91

When Dance is Imagined In Cinema:

Disclosure in Dance Practice
Marisa Zanotti

n this paper I explore scenes from two dance worlds on screen and explore how cinematic and narrative strategies are used that, I would propose, ask us to question the
conventions of both cinema and dance, as well as to look again at the reality of the world
around us. One is a fiction about a dance company creating a performance from Bizets
opera, Carmen, in Carlos Sauras 1983 work Carmen;and the other, also released in 1983, is
Chantal Akermans documentary Un Jour Pina a Demand, about spending five weeks with
Pina Bauschs company.

These films may seem poles apart. Sauras is on the surface a mainstream dancedrama, full of virtuoso camera work and technical polish, which explores Bizets Carmen
using familiar dance narrative tropes: youth over experience, and a female heroine being
absorbed into a male vision, punished for her sexuality and ultimately sacrificed. Akermans
typically subjective poetic documentary couldnt be more different aesthetically, replete
with long takes, as well as sequences that privilege the moments in-between performances
as much as the performances themselves.

What strikes me about these two very different works is that they share scenes of
dancers looking in mirrors. Initially this linking theme might appear a conventional strategy,
as many films with dance as their subject have such scenes. Through exploring the image
of the dancer looking in a mirror, either in rehearsal or in the dressing room, this paper will
suggest that these works highlight engagements with the real world as being a product
of both Baudrillards notion of the imaginary and also aspects of what he refers to as the
process of symbolic exchange.

For many dance artists and academics active in the twenty-first century, it was not
dance in theatre but dance on screen (which, by the late twentieth century, was not always
simply a filmed stage work) that constituted the first experience of dance. With this came
a notion of not just an audiences perspective on dance, but rather what dance might feel
like and its expressive potential. Perhaps more strongly the dance viewer also received
messages on how to be a dancer, to live the life of a dancer; or, as DLugo suggests in a
broader argument about Sauras work, that this (dance) identity is itself the result of a willed
submission to a cluster of artistic and social mythologies (193).1 In Baudrillards terms, this
points to a state where the world is produced by the imaginary, which is the perspective
of the human self, its self identifications through images and objects and its capacity to
represent producing the illusion of the real world (Pawlett 59).2 This becomes particularly interesting when considering dance on screen and its capacity to explore and expand
not just perceptions of dance or indeed its cinematic potential, but also perhaps how we
consider the practice of dance.

In the twenty-first century, mainstream dance narratives on screen often have messages
that depict the dance world offering redemption from a future of crime or poverty (Honey),

92

The I n t er nati onal J our nal of S cr eendance

or as a safe haven from racial and class divisions (Save the Last Dance). However, there are
also the films of the late 1970s like All That Jazz, The Turning Point,or Argentos classic horror
Suspiria, which suggest a different kind of dance world: one of self-sacrifice, discipline, loneliness, manipulation of women by male mentors, and drama or/and death as a kind of
punishment/destiny for becoming part of this world. Carmen draws on the conventions
of the films of the 1970s; it could be said that these films, like Carmen, echo The Red Shoes,
although this paper will not enter into a discussion of the influence of The Red Shoes, as
much has been written about Powell and Pressburgers film. Un Jour Pina a Demand offers
an insight into the work of Wuppertal Dance Theatre through a documentary on the work
of Pina Bausch that has footage of rehearsal, performance, backstage scenes and interviews
with both Bausch and Akerman. Here there is no linear narrative thread created and no
attempt to cast the work in line with objectivity, or indeed what might be recognized as
documentary realism.

In choosing to discuss Carmen I am revisiting a work that excited me when I first saw
it in 1983 as a young dancer. Carmen won ten international awards and six nominations,
including the Oscar nomination for best foreign film. Twenty-seven years later I am still
as excited by how intriguing and provocative it remains today. I would suggest that it is
worth examining some of the subversive strategies at work that may on first viewing not
be immediately visible, especially in a filmic space where rehearsal, performance and reality
become indistinguishable amongst a company of dancers.

. . . he admires all that hes admired for

for it is he that he himself desires,
all unaware; he praises and is praised,
seeks and is the one that he is seeking
kindles the flame and is consumed by it. (Ovid, Metamorphoses Bk. III)

The importance of the mirror in Carmen, and thus its semiotic implications are made
evident immediately in the opening of the film. DLugo, in his book on Saura, The Films of
Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing,gives us a detailed analysis of this, and of what he terms
the figure of performance (193) as a key theme for discussion. In this book he offers a
comprehensive analysis of Sauras Flamenco Trilogy and of the role of the mirror in Carmen.
In the filma series of narrative/visual strategies are used through the theme of the mirror
and the gaze by way of a contemplation of the image of self and of other dancers. The film
foregrounds narcissism and the mirror, and explores the process of looking as an operation
that unifies fictional and non-fictional worlds in a state of performance. As the narrative
develops, the spectator enters into the world of a play within a play (itself a form of narcissism as the work of art reflects upon itself ), with themes of the creation of identities in
dance and Spanish culture.

In this context, the question might also be asked, at which point does the dancing
body become fictionalized; in dance are we ever really in a fictional body space? The scope
of this paper does not permit me to explore all that this question implies but I will begin to
consider it as a theme.

Being a dancer is often a process of looking, being looked at by other dancers, and
imagining being looked at. Sometimes in the studio the dancer is performing an imagined
performance for an imagined spectator. If using a mirror, the dancer might glimpse herself

W hen D an ce is I m agined I n C inema : D isclosur e in D ance P r ac ti ce

93

performing an imagined performance for an imagined spectator. This addition of another

layer of spectatorship is of significance. The sequence from Carmen described below is
played in front of mirrors and is intermittently watched by other dancers in the company as
they too rehearse.

The character Cristina is pitted against the younger Carmen. Cristina asks to help
Carmen demonstrate how to approach a choreographic sequence of elaborate gesture,
watching herself in the mirror as she does so. The scene can be read in relation to another
familiar trope, exemplified by Antonio the choreographer passing over an older female
dancer for a younger woman.3 However, what is more interesting in this short scene is
the spectator seeing a version of the process of repetition, in this case a reflection on a
reflection, a process that is so much part of classical dance practice. There is a depth of
understanding here of both dance technique and dance pedagogy.4 This scene deals with
issues of narcissism, especially when we see Carmen (the characters name) learning that
being Carmen (the character in the dance drama of Carmen) is an act that unites mind and
body, desire and will. Although Carmen as a character is a fiction, the body of Carmen as
Carmen is a reality lived by the dancer. I would in addition suggest that there is a connection for the dancer between the experience of moving accompanied by the simultaneous
act of seeing, and being seen in a performance that is both in the present and in the future,
an imagined performance.

This is not a separation from the self, but perhaps what the viewer is seeing here is the
act of the fictional character Carmen becoming not just Cristina (and there is a hint of that)
but also an awareness that she has won out against Cristina. Perhaps it can be suggested
that she is becoming the dancer in the mirror: she is entering a mirror world with all the
possibilities that this might offer. A mirror world in this context might be defined as a space,
which allows the dancer/choreographer to enter into a world, and a process of imagined
(and Imaginary) performance. In the mirror world Carmen sees herself in relation to her
value in terms of youth and beauty and in her potential as AntoniosCarmen. However here
we might return to Baudrillard who, in Revenge of The Mirror People says: objects, children, the dead, images, women, everything which serves to provide a passive reflection
in a world based in identity is ready to go on the counter offensive (149).5 Carmen is no
passive ingnue, and whilst the action in the film appears to superficially mirror the Operas
narrative, Antonio tries to create his Carmen and possess herin both the mirror world of the
dance he is creating and in the world outside that. She is a modern young woman driven
by her own needs and desires. She exists independently of his artistic vision.

Where the film can be read as truly subversive, however, is in showing us that it
is Antonio who is in crisis: he is quite literally out of step, a victim of his striving for an
authentic, essential truth in a world where there can only be what is produced through
representation. This desire is both in relation to his recasting of Bizets opera and the need
to create an ideal, a real, culturally authentic Carmen. Antonios vision is of a Carmen that
returns the story to its Spanish (as opposed to French) roots. Marshall Leicester, Jr. develops
very interesting arguments in relation to Sauras exploration of authenticity in Carmen
(something that Antonio Gades was also deeply concerned with in his work with his own
company). I will not attempt a full exploration of this argument in this paper but a key point
would be that Leicester, Jr. highlights that Flamenco is a recent construction. The dance
drama envisioned by the character Antonio is both too close to the clichs of Bizets opera

94

The I n t er nati onal J our nal of S cr eendance

and is also a new form that integrates episodic structure and flamenco, itself the product
of a world where tradition itself is always under construction always being extended to
cover and to justify new needs and desires (256). This would suggest another example
of the imaginary attempting to recapture the real. DLugo further analyzes the role of the
mirror: for example in a scene alone in his studio that not only shows Antonio engaged in a
narcissistic display but in the aspect of dance that is critical, contemplative, where thought
is visible in the body. On the surface Antonio is choreographing sequences or assessing
himself as a dancer, however implicitly in this process of dancing he is also a man struggling
to define himself through his body within a culture that is itself being questioned and redefined. I would also add that Antonios crisis is connected with his performance of another
series of roles coming out of the myths of a (screen)dance culture: impresario, jealous lover
and aging dancer.

This paper has explored themes of performance through Sauras film Carmen, one of
which themes seems to be asking: when does the dancer enter the world of the performance; or rather, when does she leave it? In Un Jour Pina a Demand (referred to henceforth
as Un Jour . . .) Akerman explores a similar question through images of mirror worlds and
in showing rituals around performance and rehearsal. In Un Jour . . . the still camera in the
dressing room shows us what appears to be a familiar image: dancers in the dressing room
or in backstage activity, smoking, putting on makeup, sitting around. Here there is sense
that, at moments, the dancers, whilst allowing Akerman into their world, do so through a
sense of the performance of that world; and that Akerman herself, in her creation of the
work, is also engaged in a form of performance.

What Akermans formal choices create is the possibility to reconsider the significance
of these rituals as we move between dressing room/rehearsal and performance. After
a while these worlds and these times lead us to explore a space of multiple exchanges.
When a dancer sings a folk song to herself in the mirror, is she rehearsing what will happen
later in some future Bausch work? We see a couple smoking together; this image gathers
momentum when later they perform a disturbing smoking scene. These images reflect
one another in different ways in our memory. One remarkable sequence is a montage
of dancers applying make-up before and during a show while looking in mirrors: they
are powdering their faces, the framing rendering the actions choreographic, the rhythm
echoing the rhythm of small gestures in sequences on stage. Akerman playfully draws our
attention to the relationship between this ritual of preparation for going on stage, with the
rituals of gestures shown on stage.

The film is particularly poignant when she shows us the dancers in quiet moments. We
might recognize them from our knowledge of the company on stage, but in comparison to
how we see them in a state of performance, when they are driven, physical and vocal, here
they appear almost ghostly. The traces of themselves in Bauschs dance works are evident
only in what they are wearing; otherwise they seem light, insubstantial. They inhabit in
Akermans world another kind of fiction that of the dressing room versus the reality of
their personae on stage. Akerman suggests a netherworld that dancers move through; the
images hint at them being ghostly figures: looking in the mirror, are they checking they are
still present, and if they are, in which worldthat of the performance or the real world? Just
as in the examples cited previously with respect to Carmen,the space of the mirror again
becomes a space for contemplation, both in the repetition of a ritual of preparation and

W hen D an ce is I m agined I n C inema : D isclosur e in D ance P r ac ti ce

95

as space for gathering the self together again through the narcissistic rituals of grooming.
Here the boundaries between fiction and documentary are blurred through Akermans
poetic vision. As in Carmen, looking in the mirror becomes an exchange that takes the
dancer and the spectator into another kind of world.

In Akermans documentary we are not sure (because we are not told) which show we
are looking at over the five weeks Akerman spends with the company.6 Sometimes we seem
to be watching the dancers in a series of altered states, in performance, in rehearsal and
in the dressing room. However, through the filmic space she asks the viewer to question
fixed ideas about the separation between on and off stage. Throughout the documentary
Akerman does not privilege any event as being more interesting or significant than any
other. As noted previously it is not unusual for backstage to be a fascinating figure in a
film work about dance, but in Un Jour. . . , where we might expect some kind of revelation
that this is where the drama really is, we are instead shown that not too much happens.
Butler quotes from Halbreich and Jenkins in Foster: hers is a cinema of waiting, of resolutions deferred. When we watch Bauschs dancers in the dressing rooms they appear on the
surface to be doing very little. However it becomes clear that we are glimpsing them during
not just one performance but also one of a series of performances. Akerman is suggesting
something about Bauschs work, an investment by the dancers, and in fact herself, in this
process. She immerses the viewer in this world and we are witness to her experience.

It is typical of Akerman that she is interested in mundane activity arising from moments
in-between events, and that these non-spaces become events in themselves where time
collapses. Here her interests chime with Bausch, for whom duration is an important feature
of work. Akerman looks at the work of performance as part of a process, not just one final
event. She creates duration where the time of rehearsal, of dressing room and stage overlap.
This echoes what we might call Bausch-time, for Bausch often articulates time in her works
as a layering of fictions and memories of childhood, family, adulthood, place, and social and
performance rituals.

In this paper I have argued that the cinematic visions of Saura and Akerman invite us
to reconsider practice and performance, authenticity and fiction in the context of dance
as acts of symbolic exchange. Akerman makes little difference between documentary
and fiction, forcing us to question through her radical choices the way in which cinematic
conventions create and obscure meaning; this subsequently creates a new lens through
which to view familiar scenarios. In Carmen,too, we find radical strategies, perhaps most of
all in Sauras treatment of death, wherethe division between the world of the mirror and the
world on the other side is removed. Deaths and murders are performed but we are never
really sure whether anyone dies or indeed whether Antonio is imagining events. Therefore
not only do we have a work that destabilizes us constantly as viewers through shifts of time
and space, but also a work where death is rendered as not final.

The subversive potential of performance in Carmen is in turn amplified when that
performance is also a performance of death. This resonates with Baudrillard, for whom the
separation of life and death is the basis of the power structures and controls produced
through binary thinking; and for whom economic/semiotic systems are built on the notion
of fixed categories. Performance in this context can also be read in relation to Pawletts
definition of symbolic exchange, being seen in acts which are challenges to these closed
systems (48). Or as Baudrillard suggests in The Perfect Crime: Now the image can no longer

96

The I n t er nati onal J our nal of S cr eendance

imagine the real because it is the real (4). Both Carmen and Un Jour. . . seem to deal in
exploring notions of binaries, pointing us towards ideas of performance as a dual form.
When Saura and Akerman ask a question in cinema about where dance performance
begins and ends, they raise the possibility that dance performance might be both the cut
and the suture for a world where Reality is a product of the process of the Imaginary. In
these films, dance on screen affords a medium through which complex issues surrounding
dance and dancers, performing and performance can be addressed.

Notes
1. DLugo, Marvin. The Films of Carlos Saura: The Practice of Seeing.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Print.
2. Pawlett, William. Jean Baudrillard. London: Routledge 2007. Print.
3. In the stage version of Gades Carmen it was Cristina Hoya who played Carmen (muse paper)
4. See Mark Franko on transference in dance pedagogy in: Of the Presence of the Body: Essays on dance and
performance theory. Ed. Andr Lepecki. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2004. 113123. Print.
5. Baudrillard, Jean. The Perfect Crime. London: Verso, 1996. Print.
6. The final sequences of the work are interviews with both Bausch and Akerman; we find out that
the company was performing Bandonen, although there is footage from Nelken in rehearsal and
performance filmed while the company was touring, presumably in the five-week period.