (dir. & prod.). Olympia-Film Gmbh, 1938.

86 Study of the harmonious movement.

87 TOEPFER, Empire of Ecstasy… 1997, p. 315.

88 fig. 3.16 - Advertisement of Fest der Völker, film by Leni Riefenstahl, 1938. The woman photographed is Riefenstahl herself.

89 “Free, expressive dance,” the way to call the new dance of German expressionism; vid. infra, chap. 11.

90 LEWIS THOMAS, “My Mary. Personal Reminiscences…,” online; written from interviews conducted in 1972-73.

91 WIGMAN, Liebe Hanya… 2003, p. XXII.

92 apud MATAMOROS, Danza-Cuerpo… 2008, p. 8.

93 “The Cage is a horror story about a primitive-matriarchal genus of insects whose females kill their mates after copulation […] deliberately, the female insects of The Cage are coarsely and sensationally lethal.” MACAULAY, “A Jerome Robbins Sampler…”, The New York Times, 16.01.2009.

94 MARTIN, “City Ballet Offers…”, The New York Times, 10.06.1951.

95 Commentaries in NYC Ballet’s Wendy Whelan… 2008, video online.

96 fig. 3.17 - Heather Watts, another prominent performer of the main character, with a short-haired wig.

97 “The Cage is […] savage; it is, indeed, a little horror; but it is quite the best ballet Mr. Robbins has yet done, more compact in design, more inventive in movement, more devastating in dramatic power, than anything that has preceded it. It is stimulating to have an artist speak out with such unbridled venom, even though that might not be the tone one would choose for him. The courage to be honest, even though unpleasant, is all too rare. […] Nora Kaye dances the central role with magnificent power and subtlety.” MARTIN, “The Dance: Close of…”, The New York Times, 24.06.1951.