Dance, Space and Subjectivity

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Dance, Space
and Subjectivity
Valerie A. Briginshaw
Formerly Professor of Dance Studies
University of Chichester
© Valerie A. Briginshaw 2001, 2009
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 978-0-333-91973-6

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work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in hardback 2001
First published in paperback 2009 by
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ISBN 978-0-230-22979-2 ISBN 978-0-230-27235-4 (eBook)

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Briginshaw, Valerie A.
Dance, space, and subjectivity / Valerie Briginshaw.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Dance—Reviews. 2. Postmodernism. I. Title.

GV1594.B75 2001
792.8—dc21
2001021214
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09
 to the memory of my parents
Vera Briginshaw (née Higham)
and
George Maitland Briginshaw
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Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Preface to Second Edition xiii

Preface xv

Acknowledgements xviii

1 Introduction 1
Where bodies meet space 2
Currency of ideas about space 5
Questions of subjectivity 6
Reading dances 7
Bounded bodies 9
In-between spaces 14
Inside/outside interfaces 17

PART I Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

2 Travel metaphors in dance – gendered constructions of
travel, spaces and subjects 27
Introduction 27
Metaphors of travel in postmodern discourse 28
Travel and gender 29
Space, power and gender 30
Suggestions of travel in the dances 32
Gendering of travel, space and subjects in the dance films 35
Reappropriating travel metaphors for new subjectivities 40
Conclusion 42

3 Transforming city spaces and subjects 43

Introduction 43
Sixties precedents 44
Muurwerk and Step in Time Girls 49
Constructed spaces 50
Mutual definition of bodies and cities 51
Conclusion 56

vii
viii Contents

4 Coastal constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the

Windy Beach 59
Introduction 59
Eroticized bodies and spaces 63
Bodies and boundaries 65
Seaside surrealism 68
Conclusion 73

PART II Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

5 Desire spatialized differently in dances that can be read
as lesbian 77
Introduction 77
Lesbian desire refigured 78
The performance of gender and sexuality 80
The dances – Reservaat (1988), Between/Outside (1999),
Virginia Minx at Play (1993) and Homeward Bound (1997) 81
Surfaces in contact 83
Becoming/transformations in Reservaat and
Homeward Bound 85
Machinic assemblages in Between/Outside and Reservaat 88
Polymorphous perversity and multiplicities in Virginia
Minx at Play 92
In-between spaces – spatial locations and private/public
boundaries 94
Conclusion 95
6 Hybridity and nomadic subjectivity in Shobana
Jeyasingh’s Duets with Automobiles 97
Introduction 97
Hybrid spaces between East and West 99
Female solidarity and nomadic subjectivity 102
Dancers and buildings and the spaces in between 104
Mutual construction of bodies and spaces 106
Nomadic subjects in cities 108
Conclusion 109
7 Crossing the (black) Atlantic: spatial and temporal
displacements in Meredith Monk’s Ellis Island and
Jonzi D’s Aeroplane Man 112
Introduction 112
Meredith Monk and Jonzi D 114
 Contents ix

The constructed nature of identity 117

Technologies of power – subjectification, normalization
and examination 123
The role of language in operations of power 130
Spatial containment, borders and territorialization 132
Conclusion 134

PART III Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

8 Fleshy corporealities in Trisha Brown’s If You Couldn’t See Me,
Lea Anderson’s Joan and Yolande Snaith’s Blind Faith 139
Introduction 139
The theories of Deleuze, Bordo and Kristeva 141
The dances 144
Flesh 146
Fluids 153
Folds 155
Conclusion 161

9 ‘Carnivalesque’ subversions in Mark Morris’ Dogtown,

Liz Aggiss’ Grotesque Dancer and Emilyn Claid’s Across
Your Heart 162
Introduction 162
The dances 164
Grotesque challenges to boundaries 166
Excessive overflows 171
Carnivalesque parody 175
Grotesque and carnivalesque interactivity with the world 178
Conclusion 181

10 Architectural spaces in the choreography of William

Forsythe and De Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas 183
Introduction 183
The choreographers and dances 186
Disrupting the single viewpoint of perspective 189
Challenging notions of a separated self 192
The role of the visual in the construction of bounded and
gendered subjectivity 195
Vision and reason – the dominance and construction
of the eye/‘I’ 198
The ideological nature of visualization 200
Conclusion 204
x Contents

Appendix 207

Notes 209

Bibliography 213

Index 223
List of Illustrations

Cover illustration Film still of Martine Berghuijs and Pépé Smit in

Reservaat courtesy of Cinenova Film & Video Distribution.
Plate 1 Film still of Roxanne Huilmand in Muurwerk courtesy of argos
international film distributors.
Plate 2 Photograph of Yolande Snaith in Step in Time Girls by Ross
MacGibbon reproduced with his permission.
Plate 3 Photograph of Out on the Windy Beach by the author.
Plate 4 Photograph of Emilyn Claid in the ‘Watch Me Witch You’
section from Virginia Minx at Play by Eleni Leoussi reproduced with her
permission.
Plate 5 Photograph of Sarah Spanton in Homeward Bound by Michelle
Atherton reproduced with her permission.
Plate 6 Still from Duets with Automobiles from the series ‘Dance for the
Camera’ courtesy of Arts Council/BBC.
Plate 7 Photograph of Ellis Island by Bob Rosen reproduced with his
permission.
Plate 8 Photograph of Trisha Brown in If You Couldn’t See Me by Joanne
Savio reproduced with her permission.
Plate 9 Photograph of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632) by
Rembrandt courtesy of Mauritshuis, The Hague.
Plate 10 Still from Joan courtesy of MJW Productions.
Plate 11 Photograph of Andreas Vesalius’s illustration The Fifth Plate
of the Muscles from the Second Book of the Fabrica reproduced with
permission of Dover Publications Inc.
Plate 12 Still from Blind Faith courtesy of Yolande Snaith Theatredance.
Plate 13 Photograph of Liz Aggiss in Grotesque Dancer reproduced with
permission of Divas.
Plate 14 Photograph of CandoCo Dance Company in Across Your Heart
by Chris Nash reproduced with his permission.
Plate 15 Photograph of Rosas Danst Rosas by Herman Sorgeloos repro-
duced with his permission.
Plate 16 Photograph of Enemy in the Figure by Dominik Mentzos repro-
duced with his permission.

xi
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Preface to Second Edition

Despite being published eight years ago in 2001, the core ideas in Dance,
Space and Subjectivity concerned with the ways in which dances con-
struct space and subjectivity and the meanings that result, are still per-
tinent today. No other texts in dance studies have dealt since, at length,
with ideas about the spatiality of subjectivity in dance in any detail. The
premises and arguments on which the original text was based are still
current and relevant as is the content in the form of the ideas explored
and the dances discussed. Most of the choreographers whose dance
works are examined are important national and international figures
whose choreography is still very much at the centre of current debate
in dance scholarship. They continue to occupy an important position
in the dance world today as they did when the first edition appeared,
and they remain worthy of serious study. The close readings of dances
in Dance, Space and Subjectivity can also serve as useful models for explor-
ing dance in-depth in practice and in writing within dance and perfor-
mance studies courses.
The revisions I have made for this edition are therefore relatively
minor and largely in the form of correcting one or two minor typo-
graphical and grammatical errors that slipped into the first edition, and
updating information in the text, particularly in Appendix 1. This has
been completely re-written since it indicates details of the availability
of recordings of dance works discussed.
I thought long and hard about the use of the term ‘postmodern’ in
this second edition. It is a contentious term that was the subject of much
debate throughout the 1980s and 90s in which I and others participated
(see Briginshaw, 1988, 1996). Re-reading my contributions to the
debates and the very first footnote of this text, where I qualify my use
of the term with reference to dance, with which I still concur, for me,
these clarify understanding of the term in general and my use of it in
particular. It was through my engagement with various facets of what
was termed ‘postmodern theory’ that I became aware of ways in which
the notion of ‘subjectivity’ could be opened up. Discussions of the ‘crisis
in subjectivity’, often deemed ‘postmodern’ at the time, heralded
further discussions and debates about what subjectivity is, which have
informed explorations that are at the heart of this text. It is my con-
tention that readers will inevitably come across the term ‘postmodern’

xiii
xiv Preface to Second Edition

in relation to the dances and theories discussed here in other literature,

and that my qualified use of it here contextualizes and clarifies the issues
and debates and aids understanding. I have therefore decided to let it
stand.
Revisions I have made have resulted from changes in my thinking
over the past eight years consistent with my statement in the original
preface that ‘my subjectivity and that of any writer or dance critic is
made up of several layers that are continually changing over time and
in different spaces’ (p. xvi). As a result I have changed all references to
the notion of theories being ‘applied to’ dance to less deterministic and
closed language in order to emphasize the importantly open nature of
the research with which I am engaged. Making use of terms such as
‘exploration’ and ‘discussion’ of theories ‘alongside dance’ in order to
‘inform debates’, I feel, is a more accurate and helpful way of describ-
ing the work undertaken in the text. The value and importance of open-
ness in dance and in writing, Ramsay Burt and I emphasize and explore
in more detail in our recently published Writing Dancing Together. The
timing of this second edition of Dance, Space and Subjectivity has also
allowed me to refer readers to the former text where ideas such as ‘muta-
tion’ and ‘unfaithful repetition’, discussed here in Chapters 4 and 5
respectively, are explored in more detail, with reference, for example, to
Lea Anderson’s work.
The publishers’ request for me to consider a second edition of Dance,
Space and Subjectivity coincided with my decision to retire from the Uni-
versity of Chichester and most of my academic engagements, research
and writing in order to pursue other activities. These include voluntary
work in developing countries which is in some ways a continuation of
the social and political commitment that informed the writing of this
book. This commitment, outlined in the original preface, is the raison
d’etre behind the text and behind this paperback edition, which I hope
will render it more accessible for purchase to a broader readership.

Chichester, 2009
Preface

In drawing together the issues of dance, space and subjectivity, this book
centres on dance analysis, but it also draws on a number of different
fields which extend beyond dance studies. For the past two decades
I have been engaged in research that has taken as its focus the field
of dance analysis, evidenced in my contributions to publications in
the eighties and nineties, including the book Dance Analysis: Theory
and Practice. Since then I have become increasingly interested in con-
temporary critical theories, beginning with feminist theory, and more
recently with postmodern, postcolonial, queer and post-structuralist
theories. I find these theories compelling because of the ways in which
they bring to the surface issues and debates about the nature of human
existence and human relationships, that have remained hidden for far
too long.
These issues and debates concern similarities and differences between
people that begin with where, when and to whom we are born. They
are fundamental because they are political; they result in power differ-
entials and discrimination. These similarities and differences evolve in
complexity for each of us with passages through different times and
spaces. Crucially these similarities and differences, which make up our
subjectivity, determine our life experiences. All of this may seem very
obvious, but when we look around and see large numbers of people
whose life experiences and expectations are so much less than those
of others, somehow it doesn’t seem fair. I believe, perhaps somewhat
naively, that this lack of justice or fairness can be alleviated with the
greater understanding of its root causes and factors that perpetuate it,
that feminist, postmodern, postcolonial, queer and post-structuralist
theories can provide.
My knowledge and understanding of these theories has been contin-
ually challenged and stretched by my own and others’ attempts to
explore them alongside dance and to explore dance alongside the the-
ories. This book sits happily in the middle of this open field of mutual
application and engagement where insights gained in one area of cul-
tural practice or theory can illuminate another. These mutual illumina-
tions, which open up rather than close down issues and areas of debate
and contention, for me, are extremely productive. The major impera-
tive behind this book is to share this productivity.

xv
xvi Preface

Over the years my focus in dance analysis has been on those post-
modern dances which lend themselves to analysis informed by
contemporary critical theories of this kind. This book consists of
close readings of selected examples of postmodern dance that I have
chosen because of the ways in which the dancing bodies in each
construct subjectivity and the different roles that space plays. I
therefore, develop frameworks for analysis in the book which relate to
other frameworks focusing on the contributions of space and the
dancing bodies to constructions of subjectivity. One main aim in all this
is to call into question traditional notions of subjectivity which see it
as fixed, and to suggest more interesting alternatives which recognize
its capacities for change. In this sense it is important to stress the
complex and changing nature of my own subjectivity which plays an
important role in the writing. My subjectivity and that of any writer or
dance critic is made up of several layers that are continually changing
over time and in different spaces. This is why, although I present par-
ticular readings and interpretations of the dances I write about, I stress
that these are not the only possible readings. I hope that these will open
up the dances and provoke and stimulate further interpretations of
these dances and maybe even of works with similar qualities in other
cultural forms.
Another incentive for illustrating the reciprocity of dance and a range
of different theories in this book is to demonstrate the broad relevance
of dance as a subject of study that can illuminate other areas of cultural
practice. In this sense this book should be of interest to a readership
that extends beyond students and researchers of dance. Many of the
dances that feature, for example, are films or dance videos and so
the analysis draws on film theory. In its readings of postmodern dances
the book engages with topics of cultural study as diverse as travel, the
city, beaches as leisure spaces, environmental change, the spatializa-
tion of desire, displacement and cultural identity, medieval and
Renaissance art and literature and deconstructive architecture. In this
sense it should appeal to students and scholars in the fields of cultural
history and geography, visual culture, feminism, postcolonial, queer
and gender studies as well as cultural and critical theory more gener-
ally. At the heart of the analyses of all the dances, however, is a focus
on bodies and space. The treatment of the ways in which perform-
ing bodies engage and interact with actual spaces and embody ideas
associated with metaphorical spaces, and how this contributes to con-
structions of subjectivity, should also be of interest to students and
 Preface xvii

researchers within the fields of performance, theatre and media studies.

Finally, it is my hope that in demonstrating the attraction, relevance
and diversity of the dances through my analyses, the profile of dance
as a cultural practice worthy of serious attention for cultural studies in
general, will be raised.
Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge and thank the following people for their
invaluable help, advice, guidance and support in the writing of this
book. Special mention goes to Ramsay Burt who over many years as a
friend and colleague has shared ideas, challenged and stretched my
thinking, encouraged, prompted and supported me. He read most of the
chapters at various stages in their development, and he read the man-
uscript in its entirety. His constructive criticism has been invaluable.
Thank you Ramsay. My good friend and colleague Geoff Seale also read
the whole manuscript. As he comes from outside the field of Dance his
detailed comments and suggestions tended to touch on a broad range
of issues and to stimulate revisions which I hope have made the
book more user friendly, particularly for those readers not necessarily
acquainted with the dances or theories discussed. Other friends and
colleagues have read drafts or early versions of chapters and given
feedback. They are Christy Adair (Chapters 5 and 7), Johannes Birringer
(Chapter 1), Ruth Chandler (Chapters 5 and 8), Emilyn Claid (Chapters
5 and 9), Diana Crampton (Chapter 8), Isla Duncan (Chapters 2 and 5),
Ben Noys (Chapter 9), Ann Nugent (Chapter 10), and Sarah Rubidge
(Chapter 6). I should also like to thank Daniela Adriana Pegorer, for
advice concerning the tango for Chapter 5 and Saul Keyworth for
reading Chapter 7 and giving advice concerning break dance and hip
hop. I am grateful to all of the above for their advice but I take full
responsibility for what remains.
Some of the chapters or parts thereof have been presented as confer-
ence papers, research seminar papers, lectures or have been published
elsewhere. Parts of Chapter 2 were presented at the Border Tensions Con-
ference at the University of Surrey in 1995. Chapter 3 grew out of a con-
ference paper presented at the City Limits Conference at Staffordshire
University in 1996, a chapter Helen Thomas asked me to write for
her edited collection Dance in the City published by Macmillan (– now
Palgrave) in 1997, and a chapter in Bell and Haddour’s edited col-
lection City Visions published by Pearson Education Limited in 2000.
Chapter 5 grew out of two conference papers: the first presented at a panel
on ‘Dance and Sexuality’ convened by Susan Manning for the Society of
Dance History Scholars Conference at the University of Oregon in 1998,
and the second presented at the Society of Dance History Scholars Con-

xviii
 Acknowledgements xix

ference at the University of New Mexico in 1999. I was invited to

give an early version of this conference paper at Surrey University
School of Performing Arts Research Seminar Week in 1999, and to give a
version of Chapter 5 as a lecture to MA students on the ‘Gender and
Sexuality in Performance’ module at the Tisch School of Performing
Arts, New York University. I should like to thank both institutions for
their invitations, and their respective students and staff for their useful
feedback.
Chapter 6 grew out of a paper given at the Confluences conference
at the University of Cape Town in 1997, and the chapter in City
Visions published by Pearson Education Limited in 2000 mentioned
above. Chapter 8 grew out of an article written for the journal Visual
Culture in Britain published in 2000, and part of this material was
presented at the conference Visual Culture in a Changing Society:
Britain 1940–2000 organized by the journal at the University of
Northumbria in 2000. I should like to thank the journal editor, Ysanne
Holt, for permission to publish, and her selected readers for their
feedback. I also acknowledge permission to publish material in
Chapters 3 and 6 from Pearson Education Limited. Chapter 10 grew
out of two lectures given to MA Performing Arts students at De
Montfort University, Leicester in 1999 and to an audience of architec-
ture and design students and staff of the Hochschule Anhalt (FH) at the
Bauhaus in Dessau, in 1999. I should like to thank Ramsay Burt and
Professor Lisa Stybor respectively for inviting me to give the lectures,
as well as the staff and students who attended and gave me valuable
feedback.
Some of the material in the book has also been presented as part of
University College Chichester Research Seminar Programmes for the
Dance and Women’s Studies Departments and the Postmodern Studies
Research Centre. Thanks go to all who attended and gave their
comments. I should like to acknowledge support from colleagues and
students at University College Chichester, particularly in the Dance
Department and the Postmodern Studies Research Centre Critical
Theory Reading Group and Ruth Twiss, the Dance Subject Librarian at
University College Chichester for help with searches and various other
obscure requests. Thanks also go to Paul Burt and Damian Wiles, tech-
nicians in the Media Centre, University College Chichester, for help
with reproduction of stills from videos for Plates 10 and 12. Financial
support for my attendance at conferences and lectures overseas has been
generously provided by University College Chichester’s Dance Depart-
ment research budget.
xx Acknowledgements

I should like to thank copyright holders for their permission to repro-

duce the visual images in the book. Detailed acknowledgements are
made with the captions.
Thanks go to all choreographers, filmmakers and dancers whose work
is discussed in the book. Their stimulating work has inspired my writing.
To those choreographers who have read and/or discussed my writing at
various stages, namely Liz Aggiss, Lea Anderson, Emilyn Claid, Shobana
Jeyasingh, Lucille Power, Yolande Snaith and Sarah Spanton; thanks go
to them for their valuable time and comments.
This manuscript was submitted for a Ph.D. by publication to the Uni-
versity of Southampton. Its examination culminated in a successful viva
voce in November 2000. My three examiners Dr Cora Kaplan of the
University of Southampton, Dr Lizbeth Goodman of the University of
Surrey and Professor Stephanie Jordan of Roehampton Institute, pro-
vided valuable advice regarding revisions that would strengthen the text
in its published form, which I would like to acknowledge.
Lastly, I should like to thank all those close friends who have in
various ways lived with me and my idiosyncracies through the process
of putting this book together. Particular mentions go to Charmian
Gradwell for stimulating and challenging discussions of some of the
content, and for cooking me delicious meals to sustain my writing while
on a writing retreat holiday, and to Ginny Levett for reminding me,
while on walks along beaches, that shorelines are special kinds of
borders and beaches are special kinds of liminoid spaces.
1
Introduction

This book is about relations between bodies and space in dance and the
role they play in constructing subjectivity. Why, at the beginning of the
new millenium, are relationships between dance, space and subjectiv-
ity so important? The postmodern debates about ‘crises of subjectivity’,
that were current at the turn of the twentieth century, raised questions
about who ‘we’ are, and our relation to the world we live in. Although
voiced increasingly sceptically now, these questions are still, it seems to
me, just as pressing as ever. Postmodern dance contributes to these
debates vitally and imaginatively, because it is constantly engaging and
negotiating with body/space relations in immediate and challenging
ways.1 I use the oblique (/) here between ‘body’ and ‘space’ to indicate
the conjunction of two concepts creating an interface. It allows the pos-
sibility of rethinking concepts or ideas normally seen as separated, as
interconnected. Thinking things differently in this way is a key strategy
employed throughout the book, often indicated by the use of the slash.
The conjunction of bodies and spaces is important because it is
through this interface, through our material bodies being in contact
with space, that we perceive the world around us and relations to that
world. Exploration of these relations and debates is particularly perti-
nent right now because of the openness and scope that postmodern
approaches have brought to questions of existence, identity and sub-
jectivity. The limitations of the perspective of an ideal, unified, male,
Western, white subject have been exposed – presenting the point of view
from this subject position as ‘the way things are’ is no longer accept-
able. Many other possibilities are now viable. Through in-depth analy-
ses of selected postmodern dances, informed by developments and
debates in current critical theory, this book identifies some of these
other possibilities of subjectivity. In dance the limits and extent of

1
2 Introduction

subjectivity are actually and metaphorically exposed when and where

bodies meet space. This is perhaps why there has been an explosion of
interest in bodies and space and bodily and spatial metaphors in current
cultural theory. The debates and issues that have emerged have not to
date been examined in dance in any detail, yet dance is an obvious
medium for the exploration and imagination of what is going on at
these limits.

Where bodies meet space

An example of the significance of body/space relations in dance can be

seen in the opening moments of Outside/In (1995), a dance film com-
missioned by the Arts Council and BBC2, made by Margaret Williams
and choreographed by Victoria Marks, for CandoCo Dance Company.
The camera pans slowly along a line of heads and shoulders of dancers
from left to right as they pass small intimate gestures, such as blown
and actual kisses, from one to the next. Each dancer contacts the next
in her or his own way showing individuality, but the touch in each case
is a shared gesture of intimacy and affection. The appearance of the
dancers, who they touch, how they make contact and where they are,
carry a whole gamut of connotations, associations and ambiguities sug-
gesting different possible readings. These are inherent in the various
relations of the dancers’ bodies and the kinds of bodies they are, to the
space around, and importantly, between them.
The phrase begins with a young white woman raising her palm
to touch her chin and blowing air into the face of an older white
woman to her left across her fingertips which touch the second woman’s
chin. She reels back on impact smiling with pleasure while continuing
to look at the younger woman. She then slowly turns to look at a
young dark man to her left and blows air in his ear. His head jerks on
receipt of the ‘gift’ and he puts his finger in his other ear as though
clearing it to let the air pass through. He then turns to face camera,
puckers his lips ready for a kiss and after rolling his eyes to right and
left, he places a kiss on the lips of a blond young man to his left, also
with puckered lips. Turning to face camera, the blond man licks his lips
with pleasure, looks to his left slowly, and touches foreheads with a
young white woman next to him, they both look down into her cupped
hands into which he blows. She sniffs the air and lifts up her head,
inhaling, with her eyes closed momentarily, as if to savour the experi-
ence. She then lowers her head, and as the head and shoulders of an
older white man are laid on her lap, she blows into his open mouth.
 Introduction 3

Closing his mouth, he raises his head, helped and supported by her
hand until he is facing the young white woman to his left who was first
seen at the beginning of the line. He rubs noses with her three times
turning her face to camera as he does so, and another series of intimate
gestures begins.
The spaces between and around the dancers set up particular
resonances. Throughout the sequence the performers come very
close to each other, often touching and maintaining eye contact, sug-
gesting intimacy and affection, which is enhanced by the slow, soft
accompanying music and camera close-ups. The head and shoulder
shots focus attention on the kinds of people that are touching;
their faces foreground marks of identity such as age, gender and ‘race’.
Intimate gestures such as kisses and nose rubbing normally occur
between youngish people of different genders and the same ‘race’.
This is not the case here, contact is made between young and old,
people of different ‘racial’ origins, and not only between male and
female, but also between females and males, possibly suggesting differ-
ent sexualities. The norm is challenged; other possibilities of who is
allowed to kiss or intimately touch who, of what is ‘acceptable’, are pre-
sented. Later it becomes apparent that three of the six performers are
in wheelchairs. In these opening moments of Outside/In the space
around the dancers, which is limited by the closeness of the camera
focusing on heads and shoulders, foregrounds certain aspects of
identity; age, gender and ‘race’, while temporarily hiding another; the
dancers’ abilities.
The borders and limits of bodies and space come into contact in a
very graphic way. Mouths, ears and noses which feature, are all bodily
orifices, thus directing attention in an immediate way to the actual
boundaries of the body, and the extent to which they are fluid and can
be blurred and merged. The merging of bodies and space is emphasized
in the choreography by the passing on from one dancer to the next of
a ‘piece of space’ in the form of air which disappears into bodies through
mouths and ears, for example. Mouths, lips, tongues, ears and noses are
both inside and outside the body as is skin. Seeing edges of bodies and
space as both inside and outside in this way allows for ambiguities and
ambivalence; opening up rather than closing down possible readings.
Playing with boundaries and border zones in this way is both actually
transgressive and metaphorically so because of the different bodies
involved and the intimacies exchanged. At these limits and extremes of
bodies and space, at the edges and in the border zones, meanings, which
contribute to ideas about subjectivity, are continually being negotiated.
4 Introduction

This is why body/space relations are ripe for further investigation,

because here there is potential for change and innovation and for
rethinking subjectivity.
This analysis of the beginning of Outside/In has focused on actual
bodies and the actual space between and around them, but it has
also drawn on metaphorical ideas, associated with the fluidity of
bodily and spatial borders and boundaries, which have implications
for subjectivity, that can be explored further. In this book explora-
tions of body/space relations veer between the actual and the
metaphorical throughout, since they mutually inform each other. For
example, in the first part of the book actual body/space relations are
explored when dances are filmed in non-theatrical performance sites,
such as beaches. In these spaces choreographic plays with spatial
boundaries such as shorelines are examined to throw light on some
of the ways in which metaphors such as borders and ‘in-between’
spaces work. The connotations that these different spaces suggest, and
the resonances they have with these metaphors and ideas, can
inform about how such spaces are constructed to have particular as-
sociations, how performers in them are also constructed, and how each
contributes to the construction of the other. This is why most of the
dances analyzed in this book are films or videos rather than live
theatre performances, providing scope for a wide range of different
spatial and environmental locations.
Space then, like subjectivity, is a construct, a human or social con-
struct, and so it cannot be explored without reference to human sub-
jects. Possibly the most immediate relationship of subjects to space is
through their bodies since ‘it is by means of the body that space is per-
ceived, lived – and produced’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 162). Constructions and
conceptions of space produced in this way are inextricably bound up
with conceptions of time such that ‘it is not possible to disregard the
fatal intersection of time with space’ (Foucault, 1986: 22). Space as a
product has a history (Lefebvre, 1991) which is forever changing
through time. This is important when the roles of space and body/space
relations in constructions of subjectivity in dance are examined. As was
evident in the analysis of the opening moments of Outside/In, space and
time are central to these processes of construction for the ‘fundamen-
tal structuring categories [of space and time] have major consequences
for . . . meaning and representation, subjectivity and agency, culture and
society, identity and power’ (Grossberg, 1996: 171). This is possibly also
why ideas about space are currently prevalent in various strands of
cultural theory.
 Introduction 5

Currency of ideas about space

The French poststructuralist, Michel Foucault’s claim that ‘the present

epoch will perhaps above all be the epoch of space’ (1986: 22) is at least
partly borne out by the extent to which ideas and debates about space
have surfaced in a range of disciplines. In relatively recent poststructuralist
and postmodern theory there has been an almost obsessive interest in
ideas and theories about space, the ways in which space is experienced
and its characteristics as a social construct (for example, De Certeau, 1988;
Foucault, 1986; Grosz, 1994b, 1995; Lefebvre, 1991). This interest has
extended to several areas of cultural studies, including not surprisingly
perhaps to geography. Important insights have been contributed by fem-
inist geographers about the ways in which space is gendered, some of
which are explored here in Chapter 2 (Massey, 1993, 1994; Rose, 1993
a,b). There has been a burgeoning of work employing spatial metaphors
such as ‘mapping’ and ‘cartography’ as structural and cognitive tools par-
ticularly in the early days of postmodern theory (for example, Huyssen,
1984; Jameson, 1988, 1991).
In a broader sense, these spatial metaphors, such as travel, maps,
mapping and cartography, have appeared in the titles of cultural theory
articles, books and anthologies with considerable frequency (for
example, Bell and Valentine, 1995; Bird et al., 1993; Clifford, 1992; Devi,
1995; Diprose and Ferrell, 1991; Jarvis, 1998; Probyn, 1990; Zizek, 1994).
The feminist cultural theorist Janet Wolff (1993), exploring the use of
such metaphors, has indicated that they are gendered and in Chapter
2 of this book I apply her ideas to dance. However, despite the preva-
lence of interest in these debates about space in other artistic fields, such
as visual art (Burgin, 1996; Florence, 1998; Lippard, 1997; Pollock,
1996), film (Burch, 1968; Deleuze, 1992; Jarvis, 1998; Mulvey, 1989),
architecture (Colomina, 1992; Norberg-Schulz, 1971, 1980) and theatre
(Aronson, 1981; Carlson, 1989; Chaudhuri, 1995; Read, 1993), where
issues of the constructed nature of spaces and their effects have been
investigated, the ideas have hardly been explored at all in dance theory
– a few mentions in Thomas (1997) are the rare exceptions. Given the
centrality of the body to dance, and the fact that the debates on and
around space have extended to embrace relations between space and
the body (for example, Pile, 1996, see also anthologies edited by Ainley,
1998; Duncan, 1996; Nast and Pile, 1998), dance should have much to
contribute to this increasingly extensive area of current debate and
research. In a very fundamental and immediate way dance presents rep-
resentations of bodies in spaces, their relations to the spaces and to
6 Introduction

other bodies, and, as has been indicated, in this sense it is a most per-
tinent arena for exploring questions of subjectivity.

Questions of subjectivity

Notions of subjectivity are complex. What it means to be a subject

entails being an ‘I’ a ‘you’ a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. In other words subjects are
constructed and positioned by and through language and discourse.
Bodies or humans are subjected; they attain subject positions, or become
subjects, in this way. Traditional Western notions of subjectivity posi-
tion or fix the subject in time and space. Consequently different ways
of conceptualizing time and space affect the ways subjectivity is under-
stood. In the discourse of dance, when the limits of bodies, where they
meet and interact with the surrounding space and with other bodies,
are the focus, attention is drawn to the bodies’ similarities and differ-
ences. Subjects are constituted as the same as others or different from
others, through discourses such as dance. The similarities and differ-
ences of dancing bodies point to the kinds of subjects performing. They
are seen as gendered, ‘racialized’, sexualized and in terms of their ability.
Various historical, political, social, cultural, sexual and ‘racial’ discourses
such as dance construct subjects to be seen in these ways. Yet despite
these differences, subjects traditionally are seen as the same; as univer-
sally human and as unified. This is because in much Western philoso-
phy subjection erases difference to maintain the illusion of sameness.
Within the context of certain strands of postmodern theory the differ-
ences in subjects are recognized, so that subjects are seen as fragmented
or split. This allows for subjects to be both the same and different from
one another, to be both gendered and ‘racialized’, to be both agents with
power to act on the one hand, and subjected to the rules and laws of
language on the other. It allows for the occupation of more than one
subject position. Seeing subjectivity as constructed in these ways impor-
tantly means it is open to change, it is in process, fluid and mobile rather
than fixed.
This openness means that a representational practice like dance can
call into question traditional notions of subjectivity as unified and fixed.
This book, through a focus on space in dance, explores various ways in
which dance can challenge, trouble and question these fixed percep-
tions of subjectivity. The questions it addresses include: how does the
space in which the dance occurs affect perceptions of subjectivity? Dif-
ferent spaces for dance such as cities, and the buildings that constitute
them, and wide open outdoor spaces, such as landscapes and beaches,
 Introduction 7

hold connotations and associations. They are not empty. Like bodies,
they can be gendered, ‘racialized’ and sexualized. What happens when
dance is set in such places? What effect does this have on the choreog-
raphy?; on the spaces?; on ideas concerning subjectivity? How does the
space between dancers, and between dancers and spectators, affect con-
structions of subjectivity? How can investigations of body/space rela-
tions in dance contribute to rethinking notions of subjectivity, to
opening up possibilities for previously excluded subjectivities?
Subjectivities have been excluded in the past because differences have
not been recognized. Constituents of difference that make up subjec-
tivity and identity, specifically gender, ‘race’, sexuality and ability, and
how they are represented in postmodern dance, are a focus of my explo-
ration of body/space relationships. My interest in these constituents of
identity stems from a longstanding engagement with feminist theories,
and more recently, with postcolonial and queer theories, all of which
have emphasized the power differentials inherent in language and
discourse which value one idea or concept over another resulting in
discrimination and oppression. In each chapter selected examples of
postmodern dance are read in the light of some of these theories in
order to explore relationships between space and bodies in dance in
ways that can aid an understanding of how identities and subjectivity
are negotiated, constructed and resisted. In the process the power dif-
ferentials at work are exposed, and ways of reading ‘against the grain’
in order to eliminate any potential for discriminatory or oppressive
practices are suggested.

Reading dances

This book provides frameworks for exploring space and subjectivity in a

range of selected examples of postmodern dance. Readings appro-priate
to the choreography are posited but these are not intended
as definitive. They do not exclude other readings, on the contrary,
my explorations of the dances, read through particular theories, are
intended to open up the dances for further readings. These explorations
draw on a selective reading of pertinent feminist, postcolonial and queer
theorists. They, in turn, draw on relevant phenomenological, philo-
sophical, post-structuralist and postmodern theory. Post-structuralist
and postmodern theories by unhinging notions of subjectivity and
agency have been criticized for undermining the grounds of political
action. I disagree with these criticisms. I am arguing throughout for
political positions. I hope the book demonstrates that certain
8 Introduction

post-structural theories appropriately explored alongside radical post-

modern choreography can demonstrate through their application the
political potential of both the dance and of the theories in practice. In
these readings I am not looking at space purely formally but rather exam-
ining the ideological, philosophical and political parameters of space. In
other words I am concerned with spatial concepts such as perspective
and distance and how these affect meanings in dance. In this sense I
explore what and how space means in dance, how it is possible to think
space differently, and what this means for dance and for subjectivity.
The key starting point is my interest in certain postmodern dances
that raise questions and issues, concerning subjectivity and embodi-
ment, which demand to be looked at and explored using a range of
critical, and particularly spatial, theories. In the rest of this chapter I
introduce the principal theoretical ideas that are explored in this book
using incidents in Pina Bausch’s film Lament of the Empress (1989)
(Lament from now on) as empirical examples to illustrate them. Bausch
is one of the most important postmodern choreographers of the
last three decades of the twentieth century whose work, which is
both arresting and contentious, has been performed and debated
throughout Europe, North America and beyond. She confronts issues of
subjectivity, identity and embodiment head on. The impact of her
choreographic imagery is enhanced in many of her dances by the par-
ticular kinds of resonant spaces she creates on stage. In Lament
Bausch exploits the increased scope the film medium gives her to
explore this aspect of her work. Set in interior and exterior spaces in
and around the German town of Wuppertal, where her dance company
is based, Lament is made up of a series of seemingly unconnected close-
ups and long shots of individuals, performing a mixture of pedestrian
and dance vocabulary in various bizarre costumes from swimsuits to
ball gowns, occasionally in states of disarray. Performers are often
seen struggling with the elements – snow, mud, wind, water. Some-
times they appear distressed or lost, crying out or shouting to attract
attention, wandering aimlessly through woods, down roads or over hill-
sides. Surreal radical juxtapositions include a woman sitting in an arm-
chair smoking at a busy traffic intersection, and a telephone mouthpiece
held in a lavatory bowl while it is being flushed. Scenes shot in public
spaces include passers by and onlookers. Many different urban, rural,
indoor and outdoor locations are used as well as a range of indetermi-
nate spaces between.
The various post-structuralist theories I explore when reading the
dances may seem fragmented. However they are all concerned with the
 Introduction 9

ways in which subjectivity is constructed in and by discourse, and with

critiquing the premises of Western philosophy which revolve around
the concept of an ideal, rational, unified, subject, which, in turn, relies
on dualistic thinking that enforces seeing things in terms of binary
oppositions. These premises result in constructions of subjectivity in
choreography and performance, where the spectator is positioned con-
ventionally as subject and the performer as object in particular rela-
tionships to space, time and discourse. Some of the implications of
binary oppositions for constructions of subjectivity are explored imme-
diately below under the heading, ‘Bounded Bodies’. Following this, two
interrelated ways of conceiving things differently are introduced which
are explored throughout the book to problematize binaries – ‘in-
between spaces’ and ‘inside/outside interfaces’.

Bounded bodies

Since the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), the subject

has been thought of as situated in and positioning her/himself in space
and time. As the American feminist theorist Susan Bordo observes,
Descartes conceptualized the body ‘as the site of epistemological limi-
tation, as that which fixes the knower in time and space and therefore
situates and relativizes perception and thought’ (1995: 227). It is within
this context of body/space relations that subjectivity and subjects’ rela-
tions to the world are understood. The rational unitary subject, inher-
ited from Descartes, is reduced to finite co-ordinates in time and space,
where time and space are seen as unproblematic, quantifiable and
measurable in a scientific and mathematical way. By bracketing off other
ways of experiencing time/space, the subject is confined to a private
time/space whose isolation from the private times/spaces of others
ensures the disinterestedness and distance of individual judgement. The
ways in which the subject is constructed as distanced from the world,
the separation of subject from object and the forces or technologies of
power at work particularly in relation to the body in this construction
process are theorized by Foucault, whose ideas inform the analysis in
Chapter 7.
One of the aims of this book is to show how postmodern dance can
challenge these ideas of subject/object separation. For example, there
are moments in Bausch’s Lament of the Empress when ordinary people
are seen watching the action. There is a scene when a woman looks out
from her apartment window, later a net curtain is drawn obscuring
another onlooker from view. This challenges the conventional
10 Introduction

positioning of the spectator as subject and the performer as object,

because the woman looking through her window – an ‘innocent
bystander’ – becomes the object of attention when filmed. The conven-
tional subject/object separation and fixity is disrupted. The normal rela-
tion of subject/object paralleling spectator/performer is blurred, as is the
relationship between private and public space. For a moment in the film
the private space of the woman’s apartment becomes public as it is
filmed, but then the drawing of the net curtain reminds the spectator
that this is a private space where the camera would not normally
intrude.
This subject/object separation is part of a whole series of associated
dualisms or binaries such as self/other, mind/body, outside/inside,
male/female which are hierarchized. The first term in the pair is valued
and privileged over the second which is seen as the first’s ‘suppressed,
subordinated, negative counterpart’ (Grosz, 1994b: 3). This is illustrated
in the excerpt from Lament; the woman observing from her window,
who as an unseen spectator was in the privileged position of subject,
becomes more vulnerable as an object of the camera’s attention. Impor-
tantly these binaries are spatially constructed and as evident in the
representational practice of dance as in any other cultural practice. As
Australian feminist theorist Elizabeth Grosz suggests, it is not the pair
or the number two that is the problem: ‘rather it is the one which makes
it problematic’. She continues, ‘the one in order to be a one must draw
a barrier or boundary round itself’. This implicates it ‘in the establish-
ment of a binary – inside/outside, presence/absence’ (ibid: 211). This
kind of corporeal spatiality where bodies are seen and conceived as
bounded entities is central to understanding subjectivity from a Carte-
sian perspective. The bounded body is evident in much Western theatre
dance such as classical ballet, where bodily containment and control
are paramount. Throughout this book many of the postmodern dances
discussed play with and blur the boundaries of the body in different
ways disrupting, and challenging the fixity of identities seen in the
context of binaries.
The traditional relations of bodies in space, which depend on a sepa-
ration of subject and object and on a dualistic way of seeing the world,
crucially also infer at least two other interrelated concepts, which con-
struct space and bodies in particular ways, and which are investigated
here in dance. One is the notion of perspective, bound up with ideas
about visualization and the dominance of the visual in Western culture.
The other, linked to conceptions of perspective and its implication of
direction towards a vanishing point, void or lack, is desire, which is
 Introduction 11

traditionally generated, at least in part, because of the separation of

subject and object, self and other.

Perspective and vision

The notion of perspective, which emerged during the Renaissance but
developed from Ancient Greek Euclidean geometry, is bound up with
the construction of a particular kind of subjectivity or subject position.
It implies a single unifying viewpoint from which and to which all
points converge, evident in dance in the traditional performer/specta-
tor relationship. Discussing this in the context of the French psycho-
analyst Jacques Lacan’s influential theories about the construction of
subjectivity, Grosz argues:

for the subject to take up a position as a subject, it must be able to

be situated in the space occupied by its body. This anchoring of sub-
jectivity in its body is the condition of coherent identity, and more-
over, the condition under which the subject has a perspective on the
world, and becomes a source for vision, a point from which vision
emanates and to which light is focussed.
(1994b: 47)

As the French post-Marxist theorist Henri Lefebvre (1991) has revealed,

visualization and perspective are deeply pervasive ideological con-
structs, which often remain invisible, but in fact structure the ways in
which space, bodies and experience are perceived and understood in a
limiting and reductive manner.
One of the purposes of this book is to identify these constructs in
dance and expose the ways in which they shape experience. Early in
the film of Lament a woman dressed as a Hugh Heffner ‘bunny girl’ is
seen struggling and stumbling across a very muddy hillside, her costume
is in disarray, her breasts are half-exposed and in each hand she carries
a high-heeled shoe. It is a bizarre image. Much later in the film the
same bunny girl is seen, still in disarray but this time wearing her
shoes, running towards the camera from the distance down a very
long narrow country road. There is nothing else in the frame, simply
the long road with empty fields to either side, and the girl. The shot
constructs the traditional single viewpoint of perspective to which and
from which lines of vision converge, by having a single figure – the
bunny girl – on the long road. If the bunny girl had been a regular
Heffner girl with costume intact, light emanating from its satin surfaces,
filmed in her normal glamorous habitat of a night club, then the single
12 Introduction

viewpoint of perspective would be reducing and limiting her to an

objectified sex object for men’s pleasure. This is how perspective nor-
mally works. However, because in Bausch’s film she is muddy and in
disarray, the single reading of what or who she is, is disrupted; at the
same time, placing her on a long road which disappears into the dis-
tance, reminds viewers of the way in which perspective normally works
to focus vision.
The importance of the visual in theories which construct bodies
and space cannot be underestimated. ‘The vanishing-point and the
meeting of parallel lines “at infinity” were the determinants of a repre-
sentation, at once intellectual and visual, which promoted the primacy
of the gaze in a kind of “logic of visualization” ’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 41).
The gaze, arising out of the logic of visualization implied by perspec-
tive, constructs and is constructed by a rational unified subject who uses
it to control and objectify any ‘other’. Using Picasso as an example,
Lefebvre links this notion of looking or visualization to violence, a par-
ticular kind of masculine violence. He suggests: ‘Picasso’s cruelty
towards the body, particularly the female body . . . is dictated by the
dominant form of space, by the eye and by the phallus – in short, by
violence’ (1991: 302). The British feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey’s
(1975) application of the male gaze to film, although drawing more
from psychoanalytic theory, develops a similar concept which has been
much used and adapted in feminist work. The appearance of exhaus-
tion, disarray and distress of the bunny girl in Lament which renders
her vulnerable, both actually and metaphorically can be seen as the
result of violence – the cumulative effect of years of infliction of the
male gaze.
The ways in which these concepts have become powerfully and
deeply ideological are evident in Lefebvre’s claim concerning perspec-
tive that, ‘at all levels, from family dwellings to monumental edifices
. . . the elements of this space were disposed and composed in a manner
at once familiar . . . which even in the late twentieth century has not
lost its charm’ (1991: 47). Lefebvre continues stating that the ‘spatial
code’ of perspective ‘is not simply a means of reading or interpreting
the space: rather it is a means of living in that space, of understanding
it and of producing it’ (ibid: 47–8). Lefebvre claims these ideological
views are also reductive, limiting the imagination and implying closure,
and that this is only too evident in the practice of architecture (and I
would add dance) where, he argues, the space of the architect is ‘a visual
space, a space reduced to blueprints, to mere images – to that “world of
the image” which is the enemy of the imagination. These reductions
 Introduction 13

are accentuated and justified by the rule of linear perspective’ (1991:

361). These claims are explored alongside dance in the investigations of
body/space relations that follow. Specifically in Chapter 10, links
between architecture and dance in terms of body/space relations are
explored to expose the limitations of the visualization process, and to
explore ways of seeing differently and going beyond the reductive single
viewpoint of perspective.

Desire
Desire relates to perspective in the sense that it is also traditionally
dependent on a vanishing point for its comprehension. It convention-
ally relies on the separation of subject and object and the distance
between them, which also depend on a notion of space as empty or
lacking. In this sense ‘space . . . unleashes desire. It presents desire with
a “transparency” which encourages it to surge forth in an attempt to lay
claim to an apparently clear field’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 97). The constructed
nature of ‘transparency’, which Lefebvre puts in inverted commas here,
and the use of the word ‘apparently’ are important, for they suggest that
space is not empty or transparent, but for certain purposes it can appear
so. Lefebvre terms this the ‘illusion of transparency’ (ibid: 27–8) because
he claims that the socially constructed nature of space is in part con-
cealed by this illusion. Some of the ways in which space is seen as trans-
parent in this sense and linked to a masculine gaze which genders space
are explored in Chapter 2. The ways in which subject and object, self
and other, performers and audience and dancers and other dancers are
thought, conceived of and seen as separate and distanced, depend on
this view of space as empty or ‘transparent’. This in turn ‘unleashes
desire’ in a traditional sense which, linked to the ideas about perspec-
tive and the single masculine viewpoint cited above, can also be seen as
limiting and reductive.
These operations of desire are directly confronted and challenged
by the image of the muddy bunny girl in Lament. The ways in which
the mud on the bunny girl link her to the surrounding hillside
initially and then later in the film to the country road stretching
between muddy fields, displace her from her metaphorical pedestal
where she appears separate, in a clear field, as an object of desire for
the masculine gaze. The mud and the countryside space have inter-
rupted or got in the way of the distance necessary for desire to
operate in the traditional spatial sense described above. There are many
images that disrupt the conventional spatial workings of desire in this
way in Lament. Throughout most of the film women and men are seen
14 Introduction

in vulnerable and often messy circumstances which almost always

directly connect them to the particular environment in which they
are performing, getting in between them and the spectator’s gaze. The
gap required for desire to operate in a conventional manner is repeat-
edly traversed messily linking the performers graphically with their
surroundings. A scantily dressed woman dances in the midst of a bliz-
zard, a man is seen buried under a heap of snow, a woman, one arm
out of the sleeve of her dress, wanders as if lost through a wood of tall
trees. These images and many more in the film serve to disrupt and
challenge the conventional workings of desire, which depend on a
violent masculine gaze, that in turn relies on perspective and the logic
of visualization. As becomes evident in Chapter 2 however, simply pre-
senting a messy body that connects with its surrounding environment,
is not sufficient to disrupt the conventional workings of desire. The
choreography and, where relevant, the filming of the body also play an
important role.
Work in phenomenology and post-structuralism has suggested alter-
natives to these limited ways of viewing things. Instead of seeing things
in terms of separation, of opposites, and from one perspective only,
various theorists have explored the possibilities of focusing on the
spaces in between; on spaces of ambiguity and hybridity, and of becom-
ing, rather than being.

In-between spaces

Notions of in-between spaces are deployed on various levels through-

out this book because they can problematize, challenge and offer an
alternative to the dichotomies of binary oppositions. Bodies and sub-
jects can be considered to be ‘in-between’ because of a range of ambiva-
lences that are inherent in their construction. These ambivalences can
be particularly relevant for the problematization of binary oppositions.
Grosz proposes that:

these pairs [binaries] can be more readily problematized by regard-

ing the body as the threshold or borderline concept that hovers peri-
lously and undecidably at the pivotal point of binary pairs. The body
is neither – whilst also being both – the private or the public, self or
other, natural or cultural, psychical or social . . . This indeterminable
position enables it to be used as a particularly powerful strategic term
to upset the frameworks by which these binary pairs are considered.
(1994b: 23–4)
 Introduction 15

The bodies and the spaces in Lament are at times ambivalent and blurred
in this way. They are not private or public, but both. The ‘natural’ and
the ‘cultural’, the ‘psychical’ and the ‘social’ overlap and blur because
of the radical juxtapositions created. The bunny girl who stumbles
around on a muddy hillside is an ambivalent body in this sense, as is a
man who attempts assiduously to shave crouching in a wet gutter,
getting soaked by the spray of passing cars. These images transgress and
blur boundaries because the characters are out of their ‘normal’ place.
They create and play in spaces in between. The bodies act as ‘border-
line concepts’ in Grosz’s terms.
The potential of in-between bodies and in-between spaces, which
exist at borders and in frontier zones, has been examined by, among
others, postcolonial theorists, Homi Bhabha and Paul Gilroy. Bhabha,
whose theories are discussed in Chapter 6, explores the ways in which
concepts of the ‘in-between’ in terms of spaces and subjects can be
mobilized to rethink identity. He argues:

hybrid hyphenizations . . . emphasize the incommensurable elements

as the basis of cultural identities. What is at issue is the per-
formative nature of differential identities: the regulation and
negotiation of those spaces that are continually, contingently,
‘opening out’, remaking the boundaries, exposing the limits of any
claim to a singular or autonomous sign of difference – be it class,
gender or race . . . difference is neither One nor the Other, but some-
thing else besides – in-between.
(1994: 219)

Examples of cross-dressing in Lament – various different male charac-

ters wear evening dresses – could be seen as ‘hybrid hyphenizations’
which ‘emphasize . . . incommensurable elements as the basis of
cultural identities’. They remind viewers that gender identities are
performed, and by performing them otherwise, open out the spaces
in-between.
Paul Gilroy also recognizes the distinctively fluid characteristics of in-
between spaces in his writings about the African diasporic space that he
terms ‘the black Atlantic’. He argues:

the black Atlantic provides an invitation to move into the contested

spaces between the local and the global. . . . The concept of space itself
is transformed when it is seen less through outmoded notions of fixity
and place and more in terms of the ex-centric communicative
16 Introduction

circuitry that has enabled dispersed populations to converse, interact

and even synchronise.
(1996: 22)

In-between spaces in these terms, which are seen as animated by diverse

marginal voices that find points of local/global connection because of
shared experiences of displacement, are explored with reference to
Gilroy’s theories in Chapter 7. In Lament ‘contested spaces between the
local and the global’ are foregrounded by Bausch’s broad choice of music
from different cultures for the soundtrack. Some examples are Italian
folk music, North American Indian dance music, Hungarian Czardas,
Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit and Argentinian dance music. This range
of music from different cultural sources, together with the performances
of the dancers, constructs the spaces, in and around Wuppertal, where
the dancers are performing, differently. They have echoes of Gilroy’s ‘ex-
centric marginal spaces’, in-between spaces, on the borderlines. Post-
colonial theories such as these are discussed in Chapters 6 and 7
alongside postmodern dances that explore ‘racial’ aspects of identity.
Feminist theorists have also employed notions of the ‘in-between’.
The Italian-born Rosi Braidotti, currently based in the Netherlands,
whose theories of nomadic subjectivity are explored in Chapter 6,
stresses transmobility and the ability to move across and between
boundaries in an interconnected way. She writes of ‘in-between spaces
where new forms of political subjectivity can be explored’ (1994: 7). The
American Donna Haraway, whose theories inform Chapters 2 and 4,
also develops ideas of hybridization related to notions of the in-between
in her concepts of cyborgs as futuristic machine/organism fabrications
for a post-gender world. Emphases on permeable boundaries and affini-
ties and networks in her theories ally them with the transmobility and
interconnectedness of Braidotti’s nomadism. In Lament connections and
affinities between the disparate characters portrayed are suggested by
various devices such as the soundtrack, where one piece of music often
accompanies several contrasting adjacent scenes linking them across
and between boundaries.
Grosz is more concerned with the ways in which the in-between
can be applied to bodies, particularly female bodies, in an exploration
of their permeability. She suggests that ‘womanhood’ occupies a kind
of ‘in-between’ space. Discussing menstruation, she claims that it ‘marks
womanhood . . . as outside itself, outside its time . . . and place . . . and
thus a paradoxical entity, on the very border between infancy and adult-
hood, nature and culture, subject and object, rational being and irra-
tional animal’ (1994b: 205). The use of fluidity in general, and bodily
 Introduction 17

fluids in particular, as metaphors for the mobility and ambiguity of

in-between bodies and spaces, recurs in a range of different but related
theories, where they are employed to further disrupt binary thinking.
The French-based Bulgarian feminist Julia Kristeva argues that excessive
overflows of bodily fluids and waste, which she terms abject, can suggest
the merging of subject and object that results in an ambiguous subject
in process. In Lament a woman expresses milk from her breast and drinks
it. This subversive action plays with and blurs inside/outside bodily
interfaces and boundaries. The use of actual bodily substances in dance
can sometimes point to the same or similar meanings that are suggested
metaphorically in these theories. Examples of postmodern dances,
which feature bodily flows that have the potential for inhabiting the
in-between spaces and blurring inside/outside body boundaries, are
explored with reference to these theories, specifically in Chapter 8, but
also in Chapter 9.

Inside/outside interfaces

As was evident in the discussion of Outside/In, and the example of the

woman drinking her own breast milk in Lament, the boundaries or
borders of the body are fluid and permeable. Borders can be seen to
contain, surround and delimit movement in space, but they can also be
crossed and broken. The potential of bodies to overflow or go beyond
their conventional borders in dance, and to reveal ways in which body
boundaries can be blurred and exceeded both actually and metaphori-
cally, is a theme that recurs throughout the book.
Ideas about excessive overflowing bodies are explored in detail by the
Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin in his studies of medieval carni-
val (1984) and his development of the notion of ‘grotesque realism’,
which are the focus of Chapter 9. He claims, ‘the grotesque image dis-
plays not only the outward but also the inner features of the body:
blood, bowels, heart and other organs. The outward and inward features
are often merged into one’, in this sense, he continues, ‘grotesque
imagery constructs what we might call a double body’ (1984: 318). The
examples, already cited, of messy, wet, muddy, snow covered bodies,
often exceeding their costumes in Lament, along with the woman drink-
ing her breast milk, can be seen as grotesque and ‘double bodies’ in
Bakhtinian terms. They all play with and blur the inside/outside bodily
interfaces and boundaries.
Bhabha, whose ideas of postcolonial hybridity evoke spaces of ambi-
guity where boundaries between inside and outside are blurred, quotes
Bakhtin, who employs the term ‘hybrid’ to describe his ‘double body’.
18 Introduction

This is because it is ‘double-voiced’, ‘double-accented’ and ‘double-

languaged’ presenting ‘the collision between differing points of view
on the world’ (quoted in Bhabha, 1998: 33). Bhabha is quick to
stress that the doubleness of hybridity, because of the idea of collision
inherent in the concept, is very different from the doubleness of binary
thinking, characterized by separation and opposition. In Lament the
image of the muddy, exhausted bunny girl aligns bunny girls with real
bunnies who burrow in the earth and mud, thus ridiculing the original,
to which Bausch is referring. However, at the same time, the sheer
exhaustion, distress and disarray of the girl evokes the demoralizing,
dirty and sordid nature of the sex business that created her. This ‘double-
accented’ image is both powerful and grotesque, suggesting what
Bakhtin calls ‘potential for new world views’ (ibid: 33).
The close relations between the inner and outer limits of Bakhtin’s
grotesque body result in its ‘open unfinished nature, its interaction with
the world’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 281). Throughout Lament Bausch’s perform-
ers often display open, unfinished, messy bodies that closely ‘interact
with the world’. The radical juxtapositions inherent suggest ways of
viewing subjects otherwise, of thinking them differently, of opening
things up rather than closing them down. The unfinished nature of
these ‘grotesque’ bodies means that, they are, as Bakhtin argues, bodies
‘in the act of becoming’ (1984: 317). This notion of bodies seen as
‘becoming’ and always in the process of constructing and being con-
structed – never finished – is one that recurs throughout the book. It is
of particular use because it recognizes the non-fixity and instability of
subjectivity, such that the subject never reaches a stable state of being
which can be fixed in a binary opposition, it rather has the possibility
of fluctuating in the spaces in between.
The French post-structuralists Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari,
employ the notion of ‘becoming’ to characterize processes of continual
transformation. This idea can be explored in relation to not only the
space between bodies, but also to linkages and interfaces within and
between bodies. These notions are bound up with ideas of multiplicity
and productivity. Their theories of assemblages which focus on dynamic
processes of interconnectivity characterized by flows, intensities and
linkages, suggest further ways of theorizing inside/outside interfaces of
bodies and spaces which, following Grosz’s suggestions for refiguring
desire are explored in Chapter 5. The dynamism of these ideas which con-
tinually stress ongoing processes rather than fixed products makes them
particularly attractive for dance. The evocative imagery of Baroque
folds and foldings has inspired Deleuze to explore related notions of
 Introduction 19

infinite, wave-like energies. The theories that resulted are discussed

alongside dance in Chapter 8.
Many of these ideas concerned with inside/outside bodily interfaces
owe a debt to the French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty. His
notion of a ‘double sensation’ suggests ways of thinking beyond the
limitations of dualism and the bounded entities that result. Grosz sug-
gests it ‘creates a kind of interface of the inside and the outside’ (1994b:
36). She explains this, stating, ‘the information provided by the surface
of the skin is both endogenous and exogenous, active and passive, recep-
tive and expressive’. She continues, ‘double sensations are those in which
the subject utilizes one part of the body to touch another, thus exhibit-
ing the interchangeability of active and passive sensations, of those posi-
tions of subject and object, mind and body’ (ibid: 35–6). These notions
are similar to the Belgian born French-based feminist Luce Irigaray’s
image of the touching of two lips in her description of female sexuality.
However, in her focus on sexuality she departs fundamentally from
Merleau-Ponty who Irigaray criticizes for failing to take sexual difference
into account (Irigaray, 1993: 151–84). The importance of touching as a
way of filling the traditional gap associated with an unproductive notion
of desire, is explored with reference to Irigaray’s theories in Chapter 5.
Spatial interfaces do not exhibit the same physical features as bodily
interfaces, but their inside/outside boundaries can also be seen to touch
or merge. In Lament when a woman is seen sitting alone in a constantly
circling monorail car uttering a drunken monologue, the public space
of the monorail car is rendered private and intimate by the woman’s
performance. The private/public boundary of this space blurs in the per-
formance. The monorail car is an interior space, but in its circling it is
connected to the exterior spaces of Wuppertal, actually by the mono-
rail and virtually by the views of Wuppertal seen through its windows.
It also connects the woman to the city as it moves her through it. The
boundaries of the city spaces and of the monorail car space touch and
merge. As well as disrupting the logic of visualization derived from a
single perspective viewpoint, this scene also highlights the contingency
and the effect of spatial boundaries. Similar examples of blurred spatial
boundaries, often involving buildings and dancers, are explored in
Chapters 3, 6 and 10.
To summarize: when examining dance focusing on body/space rela-
tions, attention is drawn to the boundaries of bodies and space, where
the limits of representations of embodied subjectivity are forged, and
become apparent. This is why such a focus is particularly pertinent
when constructions of subjectivity are at issue. This focus on body/space
20 Introduction

relations prompts investigation of a set of interrelated ideas current in

contemporary critical theory, all concerned to critique the premises of
Western philosophy, which result in seeing things in terms of binary
oppositions. These interrelated ideas surface and resurface in different
forms in different chapters. Their application to the analyses of certain
postmodern dances which raise issues of subjectivity, enables explo-
rations of the construction of subjectivity such that power differentials
are exposed, and suggestions for reading ‘against the grain’ can be made.
These key interrelated ideas, current in critical theory, are the blurring
of bodily and spatial boundaries, the in-between spaces of hybridity and
ambiguity, a focus on inside/outside interfaces, privileging touch
and sensation over the visual, focusing on foldings of bodies and space,
and on bodily and spatial excesses. When dance is examined using
such ideas, the mutual construction of bodies and spaces is at the centre
of the investigation. This notion, inherent in Lefebvre’s theories, is
developed by Grosz from ideas concerning bodily inscription derived
from Foucault. This focus on the physical and metaphorical construc-
tion of bodies and spaces, and their interactions, directs attention to the
subtleties and nuances of meaning inherent in those postmodern
dances that address, implicitly and explicitly, issues of embodied sub-
jectivity. Consequently, ways of rethinking and challenging traditional
notions of subjectivity to make room for subject positions that are
currently excluded become possible.
The book is a collection of close readings of postmodern dances. The
dances, because of their intricacies and complexities, have directed me
to certain post-structuralist theories to aid my understanding. Engaging
with the dances in this way has illuminated aspects of the theories.
Dance with its focus on the body asks particular questions of theory, it
teases out particular emphases in theory often in refreshing new ways
and it can illustrate some of the more abstract ideas physically and
immediately in an embodied manner. For example, issues of gender,
which may be implicit in the theories, can become explicit when
examined in dance. In turn, the theories have directed my viewing of
the dances to a certain extent. They have brought insights to the chore-
ography revealing previously hidden meanings. Subversive nuances and
subtleties in the dances have been brought to light because of the
focuses of the theories applied. The book, therefore, demonstrates the
mutually beneficial reciprocity of dance and theory.
 Introduction 21

These then constitute the ideas and theories behind this book. Each is
discussed, explored and expanded in relation to specific postmodern
dances. The theories outlined are not discussed or explored in any
logical, linear or indeed chronological manner. Rather they ‘come and
go’ throughout the text in a fluid fashion deemed appropriate given
their non-linear character and notions of interconnectivity which they
embrace. To a certain extent, chapters and parts of the book stand
alone and there is no one recommended way of reading. The book
is loosely organized in three parts: ‘Constructions of space and
subjectivity’, ‘Dancing in the in-between spaces’, and ‘Inside/outside
bodies and spaces’, with a final chapter that shows how the concerns
of all three parts can overlap. In the first part, site specific dances are
examined focusing on the ways in which the actual spaces of their
location – the particular places in which they are set – are constructed,
and in turn contribute to constructions of subjectivity. In Part II there
is a shift from these specific places – these actual spaces – to virtual or
metaphorical spaces in the dances seen as in-between. These are created
as in-between by the choreography and, in some cases, the filming. They
are ambivalent and indefinite, neither one thing nor the other. Conse-
quently they suggest possibilities for rethinking and challenging con-
structions of subjectivity as fixed. In Part III the focus shifts to the
dancing bodies, specifically to the inside/outside spaces of their borders
and boundaries, and the ways in which these can trouble and subvert
traditional constructions of subjectivity and make room for previously
excluded subjectivities. The final chapter illustrates that these focuses
are not mutually exclusive, but overlapping; they interconnect in
various ways which are apparent throughout the book. The material for
some of these chapters started life as chapters of other books and con-
ference papers published elsewhere, but in bringing it together and
reworking it, key arguments that cohere around a set of interrelated
ideas about bodies, space and subjectivity are developed, which call into
question traditional notions of subjectivity and suggest possibilities for
rethinking it.
In the first part of the book entitled ‘Constructions of space and sub-
jectivity’ different ways in which spaces and dancing bodies can be seen
to construct each other and the implications for subjectivity are exam-
ined. The first chapter focuses on four site specific dance films by Euro-
pean and British choreographers and directors, which all focus on travel
of one form or another and are set in different spatial locations. It
explores the extent to which the gendering of the spaces is hidden or
revealed by the choreography, performance and filming, together with
22 Introduction

the effects of this on the construction of subjectivity and the power

differentials at work. Chapter 3, after focusing on some early American
postmodern work set in and around the city of New York which pro-
vides precedents, examines two dance films, by British and European
choreographers and directors, set in cities; the first, in a Brussels alley-
way, the second, in a flat in London. This chapter focuses on the ways
in which the dancing bodies and the city spaces mutually define each
other, and how identities of bodies and spaces are invested with power
of different kinds deriving from gender. A beach hut is the site of the
British choreographer, Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach (1998)
analyzed in Chapter 4. Associations of seaside resorts with leisure and
the erotic on the one hand, and the mythic, dark, environmental force
of the sea on the other, are explored in the choreography, to reveal the
complexity and fluidity of mutual constructions of space and subjec-
tivity. Focuses on coastal borders in the choreography are explored lit-
erally in the form of plays with shorelines, and metaphorically through
surreal and ironic choreographic elements which are shown to subver-
sively point to new possibilities for subjectivity.
In Part II entitled ‘Dancing in the in-between spaces’ the focus is less
to do with the spaces of particular locations, and more to do with actual
and virtual ‘in-between’ spaces. In Chapter 5 the ways in which desire,
specifically lesbian desire, fills, plays in and occupies the spaces between
dancers and between dancers and spectators, is the focus. The chapter
argues that lesbian desire is spatialized differently and this is demon-
strated through analysis of four postmodern dances that can be read as
lesbian, choreographed by British and European choreographers. It is
suggested that distances and differences between subject and object, and
between self and other are minimized, because these actual and
metaphorical boundaries in the dances are blurred and fluid. The next
chapter examines British-based Shobana Jeyasingh’s Duets with Automo-
biles (1993) to explore the in-between spaces of hybridity and nomadic
subjectivity negotiated in the piece by three classical Indian dancers
performing in empty London office buildings. The possibilities for re-
thinking questions of meaning, representation, identity and female sub-
jectivity in terms of blurred boundaries and interconnectedness are
revealed. The actual space in between the dancers and the architecture
is also explored for its potential to suggest new identities. The final
chapter in this section is concerned with the diasporic in-between
spaces that feature in works by the American postmodern choreogra-
pher, Meredith Monk, and the British rap artist, Jonzi D, where issues
of ‘racial’ identity, difference and displacement are addressed. The works
 Introduction 23

explore ways in which systems of power operate spatially to construct

subjects, but also how these can be resisted through dance to reveal the
possibilities for constructing fluid identities and subjectivities that cel-
ebrate difference.
Part III entitled ‘Inside/outside bodies and spaces’, focuses on the
borders and edges of bodies and spaces where inside and outside exist
in an ambivalent relationship of doubleness. The possibilities of this
liminal and libidinal space for rethinking embodied subjectivity are
examined. Chapter 8 explores these fleshy borders in three very differ-
ent works: Trisha Brown’s If you couldn’t see me (1994) from America, Lea
Anderson’s Joan (1994) and Yolande Snaith’s Blind Faith (1998) from
Britain. It examines the flesh, fluids and folds in the unfamiliar terri-
tory of a woman’s back (If you couldn’t see me), in the actual and
metaphorical inside/outside bodily forms inspired by imagery from
Renaissance and Baroque paintings and sculptures (Blind Faith), and in
the actual and spiritual spaces of the ‘internal choreography’ of the
mythical martyr, Joan of Arc (Joan). The next chapter explores the extent
to which the excessive and grotesque bodies of Liz Aggiss’ Grotesque
Dancer (1987 revived 1998) from Britain and Mark Morris’ Dogtown
(1983) from America, thrown up by the ‘troubled’ spaces of modern
and postmodern urbanity, can be subversive in a Bakhtinian sense. This
analysis is juxtaposed with that of Emilyn Claid’s Across Your Heart
(1997) for CandoCo Dance Company from Britain, where the polariz-
ing of classical and ‘grotesque’ bodies in Western culture is used to
explore the potential for thinking disability and sexuality otherwise.
By way of conclusion the final chapter examines the dance film, Rosas
Danst Rosas (1997) choreographed by the Belgian choreographer, Anne
Teresa De Keersmaeker, and Enemy in the Figure (1989) choreographed
by the American Director of Ballett Frankfurt, William Forsythe. It is
argued that the dances, which are both concerned with architectural
spaces, deconstruct space by disrupting the ‘logic of visualization’ and
point to ways of experiencing space differently which affect subjectiv-
ity. The chapter provides a focus for revisiting the bodily and spatial
themes and ideas explored in the book and reiterating the interrelations
between them and their potential for suggesting possibilities for rethink-
ing subjectivity.
Part I
Constructions of Space and
Subjectivity
2
Travel Metaphors in Dance –
Gendered Constructions of Travel,
Spaces and Subjects

Introduction

In the next three chapters, dances set in mainly outdoor spaces are
examined, focusing on the ways in which the physical spaces of their
location can be seen to be constructed in part by the dances, and in
turn can contribute to constructions of the dancing subjects. The role
gender plays in these constructions is a focus.
This chapter explores the treatment of travel, space and subjects in
four site specific dance films and videos which focus on travel of various
kinds. The ways in which travel is portrayed are bound up with the loca-
tions used, the particular places in which the dances are set, and how
these spaces are constructed. The interest in travel as subject matter for
dance parallels the use of travel metaphors in recent postmodern theory.
The crisis in subjectivity inherent in postmodernity has been described
in terms of metaphors associated with travel such as nomadism. The
complexities of the crisis evident in fragmented subjectivity and in
changing conceptions and experiences of space, it has been suggested,
require navigation or mapping. It has been argued that these travel
metaphors, like real travel, are gendered (Wolff, 1993). It has also been
argued that social constructions of space are gendered (Rose, 1993a,b).
The ways in which constructions of travel, of the spaces of travel and
of the subjects that travel in them, are gendered, are identified in the
dances as either hidden or revealed. I argue that revealing the ways in
which travel, space and subjects are gendered can point to new ways of
conceiving subjectivity.1
After briefly outlining some uses of travel metaphors in postmodern
discourse and showing how travel and space are gendered, examples of
the gendering of travel, spaces and subjects are identified in the dance

27
28 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

films. In conclusion suggestions are made for reappropriation of the

travel metaphors and new ways of conceiving subjectivity.

Metaphors of travel in postmodern discourse

New experiences of space and time are claimed to be characteristic of

the present postmodern era (Bird et al., 1993). The concept ‘time–space
compression’ based on the notion that distances in time and space are
shrinking is explored in the geographer David Harvey’s The Condition of
Postmodernity (1990). The world, through new technologies, is in many
senses a much smaller, more accessible place than it used to be. Travel-
ling of all kinds, of information as well as people, through time as well
as space, is escalating. Whereas the motorcar, the train and the aero-
plane could be seen to be signs of modernity, postmodernity is rather
characterized by a range of electronic, computerized, telecommunica-
tion, video and virtual reality developments.2
These developments have revealed tensions between ‘the global’ and
‘the local’, between ‘space’ and ‘place’. Attempts to express, understand
or resolve these tensions are evident in a nostalgic fascination with local
cultures and the vernacular or the ‘other’ in some postmodern culture.
‘Travel’ as a metaphor gives access to the ‘other’. Metaphors of travel
position the ‘other’ as either ‘natural’ or constructed and in doing so
they either hide or reveal key constituents of the construction, such as
gender.
While on the one hand the links between different cultures, times
and places stress integration or a kind of globalization, in another
sense recognition of the range of cultural groups and ‘others’ that
exist, emphasizes notions of fragmentation or localization, which are
also manifest in concepts of a ‘fragmented subject’. In order to address
the fragmentation of not only subjects and identities, but also of con-
cepts of ‘meaning’ and ‘truth’, postmodern discourse has employed
metaphors of travel. In a text, tellingly titled Cartographies –
poststructuralism and the mapping of bodies and spaces (Diprose and
Ferrell, 1991), it is suggested that ‘the philosopher of the future
will be a “wanderer”, a transient who abjures attachments to exist-
ing institutions and ideas . . . the desert in which he or she wanders
is . . . a mobile space characterized by the variable directions and the
multiple dimensions in which movement is possible’ (Patton, 1991:
53).
Culture can be rethought in terms of travel to accommodate the shift-
ing ‘truths’, encounters, horizons and landscapes of postmodernity so
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 29

that culture as a ‘rooted body that grows lives and dies is questioned’
and replaced by ‘constructed and disputed historicities, sites of displace-
ment, interference, and interaction’ (Clifford, 1992: 101). Recognition
that the terrain is varied and complex results in an extension of these
travel metaphors to include the notion of worldviews becoming ‘maps’,
‘topographies’ or grids with ‘coordinates’ as reference points. The notion
of ‘cognitive mapping’ as a postmodern way of ‘seeing the world’ has
been championed by the American Marxist critic, Frederic Jameson
(1988) and the term ‘conceptual map’ (Connor, 1989) has also been
used. As indicated in the introduction to this volume, several post-
modern texts have emerged with ‘mapping’ in their titles. Given that
everything, from identities to ideas to cultures characterized as post-
modern, is essentially fluid, forever shifting and changing, on the move,
it is perhaps not surprising that travel metaphors of various kinds have
become current in postmodern discourse.

Travel and gender

The ways in which travel is gendered often remain hidden. Some of

the theorists who use travel metaphors, particularly Harvey (1990)
and Jameson (1991), almost entirely ignore gender in their analyses
(Massey, 1993, Morris, 1993). Arguing that travel metaphors in cultural
criticism are gendered, the feminist cultural theorist, Janet Wolff, claims
that ‘just as the practices and ideologies of actual travel operate to
exclude or pathologize women, so the use of that vocabulary as
metaphor necessarily produces androcentric tendencies in theory’
(1993: 224).
Having examined vocabularies of travel in postmodern theory, post-
colonial criticism and post-structuralism, Wolff looks at women and
travel and concludes that ‘histories of travel make it clear that
women have never had the same access to the road as men’ (1993: 229).
She quotes the feminist historian, Cynthia Enloe, who argues ‘being
feminine has been defined as sticking close to home. Masculinity
by contrast has been the passport for travel’ (ibid: 229). Wolff points
out that women do travel and have a place in travel, but often that
place is marginalized and degraded, as in tourism where women are
often hotel maids or active in sex tourism. Those women who have trav-
elled in the past have often been masculinized and seen as eccentric for
taking up a ‘male pursuit’. Wolff cites the hostile criticism of the film
Thelma and Louise (1991) as partly to do with the unacceptable notion
of women starring in a road movie, normally the domain of men.
30 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

‘Thelma’ and ‘Louise’ become masculinized as the film progresses as

they move from the ‘supposedly female space of the home to the sup-
posedly male space of the great outdoors’ and take to the road which
acts as a sign for ‘a certain mythicized freedom’ (Tasker, 1993: 136). It
is claimed that ‘ “Good travel” (heroic, educational, scientific, adven-
turous, ennobling) is something men (should) do. Women are impeded
from serious travel’ (Clifford, 1992: 105). The journalist, Dea Birkett,
reviewing books on women travellers in the last two centuries, com-
ments, ‘it is far . . . more demanding for a woman to wander now than
ever before’ (1990: 41).

Space, power and gender

Space as a concept associated with travel can also be seen to be gen-

dered. As a social construct space is not transparent and innocent, it is
imbued with power of different kinds. In this sense there is a politics of
space and of travel as movement through space. For example, the forced
migration of people in the face of lack of resources or employment and
the regulation associated with refugee camps and immigration, demon-
strate the powerlessness of some kinds of travel. The feminist geographer,
Doreen Massey employs the term ‘power-geometry’ to describe the dif-
ferential power associated with movement flows and travel. She com-
pares those who are doing the moving and communicating and
importantly are in control of these processes – the ‘jet-setters’ – and
those who, although moving a lot, are not in charge in the same way
– the refugees, migrant workers, third world peasants, and so on. As she
indicates, ‘mobility and control over mobility both reflect and reinforce
power’ (1993: 62). This power differential is based to a certain extent
on power structures and institutions that operate elsewhere, such as
patriarchy.
The feminist geographer, Gillian Rose, discussing the ways most geo-
graphers look at space employing what she terms ‘the geographer’s
gaze’, which is bound up with their claim to knowledge, argues
that it ‘rests on a notion of space as completely transparent, unmedi-
ated and therefore utterly knowable’ (1993a: 70). She cites the
French, post-Marxist theorist Henri Lefebvre who proposes that the
nature of space as a social product is concealed in part by the ‘illusion
of transparency’ which renders space ‘luminous’ and ‘intelligible’,
‘giving action free rein’ (Lefebvre, 1991: 27). It ‘goes hand in hand with
a view of space as innocent, as free of traps or secret places’ (ibid: 28).
In this sense space is not seen as socially produced but as unproblem-
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 31

atic and neutral and, therefore, knowable and understandable.

These ideas about space are bound up with the dominance of the visual
as a way of knowing in Western culture, with what Lefebvre terms
the ‘logic of visualization’. This notion and its associations with a
single masculine viewpoint are explained briefly in the Introduc-
tion and explored in some detail with reference to dance and architec-
ture in Chapter 10. This connection with the visual means that when
space is rendered transparent, as Lefebvre claims, ‘everything can be
taken in by a single glance from that mental eye which illuminates
whatever it contemplates’ (ibid: 28). As is pointed out in the Introduc-
tion the single masculine viewpoint associated with ideas about per-
spective is based on the premises of Cartesian dualism that separate out
‘body’ from ‘mind’ and ‘self’ from ‘world’ and construct a notion of the
subject as rational, unified and distanced from the world (see also
Chapter 8).
These same premises underlie Lefebvre’s concept of transparency
and Rose’s of the geographer’s gaze. She argues ‘the claim to see all and
therefore know all depends on assuming a vantage point far removed
from the embodied world’, and ‘this transcendent, distanced gaze
reinforces the dominant Western masculine subjectivity in all its fear
of embodied attachment and all its universal pretensions’ (1993a: 70–1).
Consequently the illusion of ‘transparent space’ means that, as Rose
suggests, it can be known ‘only through a certain masculinity’ and
that ‘like the masculine subjectivity on which it relies, transparent
space hides what it depends on for its meaning: an other’ (ibid: 71),
which Rose sees as ‘place’. She suggests ‘in this dualistic structure of
meaning, masculine knowledge of lucid transparent space is made sense
of only in contrast to a notion of “place” as an unknowable’ (ibid). In
other words ‘space’ and ‘place’ constitute a dualism that can be aligned
with others such as ‘mind’/‘body’, ‘self’/‘other’ and ‘male’/‘female’.
Characteristics of this ‘transparent’ space according to one geographer
Rose cites, Gould, are its ‘infinitude’, its ‘unboundedness’ and the
freedom it provides ‘to run, to leap, to stretch and reach out without
bounds’ (ibid: 75). She comments ‘these claims of power over space
. . . suggest to me that [the] space is that of hegemonic masculinity.
Only white, heterosexual men usually enjoy such a feeling of spatial
freedom. Women know that spaces are not necessarily without con-
straint; sexual attacks warn them that their bodies are not meant to be
in public spaces’ (ibid: 75–6). The implications of seeing space from this
gendered perspective are explored in the readings of the dances that
follow.
32 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

Suggestions of travel in the dances

In postmodern dance, travel is not being used as a metaphor in the same

sense as it is in postmodern discourse. The dances examined here focus
on and create images of, or associated with, ‘real’ travel, but in the sense
that any dance or art work is re-presenting ideas about the ‘real world’,
I would argue that these representations of travel sometimes act as
metaphors.
Four dance films associated with travel of different kinds are exam-
ined: Carnets de Traversée, Quais Ouest (1989, video: 1990), translated as
‘Crossing Notebooks (notes or jottings), West Quays’, La Deroute (1990,
video: 1991), ‘the Route’, Land-Jäger (1990), literally translated as ‘Land
or Country Hunter’ and Cross-Channel, (1991).3 Their titles suggest travel
and they include a range of locations that connote travel such as quays,
ports, stations, railtracks, roads, a hotel, open landscapes and beaches.
The travel suggested can be seen to fall into three loose categories;
migration, exploration and tourism. Carnets and La Deroute are
described as ‘dance performances based on the theme of migration’ and
Land-Jäger as ‘an imaginary journey’ (Éditions à Voir, 1990, 1991). I
suggest this journey is about exploration, since it includes activities for
three men, such as striding through high undergrowth and sitting and
sleeping round a campfire. There is also no evidence of any ‘civilization’
in the landscape. Cross-Channel, which features cycling, camping,
staying in a hotel, swimming, sunbathing and partying on the beach,
concerns holidaymaking or tourism.
Carnets (24 mins), choreographed by Johanne Charlebois and
directed by Harold Vasselin, shows a group of six ‘migrants’ dressed in
European, turn-of-the-century peasant garb, three men in caps, braces,
shirtsleeves and trousers, and three women in mid-calf length skirts. The
costume together with the use of monochrome suggests a time in
the past – the publicity synopsis mentions, ‘a hypothetical journey to
the New World . . . the promised land’. Carnets’ title and the quayside
location where signs such as ‘Acces au Paquebot’ ‘Access to boat’ are in
French and English, indicate the migrants’ departure from a French
port. Carnets was in fact filmed in Le Havre. The locations include a
departure hall, customs hall, the quayside and harbour wall and water,
with shots of docks and cranes in the distance, and the metal ladders
and gangplanks of a ship, all suggesting a port. As the film opens, the
‘migrants’ are seen happily dancing the Charleston in the departure
hall, to an old sounding recording of Abe Lyman’s California Orchestra
playing ‘Shake that thing’, indicating their imminent, hopeful depar-
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 33

ture to the ‘promised land’ of the USA. Prior to the title credits, an enig-
matic female figure with feathered turban and trailing tail, a mythical,
half-woman, half-bird, surreal creature of flight, is seen ascending a ver-
tical metal runged ladder. She appears repeatedly throughout the film,
often in high places looking down on the quayside and the migrants,
who seem oblivious of her. The publicity synopsis states, ‘A woman
appears. . . . Is she real or just the reflection of a desire to know the other
side of the ocean?’ In between her appearances, the migrants are seen
standing in a line in the water up to their ankles facing out to sea, some
holding suitcases or boxes; standing, sitting and dancing on the harbour
wall; walking, running and dancing in the dock area among warehouses
and packing cases; and running and lifting each other up and down the
gangplanks of a boat. Pedestrian movements are mixed with more
expressive contemporary dance movements of the kind associated with
1980s ‘Euro-crash’.4 Carnets is accompanied by natural sounds – the
dancers’ feet on the harbour wall, ships’ sirens and seagulls – occasion-
ally interspersed with Jean-Jacques Palix’s music of accordion chords,
drum rolls and a persistent metallic sounding beat.
The publicity for La Deroute (26 mins), choreographed by Tedi Tafel
and directed by Rodrigue Jean who also both perform, states the film
is ‘about immigrants battling the elements in a cruel and unfamiliar
land’. Filmed in monochrome, it opens with a scene of about forty men,
women and children standing alone or in small groups spread out across
a windy beach. These people by their dress of current day coats, trousers
and skirts, look more like contemporary migrants than those in Carnets.
The film follows a central female character as she wanders along a shore-
line, across various tracts of open windswept land; from the beach to
mud flats, to grasslands, to sandbanks in water, through a dense wood
out into the open to further expanses of flat land and marshes. She is
occasionally followed or accompanied by a man and she encounters
other travellers along the way. As in Carnets the movement material
mixes pedestrian postures – walking and running – with more expres-
sive contemporary dance movements. Perhaps the similarity of style is
not surprising since the two pieces are featured on the same video,
Rodrigue Jean, the filmmaker of La Deroute, performs in Carnets,
Johanne Charlebois, the choreographer of Carnets, is credited as Assis-
tant Realisateur on La Deroute, and the two works share a dancer,
Veronique Favarel. The accompaniment for La Deroute is a mixture of
natural sounds such as the wind, peoples’ distant voices and people
walking through water and occasional atmospheric music by Monique
Jean when percussion or violins suggest suspense or solitude.
34 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

Land-Jäger (13 mins), choreographed and directed by Stefan Schnei-

der, also filmed in monochrome, features three men in dark suits and
light shirts, in various outdoor locations; a beach, the sea, a grassy field,
a wood, a hill and a maize field. They are seen buried in sand, in the
water, walking and running over the hill, crouching in the earth, strid-
ing through the maize field and seated and lying around a campfire.
The movement material mixes pedestrian activities with episodes of
more stylized dance movement. For example, one of the men performs
an athletic solo, looking as if he is being continually knocked to the
ground in a fight. He repeatedly bounces back in the style of a robotic
break dancer. At times the film uses fast freeze frame edits from one shot
to another animating the performers’ postures. Other surreal elements
include a transparent cube that is seen superimposed over a grassy field
at the outset, over the campfire, and on the beach at the end. The
accompaniment is a mix of natural sounds such as lapping water, and
African traditional xylophone and drumming music from Douala,
Ethiopia and the Nile.
Cross-Channel (25 mins), choreographed by Lea Anderson and
directed by Margaret Williams, follows two groups – one consisting of
seven women and the other of five men – from London across the
English Channel to Calais in France. The film repeatedly alternates
between showing the women and the men. The women travel by train
from London’s Victoria Station to Dover where they board a cross-
channel ferry for Calais. In France they are seen in a hotel, on a beach,
in a café/bar with the men, and with them again at a party in a beach
hut. The men travel by bike, they are seen cycling across London past
recognizable landmarks like Big Ben, through the English countryside
to the top of the white cliffs of Dover where they camp. They then
appear as workers on the cross-channel ferry, directing cars on and off
and cleaning windows and steps, and in Calais on the beach bathing,
in the café/bar with the women and at the final beach hut party. The
women are dressed smartly throughout, in stylish, white, fifties-style
summer dresses and matching hats with black trim and accessories for
the journey, in black and white fifties-style swimsuits and sunglasses for
the beach, accompanied by hats and feather boas in the café/bar, and
in colourful short cocktail dresses with feather trim for the end party.
The men are costumed more casually in cycling gear, matelot-shirts and
shorts when camping, overalls when working on the cross-channel
ferry, old fashioned black bathing costumes on the beach and suits for
the party. Each group is costumed identically or similarly making them
stand out as groups of performers, rather than blend in with other
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 35

people in the various locations. Unlike the other three pieces Cross-
Channel is filmed in colour and in a mixture of urban and rural, peopled
and empty spaces. The movement material is pedestrian throughout but
it is often repeated and patterned in the choreography so that it looks
performed. For example, the men’s circular cleaning of the boat
windows becomes a repeated rhythmic phrase, as does their dealing of
playing cards in a tent when camping. Cross-Channel is accompanied by
Steve Blake’s jazz music – a continuous beat on saxaphone, trombone,
bass and drums – over which natural sounds, such as the train and ferry
announcements, can be heard.

Gendering of travel, space and subjects in the dance films

Transparent space
The gendering of space and travel that is evident in some postmodern
discourse is also apparent in the dance films. Land-Jäger and La Deroute
feature wide open spaces of the kind that Rose suggests can be rendered
‘transparent’ by the geographer’s gaze. In both films figures are seen in
the distance, running across windswept, open expanses of grassy fields.
The filming and choreography construct the space as infinite and
unbounded and, following Rose, viewed from a masculine perspective.
There is also a sense in three of the films – Carnets, Land-Jäger and
La Deroute – that the space appears innocent and ‘transparent’
because it is not clearly identifiable as a specific place. A generalized,
almost abstract sense of space, rather than a specific place is being
evoked.
Massey suggests that what is needed to expose the ‘transparency’ at
work is ‘a progressive sense of place’, ‘an understanding of “its charac-
ter”, which can only be constructed by linking that place to places
beyond’ (1993: 68). Massey is suggesting dismantling the binary of
‘space’ and ‘place’. She continues, ‘it would be about the relationship
between place and space . . . a global sense of the local’ (ibid: 68). This
is what is presented in Cross-Channel. The characters in the dance are
clearly situated, they are identified with places beyond the channel cross-
ing and the French coast by markers on their journey, including, for
example, London’s Victoria Station and Dover’s white cliffs. Importantly
also the social construction of the space, and the role that gender plays
in the construction, are not concealed by the illusion of transparency.
Signs of gender self-consciously characterize the places passed through
on the journey. The group of women dressed stylishly in their fifties-
36 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

style white dresses, looking like fashion models from Vogue magazine,
are seen at Victoria Station, on a train, on a cross-channel ferry and in
a hotel. They are clearly gendered traditionally feminine. The construc-
tion of their femininity is underlined by repetition of costume, all wear
colour co-ordinated variations of the same fifties-style dresses, by inclu-
sion of specifically feminine postures and gestures, such as photo poses
with one hand behind the head like a model and adjusting their sun-
glasses affectatiously and by the filming. When on the train one of the
women’s faces is filmed in profile, in close-up, looking out of the
window, the camera lingers on her made-up face and neatly styled hair.
Associations with ideals of femininity featured in adverts are suggested.
These women feminize the spaces, in the way that models do on tourist
brochures, they make them seem attractive. Their femininity is not
hidden or masqueraded as ‘natural’, it is rather paraded as constructed.
By association, the places they inhabit and pass through and the mode
of travel they engage in are also gendered glamorously feminine.

Nostalgic space
The feminist art critic Sarah Kent claims that postmodern painting is ‘a
form of mourning for lost power, lost belief and lost confidence, in
which actual significance is replaced by overblown self-importance . . .
It is a masculine artform – a witness to the crumbling of certainty’ (1984:
61). In a similar sense the use of travel metaphors in postmodern dis-
course can also represent mourning, but for different kinds of lost
masculine, colonial power. Some theorists have proposed that post-
modernism is ‘a response by intellectuals to their own discomfiture,
their sense of dislodgement from previous authority’ (Massey, 1991: 33).
Practices of decentering and destabilizing that postmodernism champi-
ons, clearly pose threats to established, centered power bases which are
traditionally masculine. A mode of thinking which sets up a centre and
a periphery in opposition to one another, apart from being modernist,
is also imperialist and colonialist (Docherty, 1993). As the postmodern
theorist, Steven Connor, suggests, the use of ‘metaphorical–topograph-
ical terms of space and territory’ which include ‘centre and margin,
inside and outside, position and boundary . . . can conjure up an oddly
antique-seeming map of the world and global political relations, when
struggles for power and conquest could be represented in much more
reassuringly visible terms.’ He continues, ‘in their mimicking of this
. . . vanished territorialization of power relationships, these metaphors
also seem to embody a nostalgia for what has been lost with that sort
of map of the world’ (1989: 227).
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 37

Mapping, through its global visualization, positions and controls the

‘other’ which includes the feminine.5 This can be compared with the
traditional treatment of landscape in painting as ‘inanimate’ (Oulton
quoted in Lee, 1987: 23) derived from the male artist’s search for
‘beauty’ and perfection, and seen in terms of his ability to transform
and subjugate ‘nature’, where ‘nature’ is traditionally constructed as
feminine and ‘other’ (see also Chapter 4). This parallels the filming and
construction of the landscape, nature and performers in Land-Jäger and
La Deroute which render them ‘transparent’ or innocent. There is also
evidence of a ‘mourning for lost power’ of the sort Kent suggests, since
associations with nostalgic notions of territory as available for explo-
ration, possession and colonization, are apparent. An example is the
hunting theme of Land-Jäger, evident in its title and shots of hands
taking live fish out of water, together with other boy scout/Iron
John/new man activities of the male performers. They sit round a camp-
fire, sleep out under the stars, and stride purposefully through a field of
high maize, pushing it aside as they go. A sense of conquest of nature
is emphasized when the camera cuts through the maize, giving the audi-
ence parallel experiences of tramping through and over ‘nature’. A
yearning for lost colonialism is also suggested by the accompaniment
of African traditional music which creates an eerie, almost jungle-like
atmosphere. Several long shots of a triangular structure in water in Land-
Jäger could suggest rationality through association with classical geom-
etry. This in turn could be associated with the masculinity of the men
in those suits, which dissociate them from the femininity of the land-
scape. Nature’s association with the feminine is also evidenced in La
Deroute when the central female character dances a long solo in a large
marshland puddle. She gradually gets wetter and wetter, until she sinks
to her knees in the muddy water, repeatedly arching her back revealing
her neck and throat and expressively circling her head and torso in
violent whole body gestures. In the filming her circling arms and upper
body merge with sprays of muddy water. Her wetness blurs with that of
the puddle – woman and nature become one.

Spaces evocative of romantic travel

Travel can be seen as a response to the postmodern crisis of subjectiv-
ity when viewed as a metaphor for a search for ‘self’ or a quest. It has
been claimed that tourists ‘embody a quest for authenticity’ (Urry, 1990:
8). However, as Wolff points out, this metaphor is also gendered in that
‘men have . . . an exaggerated investment in a concept of a “self” ’ (1993:
231). The exploration of Land-Jäger has strong associations with a search
38 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

for ‘self’. There are repeated shots of one or two men walking away from
camera across a grass field towards a wood, although there is no appar-
ent destination, a sense of purpose is indicated by repetition. Absence
of a clear destination and proximity to nature often characterize roman-
tic quests. Romantic ballet narratives such as La Sylphide (1832) and
Giselle (1841) come to mind, where male heroes pursue female spirits
of nature in search of an ideal. The feathered female figure, who mys-
teriously haunts Carnets, is like a Romantic ballet spirit in her potential
for flight and symbolism of freedom. She is often seen ascending, above
the migrants, looking down over them, or into the distance. They do
not acknowledge her, she seems to be from another world. As the pub-
licity states, ‘Is she real or . . . the reflection of a desire to know the other
side of the ocean?’
This ‘desire to know the other side of the ocean’ is also evoked
in Carnets by dancing set on the quayside or harbour wall often
involving looking out to sea. There is a sense in which postmodern
tensions between the global and the local, or space and place, could
be said to be suggested by relations that are constructed between
the performers and the land and seascapes presented. Distance shots of
land or sea and sky show horizons which have a particular metaphori-
cal, also often romantic or mythic resonance, in terms of travel, espe-
cially when figures are placed looking towards them as they are in
Carnets and Cross-Channel. Such scenes conjure up images from
familiar Romantic paintings such as Caspar David Friedrich’s ‘The
Monk by the Sea’ (1808–10), where the size of the figure – small, almost
minute – in relation to the size of the land or seascape – vast – is pow-
erfully evocative of a certain kind of liminality. This is a romantic,
masculine view of the world where nature is seen as ‘other’, evoked
in Carnets by several shots of people looking out to sea, one of which
significantly ends the film. In Cross-Channel performers are also seen
looking out to sea, but they are constructed differently. Instead
of a single, lone figure gazing romantically towards the horizon, there
is a line of equally spaced figures gazing out to sea at sunset. Their per-
formance self-reflexively underlines the image’s construction. They act
out the cliché prevalent in romantic fiction and film. They are not
‘natural’.

The power of the gaze

Rose describes the geographer’s gaze as ‘penetrating’, associated with a
masculine viewpoint and with a ‘strong claim to knowledge’, based on
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 39

the illusion of the ‘transparency’ of space which appears to be unmedi-

ated and ‘utterly knowable’ (1993a: 70). Theories of the ‘look’ or the
‘gaze’ and the ways in which looking is gendered have been prevalent
in feminist scholarship from John Berger’s (1973) statement that ‘men
look’ whilst ‘women appear’ and connote ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’, to
Laura Mulvey’s (1975) theory of the male gaze at work in Hollywood
cinema, to Luce Irigaray’s statement that ‘investment in the look is not
privileged in women as in men. More than the other senses, the eye
objectifies and masters’ (1978: 50).
Associations of objectification, mastery, possession, exploitation and
voyeurism with the masculine gaze relate to those travellers who were
also explorers and conquerors in colonial times, as well as to tourists
today. The use of telephoto lenses in game parks comes to mind. In the
sense that tourism is ‘a form of entertainment dependent on exploita-
tion’ (Chaney, 1994: 79), a notion of ‘the tourist gaze’ has been sug-
gested (Urry, 1990) and the tourist has been described as a voyeur
(Chaney, 1994: 173). The geographer’s gendered gaze can be synthesized
with Mulvey’s masculine gaze since both objectify and rationalize from
a masculine perspective; the geographer’s gaze objectifies the land and
the masculine gaze objectifies woman.
The synthesis of these two gazes is demonstrated in the dance films
in the way that space is rendered ‘transparent’ by the filming and in the
way that the women in some of the pieces are also presented as ‘trans-
parent’, when clearly they are gendered by certain filmic and choreo-
graphic devices. As Mulvey claims both the camera and the other (male)
performers position the viewer to see the female performer(s) through
the masculine gaze.
The men in Carnets are seen actively moving through space; climb-
ing steps, walking along the quayside, jumping on the quay wall. The
women are often seen looking, out across the water and into the dis-
tance, nearly always stationary, often in close-up, their faces well-lit
with wind-blown hair. When the women dance it is often in a sensi-
tive, interior way. In La Deroute there are similar close-ups of women’s
faces and the long solo of the woman in water which arrests the narra-
tive in just the way Mulvey describes for mainstream female Hollywood
film stars. Unlike the characters in Lament of the Empress described in
Chapter 1, the filming of this woman and her performance construct
her as an object of the masculine gaze. She is filmed in close-up and
from overhead and her performance consists of expansive, expressive,
typically feminine, modern dance gestures. Both the woman and the
40 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

land, in the sense of mud and water, are constructed as ‘transparent’

and objectified by the gaze.
Cross-Channel also presents women as passive and to-be-looked-at –
sitting in the train, leaning over the side of the ferry, sunbathing on the
beach – and men as active – cycling, directing traffic onto the boat,
cleaning the ferry windows and swimming. The choreography in Cross-
Channel also emphasizes gender differences. The women are given
mainly whole body, fluid movements, as in a hotel corridor when they
emerge from doorways, spin across the hallway and disappear into the
rooms opposite. Whereas the choreography for the men consists mainly
of rigid movements of isolated body parts, such as when they swat flies
outside their tents on the clifftops, or when they gingerly dip their toes
in the sea, wavering as they paddle. The choreography, particularly
when combined with the costumes, results in the women looking suave,
sophisticated and in control, and the men looking clumsy, awkward and
silly. The women appear as competent ‘natural’ travellers, whereas the
men look uncomfortable in this role, reversing, and hence questioning,
the dominant viewpoint. Through various structural devices such as
editing and repetition, the passivity of the women and the activity of
the men in Cross-Channel are emphasized, foregrounded and played
with and thus exposed and critiqued through ridicule. Gender is
revealed as constructed rather than hidden by the illusion of trans-
parency as it is in Carnets and La Deroute.

Reappropriating travel metaphors for new subjectivities

Wolff concludes her article on travel metaphors by proposing the re-

appropriation (her emphasis) rather than the avoidance of such meta-
phors. A reappropriation is, in her words, ‘a good postmodern practice
which both exposes the implicit meanings in play, and produces the
possibility of subverting those meanings by thinking against the grain’
(1993: 236).
The American feminist Donna Haraway’s essay The Promises of Mon-
sters (1992) can be seen as an example of Wolff’s proposed reappropri-
ation of travel metaphors since she exposes and subverts the meanings
in play and thinks ‘against the grain’. Haraway states that the essay will
be a ‘mapping exercise and travelogue through mindscapes and land-
scapes of what may count as nature in certain local/global struggles’.
The purpose of the exercise is to write theory that will ‘produce not
effects of distance, but effects of connection, of embodiment and of
responsibility for an imagined elsewhere’ (1992: 295). One result of this
 Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects 41

is to see ‘nature’ as constructed. Haraway proposes ‘we must find

another relationship to nature besides reification and possession . . . in
this essay’s journey toward elsewhere, I have promised to trope nature
through a relentless ‘artifactualism’ (ibid: 296). By ‘artifactualism’ she
means that nature is constructed like an artifact. It is made as fiction
and fact.
A travel metaphor suggested in Haraway’s ‘journey to elsewhere’ is
‘networking’ resulting from ‘affinities’. Haraway says, ‘I prefer a network
ideological image, suggesting the profusion of spaces and identities and
the permeability of boundaries in the personal body and in the body
politic’ (1990: 212). This proposal of a network image addresses, for her,
the fluid, multi-layered and fragmentary nature of postmodern subjects.
She is proposing a connected notion of embodied subjectivity associ-
ated with the feminine. This is very different from the subjectivity con-
structed in some of the dance films where seeing space and travel as
‘innocent’ and ‘transparent’ hides the gendering at work. When space
is seen as distanced and unknown as in La Deroute, Carnets and Land-
Jäger, the subjectivity suggested is detached, it connotes the power and
exploitation of travel associated with exploration, colonialism and
tourism. From this masculine perspective of the geographer’s gaze, space
is objectified as other and seen as feminine. The viewpoint is distanced
and detached from the world with associations of power over it.
Haraway’s concept of a network ideological image in contrast privileges
seeing from more than one perspective over the single penetrative mas-
culine gaze. A ‘profusion of spaces and identities and the permeability
of boundaries’ are posited.
This view of space is evident in Cross-Channel where connections
and networking rather than distance are suggested by the rapid
editing cuts from the group of females to the group of males, and
by the many spatial conjunctions of the two groups, which increase
in proximity as the film progresses. The male cyclists ride under
a railway bridge over which the train, which presumably carries the
women, is crossing. The men work on the cross-channel ferry on
which the women travel. Finally, the two groups share the same beach
and café/bar, and attend the same party. Cross-Channel also suggests the
‘permeablility of boundaries in the personal body and the body politic’
that Haraway mentions. It does this by exposing the constructed
nature of gender showing that those personal body boundaries are not
fixed but permeable, and by revealing the power invested in such con-
structions, because they are associated with certain kinds of activity
or passivity.
42 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

Conclusion

In the light of these theories, it is evident that Carnets, La Deroute and

Land-Jäger, reinforce androcentric worldviews. They do this by present-
ing ‘transparent’ views of space and of women from a masculine per-
spective, rather than revealing situated pictures of places. They also
privilege a penetrative, masculine gaze which objectifies. The results
reinforce constructions of landscapes as inanimate and available for pos-
session, of nature as reified, passive and feminine, and of journeys and
travel as active masculine pursuits in search of an ideal self. By doing
this, these texts conceal the politics and power differentials of different
kinds of travel, space and subjects. The powerlessness of the migrants
of Carnets and La Deroute is eclipsed by the ‘beauty’ of the filming and
choreography. These constructions of travel and space perpetuate patri-
archal notions of subjectivity that is fixed and distanced from the world
and associated with power over it. In contrast Cross-Channel presents
clearly identifiable places rather than anonymous spaces, it situates
the performers in them, and, through self-reflexive filming and cho-
reography, shows ‘otherness’ and gender to be constructed rather than
‘natural’. By working against the grain in this way, Cross-Channel re-
appropriates the travel metaphors and subverts the more masculine
and androcentric readings of travel, space and subjects. In the light of
Haraway’s theories, the focuses on situated places over transparent
spaces can be seen to privilege notions of networks and affinities with
the spaces. These ideas suggest possibilities for new ways of thinking a
less distanced and more permeable, connected, embodied subjectivity
that I believe can sometimes be imagined in postmodern works like
Cross-Channel.
The next chapter focuses on the particular ways in which dancing
bodies and the spaces of their performance can mutually construct each
other, and in the process transform the spaces and subjects involved.
3
Transforming City Spaces
and Subjects

Introduction

During the nineties the city as a paradigm example of postmodern

construction became the focus of considerable attention (see for
example Clarke, 1997; Lefebvre, 1996; Pile, 1996; Watson and Gibson,
1995). The use of cities as settings for postmodern dance, in live site
specific performances and in dance films and videos, was prevalent in
the late eighties and early nineties.1 This chapter examines one Euro-
pean and one British postmodern dance video; Muurwerk (1987), cho-
reographed and performed by Roxanne Huilmand and directed by
Wolfgang Kolb; and Step in Time Girls (1988) choreographed by Yolande
Snaith and directed by Terry Braun. Both use the city as a setting for
female solos. Following the French post-Marxist theorist Henri Lefeb-
vre, who proposes, ‘each living body is space and has space: it produces
itself in space and it also produces that space’ (1991: 170), I examine
how the city spaces and the dancing bodies mutually construct each
other and the role gender plays. The city is a particular kind of con-
structed space and its construction is inextricably bound up with con-
structions of subjectivity. ‘To the extent that the inhabitant of the
(post)modern city is no longer a subject apart from his or her perfor-
mances, the border between self and city has become fluid’ (Patton in
Watson and Gibson, 1995: 117–18). In the analysis of Muurwerk and Step
in Time Girls particular attention is paid to the ways in which the
dancers’ interactions with the urban environments, with the fluid
borders between themselves and the city, contribute to the construction
of spaces and subjects.
Earlier instances of dances located in city spaces evident in avant-
garde performances of the sixties provide key precedents for this work.

43
44 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

The conceptual focuses of sixties artists on the avant garde use of site
specific performance spaces which stretched audience perception, on
a particular urban sensibility and on blurring boundaries, such as
inside/outside, private/public and art/everyday life, paved the way for
what was to follow. Examples of this work by American choreographers,
Lucinda Childs, Meredith Monk, Twyla Tharp and Trisha Brown provide
an historical context for the later works.

Sixties precedents

In New York in the sixties dances were often set in city spaces such as
streets, museums, lofts and parking lots. The significance of using such
spaces had been proposed by artists such as Allan Kaprow and Claes
Oldenburg when they began to stage ‘Happenings’. Kaprow, who
wanted to blur the boundaries between ‘art’ and ‘life’, wrote, ‘we must
become preoccupied with . . . the space and objects of our everyday life
. . . our bodies, clothes, rooms. . . . Forty-Second Street . . . happenings
and events, found in garbage cans, police files, hotel lobbies; seen in
store windows and on the streets’ (in Artnews in 1958 quoted in Crow,
1996: 33). Oldenburg used the Judson Memorial Church gallery space
in Washington Square, New York, which he and friends had established
in 1959, for his installation The Street in 1960. It consisted of ‘crudely
fashioned props and figures . . . intended to evoke the . . . life of the poor
neighbourhoods . . . where he . . . lived and worked’ (Crow, 1996: 34). In
The Street he staged a Happening entitled Snapshots from the City – 32
tableaux each appearing briefly before being blacked out. Oldenburg
stated he was coming to grips ‘with the landscape of the city, with the
dirt of the city, and the accidental possibilities of the city’ (ibid: 34). A
similar urban sensibility informed certain dance performances in sixties
New York, and infuses the recent fascination with the city evident in
the two dance videos examined later.
In 1964 Lucinda Childs, one of the dancers from the Judson Dance
Theater, named because of their performances in the eponymous
church, created Street Dance. She and another dancer performed in the
street four or five floors below the Cunningham dancer, Judith Dunn’s
studio, where a tape instructed the spectators to watch from the
window. Childs said, ‘The dance was entirely based on its found sur-
roundings . . . we were engaged in pointing out . . . details and/or irreg-
ularities in the façades of the buildings: lettering and labels, the . . .
displays in the store fronts. . . . While the spectators were not able to see
in . . . detail . . . what it was we were pointing to, they could hear the
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 45

information on a tape’ (in Livet, 1978: 61–3).2 Childs mentions the

dance blending ‘in with the other activity . . . in the street’ citing an
incident when a pedestrian asked her a question and she stopped what
she was doing to answer him. She continues, ‘I liked that, the fact that
the dance could fit into this self-contained setting where everybody,
including me, was going about their business’ (ibid). This engagement
with the urban environment blurred the boundaries between perfor-
mance and everyday life, coinciding with these artists’ conceptual inves-
tigations of the limits of dance and performance. They were examining
what it meant to dance and perform, where such performances might
take place and the basic elements of space and time in which perfor-
mances existed.
The spatial configuration of Street Dance stretched the audience’s
perception. This was an important consideration for Childs. She said,
‘the spectator was . . . called upon to envision, in an imagined sort
of way . . . information that . . . existed beyond the range of his . . .
perception’ (ibid: 63). Childs admits that this experiment with
perception proved important for her later work (in Kreemer, 1987: 97).
Viewing dancers from a distance through glass windows and walls
resurfaces in later postmodern dances filmed in cities, such as Lament
of the Empress (1989) cited in Chapter 1, Step in Time Girls examined
in this chapter, and Duets with Automobiles (1993) and Rosas Danst
Rosas (1997) examined in Chapters 6 and 10 respectively. When dancers
are framed and filmed through glass, exploiting the fluid borders
between self and city, a mutual construction of the dancing bodies and
the spaces which they inhabit can result. Plays with perception of
this kind affect the way in which performers are viewed as subjects or
objects and have an important bearing on constructions of subjectivity.
In this sense the avant-garde nature of works like Street Dance opened
up possibilities for a consideration of the more overtly political con-
cerns of feminists which surfaced in the seventies, and are key to the
gendered constructions of subjectivity examined in Step in Time Girls
and Muurwerk.
Another work where performers were seen through windows was
Meredith Monk’s Blueprint (1967), first performed in Woodstock, and
later in the Judson Gallery and Monk’s loft in New York. In the Wood-
stock performance spectators viewed live and filmed events through the
windows of a building from outside, before moving inside to see ef-
figies of the figures who had just performed, through the windows
outside. Banes comments, ‘Throughout, there was a confounding of
inside and outside’ (1980: 161). She sees this as the basis for many
46 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

metaphors in Monk’s work, extending the blurring of boundaries to ‘the

borders between private and public . . . the body and the universe
[and] the individual and community’ (ibid). As Harrison and Wood
comment, the site specific artworks of the sixties ‘generated a phe-
nomenologically informed focus upon the conditions of encounters
with artworks: . . . the embodied perception of physical objects and
events’ (1992: 799). Phenomenologically informed embodied percep-
tion is one of the bases for the Australian feminist critic Elizabeth
Grosz’s theories of mutual definition of bodies and spaces in general,
and of bodies and cities in particular, which I use in this chapter. Grosz
uses the term ‘interface’ to describe a ‘two-way linkage’ which she sug-
gests exists between bodies and cities (1995: 108). This can be seen to
be consonant with the blurring of boundaries between events and
audiences in the sixties performances, characterized as ‘embodied
perception’ by Harrison and Wood, and with the dissolveable divi-
sions Banes sees in Monk’s work. The importance of particular sites
seen from different perspectives together with the recognition of the
fluidity of borders, and the significance of the spaces in between, are
apparent in much of Monk’s later work, as the examination of her Ellis
Island (1981) in Chapter 7 illustrates. The blurring of actual public and
private spaces, evident in Monk’s performances in her own loft, is also
a feature of Step in Time Girls and other current site specific work (see
Chapter 5). The use in Blueprint of particular parts of buildings such as
windows and the roof or loft – in the Woodstock version a man stood
on the roof and in the Judson performance there was a man in the
church loft (McDonagh, 1990: 114) – while playing with the spectators’
perception, also focuses their attention on the frames and façades of the
urban environment. People can seem confined and constrained when
seen through window frames or against façades,3 highlighting features
of urban existence foregrounded by similar means in Step in Time Girls
and Muurwerk.
Specific sites for Monk are important, she feels ‘each piece should
grow partially out of the site in which it is performed’ (McDonagh,
1990: 117) (see also Chapter 7). This is apparent in her use of the
Wooster Parking Lot in Vessel (1971), where among many other things,
she lit up the portico of the church across the street. Commenting on
this, Monk said, ‘I’m working like a filmmaker’, ‘it’s like expanding the
environment until you’re aware of more and more. . . . When you think
you’ve got to the limits of the parking lot . . . your eye moves across the
street’ (in Cohen, 1992: 216). Monk, in common with other sixties New
York artists, was investigating the limits of performance by expanding
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 47

her audience’s perception. The parallels with filmmaking she recognizes,

where the artist can play with audiences’ viewpoints in a range of
ways, become commonplace in dance films of the eighties and nineties,
as the use of the camera in the two works analyzed in this chapter
demonstrates. The specificity of the Wooster parking lot is also im-
portant for Monk. She describes it in detail, ‘On one side . . . is the
Canal Lumber Company and on the other side . . . is a church,
St. Alphonsus . . . straight ahead of the audience is a candy factory,
an old building with a faded sign on it and a few straggly trees at
its base’ (ibid: 215). This description is reminiscent of Childs’ Street
Dance score. Both choreographers clearly had an eye for the details of
their city. Monk underlined the importance of this particular city space
when she said, ‘I was trying to find an outdoor space that had a
specific New York ambience . . . one level of Vessel has to do with
people opening up their eyes to New York’ (ibid: 215). This con-
cern with an urban sensibility is also evident in Monk’s construction of
the space – as well as lighting it, she installed among other things
furniture, eighty performers sitting round campfires and a motorcycle
cavalcade. She created a particular place using the parking lot’s
specific ambience. A similar kind of attention to the detail of city
spaces is evident in the work of the later postmodern choreographers
examined here.
Twyla Tharp’s Dancing in the Streets of London, and Paris, Continued in
Stockholm and Sometimes Madrid (1969) was first performed on two levels
and the connecting stairwell of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum in
Hartford, Connecticut, and later in both the Lincoln Center Perform-
ing Arts Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Tharp
said ‘I designed Dancing in the Streets to break down every conceivable
wall put up to separate life from art’ (1992: 122–5). There had been
‘activist interventions within museums and galleries’ in New York
throughout the sixties as these city spaces were seen as ‘outposts of
established power’ (Crow, 1996: 11). Tharp’s intention to blur the
boundaries between art and life was consonant with the philosophy
behind these actions. Her choreography consisted of ‘workaday tasks
such as switching clothing, or reading while dancing’ (Mazo, 1977: 286).
The use of everyday pedestrian movement, which was avant-garde at
the time, became a feature of much later postmodern work, such as Step
in Time Girls, and it can be seen as a source for movement in Muurwerk.
The specificities of the different museums as performance locales were
also clearly exploited, as Tharp indicates, ‘we opened by warming up
directly in front of the museum entrance so the audience had to walk
48 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

over and around us to get in . . . the dances occurred in . . . galleries, ele-

vator shafts, broom closets, hallways’ (Tharp, 1992: 125). In some ways
the performers invaded the museum space reclaiming it for their own
purposes. This action, probably inspired by earlier sixties occupations
of public art spaces, motivated by a disenchantment with these ‘out-
posts of established power’, is paralleled by the metaphorical reclama-
tion of potentially constraining and alienating city spaces by the
women performers in Step in Time Girls and Muurwerk. Tharp made
several pieces at this time that used different city spaces; from museums
in Stuttgart (One Two Three, 1967) and Amsterdam (Jam, 1967), to New
York’s Central Park for Medley (1969), and the roof of a school in Brook-
lyn for her dance film Stride (1965).
Trisha Brown famously used roof tops for her Roof Piece (1971).
This was one of a series of equipment pieces including Man Walking
Down the Side of the Building (1969) and Walking on the Wall (1971),
which involved dancers in harnesses doing exactly as the titles
describe. These pieces played with the audience’s sense of perspective
(see also Chapters 8 and 10) and inevitably, because of the tasks
set by Brown, the particular city spaces used became part of the cho-
reography. There is a sense in which these urban surfaces were trans-
formed by these performances into challenging edifices for testing
the limits of the body’s capabilities. Similar transformations of city
spaces occur in the later postmodern choreography analyzed in this
chapter. Roof Piece possibly also inspired part of Freefall (1988), a dance
video set in London choreographed by Gabi Agis, which has dancers
performing on London rooftops spaced out in just the way Brown’s
dancers were (see Briginshaw, 1997). In both pieces the audiences’
perceptions are stretched, boundaries between city space and per-
formers are blurred as the dancers in the distance merge with the city
skyline.
The avant-garde use of site specific city spaces by choreographers
and other artists in sixties New York stretched audiences’ percep-
tions and blurred boundaries introducing ideas of embodied percep-
tion. These ideas made way for an enlightened engagement with
mutual constructions of spaces and subjects which, drawing on the
achievements of seventies feminists, acknowledges the role that gender
plays. The ways in which city spaces and dancing bodies are trans-
formed by this mutual construction, which is recognized as gendered,
are examined in the analysis of Muurwerk and Step in Time Girls which
follows.
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 49

Muurwerk and Step in Time Girls

Muurwerk’s (1987–27 mins) title, translated, means ‘brickwork’ or liter-

ally ‘wall work’. There is certainly a sense in which Roxanne Huilmand,
the solo dancer, is ‘working’ with the walls of the alley in the old centre
of Brussels in which Muurwerk is set (see Plate 1). Dressed in a sleeveless,
low backed, short skirted dress and boots, Huilmand opens the piece by
walking down the alley away from camera, dragging the palm of her hand
along the walls. The only sound initially is that of her footsteps echoing
in the empty space. What initially appear to be everyday pedestrian
movements such as walking and leaning on a wall transform into more
obvious contemporary dance as Huilmand begins to rhythmically roll
and spin her body along the walls as well as running and kicking against
them. These movements are all incessantly repeated and after about 15
minutes they are accompanied by the minimalist violin music of Walter
Hus. This ‘Euro-crash’ style of dancing, is not surprising since Roxanne
Huilmand is a former member of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s company
Rosas (see Chapter 10) and De Keersmaeker was one of the choreog-
raphers who established Euro-crash (see Chapter 2, note 4). Wolfgang
Kolb, who directed Muurwerk, has also directed several films and videos
for Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Rosas.
In Step in Time Girls (1988–24 mins) three female dancers portraying
women from different periods – ‘contemporary’, ‘wartime’ and ‘Victo-
rian’ – are filmed for the most part on their own, inside and outside
the same block of low income London flats. Very occasionally they are
seen with a male partner, a small child or a baby, but never with each
other. While outside the flat, their movements are pedestrian,
walking, running and going up and down stairs or steps. When inside,
however, they rhythmically repeat and enlarge movements such as
rolling along walls and windowsills, rocking in chairs and opening
and closing drawers and cupboards. The ‘contemporary’ woman,
danced by Yolande Snaith, becomes quite athletic at times (see Plate 2),
running and jumping up on a table in an economically efficient
manner. She propels her upper body through a serving hatch, and
remaining contained, hangs down from it, and uses momentum to
swing along the wall below. Snaith is known for her gymnastic,
weighty, ‘release-based’ style of dancing, characteristic of British
‘new dance’, developed in the seventies and eighties, particularly at
Dartington College of Arts, where Snaith studied under the tutorship
of Americans Mary Fulkerson and Steve Paxton. A former member
50 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

of the Judson Dance Theater, Paxton is noted for his promotion

of the athletic duet form known as ‘contact improvization’. The
editing of the film continually shifts scene from inside to outside, just
as some of Monk’s and others’ performances did in the sixties, and from
one woman to another. The women are seen performing similar but not
identical movements in the same spaces.

Constructed spaces

Spaces, through their construction, are invested with power. The post-
modern city, like the postmodern subject, is fractured and fragmented,
it is falling apart and full of contradictions. It is utopian and dystopian,
attracting and alienating. It is constructed as labyrinthine, free-flowing
and uncontrollable, but also as containing and trapping. The effects of
this for some women can be negative; they can be isolated, excluded
and constrained in these mainly public spaces historically constructed
by men for men.
The two dance video texts discussed here provide examples of differ-
ent kinds of constructed city spaces invested with power. In Muurwerk
the deserted alley in the centre of old Brussels can be seen as alienating
and trapping, the sort of inner city space that women are warned about
and expected to avoid. This is the kind of city space that connotes male
freedom associated with the nineteenth-century notion of the flâneur.
In Step in Time Girls the rooms of the London flat and its environs can
be seen as unsympathetic urban spaces which isolate, contain and con-
strain the women that inhabit them. They appear to be a legacy from
the ‘culture of separate spheres’ that the feminist cultural theorist Janet
Wolff argues grew up in the nineteenth-century but still persists to a
certain extent today. In this culture male and female are closely aligned
with public and private spheres respectively giving rise to ‘the domes-
tic ideology of the home as haven and women as identified with this
private sphere’ (1988: 119).
In the dance video texts, the choreographers and filmmakers use dis-
courses which can either reveal or hide ways in which the bodies and
spaces are constructed and invested with power. I explore how these
texts reveal in a problematic way the possibilities for reclaiming ways
of inhabiting the city, which turn anonymous spaces into situated
places, by negotiating their negative and alienating characteristics for
women. In the process I suggest these choreographers and filmmakers
demonstrate possibilities for affirmation and empowerment through
defining new relationships with city spaces.
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 51

Mutual definition of bodies and cities

In each of these dance video texts the dancers’ bodies interact with the
city in different ways. These interactions, which involve the physical
contact of the dancers’ bodies and the fabric of the city, are explored
focusing on the mutual construction and definition of bodies and cities.
Elizabeth Grosz’s notion of the body as a surface of inscription, which
she derives from Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze, can inform an analy-
sis of these texts in the sense that the power invested in the city spaces
inscribes movement patterns on the women’s bodies in different ways.
Grosz is ‘concerned with the processes by which the subject is marked
. . . or constructed by the various regimes of institutional, discursive and
non-discursive power’ (1995: 33). These values and regimes of power,
determined by the ways in which the world is seen and conceived,
include strands of this conception and construction such as gender. In
this inscriptive process ‘the body’s boundaries and zones are constituted
. . . through linkages with other surfaces and planes’ (ibid: 34). In these
two dance videos the boundaries and zones of the performers’ bodies
are partly constituted through their linkages with the surfaces and
planes of the city. In this sense bodies and cities are ‘mutually defining’
(ibid: 108).
I am arguing that this process of mutual definition can inform read-
ings of these dances and that through it, the dancing bodies become
subjects and the spaces of the city settings become places. This is
because exceptionally in the choreography and filming of the dance
videos the women go beyond the confined urban spaces. Consequently
the mutual definition which occurs can affirm identities for the women
contrary to what’s expected of them in these city spaces.

Muurwerk
The choreography of Muurwerk consists largely of repetitive phrases of
rolling, spinning along and jumping up and kicking the walls of the
deserted Brussels alley, which appears drab and lonely in this black and
white film. There are very few moments when one or other part of
Roxanne Huilmand’s body is not in contact with the alley’s surfaces. The
rhythmic phrases of rolling and spinning along the walls of the alley
are interspersed with Huilmand, rolling across the alley floor into the
gutter defiantly revealing her substantial white knickers and with her
circling round on the ground from sitting to rolling onto hands and
feet. The tactile nature of these interactions is emphasized in three ways:
through camera close-ups; choreographically, through persistent repeti-
52 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

tion and dynamic contrasts of speed and body tension; and aurally, in
the soundtrack where the brushing and scraping of body on walls and
ground is heard.
As Huilmand repeatedly leans on, pushes off, slides, drags and brushes
her body up against the stone sides and pavement of the alley, her rela-
tionship with it seems to become increasingly affectionate. The camera,
by closing in on her movements, allows her to perform more intimate
movements designed to be seen close up, while also emphasizing the
intimacy of the space, as it caresses the alley walls and floor. The window
ledges, cracks, nooks and crannies become known as they are repeat-
edly traversed by Huilmand’s body. The filming and Huilmand’s
performance construct and play with ‘femininity’ in various ways. Huil-
mand veers between being seductively sensual – when the camera
lingers on a close-up of her face as she brushes her hair behind her ear
– and aggressively violent as she repeatedly runs, jumps up and kicks
against the walls. She teases and titillates through the dynamics and
pace of the choreography by very slowly repeating and building up pat-
terns of rolling or spinning along the walls only to abruptly interrupt
and change the action before a climax is reached. In this context I
suggest that as Grosz argues: ‘the practices of femininity can readily
function . . . as modes of guerrilla subversion of patriarchal codes’
(1994b: 144). The brazen confidence of Huilmand’s apparently fearless
performance of a limited but thoroughly known and worked through
vocabulary, etched with a subtle playfulness, enables her to transform
the normally alien space of an inner city alley into, for her, an intimate
place of play and fantasy. Whereas the sixties artists raised audiences’
awareness of urban environments and stretched their perception
through avant garde uses of space, eighties and nineties’ choreog-
raphers, such as Huilmand, challenge audiences to rethink traditional
gendered relations between female subjects and city spaces.
The choreography and filming of Huilmand’s performance make it
seem rebellious, and new meanings are created for this body in this city
space as they mutually define each other. ‘The city . . . divides cultural
life into private and public domains’ (Grosz, 1995: 109). A public alley-
way such as this is considered a threatening space for women. Follow-
ing Wolff’s identification of the ‘culture of separate spheres’, it is likely
to keep women in their place, in the private, domestic, supposedly safe
space of the home. The possibly expected reading of the situation por-
trayed in Muurwerk; a young woman, dressed in a sleeveless, low backed,
short skirted dress, alone in a deserted alley, often literally pinned to
the walls or floor, is that this woman is likely to be courting danger,
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 53

that she could be a prostitute. This reading is evidence of the social rules
and expectations which are part of the institutional power of the city.
As Grosz indicates, ‘the city’s form and structure provides the context
in which social rules and expectations are internalized and habituated’
(1995: 109). The form and structure of the alleyway provide a context
for expecting women to be in danger and possibly to be prostitutes if
they are in such a place. However, this reading is averted by the cho-
reography. Rather than appear vulnerable as might be expected, Huil-
mand, because of her defiant performance, seems to be making a more
affirmative statement about her ability to confidently occupy and
inhabit the space of the alley. Her bodily brushes with the fabric of the
alley are unremittingly confrontational. Her performance, combined
with the choreography and filming, overcomes the expectations asso-
ciated with her gender in such a city space. She transforms it into a non-
threatening place of surfaces and textures for rolling and spinning along
in which she seems at home.
The insistent repetition of what appear to be sometimes angry, some-
times mesmeric, caresses and collisions with concrete in Muurwerk flies
in the face of any suggestion of vulnerability, which looks instead as if
it is being worked out of the dancer’s system cathartically. When Huil-
mand rolls into the gutter and her skirt flies up revealing her knickers,
she seems to be defiantly saying ‘so what!’ As Grosz claims, ‘the form,
structure and norms of the city seep into and affect all the other ele-
ments that go into the constitution of corporeality. It affects . . . the
subject’s understanding of and alignment with space . . . comportment
and orientations. It also affects the subject’s forms of corporeal exertion’
(1995: 108). Despite the city’s impact on corporeality and its power to
inscribe a sense of vulnerability on a young woman like Huilmand, as
Grosz argues, there is the possibility of a reciprocal reinscription. She
suggests, ‘the body (as cultural product) transforms, reinscribes the
urban landscape according to its changing . . . needs, extending the
limits of the city’ (1995: 109). In her dancing Huilmand seems to be
doing just this, to be at least partly creating her own labyrinth in the
alley, discovering new movement and identity possibilities and the
potential of new relationships with the city and its spaces. She appears
to be reclaiming the space for herself, but differently from the sixties
artists such as Tharp and her dancers. Huilmand and Kolb, the film-
maker, are working with discourses of the body and film developed since
the sixties, which reveal ways in which Huilmand’s gendered body and
the space of the alley are constructed and invested with power. They
reveal possibilities for reclaiming a way of inhabiting the city, which are
54 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

through reinscription turning this anonymous alley into a familiar, situ-

ated place. The choreography and filming of Huilmand’s performance
have negotiated the negative and alienating characteristics for women
and ‘others’ of this city space.

Step in Time Girls

First impressions of Step in Time Girls suggest that the three women,
albeit from different periods, are all contained and trapped by the city
spaces they inhabit. They appear subjected by them and made power-
less by being forced to repeat movement vocabularies that suggest frus-
tration with their environment and situations. This is apparent when
the women repeatedly rock back and forth in chairs, roll along walls
and windowsills and stride back and forth along table and windowsill.
Their containment, alienation and isolation are emphasized because
they are often seen in relation to the windows, their link with the
outside world. They look out of them, pace up and down in front of
them and dance on the windowsill. They are also viewed from the
outside; as the camera recedes, minute pictures of private lives are
glimpsed, framed by the numerous identical cell-like windows of the
block of flats. The space of the flat is coded ‘domestic’ by aspects of the
choreography; the dogged repetition of tasks that the women perform,
such as opening cupboards and drawers, returning a baby’s spoon to its
highchair tray and running up and down stairs. The choreography
abstracts and emphasizes the movements through development, exag-
geration and, particularly, through repetition. Different parts of the
body, such as shoulders, backs and feet contact the furniture and walls
and repetitive rhythms are often built up. The movement patterns these
women perform are those which the city has inscribed on their bodies
through the power invested in the city spaces that they inhabit. The
choreography and filming of Step in Time Girls, by revealing ways in
which urban spaces contain and trap, gender them traditionally femi-
nine4 and render the inhabitants, also gendered feminine, to a certain
extent powerless.
This is not the whole story however. Through the repetition of these
movement patterns the women appear to go beyond the limitations of
the city spaces and make them their own. For example, just over halfway
through the piece the ‘contemporary’ woman rolls along the floor of
the flat and up to sit on a chair and lean back briefly, she then jumps
to sit on a table where spinning round on her bottom she swings her
feet up to stand on the table against the wall, from where she looks
down at the space she has just traversed. The whole phrase is then
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 55

reversed and repeated twice. With the reversal and repetition of the
choreography a rhythm and phrase are established which appear to be
performed and enjoyed for their own sake. The sheer energy and
momentum of the dancing takes over. Jumping onto the table, spin-
ning round on it and jumping off again are actions that, because of their
audacity in the context of the domestic space in which they are per-
formed, can be seen to be empowering and affirming. The dancer is
reclaiming and taking over this urban space for herself. It has become
her place.
There are several other examples of choreography where the women
appear to stretch and in some cases exceed the constraints of the space.
All three women throw their jackets across the space of the flat at one
point: the ‘contemporary’ woman lobs hers up against a window, picks
it up and repeats the gesture; three times the ‘wartime’ woman hurls
her jacket at a wall and then ‘catches’ it on her back as it slides down
the wall; the ‘Victorian’ woman flings her jacket across the room onto
a chair. Straight after this the ‘wartime’ woman spins along a win-
dowsill, jumps up to sit on it and then comes down and, while still
holding the upright window support, jumps her hips up high in the air
using her other hand to push up from the windowsill. This is repeated.
There is a sense in which she is exceeding the limits of the space by her
actions, emphasized by the low angled shot which shows her filling the
screen. Immediately afterwards the ‘Victorian’ woman is seen silhouet-
ted against an open window rocking back slowly in her chair balancing
on the back legs only, until she tips a little further back and the chair
leans against the wall, her image also fills the screen. She then returns
forward to repeat the movement – in all it is repeated fourteen times.
The last eleven times she raises her arms as her body tips back adding
to the momentum. The camera focuses on her feet pushing off the floor
and then dangling in mid air as she holds the balance, and on her hands
as they are held suspended above her. The movement is slow, it becomes
increasingly mesmeric with repetition.
At these moments it seems as if the women have appropriated the
space of the flat for their own personal gymnastic or exercise routines.
They are enjoying rocking, stretching, balancing and jumping up, using
the walls, floor and furniture as apparatus to assist them. This seems
particularly the case when much earlier in the video the ‘contemporary’
woman bursts through the serving hatch, head first, stretching her arms
to the side horizontally, holding a gymnast’s pose. She balances on her
stomach briefly and then drops her upper body down to repeatedly
swing it along the wall below. In the next shot she is balancing on her
56 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

thighs bracing herself with her feet on the upper lintel of the hatch still
swinging her torso from side to side along the wall below. She then rocks
her upper body away from and towards the wall several times before
lowering herself through the hatch down onto the floor in a somersault.
These acrobatic and athletic feats go way beyond the norm for women
in a domestic interior. This city space is transformed from a containing
unsympathetic environment and reinscribed as an imaginative play-
ground where the women revel in the experience of their bodies con-
tacting and rebounding off walls and furniture. This choreography uses
the surfaces of the London flat to challenge the capabilities of the
dancers in a similar way to Trisha Brown’s equipment pieces. However,
where Brown was concerned with challenging audiences’ perceptions of
what and how the human body could perform, Snaith and her dancers
in their enjoyment of physicality in this urban environment, challenge
viewers to rethink their expectations of feminine behaviour in such
spaces. The fact that the three women from different periods perform
similar movements in the same block of flats also suggests linkages and
connections through time that add to the dancers’ construction as sub-
jects. The urban spaces of the London flat and its environs connect the
three women as subjects in the city. In these ways Step in Time Girls
reveals through its choreography and filming possibilities for reclaim-
ing city spaces as places for women. The bodies and the spaces mutu-
ally define each other to suggest new meanings.

Conclusion

By placing dances in city settings, choreographers and filmmakers open

up possibilities for exploring the ways in which cities and bodies can
mutually define and construct each other. It would be possible to use
the city, with its multiplicity of signs and images, as an exciting arena
for filmed dance performances, without taking account of the ways in
which city settings and spaces are inevitably invested with power; simply
using the city as a backdrop in an uninformed manner that takes it
for granted. Some choreographers and filmmakers have done this (see
Briginshaw, 1997). However, the choreographers of the sixties cited
and the choreographers and filmmakers of the later dance video texts
examined, have gone beyond simply using the city as a backdrop.
Through their choice of settings, their choreography and performances
and through the filming, they have revealed some of the ways in
which bodies produce themselves in space and in turn produce space
(Lefebvre, 1991). The possibilities for this kind of transformation,
 Transforming City Spaces and Subjects 57

opened up by the avant-garde sixties site specific urban performances,

are evident in the two dance videos examined.
In Muurwerk the deserted, drab Brussels alley is gradually transformed
through the solo female dancer’s almost hypnotic repetitive phrases of
rolling, spinning, sliding and kicking. This city space, that connotes
male freedom associated with the nineteenth-century notion of the
flâneur, is reinvested with a distinctly feminine kind of potency, as,
through her dancing, Huilmand weaves her own thread of power and
takes on the mantle of a contemporary flâneuse. The anonymous space
becomes an imaginative situated place of play – of musings and teas-
ings, suggesting new meanings.
In Step in Time Girls the rooms of the London flat and its environs
which contain and confine its three female inhabitants from different
eras, through the choreography and filming reveal the potential for
change. The women’s performances, by first reiterating the boundaries
of the spaces they inhabit, set up possibilities for transcending these
limits. It soon becomes apparent, through the choreography and
filming, that these women have the potential to go beyond the con-
straints of their environment, just as Brown’s performers did in the
sixties. Despite the expected internalization of rules and habits which
the city inscribes, through the repetition and development of choreo-
graphic phrases, which increasingly visibly become enjoyed for their
own sake, Snaith and her co-performers, by revelling in the sheer physi-
cality of their movement experience, each in their own way, reclaim
and reinscribe these city spaces for themselves.
The examination of these dance video texts and the earlier precedents
from the sixties, has shown that because both bodies and cities can be
seen as constructed, there is always potential for change, and that when
bodies and cities coexist and interact, there is also potential for their
mutual construction and definition. As the two dance videos have
shown ‘there is nothing intrinsic about the city that makes it alienat-
ing or unnatural’ (Grosz, 1995: 109). The ways in which these dance
video texts and the earlier sixties work have facilitated the construction
of bodies and city spaces as subjects and places, have indicated the
potential for new meanings. The site specific work of the sixties began
to erode the conventional boundaries between performers and audi-
ences such that the traditional subject/object split between spectator
and performer was challenged. Huilmand’s performance and the filming
of Muurwerk have suggested possibilities for a newly empowered femi-
nine subjectivity evident in the notion of a contemporary flâneuse. The
excessive performances of the three women in Step in Time Girls, which
58 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

have challenged the culture of separate spheres that has traditionally

confined women to the home, have pointed to the liberating potential
of a particular kind of embodied subjectivity. In the interfaces between
bodies and cities explored, possibilities for rethinking subjectivity have
become apparent.
In the next chapter further mutual constructions of dancing bodies
and spaces are examined in a live site specific performance set in coastal
locations. The ways in which the choreography plays with particular
associations that the coastal environment suggests are seen to be sub-
versive in terms of their implications for reconstructing subjectivity.
4
Coastal Constructions in
Lea Anderson’s Out on the
Windy Beach

Introduction

Beaches and the sea, like cities (see Chapter 3), are constructed spaces
resonant with connotations. Seaside spaces, and the bodies that inhabit
and play in them, mutually construct each other. However, this is no
straightforward, simple matter. As leisure spaces, beaches and seaside
resorts have associations with activities such as swimming, sunbathing
and seaside entertainment. The sea is also a source of imagery in folk-
lore and mythology and a powerful, sometimes dark, environmental
force. The British postmodern choreographer, Lea Anderson, has drawn
on these very different sources as inspiration for Out on the Windy Beach
(1998) which is performed on and around a beach hut, set in a range
of outdoor locations near water. The piece demonstrates the complexi-
ties and fluidities inherent in the mutual construction of subjects and
spaces.
Citing the beach as a key leisure space, the French post-Marxist Henri
Lefebvre suggests: ‘typically, the identification of sex and sexuality, of
pleasure and physical gratification, with “leisure” occurs in places spe-
cially designated for the purpose – [such as] sun-drenched beaches’
(1991: 310). As a result Lefebvre claims ‘such leisure spaces become
eroticized’ (ibid). They function as spaces of consumption in Lefebvre’s
terms – ‘the consumption of space, sun and sea, and of . . . eroticism’
(ibid: 58) – exemplified by the growth of the resort around such spaces.
Resorts, products of the leisure and tourist industry, are constructed
spaces with histories. The ways in which resorts and bodies construct
and eroticize each other in Out on the Windy Beach, together with impli-
cations for the construction of subjectivity, specifically in terms of
gender, are explored in the first section of this chapter.

59
60 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

Beaches also exist between land and sea. As shorelines, they form
borders and boundaries. They are particular liminoid or in-between
spaces. These coastal borderlines are explored and exploited in Ander-
son’s choreography. In the second section of the chapter entitled ‘Bodies
and boundaries’, the movement of dancing bodies across and between
the borderlines, and the effect of the coastal environment on the bodies,
are explored. These provide specific examples of the fluid nature of the
mutual construction of bodies and spaces, that focuses on the limits or
edges of both. In this sense there are implications for constructions of
subjectivity.
Coastal environments are continually changing because of environ-
mental factors such as erosion and pollution. This is part of their con-
struction that appears ‘natural’. These environmental changes are
increasingly seen as threatening the stability of existence in a fixed,
unchanging world. In some senses these changes parallel human con-
structions and reconstructions, evident in cloning, cosmetic surgery or
body ornamentation and decoration, which can also be seen to threaten
the stability and assurance of notions of fixed subjectivity. Ideas sur-
rounding these environmental and human constructions and recon-
structions are generated and fuelled by futuristic predictions on the
one hand and science-fiction fantasy on the other.
Anderson explores constructions of this kind ironically in Out on the
Windy Beach. The ways in which the American feminist Donna Haraway
sees nature as constructed were referred to in Chapter 2. She claims, ‘the
certainty of what counts as nature – a source of insight and a promise
of innocence – is undermined, probably fatally’ (1990: 194). This is
evident on one level in the erosion and irreversible change of the nature
of coastal environments, and on another level in changes to human
‘nature’, both of which are referenced in Out on the Windy Beach.
Changes in the nature of the human organism are at the centre of
Haraway’s manifesto for ‘cyborgs’, which are fabricated, futuristic,
hybrids of organisms and machines, central to her ‘effort to build an
ironic political myth faithful to feminism, socialism and materialism.’
(ibid: 190). Partly because of the parallels in Anderson’s and Haraway’s
postmodern, ironic strategies, but also because they both draw on
science-fiction generated fantasies and futurology, and because a key
feature of the cyborg is ‘an intimate experience of boundaries, their con-
struction and deconstruction’ (ibid: 223), there is a sense in which the
dancing bodies in Out on the Windy Beach can be seen to be cyborgian.
In this sense because Haraway sees the cyborg as ‘an imaginative
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 61

resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings’ (ibid: 191), there are
implications for ways of rethinking constructions of subjectivity. These
theories, which are explored alongside Out on the Windy Beach through-
out but specifically in the third section of the chapter entitled ‘Seaside
surrealism’, aid an understanding of some of the more subversive ele-
ments of the dance.
Out on the Windy Beach (1998) was made for six dancers from Ander-
son’s two companies; three from the all-female Cholmondeleys and
three from the all-male Featherstonehaughs. Anderson decided to make
an outdoor piece because she wanted to tap the potential for picking
up new audiences who would not normally go and see her work. She
likes taking dance to where people are. She began her career taking work
to night club venues. In 1996 when she made Car set in and around a
Saab car, performed in a range of outdoor public spaces, she was fasci-
nated by the reactions of passers-by. She also said that she knew beach
huts and beaches were ‘a very fruitful kind of area potentially’ (Ander-
son, 1997). She had used a beach location for part of her dance film
Cross-Channel (1992) (see Chapter 2), and she conducted an eight day
residency with dance students at a beach location in 1997 which pro-
vided her with the opportunity to begin to research and develop ideas
and material for Out on the Windy Beach.
Out on the Windy Beach is an hour long piece accompanied by Steve
Blake and Dean Brodrick playing a range of instruments, including saxa-
phone, bassoon, banjo, mouth harp and percussion, live on stage. They
composed the accompaniment, which is inspired by a mixture of sea
shanties, Amazonian Tea Dance and Appalachian Old Time music. Some
of the dancers occasionally join the musicians singing or playing for
their fellow performers. The set for the work, designed by Andrew White,
consists of a wooden beach hut mounted centrally on the higher level
of a two tiered wooden platform (Plate 3). The hut is placed at the centre
back of the platform which is edged by four steps leading down to a
lower level jetty-like stage, which forms a promontory about twice the
width and depth of the hut. The beach hut has a veranda at the front
and a central hatch-like opening in the wall, in front and below which
is set a bench. The musicians play to one side of the hut on the higher
platform. The set, which is painted pale sea green, is framed by a string
of fairy lights and two distinctive large cerise flags, which act as markers
signalling the venue from a distance. The piece, which was commis-
sioned by the Brighton Festival, was performed at a range of waterside
locations mainly around Britain, between May and August 1998.
62 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

The dancers’ distinctive costumes, designed by Sandy Powell, consist

of luminous, lime green, hooded, figure-hugging body suits, with
straight long skirts ending in points like fish tails, over leggings that
cover the feet, over which flip flops are worn. These phosphorescent
outfits are complemented by reflective, orange, ski goggles and the per-
formers’ white sun-blocked lips. The effect is of weird surreal, web-
footed, sci-fi aliens. When the dancers drape themselves over the edges
of steps and platform, and over each other, they resemble patches of
algae washed up from the sea. They become part of the landscape. They
simultaneously seem to be polluting and protecting themselves from a
harsh, globally warmed, sun-soaked environment. There are moments
in the choreography when they look skywards as if towards some kind
of otherworldly force.
The choreography consists of a series of dances for the whole
company and for each of the trios of men and women. These include
a mixture of unison walking towards and away from the edge of
the jetty platform, dive-like poses on the edge of the jetty and
various entertaining seaside dance numbers. There are also sections
where the dancers lie on the platform tended and manipulated by part-
ners and roll over, such that parts of them hang over the edge of the
platform. They also enter and exit, amphibian-like, sometimes head
first, sometimes feet first, through the hatch at the front of the beach
hut. A host of seaside inspired images from lobster quadrilles, crab walks
and mermaid poses to beauty contests are conjured up. These coexist
with images of a marine invasion by surreal, sci-fi, hybrid reptilian
aliens.
Towards the end of Out on the Windy Beach the three men appear
with the bottom half of their body suits exchanged for short cerise
skirts and matching knee-high boots, and the women emerge in iden-
tical cerise, short skirts, but with tattoo covered transparent tights
underneath. Prior to this the dancers’ costumes largely disguise their
gender. This is typical of Anderson. She either uses costume and
choreography to obscure gender differences (for example in parts of
Perfect Moment, 1992 and Smithereens, 1999), or she emphasizes the
constructed nature of gender through exaggerated differences of
costume and choreography (for example in Cross-Channel, 1992 see
Chapter 2 and Briginshaw, 1996). She is adept at foregrounding
both the fluid and the constructed nature of gender in her works. In
Out on the Windy Beach this facet of her style contributes to the
revelation of the constructed and fluid nature of subjectivity that is
suggested.
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 63

Eroticized bodies and spaces

A facet of the beach location that is foregrounded in Out on the Windy

Beach is the exposure and display of the body in an erotic manner.Beaches
tend to be places where people strip off to enjoy sun, sea and sand. Bodies
are often displayed passively sunbathing, actively taking exercize or in
some form of seaside entertainment. The dancers’ bodies in Out on the
Windy Beach are partly eroticized by their figure-hugging costumes, but
these also ironically completely cover the body protecting it from the
glare of the sun together with the goggles and lipblock, and militating
against the display of flesh normally seen on beaches. The dancers’ bodies
are however eroticized by the choreography. There are several references
to the ‘body beautiful’ in poses adopted by the performers that suggest,
for example, fifties beauty queens’ postures. When the three male per-
formers emerge in their bright pink short skirts with matching boots
revealing their knees, they were described by one reviewer, no doubt
because they parade in a line in front of the audience, as having ‘beauty
queen legs glistening’ (Sacks, 1998). These images are ironic references to
the construction, eroticization and commodification of female beauty
associated with resort beauty contests. Another ironic reference is evident
when the three pink skirted males perform a version of Wilson, Kepple
and Betty’s thirties ‘Sand Dance’ which is in itself a parody of Egyptian
hieratic poses. Anderson’s version is a postmodern parody of a parody
that has hints of faraway exotic and erotic connotations associated with
the sand of the desert, rather than that of the English seaside beach.
There is a sense in which, because seaside spaces are associated with
leisure and fun, their eroticization and that of the bodies that inhabit
these spaces is permitted and taken for granted, it is part of their
construction which is hidden. Lefebvre terms these kinds of spaces
‘abstract’. He argues:

abstract space contains much, but at the same time it masks (or
denies) what it contains rather than indicating it. It contains specific
imaginary elements: fantasy images, symbols which appear to arise
from ‘something else’. It contains representations derived from the
established order. . . . Such ‘representations’ find their authority and
prescriptive power in and through the space that underpins them
and makes them effective. [his emphasis]
(1991: 311)

Examples of representations and fantasy images which ‘find

their authority and power’ in seaside spaces are evident in references
64 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

to a range of nautical and seaside imagery in Out on the Windy

Beach.
Poses of bathing belles seen in sailors’ tattoos are referenced in the
choreography and on the costumes and contribute to the eroticiza-
tion of bodies, the spaces of bodies and the seaside spaces. Anderson
and the dancers researched old sailor tattoos of young women in
‘glamour’ poses. These poses were put together to make two dances for
the three Cholmondeleys in tattoed tights. References to the bathing
belle postures in the dances eroticize and feminize the dancers’ bodies.
The same trademark sailors’ tattoos of scantily clad women used as
sources for the choreography were copied onto the dancers’ tights
(Anderson, 2000). These doubly underline the way bodies are con-
structed as erotic, since particular bodily spaces – the skin of the legs of
the female dancers – are inscribed with the same tattoo imagery that
has inspired their poses. These same images of femininity also refer
to the tattoos of bathing belles normally seen on sailors’ flesh, which
reference the scantily clad women seen on beaches and around seaside
resorts eroticizing the coastal spaces in which the dancers are perform-
ing. This performance of tattoo postures and dances underlines the ways
in which bodies and seaside spaces mutually construct each other as
erotic, pointing to the powerful role that gender often plays in con-
structing subjectivity.
When one dancer leans towards the beach hut veranda upright at an
angle embracing it, the image is reminiscent of a figurehead at the prow
of a ship. Postures such as this combined with the fishtail costumes in
Out on a Windy Beach suggest mermaids. These imaginary half-human
hybrid sea creatures, consisting of the head and trunk of a woman and
the tail of a fish, inhabit the fantasies of myths and folklore. They are
sometimes associated with the darker side of the sea as monstrous,
devouring creatures who eat sailors. In this sense they share the threat-
ening characteristics of sci-fi, aliens and cyborgs. Haraway characterizes
a ‘cyborg subject position’ as ‘dangerous and replete with the promises
of monsters’ (1992: 333).
Mermaids are usually seen posing on rocks, merging with the land or
seascape. In this sense mermaid imagery blurs the space of the body
with the space of the land or sea, the body eroticizes the landscape by
becoming part of it. In Chapter 2 I discuss the ways in which landscape
is traditionally treated as ‘inanimate’ (Oulton quoted in Lee, 1987: 23)
particularly by male artists who in their search for ‘beauty’ and perfec-
tion see their role as transforming and subjugating ‘nature’, where
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 65

‘nature’ is traditionally constructed as feminine and ‘other’. I also iden-

tify parallels between these ideas and theories of the geographer’s gaze,
which I suggest has parallels with the feminist film theorist Laura
Mulvey’s masculine gaze that objectifies ‘woman’. Both objectify from
a masculine perspective; the geographer’s gaze objectifies the land and
the masculine gaze objectifies woman. In effect the land is feminized as
‘other’. The feminist geographer Gillian Rose argues, ‘the female figure
represents landscape, and landscape a female torso, visually in part
through their pose: paintings of Woman and Nature often share the
same topography of passivity and stillness’ (1993b: 96). She continues:
‘the sensual topography of land and skin is mapped by a gaze which is
eroticized as masculine and heterosexual’ (ibid: 97). This sensual topog-
raphy of land and skin is evident in mermaid imagery which in its
merging of the feminine and the land/seascape eroticizes both.
Mermaids, clearly gendered feminine, are part of a vast catalogue of
images that contribute to the construction of femininity as, in part,
erotic. In Chapter 2 these theories of the merging of ‘woman’ and
‘nature’ are raised in relation to the solo dance of a woman in water in
La Deroute which I argue arrests the narrative in just the way Mulvey
(1975) describes for female stars in mainstream Hollywood narrative
films. Both the woman and the land are rendered ‘transparent’ and
objectified by the gaze. The mermaid poses in Out on the Windy Beach
are not transparent in this way. The costume and set render the mer-
maids ‘out of place’, they are clearly not semi-naked with flowing locks,
posing on rocks. These subtle references to mermaids in Out on the
Windy Beach demonstrate that bodies and spaces are not transparent
and unproblematic. They are eroticized and resonant with cultural
meanings embedded in their mutual construction. The references to
mermaids, bathing belles and beauty queens, given the context of the
dancers’ weird, sci-fi costumes, and the performance of these tradition-
ally gendered figures by ungendered, androgynous creatures, deliber-
ately interrogate and challenge the ways in which the male gaze can
eroticize and transparently construct bodies as landscape.

Bodies and boundaries

The beach hut set for Out on the Windy Beach was placed in its
various performance locations within view of and facing the water.
The edges of the beach hut veranda, the steps down to the platform
and the edge of the platform itself all form parallel lines with the
66 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

shore. The dancers foreground these land/sea boundaries in the

choreography. They look towards key borders such as the shoreline and
the horizon and move across, along and in between boundaries, some-
times playing with edges. Repeated back and forth movements that
reflect the ebb and flow of the tides emphasize the fluidity of the
boundaries.
Looking out to sea is a repeated motif emphasized by the reflective
goggles of the performers. Poses adopted, such as standing on the edge
of the jetty staring out to sea, and looking out whilst clasping the beach
hut veranda upright pole, foreground the look. The goggles make the
looks appear ominous. The traditional spectator/performer relationship
where the former objectifies the latter is reversed. The performers return
spectators’ gazes reflected in their eye wear. By doing this they cross the
traditional boundary between performer and spectators, disrupt the
conventional construction process which involves objectification and
render the construction instead a two-way process, which is mutual and
reciprocal. They are problematizing the subject/object binary bound up
with traditional constructions of subjectivity and foregrounding alter-
native mutual construction processes. The problematization of binary
oppositions such as that between subject and object is a key character-
istic of Haraway’s cyborgs. She says of cyborg imagery that it ‘can
suggest a way out of the maze of dualisms in which we have explained
our bodies and our tools to ourselves’ (1990: 223) and that, ‘cyborg
figures . . . are the offspring of implosions of subjects and objects and of
the natural and artificial’ (1997: 12). The dancers in Out on the Windy
Beach, because of their goggled looks towards the sea and spectators,
blur the subject/object binary. They can be seen to be ‘cyborgian off-
springs of implosions of subjects and objects’. They also blur the
natural/artificial binary with their references to mermaids, because of
the radical juxtaposition of their mermaid poses with their surreal,
sci-fi costumes.
Land/sea boundaries are foregrounded in the choreography by per-
formers moving across, around and in between them and playing on the
edges. The artificiality of these spatial limits is highlighted when
performers teeter on or hang over the edges of them. There are several
examples of dramatic encounters with the edge of the jetty-like platform
in Out on the Windy Beach. Dancers repeatedly walk to the very edge
and make large gestures upwards and outwards with outstretched arms
and open chests before turning to retreat back across the platform
towards the hut and land. They lie on the platform with their heads over
the edge when on their backs or sides, having rolled to the periphery.
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 67

They never leave the platform by moving onto the ground in front
of it, two or three feet below them, instead by their gestures and
performance of diving poses, they ironically give the impression of water
below. The connotations of the limits and constraints of this particular
boundary or borderline, as well as its ultimate artificiality and con-
structed nature, are highlighted by the choreography and performance.
At times it is as if the dancers are riskily flirting with this boundary in a
cyborgian manner. Haraway claims, ‘my cyborg myth is about trans-
gressed boundaries, potent fusions and dangerous possibilities’ (1990:
196).
The dancers’ dramatic exits and entries through the beach hut hatch,
head or feet first, slithering through the opening, foreground this
boundary and, in this instance, its unruly transgression. The manner of
entrance and exit is so unusual that it attracts attention and further
highlights the constructed nature of the boundary being crossed and
the bodies performing. These actions are decidedly not natural, the
boundary transgression is so bizarre it suggests possible ‘potent fusions
and dangerous possibilities’ in the manner of Haraway’s cyborgs.
Boundaries or borders are also reiterated by lines of dancers in the
choreography. Dancers sit in a line on the veranda bench, and on the
steps that lead down to the jetty from the hut, they stand in a line at
the edge of the jetty, and pose in racing dive positions on the same jetty
edge. The distinctive land/sea border is thus repeatedly stated. The
continual crossings and recrossings of these stated boundaries, while
emphasizing their constructed nature, also point to their fluidity and
that of the boundaries of the performers. If boundaries of space and
bodies are seen as constructed and fluid in this way, then they can
be open to possibilities for change and reconstruction.
This fluidity is particularly evident in patterns of back and forth travel
across the jetty-like platform. If the performers are not advancing or
retreating towards or away from the water, they are, for much of the
time, gesturing towards and away from it. The ebb and flow of the
choreography titillates and teases, playing with the ‘no-man’s land’ of
the jetty perched between sea and shore. This spatial dimension of the
choreography, predominantly towards and away from the beach hut
and the sea or water, foregrounds the construction of this space as
special. It marks the place where the land ends and the sea begins. The
continual movement back and forth and looking out to sea which dom-
inate in the choreography, as well as the nature of the movements per-
formed, emphasize the socially constructed nature of the space. The
choreography also foregrounds and plays with the actual fluidity of the
68 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

borderlines between land and sea which continually change with the
tide. Horizontal lines of performers walk in unison back and forth
across the platform towards and away from the water repeatedly, some-
times accompanied by raised outstretched arms broken at the wrists
with hands pointing down. These simple gestures are almost cartoon-
like, they look like pastiches of children’s drawings of birds. The sim-
plicity of the back and forth walking and the bird-like arm gestures
which occur towards the beginning of the dance set the scene for what
is to follow. Simple movement statements and gestures indicate the
influence or effect of the coastal environment on the choreography and
the performers. At the same time these are not subtle connections with
tides and sea birds as for example in Merce Cunningham’s dance, Beach
Birds (1992). The movements and gestures are crude and obvious, per-
formed in a self-reflexively postmodern, ironic, manner typical of
Anderson’s choreography (see Briginshaw, 1996). Their performance
deliberately exposes their artificial or constructed nature while also
revealing ways in which seaside spaces are constructed by cultural
associations.
These excerpts emphasize the range of borderlines and boundaries of
bodies and space that can be explored in this coastal environment. The
choreography foregrounds the constructed nature of spatial borderlines
where land meets sea. It reveals them to be cultural constructions; lines
drawn on maps to mark out territory, but it also shows, often in a cybor-
gian manner, how the fixity can be broken and boundaries blurred,
allowing potential for change through fluidity. Another example of the
fluidity of boundaries, but this time bodily boundaries, is evident in the
references to mermaids, who are creatures whose bodily boundaries are
necessarily blurred. The implications for subjectivity of blurred bodily
and spatial boundaries, which can suggest blurred conceptual bound-
aries, are taken up in the next section.

Seaside surrealism

The lurid, phosphorescent, lime green, figure-hugging body suits

that the dancers wear in Out on the Windy Beach give the performers
an unnatural and surreal appearance. The dancers stand out futuris-
tically against the faded pale sea green paint of the beach hut set. Their
costumes are almost like second skins, they eroticize the dancers’
bodies but they also make them look horrifically alien, like sci-fi extra-
terrestrials. The goggles and lip-block together with the full body
coverage and luminosity of the costumes, also suggest hyper-protective
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 69

gear worn by environmental activists. These polysemic creatures that

embody a range of possibilities are unstable and difficult to fix, they
perplex and provoke in a hybrid, cyborgian manner. The hybridity of
cyborgian creatures is central to their constitution as blurrers of bound-
aries and as blurred and fluctuating subjects and identities. The ways in
which cyborgs and the dancers blur binaries such as subject/object and
natural/artificial have already been identified. Haraway suggests, ‘cyborg
anthropology attempts to refigure provocatively the border relations
among specific humans, other organisms and machines’ (1997: 52).
When the surreally costumed dancers in Out on the Windy Beach crawl
on all fours, walk crab-like across the space on hands and feet, lie with
their heads hanging over the edge of the platform or all stare menac-
ingly out to sea, they certainly appear to be provocatively refiguring ‘the
border relations among specific humans and other organisms’ in a
cyborgian fashion.
The dancers are often seen on the ground lying, rolling or curled up,
and because they perform at the water’s edge, they sometimes resemble
marine deposits washed up with the tide. When they lie with their
heads hanging over the edge of the jetty they transgress the border
messily, soiling it like pollutants. Anderson has said of the piece ‘there
was a lot of “futurology” stuff – reading reports about what will happen
to land and sea in fifty years time – evolution and extinction’ (2000).
Ecological factors play an important part in Haraway’s theories of
cyborgs. She has said ‘cyborg life forms that inhabit the recently con-
gealed planet Earth . . . gestated in a historically specific technoscientific
womb’ (1997: 12). One example of an arena for such life forms is, ‘that
planetary habitat space called the ecosystem, with its . . . birth pangs in
resource management practices in such institutions as national fisheries
. . . and with its diplomatic forms played out in 1992 at the Earth
Summit in Rio de Janiero’ (ibid: 13). References to coastal environmen-
tal pollutants in the costumes and choreography of Out on the Windy
Beach ally the alien forms of the dancers’ bodies even more with
cyborgs.
A key border that Haraway and Anderson both flout in their work is
that of gender. Haraway proposes that her manifesto is an ‘effort to con-
tribute to socialist – feminist culture and theory . . . in the utopian tra-
dition of imagining a world without gender’ (1990: 192). Sandy Powell’s
all-in-one, hooded, unisex bodysuits cover everything except the
dancers’ faces which are goggled, and render them androgynous. The
performers’ androgyny is further underlined by the choreography, since
for much of the time it does not discriminate according to gender. There
70 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

is much dancing in unison often in lines with a strange focus on tiny

gestures typical of Anderson’s choreographic style. There is an unstop-
pable mathematical flow in the dance and music resulting in a con-
tinuous stream of dancing, which blurs genders.
Gender blurring also occurs when the dancers’ bodies sinuously inter-
twine in bizarre, mutating, mating rituals. It is difficult to tell one
body from another as they bend, twist, slither and slide around and
over each other, mutating into different shapes and forms. The perfor-
mance is erotic and alluring, yet because of the costumes and goggles,
it is also distanced and disturbing. Anderson said that environmental
research into the future of land/sea borders was the starting point for
the mating games in the choreography (2000). These mutations have
resonances with Haraway’s cyborgs whose temporal modality is ‘con-
densation, fusion, and implosion’ (1997: 12). She has also claimed
‘cyborgs signal disturbingly and pleasurably tight coupling. Bestiality
has a new status in this cycle of marriage exchange’ (1990: 193). This
description could apply to the coupling creatures in Out on the Windy
Beach. Mutating and multiplying in this way can have associations with
the subversive characteristics of pollution, which Haraway reclaims for
positive political use. She argues ‘cyborg politics insist on noise and
advocate pollution, rejoicing in the illegitimate fusions of animal and
machine’ (ibid: 218).
In this sense, the fusions evident in the mutating couples in Out on
the Windy Beach can be interpreted in terms of positive regeneration.
Haraway suggests, ‘cyborgs have more to do with regeneration and
are suspicious of the reproductive matrix and of most birthing’ (1990:
223). In other words, conceptually she privileges a mutating form of
renewal and regeneration over traditional birth. Mutation as a means
of explaining change has connotations of multiplicity over the more
linear notion of evolution which has associations with progressive and
purposive change, which it has been suggested is ‘found throughout
Enlightenment thought’ (Gisbourne, 1998).1 Haraway states, ‘I would .
. . like to displace the terminology of reproduction with that of genera-
tion. Very rarely does anything really get reproduced: what’s going on is
much more polymorphous than that’ [original emphasis] (1992: 299).
The mating couples in Out on the Windy Beach, as they roll over each
other and entwine themselves in fluid, amoebic-like connections
where many different body parts come into contact, are certainly poly-
morphous, often resembling creatures such as salamanders, which
Haraway cites. She indicates that for them ‘regeneration after injury,
such as the loss of a limb, involves regrowth of structure and restora-
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 71

tion of function with the constant possibility of twinning or other

odd topographical reproductions at the site of former injury. The
regrown limb can be monstrous, duplicated, potent.’ (ibid: 223). Sug-
gestions of the monstrous, androgynous, regenerated, new beings
Haraway imagines and theorizes are evident in the choreography in
Out on the Windy Beach.2
References to ‘regeneration’ and a ‘monstrous world without gender’
also have resonances with the Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s
ideas of the carnivalesque (see Chapter 9). There are carnivalesque ele-
ments in Out on the Windy Beach, particularly in the second half when
the dancers further transform themselves through costume changes,
exchanging their leggings and fishtail long skirts for short, above-the-
knee, cerise skirts. In this part of the performance various seaside and
popular variety entertainments are referenced; beauty contests and
numbers such as the thirties Wilson, Kepple and Betty ‘Sand Dance’,
which the men perform accompanied by the women sitting on the
beach hut bench playing miniature guitars. This is an example of a
gender reversal typical of Anderson, having the men dance while the
women play in the band. Anderson has said of her all-female company’s
early performances in night clubs that she wanted to subvert and get
away from the use of women as dancing display objects accompanying
the all-male music bands (Adair, 1987). One strategy was to make a
piece, Baby, Baby, Baby (1986), which parodied and satirized female
backing groups like the Supremes.
The inclusion of the Wilson, Kepple and Betty ‘Sand Dance’ and the
beauty contest references in Out on the Windy Beach is evidence of Ander-
son’s ‘everlasting fascination with Music Hall’and popular variety acts
and of her desire to include an ‘end of the pier’ aspect (Anderson, 2000).
These elements are also further evidence of the ways in which seaside
spaces such as resorts are eroticized and commodified and are, in Lefeb-
vre’s words, ‘spaces of consumption’ (1991: 58). Commodification and
consumption are defining features of postmodernity. Haraway recog-
nizes this, stating that ‘perhaps cyborgs inhabit less the domains of
“life,” with its developmental and organic temporalities than of “life
itself” . . . [which] is enterprised up, where . . . the species becomes the
brand name and the figure becomes the price’ (1997: 12). Resorts and
entertainment have histories as spaces and modes of consumption. The
beauty contests and the Wilson, Kepple and Betty ‘Sand Dance’ refer-
ence the histories of resorts and popular entertainment respectively.
However, given the context and costuming, these dances ironically and
surreally hint at parallels between seaside and music hall entertainment
72 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

and the more futuristic kind of similarly, popular entertainment evident

in contemporary sci-fi movies. Haraway suggests that ‘cyborg spatial-
ization’ is about ‘ “the global” ’ and that ‘the globalization of the world
. . . is a semiotic-material production of some forms of life rather than
others’ (ibid). Examples of ‘forms of life’ that ‘craft the world as . . .
global’, she argues, are ‘cyborgian entertainment events such as Star
Trek, Blade Runner, Terminator, Alien and their proliferating sequelae . . .
embedded in transnational, U.S.-dominated . . . media conglomerates,
such as those forged by the mergers of the Disney universe with Capital
Cities’ (ibid: 13). The performance of seaside entertainment numbers
and the Sand Dance by sci-fi, extra-terrestrial, alien figures in Out on the
Windy Beach is both surreal and carnivalesque in its blurring of bound-
aries between human and non-human and its conjunction of enter-
tainment references from different historical periods. This bizarre
juxtaposition is mischievous having suggestions of the trickster figures
of carnival which Haraway also associates with the cyborg. She pro-
poses, ‘in the 1990s, across the former divide between subjects and
objects and between the living and nonliving, meaning-in-the-making
. . . is a more cyborg, coyote, trickster, local, open-ended, heterogeneous,
and provisional affair’ (ibid: 127).
The mischievous inclusion of these carnivalesque entertainment
numbers in Out on the Windy Beach given the costumes – the dancers
are still wearing their goggles and lipblock – is heavily ironic. As
Haraway indicates, ‘a cyborg body . . . takes irony for granted’ (1990:
222) and ‘the cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, inti-
macy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely
without innocence’ (ibid: 192). There is certainly an irony in Anderson’s
transformation of potentially alienating, monstrous, sci-fi creatures into
sexy, alluring entertainers who are fun.
The utopian characteristics of Haraway’s theories lead her to posit new
possibilities for subjectivity. She draws on the imaginary worlds of
science fiction in a positive way. She writes of ‘moving . . . to a science
fictional, speculative factual, SF place called, simply, elsewhere’ (ibid:
295). It is in this sense that she is making suggestions for new ways of
thinking beyond traditional notions of the subject. She argues, ‘the
subject is being changed relentlessly in the late twentieth century’
(ibid). These new ways of thinking beyond traditional notions of the
subject involve connection and embodiment. She is concerned ‘to
produce . . . effects of connection, of embodiment, and of responsibility
for an imagined elsewhere’ (ibid). The embodied interconnectivity of
the mutating, mating dances in Out on the Windy Beach has already been
 Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson’s Out on the Windy Beach 73

described. At another point when the dancers are in pairs, one of them
lies on the ground, whilst their partner leans over them, lifting and low-
ering limbs and placing hands on them. They look as if they are tending
and caring for them, perhaps suggesting the kind of supportive and
responsible connections Haraway posits.
Anderson’s blurring of a range of boundaries in her choreography has
already been mentioned in connection with Haraway’s references to
blurred binaries. Haraway argues, ‘science fiction is generally concerned
with the interpenetration of boundaries between problematic selves
and unexpected others and with the exploration of possible worlds’
(1992: 300). By bringing sci-fi elements into a postmodern dance
piece Anderson has brought together science and culture, blurring a
key binary. Haraway also sees her own work as rooted in the premise
that ‘science is culture’ (ibid: 296). Central to Haraway’s cyborgian
vision for the future is the appropriation of science and new technolo-
gies, particularly communication technologies, for her own feminist
ends. She sees these technologies playing an important part in re-
thought, embodied subjectivities. She claims ‘communications tech-
nologies and biotechnologies are the crucial tools recrafting our bodies’
(1990: 205), and ‘myth and tool mutually constitute each other’ (ibid:
206). This mutual construction parallels that of bodies and seaside
spaces evident in Out on the Windy Beach. These elements have been
seen to eroticize each other, but they also, by their juxtaposition, have
been seen in a subversive and ironic cyborgian manner, to construct
each other as surreal.

Conclusion

There are several ways in which the choreography of Out on the Windy
Beach explores and plays with interfaces between bodies and coastal
environments. The bodies and spaces in Out on the Windy Beach have
been seen to eroticize each other through the inclusion of images of
mermaids, bathing belles and beauty queens, and of popular, enter-
taining dance numbers. Interfaces between bodies and coastal spaces are
also foregrounded and played with in the choreography, which empha-
sizes the land/sea spatial dimension, through the continual reiterating
and crossing of borderlines and boundaries. Spaces and bodies have
been seen to mutually construct each other, with gender at times
informing the construction process. Importantly the dances also fore-
ground the fluid nature of the constructed boundaries of bodies and
spaces, indicating that these constructions are not fixed but open to
74 Constructions of Space and Subjectivity

change, allowing for new possibilities concerning the construction of

subjectivity.
These new possibilities become more apparent with reference to
Haraway’s theories of cyborgs, which when explored alongside Out on
the Windy Beach reveal some of its more subversive elements. For
example, the polluting powers of Anderson’s mutating, alien, coastal
creatures, because of the ways in which they are seen to blur fixed con-
ceptual binaries and boundaries, can be seen as positive and regenera-
tive when read in Haraway’s terms. Anderson’s witty and ironic
animation of her ‘patches of algae’ in end of the pier dance routines is
a graphic illustration of such regeneration. The political impact of Out
on the Windy Beach in terms of its interrogations of the fixity of gender
is more apparent when the various antics of the performers are seen as
cyborgian. As Haraway argues, ‘cyborg monsters in feminist science
fiction define quite different political possibilities and limits from those
proposed by the mundane fiction of Man and Woman’ (1990: 222). Ini-
tially the import of the links with ecology and futurology in Out on the
Windy Beach is difficult to fathom, but when the links are explored
alongside Haraway’s theories, the ways in which they suggest new pos-
sibilities for rethinking subjectivity in an embodied, unfixed, polymor-
phous and more connected way are revealed.
Part II
Dancing in the
‘In-Between Spaces’
5
Desire Spatialized Differently
in Dances that can be Read
as Lesbian

Introduction

While the discussions of dance works in Part I were concerned with

constructions, dynamics and qualities of particular outdoor spaces and
locations, and how these contribute to constructions of subjectivity,
specifically with reference to gender, the next three chapters focus on
virtual or metaphorical spaces seen as in-between. These in-between
spaces existing on the borderlines of body/space interfaces and spatial
interfaces are explored specifically with reference to sexuality in this
chapter, and cultural differences in the next two chapters, to see what
potential they might hold for rethinking and challenging traditional
constructions of subjectivity.
This chapter explores the spatialization of desire in postmodern
dances that can be read as lesbian. It focuses on the interfaces between
bodies, and bodies and space, in particular kinds of in-between spaces.
I have chosen to look at these dances because of the potential a lesbian
reading can suggest for rethinking desire and conceiving it as spatial-
ized differently. It is important to clarify that I am not using the term
‘lesbian’ to describe an identity rooted and fixed in the body. My posi-
tion, alongside that of the feminist Cathy Griggers, is that bodies,
including lesbian bodies, ‘only exist in a process of constant historical
transformation . . . there are only hybrid bodies, moving bodies,
migrant bodies, becoming bodies’ (1994: 128).
Theories of desire refigured are explored in the work of the Australian
feminist Elizabeth Grosz, the French poststructuralists Gilles Deleuze
and Felix Guattari and the French feminist Luce Irigaray, who all argue
for a productive notion of desire based on touching, sensation and
interfaces, rather than on lack. Grosz, in her essay entitled ‘Refiguring

77
78 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

Lesbian Desire’ explicitly states her aim to ‘think desire beyond the logic
of lack’ (1994a: 69). Both the Cartesian notion of a material body and
immaterial mind or spirit, and the Freudian notion of a normatively
heterosexual desire predicated on a perceived lack, which requires an
other, who is marked as different, are based on binary oppositions.
Desire based on lack is characterized by binary oppositions of not only
self/other, but also subject/object, active/passive and presence/absence.
This chapter argues that non-dualistic ways of thinking which blur
binary oppositions offer ways of theorizing theatre dance to reveal
the potential in it for refigured desire. Grosz describes desire as lack
in spatial terms as ‘an absence, lack, or hole, an abyss seeking to be
engulfed, stuffed to satisfaction’ (ibid: 71). In these descriptions space
is conceived as empty, unproductive, a void waiting to be filled. In
the theories of Grosz , Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray, and in the
dances examined here, I argue that space, desire and bodies need to
be rethought as reciprocally productive, that is that they continually
produce and are produced by each other.
After briefly outlining key concepts such as assemblages and becom-
ing (from Deleuze and Guattari), which inform Grosz’s notions of refig-
ured desire, and the imagery of two lips (from Irigaray), the spatial
configurations associated with these are employed to describe interfaces
between bodies, and bodies and space in two dance video duets and two
solos. These spatial configurations all focus on the productive inter-
connectivity between bodies and space, allowing space to be seen as dis-
cursively constructed and sexualized, and subjectivity to be rethought
in terms of a fluid notion of becoming rather than a fixed idea of being.
Reservaat and Between/Outside were each made as dance films for two
female performers, respectively in the Netherlands in 1988 and in
London in 1999. Virginia Minx at Play and Homeward Bound are both
solos danced by the choreographers and first performed at the Riley
Theatre, Leeds in 1993 and at Chisenhale Dance Space, London in 1997
respectively.

Lesbian desire refigured

In her essay ‘Refiguring Lesbian Desire’ Grosz suggests that desire when
seen ‘primarily as production rather than . . . lack’ (1994a: 74) can be
conceived in terms of ‘the energy that creates things, makes alliances
and forges interactions between things’ (ibid: 75). She draws on the
work of Deleuze and Guattari because they see desire as ‘immanent,
positive, and productive, as inherently full’ (ibid) and ‘as . . . what
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 79

connects, what makes machinic alliances’ (Grosz, 1994b: 165). An

alliance in their terms is a pact ‘an infection or epidemic’ (Deleuze and
Guattari, 1988: 247). In this sense it is dynamic and everchanging, it
has the ability to spread. ‘The ways in which . . . bodies come together
with or align themselves to other things produce what Deleuze has
called a machine: a nontotalized collection or assemblage of hetero-
geneous elements and materials’ (Grosz, 1994b: 120). These machinic
connections are characterized by ‘intensities’ and ‘multiplicities’. Impor-
tantly an assemblage does not describe what things are in terms of fixed
states of being, but what things do, how they behave, and how they are
structured and relate in terms of processes, it is dynamic. As Deleuze
and Guattari state, ‘it is a composition of speeds and affects . . . a sym-
biosis’ (1988: 258). ‘ In this sense Deleuze and Guattari’s work
‘provide[s] an altogether different way of understanding the body in its
connections with other bodies . . . it is understood . . . in terms of . . . the
linkages it establishes, the transformations and becomings it undergoes’
(Grosz, 1994b: 164–5). The value of their notion of ‘becomings’ is that
they ‘involve destabilizing recognizable patterns of organization’ and
they ‘indicate[s] new possibilities in self-transformation’ (Lorraine,
1999: 181). They can be particularly pertinent when considering the dif-
ferent spatialization of desire as expressed in dance because they involve
‘challenging conventional body boundaries’ (ibid: 183).
The different spatialization of lesbian desire is identified by the British
feminist Penny Florence, in her discussion of sex and spatial structure
in a Manet painting (Mlle Victorine en costume d’Espada, 1862). She sug-
gests that the little the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan has to say
about lesbians ‘hints towards a desire which is spatialized differently from
its articulation in most of his writing’ (emphasis added) (1998: 262). She
continues: ‘Rather than a “contorted” space, manifest in intervals this
female desire is contiguous, with no loss and no gap, but rather a touch-
ing’ (ibid : 263). As Florence comments, these ideas have strong reso-
nances with Irigaray’s image of two lips, where the contiguity evident
permits a plural sexuality (Irigaray, 1985b: 28), ‘a multiplicity which
allows for subject-to-subject relations between women’ (Whitford,
1991a: 182). It is important to recognize that Irigaray is not refer-
ring in any literal sense to the female anatomy, although that is the
origin of the image, which is rather used as a discursive strategy. The
image works metonymically through contiguity, association or touch-
ing (ibid: 180) which allows for process. This emphasis on process has
similarities with Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of becoming. Irigaray
claims: ‘Woman is neither open nor closed. She is indefinite, in-finite,
80 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

form is never complete in her. . . . This incompleteness in her form . . .

allows her continually to become something else’ (her emphasis)
(1985a: 229), ‘metamorphoses occur . . . transmutations occur’ (ibid:
233). The image is particularly relevant for exploring spatial configura-
tions of lesbian desire in dance because, according to Irigaray, it focuses
on women’s limits or ‘edges touching each other’ (ibid: 232–3), which
‘do not constitute those of a body or an envelope, but the living edges
of flesh opening’ (quoted in Whitford 1991a: 162). I see this as a fluid
ever changing body/space interface, where ‘there is something which
exceeds all attempts to confine/define her [woman] within a system of
discourse’ (Whitford, 1991b: 27). The excess, openness and fluidity stem
from the multiplicity and polymorphous perversity of woman’s sexual-
ity. Irigaray claims: ‘woman has sex organs more or less everywhere. She
finds pleasure almost anywhere . . . the geography of her pleasure is far
more diversified, more multiple in its differences, more complex, more
subtle, than is commonly imagined’ (her emphasis) (1985b: 28). This
suggests ‘a mode of being “in touch” that differs from the phallic mode
of discourse’ (Burke quoted in Whitford, 1991a: 172).
From these sources there is the suggestion that desire can be seen to
be spatialized differently. This different spatialization is not based on
lack, or space seen as distance, but rather on surfaces, intensities, inter-
faces and touching. Images of machinic connections and the ‘two lips’
with associations of becoming, transformations and multiplicities,
which blur boundaries challenging binary oppositions, assist in describ-
ing and characterizing this spatialization.

The performance of gender and sexuality

When considering the choreography of refigured desire it is important

to recognize that dancing bodies are constructed as gendered and sexed.
The body is always already gendered and conventionally sexualized as
heterosexual. As the American queer theorist Judith Butler argues, ‘the
association of a natural sex with a discrete gender and with an osten-
sibly natural “attraction” to the opposing sex/gender is an unnatural
conjunction of cultural constructs’ (1990: 275). Butler claims that
genders of bodies are performed, repeatedly performed in social and cul-
tural performative acts. However, it is important to distinguish between
this kind of performance or performativity, and dance performance. The
performance of gender is something that everyone does repeatedly,
usually without realizing it is a performance. It is part of what it means
to inhabit a gendered identity and be a meaningful subject. This is
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 81

different from dance performance which is recognized as such. As Butler

suggests, performativity is different from theatrical performance because
performativity ‘consists in a reiteration of norms which precede, con-
strain, and exceed the performer’ (Butler, 1993: 234). Within dance per-
formance the performativity of gender and sexuality is hidden or so
apparent it is invisible. It exists alongside and interacts with the dance
performance. Investigation of these interactions between dance perfor-
mance and performativity in dances that can be read as lesbian, has
revealed that there is an active seductive energy that exists in the spaces
between dancers (Briginshaw, 1998). As the French post-Marxist Henri
Lefebvre claims when discussing the spatial effects of bodily rhythms,
which in part may be ‘distilled into desire’, ‘an animated space comes
into being which is the extension of the space of bodies’ (1991: 205–7).
It is this animated space that I explore further in the dances analyzed
here. My analysis, following Butler, is based on the premise that bodies
are discursively constructed as gendered and sexed through repeated
performative acts.

The Dances – Reservaat (1988), Between/Outside (1999),

Virginia Minx at Play (1993) and Homeward Bound (1997)

Reservaat, made by Clara Van Gool in 1988 and filmed in black and
white, is set in a country park or reservation with trees and a lake, where
Martine Berghuijs and Pépé Smit dance a tango (see cover photo).1 It
has been screened at various lesbian and gay film festivals in North
America and Europe throughout the nineties.2 Between/Outside, filmed
and choreographed by Lucille Power in 1999, in which she performs
with Sarah Spanton, is set in a concrete stairwell of a block of London
flats. Both dance films last about seven minutes and are accompanied
by the sounds of the performers: the crushing of leaves underfoot by
the tango dancers in Reservaat, and the dancers’ echoey footsteps on the
uncarpetted stairs in Between/Outside. Whereas tango dance steps con-
stitute the choreography in Reservaat, pedestrian movement, mainly
walking up and down stairs and sitting, is used in Between/Outside. In
both, the women are always close to each other and touch, in Reservaat
maintaining the tango embrace throughout. The intensity that the
proximity of the dancers creates is a key focus in both works. I explore
the spatial configurations in the interfaces between the dancers and
their implications for refiguring desire. The ‘Watch me witch you’
section (10 mins) from Virginia Minx at Play (77 mins) choreographed by
Emilyn Claid in 1993, and Homeward Bound (33 mins) choreographed
82 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

by Sarah Spanton in 1997 are danced on bare stages. They both create
androgynous characters, a Latin American dancer and a sailor respec-
tively (Plates 4 and 5). The choreography, costumes and music are
crucial in character construction. In Virginia Minx at Play, Claid, per-
forming virtuoso Latin dance vocabulary, wears black, close-fitting,
high-waisted, silk trousers, a deep pink sequined fringed waistcoat,
matching pink long satin gloves and a black velour fedora hat. She is
accompanied by a Latin style song entitled ‘Sombrero’, sung live on
stage by a female musician, Heather Joyce. In Homeward Bound, Spanton
performs a mixture of traditional nautical dance steps such as the sailor’s
hornpipe and other movements that evoke the swell of the ocean. She
is dressed in a white sailor suit with blue square collar, and she has a
lilo as a single prop. She dances partly in silence but mainly to record-
ings of eleven sea shanties sung by male folk singers in both the male
and female third and first person. In both works tension builds as
the spaces between parts of the dancers’ bodies and between the per-
formers and spectators are played with in performance.
The cultural contexts of the tango in Reservaat and of the broader Latin
dance conventions in Virginia Minx at Play inscribe the dancing bodies
in particular ways. As Grosz, following Foucault and Butler, argues,
‘bodily materiality . . . through corporeal inscriptions . . . is constituted
as a distinctive body . . . performing . . . in socially specified ways’
(1994b: 118). Bodies perform in distinctively gendered and sexualized
ways and these performances are often underlined and embellished
with other conventional performances, such as those of tango and
Latin American dance. Grosz continues: ‘Bodies are fictionalized . . .
positioned by various cultural narratives and discourses, which are
themselves embodiments of culturally established canons, norms, and
representational forms . . . they can be seen as living narratives’
(ibid). As the dance theorist Marta Savigliano demonstrates,
tango is a rich living cultural narrative with its own canons, norms and
contesting representational forms. Like many Latin dance styles it is
imbued with associations of the erotic and exotic and its rendering of
heterosexual desire masks the many tensions in its narrative that Sav-
igliano reveals. This provides an important context for readings of Reser-
vaat and Virginia Minx at Play in the sense that the narratives and
discourses of Latin dance conventions construct the dancing bodies in
these two works initially as contained, and part of the traditional het-
erosexual narrative of desire as lack. It is only when these dance forms
are played with in specific ways in the performances, that possibilities
for a more productive notion of desire spatialized differently become
apparent.
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 83

Surfaces in contact

Reservaat opens with a shot of a lake surrounded by trees; the reserva-

tion of the title, which sets the scene for what is to follow: a close-up
shot of fur, with a hand, fingers spread, gradually coming into view,
moving slowly across it. As the fur begins to turn, it becomes clear that
it clothes a woman’s back, held in a tango embrace by another woman,
dressed in an almost identical, but darker, fur costume. The camera
lingers on the hand/fur interface sensually, attention is focused on the
touch and textures by the close-up.
In Between/Outside there is a similar moment of contact that occurs
towards the end of the piece when the two women who are dressed
rather drably – Lucille Power in a grey leather coat and Sarah Spanton
in a red imitation fur jacket – are seen in profile. Spanton, standing
behind Power, lifts Power’s shoulder length hair out from under her coat
collar and smooths it down once with her hand. While this is happen-
ing, Power closes and opens her eyes twice, possibly blinking, or pos-
sibly briefly closing her eyes in pleasure, cherishing what is happening.
Soon after, the women’s feet pass each other on a single stair, as if on
a narrow ledge – another moment of proximity. ‘What at one moment
is suggested as an impersonal relationship is the next disrupted when a
different level of intimacy is revealed’ (Power on Between/Outside, 1999).
The shot of Spanton’s hand smoothing Power’s hair is a touch that is
in fact the culmination of a series of increasingly close encounters
between the two women. It can be compared to the opening shot of
the hand on fur in Reservaat, which sets the scene for the close bodily
contact that follows. These touches, placed as they are at the beginning
and end of the two works, are significant. They stand out in the chore-
ography because of the lengthy, close-up filming in Reservaat and the
context in Between/Outside; up until this point the two women’s rela-
tionship has been ambiguous, and this touch seems to signify a level of
intimacy not evident earlier. In both cases body parts in contact and
textures are key. It is the hand that touches, and it touches something
soft and silky, on the other woman’s body. As Grosz suggests:

we must focus on the elements, the parts . . . In looking at the inter-

locking of two such parts – fingers and velvet . . . there is not as psy-
choanalysis suggests, a predesignated erotogenic zone . . . Rather, the
coming together of two surfaces produces a tracing that imbues both
of them with eros or libido, making bits of bodies . . . parts, or par-
ticular surfaces throb, intensify, for their own sake.
(1994a: 78)
84 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

Intensities are suggested in both pieces by these moments. The lengthy

shot of the hand on fur is an instance of, to paraphrase Grosz, an
encounter or interface between one body part and another which pro-
duces an erotogenic surface and lingers on and around it for evanses-
cent effects (ibid: 78). These touches close the gap between the women
which, as Irigaray has stated, allows for a transmutation or metamor-
phosis to occur, for the possibility of becoming something else. The
‘something else’, Irigaray suggests, is an interconnectivity of the two
bodies: ‘I’m touching you, that’s quite enough to let me know that you
are my body’ (1985b: 208). This interconnectivity can be compared to
the assemblages that Deleuze and Guattari theorize which are discussed
later in the chapter.
In Virginia Minx at Play and in Homeward Bound there are more exam-
ples of touches of smooth surfaces of fabric or hair covering bodies. But
this time the touches are self touches. Claid deliciously fingers her own
pink satin gloved palm – pink silk on pink silk – she draws suggestive
circles in it before leading our gaze up her arm with her finger which
ends erotically in her mouth, from slippery silk over bare flesh to fluid.
She frequently strokes her own crotch in an affectionate and sometimes
also in a more masturbatory fashion enjoying her own body, her satin
gloved hand sliding easily over the front of her black silk trousers.
The programme notes for Sarah Spanton’s performance of Homeward
Bound (1997) state, ‘Sarah Spanton explores her bisexual identity by
taking a personal voyage of discovery’ and ‘saucy wink ship’s mate foot-
pump lilo rubber inflate deflate inhale exhale flirt sailor – “boy” toying
cruising . . . seducing “passing” hello sailor’. She begins by inflating a
lilo with a footpump looking seductively at the audience as she, at first
slowly, and then with increasing speed and intensity, pumps with her
foot, whilst also swaying her hips and body. The build up in speed and
tension of the ‘heavy breathing’ of the lilo hints at orgasm. This is
the first of several titillations with the audience which often involve
Spanton seductively swaying her hips from side to side sometimes
putting her hands on her hips, both on one, or one on each, while
cheekily approaching the audience and then retreating. For much of the
time Spanton stares out boldly at the audience – she flirts with her body
and her eyes playing with the distance between herself and us. She
circles her arms and shoulders, runs her fingers through her cropped
boyish haircut suggestively and continually plays on the swell and
wave-like body movements that suggest both sea and sex.
Both Spanton and Claid in their performances are in very different
ways enjoying sensually touching their own bodies – smooth surfaces
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 85

feature again – hair and silk. Irigaray has suggested: ‘When I touch
myself I am surely remembering you’ (1985b: 215). Importantly for
Irigaray this ‘you’ is another woman, partly because she sees the
power of touch coming from the original sensation of connection
with the mother in the womb. She argues, ‘the singularity of the body
and the flesh of the feminine comes . . . from the fact that the sensible
which is the feminine touches the sensible from which he or she
emerges. The woman being woman and potentially mother . . . the two
lips . . . can touch themselves in her . . . these two dimensions . . . are
in her body. And hence she experiences it as volume in a different
way?’ (her emphasis) (1993: 166).

Becoming/transformations in Reservaat and

Homeward Bound

After the opening glimpses of the hand on fur in Reservaat, the shot cuts
to the dancers’ intertwined legs in knee length dark suede boots and
black opaque tights, performing a sandwich (or mordida when one
partner’s foot – usually the woman’s – is sandwiched between those of
her partner – usually the man). They then turn and walk sideways, mir-
roring each other, in typical tango style, ending with an embellishment.
Only the sounds of the wind and what could be a bird in the distance
are heard. When the legs disappear, the camera lingers on a shot of the
undergrowth. In these opening moments the focus is on connections
between parts of bodies – hand on fur and intertwined legs – and on
the reservation environment. An interconnectivity between the parts
of the two bodies, and between them and the surrounding environ-
ment is immediately suggested. Grosz claims: ‘to use the machinic
connections a body part forms with another . . . is to see desire and
sexuality as productive . . . a truly nomad desire unfettered by any-
thing external for anything can form part of its circuit and be absorbed
into its operations’ (1994a: 79). In Reservaat I am suggesting that the
habitat of the reservation forms part of the circuit of desire and is
absorbed into its operations. The emphasis in the filming and choreog-
raphy seems to be on the two dancers becoming one with each other
and with the environment. Grosz describes the Deleuzian notion
of becoming as, ‘entering into a relation with a third term and with
it to form a machine’ (ibid: 78). In Reservaat the habitat environ-
ment of the reservation could be seen as representing a third term
in a machinic transformation with the two dancers, and in Between/
Outside, the dull and empty, yet containing, stairwell might also be seen
86 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

in this role. It provides a space for the two women’s brief encounters
and its ordinariness enhances the encounters’ frisson, making them
seem unlikely.
In Reservaat, a few minutes into the film the two dancers are seen,
heads and shoulders only, slowly turning as they travel in their tango
embrace, they look around, at and past each other. The shots jump
quickly from a dancer’s foot noisily crushing a twig, to a fox looking
out of a hole and howling, then to a close-up of a dancer’s eyes turning
to look, presumably at the fox, or for the source of the sound. After
close-ups of her partner’s eyes and ear, and her own eyes, the dancers
look back at each other and, maintaining their tango embrace, jump
together. There follows a pattern of steps in the milonga style ending in
an embellishment. The fox is then seen disappearing down a hole and
the couple dance off in the distance.
The dance is clearly not presented as a ‘normal’ tango. The setting,
costume and lack of tango music, as well as the performers’ gender,
suggest otherwise. It seems more likely that the machinic connection
of the tango embrace, given the setting, the fur costumes and the jux-
taposition with a fox in the filming, could be read as a Deleuzian
instance of ‘becoming animal’. Making reference to Deleuzian notions
of becoming, Grosz argues:

One ‘thing’ transmutes into another, becomes something else

through its connections with something or someone outside . . . This
. . . entails . . . an assemblage of other fragments. . . . Becomings . . .
are . . . something inherently unstable and changing. It is not a ques-
tion of being (animal) . . . but of moving, changing, being swept
beyond the one singular position into a multiplicity of flows or into
what Deleuze and Guattari have described as ‘a thousand tiny sexes’
. . . to proliferate connections, to intensify.
(ibid: 80)

Read in this way, perhaps the unlikely costume, setting and filming of
the tango in Reservaat begin to make some sense, via Grosz’s reading of
Deleuze. The myriad of flows and proliferation of connections of a thou-
sand tiny sexes, suggests the polymorphous perversity of a refigured pro-
ductive desire no longer based on lack.
Spanton’s performance in Homeward Bound might also be read in
terms of a kind of becoming or transformation, since elements of her
performance are most certainly ‘inherently unstable and changing’
(ibid: 80). This is evident in her deliberate performance of ‘sailor boy’
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 87

gestures and postures sometimes subtley hinted at and sometimes baldly

stated as in ‘Heave away me Johnny’ when she leans on her upright lilo
as if waiting for and watching the girls go by on a street corner (Plate
5). Spanton’s androgynous looks combined with her costume, choreog-
raphy and the words of the sea shanties, that refer to sailors’ lost loves
or to sailor boys which might also be the sailors’ loves, open up gaps
between embodiment and representation allowing for an eruption of a
range of possible meanings. As the literary theorist Alice Parker says of
Québécoise Nicole Brossard’s lesbian writing ‘[she] meditates on gender,
and how to tease out what is hidden in language’ (Parker in Kaufmann,
1989: 229). Spanton too is playing with gender in her performance and
teasing out what is hidden in the language of the sea songs such as
‘Lovely Nancy’. The lyrics of the song overtly refer to a woman but given
Spanton’s undulating, rope climbing, serpentine body movements
that accompany it, covert references to ‘Nancy boys’ are suggested. As
Irigaray says: ‘why only one song, one speech, one text at a time?’
(1985b: 209). Spanton’s display of nautical naughtiness erupts with
thoughts, sensations and hesitations, giving it at times a coy, boyish
appeal. Linking Deleuze’s notion of ‘becoming-imperceptible’ with
Irigaray’s notions of the ‘sensible transcendental’, the philosophical
theorist Tamsin Lorraine argues, ‘becoming-imperceptible . . . involves
bringing faculties to the limit of communication with one another . . .
fragmenting the coherent subject and disabling the convergence of the
faculties upon an object of common sense experience’. She continues
this ‘requires transformation of oneself as well as transformation of
one’s understanding of the world . . . no identity can remain fixed . . .
becoming imperceptible involves challenging conventional body
boundaries . . . and unsettling a coherent sense of self’(1999: 188–9).
Spanton is transforming herself and the world in her performance, she
is ‘fragmenting the coherent subject and disabling the convergence of
faculties on an object of commonsense experience’ and as a result of
her performance ‘no identity can remain fixed’, she ‘unsettles a coher-
ent sense of self’. Throughout her performance Spanton, partly because
of the plays on the words of the songs, but also because of her ludic,
polysemic choreography, continually shifts between subject and object.
She is at times the object of our gaze, but then also the subject of the
sea shanty. She is playing in the spaces in between in the same sense
that Deleuze describes the operations of the word ‘and’. He says, ‘and
is neither one thing nor the other, it’s always in-between, between two
things; it’s the borderline . . . it’s along this line of flight that things
come to pass, becomings evolve, revolutions take shape’ (1995: 45).
88 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

Spanton’s subtly suggestive, fluid performance which moves between

transitory identities is continually becoming in this sense; in a revolu-
tionary sense. A multiplicity of meanings emerge from this intensely
mobile, intertextual performance. ‘There is a circuit of states that forms
a mutual becoming, in the heart of a necessarily multiple or collective
assemblage’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1986: 22).

Machinic assemblages in Between/Outside and Reservaat

For most of Between/Outside, Power and Spanton are seen walking up and
down stairs usually passing each other, occasionally walking side by side,
with hardly any signs of acknowledgement. Although the performers are
near each other throughout, they are only seen to touch four times. The
first touch occurs near the beginning when the dancers are sitting side
by side on chairs. It seems significant because it occurs during a forty-
five second long shot, noticeably longer than any previous shot, and
quite long shots follow almost immediately, totalling one-and-a-half
minutes in all, about a quarter of the video. Up to this point there is no
indication that the women know each other, they simply keep passing
on the stairs. They may be neighbours or complete strangers.
The sequence begins with Power entering from the front, turning and
sitting next to Spanton to face camera. Neither woman acknowledges
the other’s presence. They continue looking straight ahead, as if they
were sitting in a public place. There then begins a series of moves where
each of them smooths their clothes underneath them and their skirts
on their knees. In between this, Spanton sits on her hands, shifting her
weight from side to side placing her hands under her, then removing
them. Power places her hands first at her sides, then in her lap, crosses
and uncrosses her leg, and looks slightly to the side away from Spanton.
They then each look slightly towards each other, but their eyes never
meet, they never acknowledge each other’s presence. Throughout this,
their inside forearms and elbows have been brushing against each other,
almost imperceptibly. They appear rather like two people, possibly on
a first date, gingerly seeing if chance touches might become something
more. The performers’ relationship is intensified by repetition within
the choreography (each performer adjusts her position about eleven
times in the course of one-and-a-half minutes), and by the mounting
tension of these moments in and out of contact. The touches and the
space between the women increasingly become centres of attention.
This initially mundane contact starts to take on the character of a kind
of foreplay or mating ritual. Two short shots between the three longer
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 89

shots of the women sitting, also suggest contact. The women’s legs and
feet only are seen crossing a stair as if passing on a narrow ledge. The
dancers must be very close, possibly holding each other in order to keep
their balance. As Power (1999) says of Between/Outside: ‘Video can sug-
gest things by what it leaves out.’
In this excerpt when the dancers’ arms are very close, the space
between them increasingly becomes animated by choreographic repeti-
tion and by the duration of the phrase. The contrast with the lack of
contact between the dancers in the rest of the piece renders these
moments of touching particularly special. There is something about the
ordinariness and drabness of the two women’s appearance and situa-
tion in the impersonal, dull and empty stairwell that enhances the
potential warmth and desire inherent in these unexpected moments of
contact. It is often impossible to distinguish toucher from touched. This
blurring of boundaries between the two results in an interconnectivity
which is continually changing, creating a kind of machinic assemblage
in a fluid state of becoming and transformation. Grosz, when discuss-
ing refigured lesbian desire, argues, ‘the ways in which (fragments of)
bodies come together . . . produce what Deleuze has called a machine
. . . or assemblage’ (1994b: 120). She explains that these interactions
and linkages can be seen as both inside and outside (ibid: 116). The
spatiality of the touches in this phrase is a continuous link from inside
the subject to outside and from outside to inside. This blurs and decen-
ters the boundaries of the two selves touching, eluding any kind of
binary opposition. Precisely because it is impossible to distinguish
toucher from touched and the image is of an assemblage, it is impossi-
ble to distinguish any clear unidirectional dynamic of desire between a
self and an other marked as different. The desire is mutual and for the
same. As Deleuze and Guattari state, ‘the notion of behaviour proves
inadequate’ because it is ‘too linear, in comparison with . . . the assem-
blage’ (1988: 333). Initially the repetition in Between/Outside appears
innocent, but as it increases it becomes apparent that this is an unfaith-
ful repetition of performative acts in Butler’s terms.3 These women are
not simply adjusting their clothing and sitting positions. There is much
more at stake. This performance is clearly staged and constructed reveal-
ing the performativity and the discursively constructed nature of gender
and sexuality.
Characteristics of Irigaray’s ‘two lips’ imagery also apply. For example,
she has stated: there is no ‘possibility of distinguishing what is touch-
ing from what is touched’ (1985b: 26). She writes of ‘exchanges without
identifiable terms, without accounts, without end’ (ibid: 197) and of
90 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

‘moving and remaining open to the other’ (quoted in Whitford, 1991a:

161). In the apparently chance encounters of the two arms in
Between/Outside it is often impossible to distinguish touched from
toucher, and these exchanges do seem without terms, accounts or end.
The two performers’ movements also appear to remain open to each
other not only in this encounter, but in others, such as the different
passings, meetings and partings on the stairs.
About a minute after the ‘sitting section’ described above, both
women are seen in profile in a close-up shot, Power is helping Spanton
on with her coat. Underneath her red imitation fur zip-up jacket,
Spanton is wearing only a black silk slip. Both women turn, face the
camera and, standing side by side, look down to do up their coats. After
zipping hers up, Spanton turns to watch Power, this is the first indica-
tion of acknowledgement. However, her look does not seem to be a sig-
nificant new development in their relationship, it rather seems like a
known repeated ritual that has occurred before. Furthermore Spanton’s
apparel, Power’s help with her coat, and the fact that they are both
putting on coats, suggest that not only do these women know each
other, but maybe their relationship is quite intimate. The next few
minutes show them simply passing on the stairs repeatedly, without eye
contact. Again an obsessive ritual seems to be being acted out, but
despite a small hint of acknowledgement in Spanton’s look, there is no
further sign that the couple know each other. They give nothing away,
leaving viewers to ponder the nature of their relationship.
The next moment of contact occurs several minutes later when Power
is seen helping Spanton on with her coat again. This time, after Spanton
puts her arm in the sleeve, Power turns her to face her and zips her coat
up for her whilst Spanton looks on. They briefly look into each other’s
eyes, before the shot changes. When the coat is being put on, the spa-
tiality between the two women is filled by the coat that connects them
and by the mundane everyday activity of putting on clothes. Grosz
characterises machinic alliances as both relating through someone to
something else and relating through something to someone, and claims
that these connections form ‘an intensity, an investment of libido’ and
this is what it means ‘to see desire and sexuality as productive’ (1994a:
79). The second time the coat is put on, Power does not leave Spanton
to zip her own coat up, she turns her round to face her and does the
zip up for her. The nature of the machinic alliance and spatiality bound
up with the action has changed, transforming the assemblage and indi-
cating the productive nature of desire. These machinic alliances suggest
a ‘different way of understanding the body in its connections with other
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 91

bodies . . . it is understood . . . in terms of . . . the linkages it establishes,

the transformations and becomings it undergoes’ (Grosz, 1994b: 164–5)
and the blurring of its boundaries.
In Between/Outside there are several shots of legs only intertwining as
they cross on a single stair. These shots of the dancers’ legs, filmed in
close-up, apart from the rest of the body can be compared with similar
shots in Reservaat, glimpsed at the beginning and reiterated later.
Towards the end of Reservaat, there is a view of feet and legs only. One
dancer’s foot kicks to the side behind the leg of her partner (perform-
ing a gancho or ‘hook’ – a kick performed between the partner’s legs)
to initiate a long running section. Alternate shots of legs and then
bodies follow, the camera moving quite fast to keep up with the dancers.
In the next shot, moving more slowly, the dancers step forward, exe-
cuting a full turn around one of them performing a giro (a circular step),
before starting to run again. Legs only are seen, they run sideways mir-
roring each other, ending with a jump.
The shots of intertwining legs in both dances can be described as
‘assemblages of fragments’, ‘series of flows and breaks of varying speeds
and intensities’, ‘moving, changing, being swept beyond the one sin-
gular position into a multiplicity of flows’ – all images in Grosz’s account
of the Deleuzian notion of ‘becoming animal’ (1994a: 80). I suggest they
could be extended to apply to any kind of ‘becoming’. The difficulty of
distinguishing one performer from another and imagining the relation
of the rest of their bodies is an instance of blurred boundaries and bina-
ries. In both dances the intertwined legs can be said to transform the
space in which they move such that inside and outside are continuous
and indecipherable. The spatiality from the inside of both subjects over-
flows and merges into a machinic assemblage animating the space
between. As Deleuze and Guattari state, ‘machinic assemblages are
simultaneously located at the intersection of the contents and the
expression . . . they rotate in all directions like beacons’ (1988: 73). In
Reservaat at times the legs move so fast that they become blurred in the
filming. The space around them is bound up in the becoming linkage.
It too becomes sexualized.
In Reservaat the dancers’ legs and feet are also seen touching them-
selves and touching those of their partner. These are highly sexualized
rituals in the tango, based on traditional heterosexual notions of desire
as lack. A foot or leg often penetrates the space between the other
dancer’s legs suggesting the sexual act. However, because the legs in
Reservaat are filmed in isolation from the rest of the body it is difficult
to see whose legs are whose, the conventional heterosexual signals are
92 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

less apparent. The spatial dynamic is not about the binaries of presence
and absence or activity and passivity, signalled when the desire of a
subject is for an object marked as different. It is rather about a more pro-
ductive desire for the same. In Between/Outside, where it is easier to dis-
tinguish between the dancers’ legs because of their different shoes, the
moves made by each are the same, blurring the binaries of active/passive
and presence/absence. In both pieces, this intertwined machinic assem-
blage, as Grosz argues, provides ‘a way of problematizing and rethink-
ing the relations between the inside and the outside of the subject, its
psychical interior and its corporeal exterior’(1994b: xii). The value of
machinic assemblages is that they recognize, fit and reveal the com-
plexities and multiplicities of desire seen as productive. In this sense
these very different spatial linkages in the dances and the ideas of desire
they suggest, whether they are concerned with arms almost impercep-
tibly touching, coats being put on, or legs intertwining, are all in Deleuze
and Guattari’s terms ‘syntheses of heterogeneities’. As they state, ‘these
heterogeneities are matters of expression . . . their synthesis . . . forms a .
. . machinic “statement” or “enunciation”. The varying relations into
which a . . . gesture, movement or position enters . . . form so many
different machinic enunciations’ (their emphasis) (1988: 330–1).

Polymorphous perversity and multiplicities in

Virginia Minx at Play

A chaotic and overtly erotic geometry of multiple productive desire

emerges in Virginia Minx at Play, as Claid plays with relationships
between herself as a solo dancer, with the singer/musician, Heather
Joyce, the spectators, and with herself. As Irigaray argues: ‘these move-
ments cannot be described as the passage from a beginning to an end.
These rivers flow into no single definitive sea. These streams are with-
out fixed banks, this body without fixed boundaries. This unceasing
mobility . . . remains very strange to anyone claiming to stand on
solid ground’ (1985b: 215).
Claid appropriates the vocabulary and style of the distinctly macho
and heterosexual Latin American dance for her own corrupt lesbian use.
A tall imposing figure, in her close-fitting, high-waisted trousers and
pink sequined waistcoat, Claid strides about the stage bathed in a deep
pink light. She plays with the Latin vocabulary of dances such as the
tango and flamenco, spinning fast, kicking high, arching her back and
striking erect postures where everything in her body seems to be sucked
up into her svelte torso. These dynamic dance phrases often end with
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 93

seductive sideways glances at the audience from under the brim of

Claid’s fedora hat. She continually teases us grinning knowingly,
winking and often reaching her upturned palm out to us as if offering
herself, but then with an abrupt slap of her wrist she quickly withdraws,
denying us our pleasure.
Claid then directs her attention to her accompanist, Joyce. She
approaches Joyce, sitting at the side of the stage, from behind, boldly
caresses her breasts, lies across her lap, pulls her up, turns her round
and lowers her in a typical Latin dance embrace. When Claid returns
her to standing, she faces her and slowly traces a line from the top of
her forehead down the centre of her face and neck, between her breasts,
over her stomach to her genitals, whereupon Joyce rushes back to the
microphone to continue her song, leaving Claid with an empty out-
stretched hand. Spinning back to centre stage, her spangled, fringed
waistcoat catching the bright lights, Claid goes down to the floor and
reclines seductively on one hip looking at the audience. She then lowers
herself onto her back, removes her hat and places it over her crotch,
and whilst raising it, she fans the area between her legs as if to cool the
heat. After one or two more sorties to Joyce, when Claid kisses her on
the neck and strokes her, and several more plays with the spectators,
the performance ends with a flourish as Joyce hits the high concluding
note of the song and Claid sits down on the chair throwing a final side-
ways glance to the crowd. Here Claid is playing with traditional notions
of desire based on lack. The singer is clearly the object of Claid’s desire,
evident in the ways in which Claid looks at her, looks at the audience
knowingly, and then approaches her from a distance and touches her.
Here, unlike the touches described between Power and Spanton in
Between/Outside, there is no confusion as to who is touching whom, the
touches are one-way. In this interlude Claid appears to be parodying
traditional heterosexual desire based on lack.
However, in her performance as a whole, like Spanton in Homeward
Bound, Claid’s androgyny continually confuses as she plays recklessly
with masculine and feminine codes. She deftly weaves her way through
subject and object positions often occupying both at the same time as
the chaotic geometry of desire criss-crosses the performance space.
Claid’s performance demonstrates many of the layers of deviousness
possible when gender and sexuality are freed up in lesbian performance
and let out to play. Claid’s body exudes polysemic possibilities of a
myriad errogenous zones from fingers to thighs, arms to mouths, breasts
to torso and crotch, concurring with Irigaray’s statement that: ‘woman
has sex organs more or less everywhere’. She finds pleasure almost
94 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

anywhere’ (1985b: 28). Focuses of attention range continuously not

only across Claid’s own body but also over Joyce’s body and back and
forth between Claid and the audience, both disrupting and fracturing
a voyeuristic, objectifying, masculine gaze, while also at times playing
with it. For most of her performance Claid reveals ‘female sexuality
as fluid, diffuse, polymorphously perverse, mobile and unbounded’
(Wilton, 1995: 155).

In-between spaces – spatial locations and

private/public boundaries

The different spatialization of desire in the four dances examined here

has been explored in, and created, in-between spaces of various kinds.
In a literal sense the spaces between bodies of dancers have been seen
at times to be animated rendering them special. Spaces between differ-
ent body parts have also at times been animated in a similar way. The
spaces between performers and spectators, live or virtual in the case
of the dance videos, have also been importantly played with, particu-
larly in the two live solos. In the two dance videos the added dimen-
sion of location provides another kind of in-between space. This blurs
binary oppositions, creating further ambiguities which enhance and
underline those inherent in the polymorphously perverse desiring
bodies, providing particular contexts for reading desire as produc-
tive and spatialized differently. The blurred boundaries inherent in
the touchings and closeness of the two bodies in Reservaat and
Between/Outside are reiterated in their locations. The country park of
Reservaat and the stairwell of Between/Outside are ambiguously both inte-
rior and exterior spaces. The park is enclosed by a wall and gate pro-
viding an interior space for animals and vegetation, but it is also an
outside and exterior space signalled by shots of trees and sky above.
Power, the choreographer of Between/Outside, says of it, ‘the [stairwell]
location is crucial: a space that is neither an interior nor an exterior,
but one that lies somewhere between’ (1999). The titles of both pieces,
Reservaat and Between/Outside, reinforce the importance of the space
of their locations and Between/Outside makes a statement about the in-
betweenness of the space, further emphasizing the blurred boundaries
of interior and exterior.
The continual blurring of interior/exterior and self/other oppositions
is extended in both pieces when private/public boundaries are also chal-
lenged. In Reservaat, a seemingly private relationship, the intensity of
which is signalled throughout, by close-ups of touches and looks, is
 Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian 95

acted out in a public space of a nature reserve. In Between/Outside the

private/public divide is also played with in subtle ways. When the two
performers sit side by side adjusting their dress and sitting positions,
these apparently public moments increasingly appear private. When the
two women who have appeared strangers help each other on with coats
over underwear, and one takes time to lift and smooth the hair of the
other, these moments seem surprisingly private. However, they might
also be considered public, because of the apparently casual way in which
they are slipped in among shots of two women who seem complete
strangers, passing on what appears to be a public thoroughfare.
Private/public boundaries can also be seen to be blurred in Homeward
Bound and Virginia Minx at Play when the performers play in the space
in between them and their spectators. They at times play with intima-
cies normally regarded as private in their public performances. The blur-
ring of these public/private binaries, like the mutual touches in the
dances, merges inside and outside, interior and exterior such that there
is a fluid interface for the differently spatialized productive kind of
desire evident in the works.

Conclusion

In these four dances when the touching, meeting and parting of the
women’s bodies, which are key threads that run throughout, are seen
non-dualistically in terms of their spatialization as machinic assem-
blages, sometimes taking on the characteristics of ‘becoming animal’ or
‘becoming imperceptible’ with resonances with Irigaray’s imagery asso-
ciated with two lips, it becomes possible to conceive desire differently.
The possibility of seeing desire spatialized in terms of linkages, con-
nectivities and transformations suggests that desire can be seen as
productive rather than as lack. This is because the boundaries of
binary oppositions of self/other, subject/object, activity/passivity and
presence/absence are often blurred in the dances allowing for a dif-
ferent spatialization of desire, emphasized in various ways by the chore-
ography, and in Reservaat and Between/Outside, also by the filming. As
Grosz indicates at the end of her essay on refiguring lesbian desire,

what I am putting forth here is . . . a way of looking at things and

doing things with concepts and ideas in the same ways we do
them with bodies and pleasures, a way . . . of flattening the hierar-
chical relations between ideas and things . . . of eliminating the privi-
lege of the human over the animal . . . the male over the female, the
96 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

straight over the ‘bent’ – of making them . . . interactive, rendering

them productive and innovative, experimental and provocative.
(1994a: 81)

The four performances explored have replaced desire based on lack,

where space is seen as empty, with an animated space of touchings and
intensities, and with seductive, actual and metaphorical plays with a
wealth of errogenous zones. In the process, subject/object and self/other
have been revealed as fluidly interchangeable with the potential to dis-
solve constraining binaries and challenge fixed identities. As Tamsin
Lorraine claims, ‘by delineating various aspects of human existence in
terms of strata and assemblages, Deleuze and Guattari [and I would add
these dances] depict a subject with vastly expanded possibilities and
connections to the world’ (1999: 172).
In the next chapter the expanded possibilities of subjectivity for con-
temporary urban Asian women are explored, focusing on the dissolu-
tion of West/East and male/female binaries, through the creation of
in-between spaces in the choreography and filming of three female
dancers in three London office buildings.
6
Hybridity and Nomadic
Subjectivity in Shobana
Jeyasingh’s Duets with
Automobiles

Introduction

In Duets with Automobiles (1993) three female dancers ( Jeyaverni

Jeganathan, Savitha Shekhar and Vidya Thirunarayan), filmed inside
and outside three London office buildings (The Ark, Hammersmith,
Canary Wharf and Alban Gate, London Wall), perform a mixture of
vocabulary from contemporary dance and the traditional, Indian clas-
sical dance form of Bharata Natyam. I argue that the choreography and
filming of the juxtaposition and interaction of the three female dancers
with the geographically situated architecture construct these spaces
as ‘in-between’. In the process West/East and male/female binaries are
blurred suggesting the possibility of a rethought, contemporary, urban,
female subjectivity.
The West/East and male/female binaries that are blurred are suggested
initially in the film by the juxtaposition of the dancers with the build-
ings. The office buildings have connotations of power, money and the
city as a financial centre. They are created by men who are at the heart
of controlling flows of finance. They are valuable and powerful proper-
ties because of where they are and what goes on in them; the control
of capital; Western capital. They are masculine public spaces; women
have historically been excluded from their creation and from power
over their operations. Shobana Jeyasingh’s choreography in this po-
tentially alienating environment successfully manages to transform
these spaces and fulfill her intention of creating ‘an icon of Indian
womanhood . . . appropriate to urban women in the 1990s’ (Rubidge,
1995: 34).1 Jeyasingh achieves this intention through her distinctive
approach to the Bharata Natyam dance form which she has meta-
phorically described as ‘making a bedroom’ out of the ‘awesome public

97
98 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

building’ of the classical language of Bharata Natyam (in Aditi Newslet-

ter, 1997: 9). In her choreography Jeyasingh is continually negotiating
the distance between the formality, authority and sense of history
that the ‘awesome public building’ of Bharata Natyam suggests, and
the personal, human ‘intimacy’ and homeliness of the ‘bedroom’. These
negotiations of in-between spaces are both symptomatic of and in-
formed by Jeyasingh’s hybridity as a diasporic artist and her nomadic
subjectivity.
Jeyasingh was born in India and now lives and works in Britain. When
discussing her work she often refers to the postcolonial theories of Homi
Bhabha (Jeyasingh, 1995, 1996, 1997b) whose concept of ‘hybridity’ she
finds ‘very useful’ (in Ingram, 1997: 12). It gets away from the polari-
zation inherent in descriptions of her dances as East/West collabora-
tions. Bhabha is concerned to resist ‘the binary opposition of racial and
cultural groups’ (1994: 207). His notion of hybridity recognizes the flu-
idity and changing nature of concepts such as ‘East’ and ‘West’. The in-
between spaces that Jeyasingh is continually negotiating in her work
are hybrid spaces of the sort that Bhabha theorizes. He characterizes
them as ‘new areas of negotiation of meaning and representation’ (1991:
211) which involve ‘inscription and intervention’ and ‘translating and
transvaluing cultural differences’ (ibid: 242, 252). These terms aptly
describe the actual and conceptual negotiations that occur in the in-
between spaces created in Duets with Automobiles which is why Bhabha’s
theories are explored in the reading that follows.
Jeyasingh has said of the office buildings in Duets with Automobiles –
‘we wanted to humanize’ them and she has referred to them as ‘an im-
aginary homeland’ (1997a). There are references to Salman Rushdie’s
Imaginary Homelands (1991) in the monograph accompanying Jeyas-
ingh’s Romance with . . . footnotes video (Holmstrom, 1995: 6), and Jeyas-
ingh has used his title for a conference paper (1995). Rushdie’s
‘imaginary homelands’ describe the ‘fictions’ that ‘exiles’, ‘emigrants
and expatriates’ create because they are unable to replace what has
been lost due to their ‘physical alienation from India’ (Rushdie, 1991:
10). For Jeyasingh the concept of ‘home’ is an important one, she has
referred to it on more than one occasion (Jeyasingh, 1996, 1997a,
1997b). Following Rushdie, she sees ‘home’ as an ‘invention’ and she
talks about the ‘fluidity’ and ‘unfixed’ nature of notions of home (1996,
1997b). She relates these ideas to her background – after her birth in
India, she grew up in Sri Lanka and Malaysia before coming to Britain.
Like the feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti, who was born in Italy, raised
in Australia, educated in Paris and is now based in the Netherlands,
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 99

Jeyasingh has actually experienced unfixed homes, and these experi-

ences conceptually inform her outlook and her work.
Braidotti, introducing her theory of nomadic subjectivity, has written
‘nomadism consists not so much in being homeless, as in being capable
of recreating your home everywhere’ (1994: 16). It is in part because
of this consonance with Jeyasingh’s ideas that Braidotti’s concept of
nomadic subjectivity is explored here. There are elements of Braidotti’s
theory that align with Bhabha’s notion of hybridity, such as her stress
on ‘transmobility’ and the importance of notions of ‘interconnected-
ness’ and her ‘figuration’ of the nomad as a ‘culturally differentiated
understanding of the subject’ (ibid: 2–5). For her, nomadic subjectivity
is a ‘multiple entity’ that allows for ‘the recognition of differences’ (ibid:
36). Her philosophy also entails ‘a move beyond . . . dualistic concep-
tual constraints’ (ibid: 2). But first and foremost Braidotti’s nomadic sub-
jectivity is a ‘female feminist subjectivity’ that is an ‘attempt to move
away from the phallocentric vision of the subject’ (ibid: 1). Braidotti’s
moves towards a contemporary female subjectivity of this kind make
her work particularly pertinent for examining Duets with Automobiles
which Jeyasingh has stated is ‘about strong, urban, Indian women’
(1997a).
Duets with Automobiles (14 mins), commissioned by the Arts Council
and the BBC and broadcast in 1993, is directed by Terry Braun2 with
music by Orlando Gough. It is the only work of Jeyasingh’s that has
been created entirely for camera. The work of Jeyasingh’s company,
formed in 1988 following her seven-year solo career in Bharata Natyam,
‘questions inherited notions of what Indian dance is and what its pos-
sibilities are, stressing its belief that Indian dance is open to personal,
contemporary and innovative use’ (Rubidge, 1993). Although Jeyas-
ingh’s work is rooted in Bharata Natyam vocabulary and style, she devel-
ops it in various ways evident in Duets with Automobiles, such as her
extension of the solo form to group choreography and her use of pre-
dominantly contemporary music.

Hybrid spaces between East and West

Jeyasingh has stated ‘it’s not a matter of choosing between this or that,
we are already in a situation where the interconnections are so complex
that we have enough work to keep track of that’ (Romance with . . . foot-
notes video, 1994) and she writes of ‘a blurring of a simple East West
divide’ (1997b: 32). Through dismantling the oversimplified binaries
of East and West in her work, Jeyasingh is concerned to reveal the
100 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

complexities and interconnections that exist on the borderlines in the

many spaces between.
Duets with Automobiles opens with a shot of St Paul’s Cathedral, seen
through a window frame with a woman, her back to camera, silhou-
etted in the foreground. St Paul’s marks the city skyline out as London,
historical London, it is a national monument, part of the British cul-
tural heritage. After a few seconds the woman slowly half turns to
camera, with her dark skin she looks Indian. She looks back at the view
and then turns back while contemplating herself slowly running her
hand and forearm along the window ledge. This sensitive contact with
the building, suggesting closeness and intimacy, initially contrasts with
the view of St Paul’s in the distance. Placing the Indian woman in the
frame might suggest connections with British Imperial history. On one
level the identities of London and of the Indian woman are constructed
by their juxtaposition and the role that ‘race’ and history play invest-
ing them with power. The grandeur of St Paul’s architecture could be
said to dominate the scene investing London and British culture with
power over the Indian woman.
Read in this way the image reinforces the East/West binary, but
other readings are possible. The shot changes to a full-length view
of St Paul’s through a glass wall this time, in a golden, possibly evening,
light with an Indian dancer standing, back to camera, silhouetted
against the cathedral. She runs the palm of her hand over its surface
through the glass. St Paul’s, seen in the sunset, could suggest the rem-
nants of an imperial past and that the dancer is contemplating the
future of a new hybrid existence in a city which is hers. Jeyasingh
said of the juxtaposition of the Indian dancers with the buildings
in Duets with Automobiles ‘it’s about making something public very
personal’ (1997a). The caress of the dancer does this. It blurs the
boundaries and binaries that separate her and St Paul’s, it brings them
closer together. Jeyasingh clearly had this in mind when making
the piece. Discussing these opening moments, she said ‘whenever I
look at St Paul’s, for me, it’s a very ambiguous icon, because I see St
Paul’s immediately connecting to the Taj Mahal and to Santa Sofia in
Istanbul. I wanted to pitch the Indian dancer against the image, I
wanted her to caress it softly’ (ibid). She continued stating ‘I didn’t want
a fight or bitterness, it’s not a power struggle’ rather she saw these
opening moments as being in sympathy with Bhabha’s resistance to the
binary opposition of colonizer and colonized. She said ‘those dialogues
are gone, I don’t see East and West. I am not the “other” any more’
(ibid).
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 101

This opening sequence sets the tone for Duets with Automobiles.
Having the Indian dancer caress St Paul’s foregrounds the ambiguity and
hybridity of this icon. The intimacy of the looks and gestures of the
Indian dancer soften the historic formality of the recognizably British
public building, making it ‘homely’ and personal, private rather than
public. The filming and choreography bring the two initially distinct
elements together rather than placing them in opposition, creating an
in-between space of hybridity, ‘[a] cultural space for opening up new
forms of identification that . . . confuse the continuity of historical
temporalities, confound the ordering of cultural symbols, traumatize
tradition’ (Bhabha, 1994: 179).
Relations between space, power and difference are not simple and
straightforward as these opening moments of Duets with Automobiles
indicate. Towards the end of the film the complexities of hybrid in-
between spaces, with ‘new forms of identification’ that ‘confuse’,
‘confound’ and ‘traumatize’ in Bhabha’s terms, become particularly
evident. When a dancer kneels down on the classically, geometric
designs inlaid in a marble floor, and traces with her palm some of
the diagonal and circular lines of the pattern, she appears, in an act
of reverence, to be making connections with the precise curved and
linear pathways she has just traced in her performance of classical
Indian dance. The ‘mapping’ refers to a parallel historical journey
whose geometrical traces remain in the cultural products of dance,
architecture and design. However, Jeyasingh, is also making a state-
ment about the contemporary fluidity and movement of cultures and
borders that currently allow such comparisons to be made. Talking of
her work she has said she is concerned with ‘the changing borders
raging all around’, the ‘dynamism of journeys’, and ‘a pattern of belong-
ing that is multi-dimensional’ ( Jeyasingh, 1995: 191–3). About her
piece Making of Maps (1992/3), Jeyasingh said that it started as ‘a process
of inventing my own heritage’. One of the images that informed
the piece was of someone playing music on a radio, twiddling the
knob and sampling music from different countries. Jeyasingh wanted
to express some of this ‘amazing accessibility and openness of the
universe that was there for the taking’ (ibid: 193). Her mapped
statements in Duets with Automobiles about traced connections between
‘race’, space and power, have resonances with the positioning, con-
trolling and colonizing characteristics of real maps, inherited from
history and demonstrated in dance, architecture and design (see Chap-
ters 2 and 10). But they also challenge notions of identities and her-
itages fixed by borders by pointing to the fluidity of contemporary
102 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

urban existence. This extract from Duets with Automobiles is a rich illus-
tration of Bhabha’s statement that,

what is theoretically innovative, and politically crucial is the need to

think beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities and to
focus on those moments . . . that are produced in the articulation of
cultural differences. These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain
for elaborating strategies of selfhood . . . that initiate new signs of
identity.
(1994: 1–2)

Bhabha’s emphasis on the importance and value of language and

culture in his work, that ‘there is no knowledge . . . outside representa-
tion’ (1994: 23), is also illustrated in this extract by the hybridity
evident in the dialectical articulation of the Bharata Natyam dancer’s
performance and the pattern on the marble floor. Here two cultural
manifestations, which are in themselves hybrid, by their dialogue ‘ini-
tiate a new sign of identity’. In this sense the choreography and filming
reveal possibilities for reclaiming the space and imbuing it with new
meanings. As Sanjoy Roy says of Jeyasingh’s work, ‘by getting “under
the skin” of cultural boundaries, by loosening the links between race,
place and culture, her work can speak to the experience of diaspora’
(Roy, 1997: 83).

Female solidarity and nomadic subjectivity

In Duets with Automobiles Jeyasingh explores the multiple and shifting

nature of questions of identity, specifically of the perspectives of her
dancers, and their existence as contemporary, urban, Indian women.
Several minutes into the piece, there is a shot of a dancer standing next
to a circular white stone pillar curving her arm above her and placing
her palm on the stone. This intimate gesture transforms the Bharata
Natyam style of the movement. Instead of the emphasis being outward,
on the frontal display of the solo dancing body as in traditional Indian
dance, here the focus is inward, the body is turned sideways and the
palm touching the stone connects the dancer to the modern London
building (see also Plate 6). As she retraces her circular pathway with her
arm, lowering her hand and spreading her fingers in a mudra, another
dancer takes hold of her wrist and pulls her towards her. The first dancer
lets her weight be caught by the second who is facing her, by placing
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 103

her hands on her shoulders. The first is then turned and she leans back
towards her partner who takes her body weight again, before sending
her back towards the pillar. Touching it she turns and slides her back
and the sole of her foot down it. The contact with the pillar and the
interchange of weight between dancers are illustrations of Jeyasingh’s
concern to ‘humanize’ the buildings through touch and intimacy.
The hints of female solidarity suggested also have connections with
Braidotti’s project to ‘evoke a vision of female feminist subjectivity’
(1994: 1).
As the dancers complete their interchange of weight, they are joined
by a third and all begin to sink into full plié, where, in the next shot, they
are seen with hands together in front of their chests in Bharata Natyam
style. They stare out confidently to camera in front of the distant London
skyline viewed through a glass wall. They rotate their hands in unison to
form clenched fists, which they sustain as they turn and lower themselves
diagonally onto their right knees. The image conveys their strong female
presence. The clenched fist – a mudra called mushdi – was an important
motif for Jeyasingh throughout Duets with Automobiles expressing
strength and determination (Jeyasingh, 1997a). Next a single dancer
leans forward on her knee and bows her head to the ground, where she
rolls over onto her back and is seen in close-up, lying on the floor. Much
of her body is touching the floor. The proximity, emphasized by the
almost intrusive close-up shot, suggests an intimacy between the dancer
and the building. She seems ‘at home’, inwardly confident, affirming an
identification as a contemporary woman. All three dancers are then seen
from outside, through the glass, sitting, staring out confidently through
the transparent wall. They look to the side in unison. The shot changes
briefly to a view of the London traffic, locating the dancers clearly in a
modern, metropolitan environment.
The interdependency of women has been identified as a central theme
in Jeyasingh’s work. A Company monograph states Jeyasingh’s ‘double
consciousness’ of the Indian classical tradition and of contemporary
urban cultural concerns is articulated when ‘she introduces a new . . .
relationship between her dancers through . . . extensive use of touch
and weight giving’ (Rubidge, 1995: 38) and ‘she deliberately subverts
the image of goddess or submissive, coy female . . . prevalent in the clas-
sical tradition, substituting . . . images . . . which more clearly express
the behaviours of the contemporary Indian woman’ (ibid: 34). Certainly
in the excerpts just described there are examples of the dancers’ inter-
dependency through giving and taking weight and confident looks to
camera suggesting strong, contemporary women.
104 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

These features of Jeyasingh’s choreographic style, which portray a

particular kind of female subjectivity and solidarity have links with
Braidotti’s theory of a specifically female nomadic subjectivity con-
cerned to construct ‘new forms of interrelatedness’ (Braidotti, 1994:
2, 5). Certainly Jeyasingh’s use of weight taking and support between
her dancers is a ‘new form of interrelatedness’ for them. Braidotti’s pro-
ject is explicitly a feminist one, she asserts ‘my task is to attempt to
redefine a transmobile, materialist theory of feminist subjectivity that
is committed to working within the parameters of the postmodern
predicament’ (ibid: 2). She emphasizes interconnectedness and the
‘ability to flow from one set of experiences to another’ (ibid: 5).
Jeyasingh’s quest to create a contemporary, urban identity for Indian
womanhood is illuminated by ideas about nomadic subjectivity.
Braidotti argues, ‘the nomadic subject . . . allows me to think through
and move across established categories and levels of experience: blur-
ring boundaries without burning bridges’ (ibid: 4). She has reclaimed
the idea of the nomad as a positive metaphor for someone who is, in
Bhabha’s terms ‘unhomed’ rather than homeless, and is able, by think-
ing through and moving across boundaries, to create ‘homes’ anywhere.
Jeyasingh is continually thinking through and moving across ‘estab-
lished categories’ of the Bharata Natyam dance style which represents
a cultural history of traditions and conventions about what an Indian
woman should be and do. As a nomadic subject Jeyasingh is forever
blurring and creating new borders and boundaries and negotiating
spaces between them to create new ‘homes’ but without ‘burning
bridges’ to Bharata Natyam. Bhabha writes of these spaces in between
as a ‘third space’ which ‘displaces the histories that constitute it’ (1991:
211). His statement that this space ‘sets up new structures of authority’
and ‘new political initiatives’ that it is ‘a new area of negotiation of
meaning and representation’ (ibid), aptly describes Jeyasingh’s negotia-
tions with Bharata Natyam.

Dancers and buildings and the spaces in between

In Duets with Automobiles an actual and metaphorical third space exists

between the dancers’ bodies and the architecture. This interface pro-
vides room where identities can be discovered, forged and played with.
For the diasporic artist however,

the exploration of this interstitial space can be seen as a series of

creative conflicts: between a global, ‘post-modern’ critical hegemony,
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 105

and the critical codes of a particular history and tradition; between

carving out a territory in the mainstream and making marginalisa-
tion itself a creative condition; between a shifting relationship with
the host country (home) and a changing relationship with a notional
‘back home’.
(Holmstrom in Romance . . . with footnotes monograph, 1995: 6)

These complexities are all apparent in Duets with Automobiles in the

relationships between dancers’ bodies and the architecture. The dancers’
bodily shapes containing geometrical patterns, lines and curves, often
within a circle in Bharata Natyam, are carefully placed inside or along-
side circular domes, promontories and pillars, or next to the lines of
window frames and walls. But in order to ‘make a bedroom out of a
public building’ Jeyasingh goes beyond formal, aesthetic concerns
and extends the Bharata Natyam language in a personal, emotional
direction. The buildings become intimate spaces of touches, caresses,
embraces, listening and sleep. A recurring motif is the downward
movement of the palm of the hand usually on glass walls, but it also
caresses stone pillars and wooden and marble floors of the office build-
ings. It acts as a kind of leitmotif that, together with the rest of the
choreography and filming, marks the dancers’ presence in an almost
ritualistic fashion in these city spaces endowed with power associated
with capital. The three dancers build an intimate relationship with the
office buildings as, alongside traditional Bharata Natyam phrases of
dance, they also roll, lie, kneel and place their heads on the floor as if
listening or asleep, run, hug and lean on rounded stone pillars. These
intimate points of contact of bodies and surfaces of the city buildings
are emphasized by close-up shots, sounds, such as those of bare feet
slapping out Bharata Natyam rhythms on wood and marble floors,
choreographic repetition and other visual devices such as silhouettes.
By their actions, through their close contact with the floors, pillars,
windows and walls of these city spaces, the dancers transform the office
buildings and turn them into intimate homely places. The film editing
also contributes to this transformation. Shots change from one build-
ing to another seamlessly such that the three offices merge into one.
Jeyasingh said ‘we didn’t actually want to separate the buildings, but
to make them like one building, it was in some ways an imaginary
homeland’ (1997a).
There is a sense in which the presence, filming and choreography of
the Indian classical dancers in the London office buildings – in these
centres of capital and power – is a bold invasion of city space, which is
106 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

in turn transformed by what occurs in it. One of the ways in which the
space is transformed is through a particular bodily relationship with the
architecture when the dancers repeatedly caress and hug pillars. This
illustrates the complexity of the ‘creative conflicts’ between home and
‘back home’. On one level this physical embrace of the modern urban
building appears to be suggesting a metaphorical embrace of contem-
porary urban life. There is a sense in which intimate gestures such as
these show the dancers making themselves at home in these empty
offices, inhabiting them, humanizing them and making imaginary
homelands out of them. However, Jeyasingh has indicated that she also
had in mind the image of a yakshi; a female tree spirit often seen in clas-
sical Indian architecture touching a pillar or the building with a part of
her body, usually her feet. This ‘young fecund sort of female often with
very big breasts’ would be standing, carved into pillars of buildings sym-
bolizing a source of energy since ‘she’s the creative principle making
the tree or pillar come to life’ ( Jeyasingh, 1997a). Throughout Duets with
Automobiles subtle references are made to this tree spirit through dancers
sliding their feet down or hugging pillars. Bound up in these gestures
are ideas about female energy or strength from the yakshi that relate to
Braidotti’s notions of female subjectivity, references to classical Indian
architecture ‘back home’ and the transformation and translation of
the gesture by its reinscription on the pillars of a contemporary London
building. The gesture could be said to transform the building by making
a metaphorical ‘home’ or ‘bedroom’ out of it at the same time as breath-
ing energy into it or humanizing it through reference to yakshi. The
dialogues and interactions between these different cultural ideas and
images illustrate the complexities of the hybridity and nomadic sub-
jectivity being explored.

Mutual construction of bodies and spaces

There are many ways in which new identities for the dancers and the
buildings are suggested in Duets with Automobiles, since they mutually
construct each other. Parallels can be drawn with the mutual inscrip-
tions of bodies and cities that occur in Muurwerk and Step in Time Girls
discussed in Chapter 3. In all three works the dancers transform the city
spaces making them theirs, but the ways in which the choreography
and filming achieve this are very different, as are the dancing bodies
and city spaces involved.3 In Duets with Automobiles there is a series of
shots of the dancers seen from outside the buildings through glass walls.
This is followed by an interior view of two dancers, one in the fore-
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 107

ground and one in the background performing a natya arambe – liter-

ally an opening or beginning dance – against the backdrop of the city
skyline. Next, the glass walls with reflections of traffic traversing them
are seen from outside and three dancers are just about visible in the top
right corner of the frame performing a plié, a tilt and a lunge in unison
in Bharata Natyam style. This series of pictures of the dancers alternat-
ing from inside to outside the building has presented different views of
them in relation to the architecture. Actual movement back and forth
between different imagined spaces or notions of ‘home’ could be sug-
gested; from dancers inscribed on the urban landscape, when viewed
from inside the building, and the London traffic inscribed on the
dancers, when viewed from outside. The buildings and the dancers
mutually inscribe and construct each other and illustrate Bhabha’s ideas
of ‘inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity’ (1994: 38–9). These
constructed spaces are ‘racialized’ in the process. The Indianness of the
dancers, evident in their colour, costume and Bharata Natyam chore-
ography, is inscribed on the city skyline when they are viewed from
inside. When they are viewed from outside, with the glass edifice of the
building foregrounded, the dancers, hardly visible, become overlaid
with the reflections of London traffic; their Indianness is not nearly as
apparent as it merges into the kaleidoscope of metropolitan images.
They become part of the modern urban environment.
Perhaps one of the most memorable moments in Duets with Automo-
biles in terms of the ways in which the choreography reinvests the city
spaces with a new kind of power is when a dancer travels forwards
towards the camera framed by the walls and ceiling of a long corridor,
emphasizing a sense of perspective as it recedes into the far distance. As
she advances down the corridor slapping out Bharata Natyam rhythms
with her feet on the marble floor, she is joined by first one and then
the other of the three dancers. They move forward in unison, the sounds
of their feet mingling with Orlando Gough’s collage of rhythmic voices
in the accompanying music. Their advance is emphasized by forceful
arm gestures thrust directly towards the camera, sometimes led with a
clenched fist. The three dancers complete their powerful surge forward
exiting to camera. The impact of the phrase is further enhanced when
it is repeated a little later in the piece, with two slight changes. The first
is that the sequence is preceded by a long shot of the corridor further
emphasizing the grand proportions of the neoclassical concourse
against which the dancer initially is hardly visible. The second change
is that this time the dancers perform unaccompanied, allowing the
sounds of their feet on the floor to be heard uninterrupted, reinforcing
108 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

the impetus of their advancing steps. The forward approach of the

dancers seems relentless; it leaves an impression of female potency and
strength that transforms this previously male-dominated centre of
capital. The choreography and filming invest the city spaces and the
bodies of the dancers with power and the possibilities of new meanings
and new identities. The spaces become particular places and the bodies,
empowered subjects, where the conflicts and contradictions of gender
and ‘race’ are evident through the dancers’ range of interactions with
the architecture.

Nomadic subjects in cities

At the end of Duets with Automobiles a colonnade outside a building is

shown and the three dancers appear in everyday dress, sitting on the
ground in the sun, leaning against a large pillar; they are outside the
building and they are not dancing. There is no music, for the first time
natural sounds are heard. The building has not been seen before, there
are no familiar marks of identification. The three Indian women are
chatting, they look up as someone passes by and then continue their
conversation. They could be in Bombay (one shields her eyes from the
sun), or Birmingham, Manchester or Madras. London is no longer the
only possibility. The anonymity of the setting might suggest that these
women are ‘unhomed’ or ‘unhomely’, in Bhabha’s terms. As Jeyasingh
claims,

the culture of the diaspora challenges inherited ideas of home as

something defined by geography. More and more ‘home’ is becom-
ing a radical and dynamic intervention that is more about the future
than the past, the sum of new journeys rather than the station that
one has left behind.
(1997b: 32)

What Jeyasingh said about the end of Making of Maps (1993) might also
apply here. Talking of the role of urban sounds in the piece, she said

For me it was very important to bring back the sounds of the city
. . . it was the only way to end the dance. The whole dance was . . .
a questioning journey that an Indian dancer in Britain was asking
about where she belonged, so it was fit and proper that the dance
actually started with the street sounds because that is where we live
. . . in these big cities, at the same time . . . we carry the very Indian
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 109

part of us . . . but . . . we don’t make this journey to India and stay

there, we’ve got to come back and find a resolution, find a peace
within the situation which we find ourselves in now. So it’s very
proper that the dance comes back to the everyday sounds of London,
or Birmingham . . . or wherever we live, and that we find a new way
of dancing with the music of the everyday.
(Making of Maps video, 1993.)

Ending Duets with Automobiles with ‘the everyday’ reminds audiences

that these dancers are also contemporary women who live in cities.
They have the inward assurance as nomadic subjects to inhabit the
in-between spaces of hybridity.

Conclusion

Exploring Bhabha’s theory of hybridity and Braidotti’s theory of

nomadic subjectivity alongside Duets with Automobiles has highlighted
the ways in which the work explores in-between spaces and specific
consequences of this exploration. Placing three Bharata Natyam
dancers in offices which have derived power from controlling capital,
and are hence at the heart of the city, seems at first sight possibly an
extreme imposition. However the innovative choreography and film-
ing which are sympathetic and sensitive to the aesthetic concerns of
the architecture and the dance vocabulary reveal the potential for
redefining the dancing bodies and the city spaces. The physical spaces
between the dancers and the architecture are highlighted in the cho-
reography through various kinds of contact such as caresses, embraces,
leaning, rolling on, – specific touches and looks. These means of contact
are carefully chosen such that they both extend and develop traditional
classical Bharata Natyam vocabulary with contemporary inflexions. As
a result differences between past and present, classical and contempo-
rary, East and West, and female and male in terms of dance and space
are blurred. It is in this sense that Jeyasingh’s choreography subverts
and intervenes by conceptually dismantling binaries and challenging
hierarchies and entrenched cultural values. The in-between spaces of
Duets with Automobiles are also emphasized in the filming through close-
ups, framing, editing and filming through and against glass windows
and walls. Thus, the relationships between the dancers and this city
space of capital are continually foregrounded and as a result, the cul-
tural differences that exist are conceptually, ‘reinscribed’, ‘translated’
and ‘transvalued’, such that these spaces become ‘new areas of
110 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

negotiation, meaning and representation’ in Bhabha’s terms. In this

sense, as Bhabha argues, such ‘borderline work’ ‘demands an encounter
with “newness” ’, ‘it renews the past refiguring it as a contingent “in-
between” space that innovates and interrupts the performance of the
present’ (1994: 7). The performers, through their dancing and the ways
in which they are filmed, seem to enact a ritual in these city spaces
invested with power. They subtly, yet firmly, assert their presence and
in so doing, their new hybrid identities as contemporary, urban, Asian
women are affirmed.
Braidotti’s theory of nomadic subjectivity has parallels with Bhabha’s
theory in terms of its focus on dismantling and blurring the binaries
and boundaries of, in Braidotti’s terms, ‘race, class, gender and sexual
practice’ (1994: 2). What her theory adds are particular focuses on the
importance of transmobility and the value of a specific female solidar-
ity associated with interconnectedness. As a result, reading Duets with
Automobiles with Braidotti’s theory in mind, highlights the ways in
which the choreography and filming emphasize the mobility of the
dancers in the city space both physically and conceptually. The dance
is filmed inside and outside three different London office buildings but
the film’s editing makes it difficult to fathom which building is which.
There is a sense of the dancers’ mobility between and confidence in
these spaces. Their nomadism is empowering and, at least partly as a
result of their ability to move between these different spaces of capital
and power, they appear to be ‘at home’ in them.
The other key contribution of Braidotti’s theory is its inherently
feminist focus. When it is explored alongside Duets with Automobiles,
attention is drawn to the spaces between the dancers. These spaces can
also be seen to be conceptual in-between spaces like those between the
dancers and the architecture. Jeyasingh does not simply extend the tra-
ditional solo form of Bharata Natyam into a group form, she pays par-
ticular attention to the ways in which her three female dancers relate
to each other. They support and lean on each other, lift and hold each
other in ways that emphasize both closeness and strength. In her dis-
cussion of Making of Maps she writes of the ways in which she wanted
to ‘question . . . the self sufficiency of the Bharata Natyam body condi-
tioned by its history as a solo art form’. She suggests, ‘it was not just a
matter of introducing touch and with it the implication of human
emotion and relationships, but also the acceptance of physical depen-
dency and trust’ (1997b: 32). Physical dependency and trust are evident
between the dancers in Duets with Automobiles when they help each
other off the floor, assist each other in jumping by lifting, and when
 Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity 111

they take each other’s weight. In this sense, they illustrate Braidotti’s
stress on female solidarity within nomadic subjectivity which, accord-
ing to her, constructs ‘new forms of interrelatedness’ and connected-
ness.
The new forms of interrelatedness in Duets with Automobiles occur in
the in-between spaces created and foregrounded between dancers, and
between dancers and buildings representing city spaces associated with
Western, male power. In this sense, the dancers in Duets with Automo-
biles through their interconnectedness with each other and the build-
ings have enunciated a new kind of empowering, female subjectivity,
which through its hybridity, also forges new relationships with the cul-
tures of old and new homes. They are able to do this because of the
ways in which the choreography and filming show them ‘at home’ in
the city office spaces and at the same time making a ‘bedroom’ out of
the traditions of the ‘awesome public building’ of Bharata Natyam.
In the next chapter actual and metaphorical in-between spaces
created by constructions of cultural difference on both sides of the
Atlantic are explored in two works focusing on issues of identity, power
and difference. While experiences of displacement and subjection are
seen to contribute to constructions of cultural difference, resistance is
revealed as empowering, suggesting possibilities for fluid identities and
subjectivities with space for celebrating difference.
1 Film still of Roxanne Huilmand in Muurwerk courtesy of argos international
film distributors.

2 Photograph of Yolande Snaith in Step in Time Girls by Ross MacGibbon

reproduced with his permission.
3 Photograph of Out of the Windy Beach by the author.

4 Photograph of Emilyn Claid in the 'Watch me Witch You' section from Virginia
Minx at Play by Eleni Leoussi reproduced with her permission.
5 Photograph of Sarah Spanton in Homeward Bound by Michelle Atherton
reproduced with her permission.

6 Still from Duets with Automobiles from the series 'Dance for the Camera'
courtesy of Arts Council/BBe.
7 Photograph of Ellis Island by Bob Rosen reproduced with his permission.

8 Photograph of Trisha Brown in If You Couldn't See Me by Joanne Savio

reproduced with her permission.
9 Photograph of The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp {1632} by Rembrandt
courtesy of Mauritshuis, The Hague.

10 Still from Joan courtesy of MJW Productions.

 11 Photograph of Andreas
Vesalius's illustration -
The Fifth Plate of the
Muscles from the Second
Book of the Fabrica
reproduced with
permission of Dover
Publications Inc.

12 Still from Blind Faith courtesy of Yolande Snaith Theatredance.

13 Photograph of Liz Aggiss in Grotesque Dancerreproduced with permission of
Divas.

14 Photograph of CandoCo Dance Company in Across Your Heart by Chris Nash

reproduced with his permission.
15 Photograph of Rosas Danst Rosas by Herman Sorgeloos reproduced with his
permission.

16 Photograph of Enemy in the Figure by Dominik Mentzos reproduced with his

permission.
7
Crossing the (black) Atlantic:
Spatial and Temporal
Displacements in Meredith Monk’s
Ellis Island and Jonzi D’s
Aeroplane Man

Introduction

Whereras the first two chapters in Part II focused on in-between spaces

derived from actual spaces between dancers (in Chapter 5), and from
diasporic spaces (in Chapter 6), a discursive in-between space provides
a symbolic reference for the exploration of displacement in the context
of the politics of migration in this chapter. Ellis Island (1981) and Aero-
plane Man (1997) are both concerned with experiences of displacement
in in-between spaces on actual and metaphorical journeys which are
like rites of passage. This chapter examines how these two works explore
issues of identity, difference and power, spatially and temporally in the
course of these journeys.
The British postcolonialist Paul Gilroy’s concept of the ‘black Atlantic’
illustrates the complexities of identity formation that arise out of
various spatial and temporal displacements. The idea of the black
Atlantic represents not only the enforced crossings of slaves from
Africa but also return crossings of liberated African Americans in search
of education and employment in Europe. It reveals the ‘complex of dif-
ference and similarity that gave rise to the consciousness of diaspora
inter-culture’ (Gilroy, 1996: 20). Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man are both
concerned with how the diasporic movements of peoples at different
times ‘muddy the waters’ of identity formation. Ellis Island, a film
created by American artist, Meredith Monk, shows immigrants, black
and white, who have crossed the Atlantic being processed as they pass
through the US immigration centre on Ellis Island in New York harbour
in the early twentieth century (Plate 7). Aeroplane Man, a rap performed
by British artist Jonzi D, tells of his semi-autobiographical travels back

112
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 113

and forth across the Atlantic in search of his roots. These works, by
revealing the roles which space and place play in identity formation
and the construction of difference, expose some of the causes of dis-
placement. In-between spaces formed by the construction of borders
are key in both works. The immigrants on Ellis Island are displaced in
a liminal, in-between space on the borders of the state they wish to
enter. Jonzi D experiences the marginality of displacement in Britain
and the in-betweenness of not belonging as he crosses borders on his
travels.
The role of power in creating identities based on difference that result
in feelings of displacement is exposed in both works. The French post-
structuralist Michel Foucault’s theories of disciplinary technologies of
power when explored particularly alongside Ellis Island reveal the ways
in which power creates ‘others’ through constructions of difference.
Both works show how these discourses of power are perpetuated and
how their effects, which importantly include resistance to power, con-
struct and contribute to experiences of displacement, but also to alter-
native subjectivities where difference is valued.
I see Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man as complementary. Where Ellis
Island focuses on institutional mechanisms which construct subjects
of difference, Aeroplane Man explores the results of this construction
in an individual’s experience. They are also complementary in their
spatial and temporal treatment of these issues revealing the interde-
pendence of these two dimensions. Their exploration of in-between
spaces draws on and points to histories of racial and colonial oppres-
sion while indicating their contemporary relevance. Ellis Island shows
the immigration centre in operation at the turn of the century and as
contemporary ruined buildings which tourists are shown around. In
Aeroplane Man Jonzi D, drawing on history, travels to Africa and the
Caribbean in search of his roots, but his performance reveals that these
journeys are prompted by his contemporary experience of racism in
Britain. Both works explore history and memory but ‘re-order them
within patterns of meaning which belong to the present’ (Betterton,
1996: 175).
The in-between spaces of Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man are in the
margins, characterized by the African American feminist bell hooks as
being ‘both sites of repression and . . . resistance’ (1990: 342). Mecha-
nisms of institutional repression are portrayed in Ellis Island. In Aero-
plane Man the repression of contemporary racism in Britain is depicted.
Resistance is evident in affective elements in the works which exist
outside the symbolic boundaries of the contained subject constructed
114 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

by language. These affective elements are evident in dance and music

performance in both works. A rare glimpse of the immigrants enjoying
themselves waltzing in Ellis Island can be read as a moment of resis-
tance. The politically charged protest theatre mode of rap performance
used in Aeroplane Man is inherently resistant, particularly in the ways
that it wittily plays with language. Both pieces illustrate Gilroy’s (1995)
claim of the potency of music and dance performance as signs of resis-
tance in the history of repressed peoples.
Both works also identify the role of language in operations of power,
subjectification and displacement. In Ellis Island language is revealed as
a tool of normalization; through language lessons which the immi-
grants are given and through their labelling and documentation by
that language. In Aeroplane Man Jonzi D is displaced by the language of
others which he vividly describes through the distinctly provocative
and empowering language of his rap.
After an introduction to the artists and works being considered, the
constructed nature of identity is explored. It is argued that both works
demonstrate the role that difference plays in the construction of iden-
tity; they show that identity has no fixed origins, that it is multiple and
fragmented; and they illustrate how identity is a process of becoming,
rather than a descriptor of a stable state of being. It is argued that Ellis
Island and Aeroplane Man illustrate the important role place plays in
identity construction. Next, using Foucault’s theories, I argue that Ellis
Island, in particular, reveals technologies of power that contribute to the
identity construction process and result in displacement. The role of
resistance as an effect of power is identified and the important role that
language plays in the identity construction process is explored. I argue
that both works demonstrate how spatial containment, brought about
by the construction of borders which territorialize, contributes to iden-
tity construction and displacement, but also how the blurring of borders
challenges containment revealing ways in which difference can be
appreciated.

Meredith Monk and Jonzi D

Meredith Monk is a white Jewish American woman in her late 50s whose
career spans almost forty years and Jonzi D is a black British male in his
20s. Although of different backgrounds, gender and generations, their
works share certain key characteristics. Both are semi-autobiographical
drawing on ‘racial’ and family histories, both use travel as an image to
explore identity construction, and both are multi-media works blurring
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 115

the boundaries between dance, film, theatre, music and text. These
common features are significant in the explorations of displacement in
Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man.
Meredith Monk began performing in New York in the early sixties
and formed her own semi-communal performing arts company,
The House, in 1968. Key features of Monk’s work evident in Ellis
Island are her use of pedestrian movement, ritual, archetypes, cinematic
syntax and tableaux1 to portray humanity and a sense of community.
She has said that she wants to give audiences the opportunity ‘to sense
the fullness of their experience and the fullness of all the aspects of them-
selves’ (in Zurbrugg, 1993: 98). She clearly values the differences evident
in world cultures and there is a sense in which Ellis Island celebrates this.
Her non-linear plays with time, including past and present in the same
work, with her use of radical juxtaposition, give her work a dreamlike or
surreal quality. Her interest in space and history has resulted in several
site specific works and a focus on archaeology. Monk has said, ‘when you
create . . . it’s really a process of uncovering’ (in Baker, 1984: 3). Ellis
Island featured originally as a seven minute film in Recent Ruins (1979),
one of a series of archaeology based pieces. It was extended to 30 minutes
and filmed in 35mm colour and black and white in collaboration with
filmmaker Bob Rosen and photographer Jerry Panzen.2 Broadcast in West
Germany, the USA and Britain, and released on video, it has won many
awards. Filmed in the derelict, abandoned Ellis Island immigration
centre, its black and white sections consist of a collage of images of the
place, objects within it, and tableaux of immigrants posing for pho-
tographs, being measured, examined and labelled. There is hardly any
‘realistic’ sound, the accompaniment is a selection from Monk’s own
haunting vocal compositions. These historic images are interspersed
with film shot in colour with naturalistic sounds of contemporary guided
tours of the centre.
Jonzi D (actual name David Johns) started rapping and breaking3 in
1984, graduated from the London Contemporary Dance School in 1992,
and was appointed choreographer in residence at the associated Place
Theatre in 1998. His background is in South London hip hop culture
which he merges with his conventional dance training. He formed
Lyrikal Fearta, a company of rappers, dancers, musicians and a DJ, to
fuse abstract imagery and hip hop culture. He sees his work as ‘the voice
of the underclass in . . . capitalist society’ ‘the very personal honest
expression of how I see the world’ (Jonzi D, interview on Aeroplane Man
video, 1997). Aeroplane Man existed originally as a short solo within a
full-length show, The Requel (1997). It has since been videoed as part of
116 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

The Place Spring Loaded 3 (1997) series and extended for a full evening
performance, lasting approximately one hour and 45 minutes, at The
Place for a week in April/May 1999. The seven minute video of Aero-
plane Man consists of Jonzi D performing his rap solo in a single spot-
light, centre stage. The rap relates his experience of racism as a British
black and his consequent decision to leave in search of his roots. ‘Call
up Mr Aeroplane Man’ is a repetitive refrain that Jonzi sings while
jogging, he asks ‘Mr Aeroplane Man’ to jet him to Grenada, Jamaica,
America and Africa. On each ‘visit’ Jonzi D performs the typical ver-
nacular dance of the place and enacts encounters with people he meets.
The piece ends with him jogging, asking ‘Mr Aeroplane Man’ to ‘Keep
on flying’. Throughout Jonzi D is cheered by the audience. In at
least one live version of this (1997) production the piece opens with a
film showing Jonzi D jogging through London heralding his arrival in
the performance space (Leask, 1997: 38). In the extended version of
Aeroplane Man Jonzi D is joined by a company who perform the dances
and music of the places he visits. There is also an opening mime scene
where Jonzi D, lying under a Union Jack covered duvet centre stage, has
neatly folded piles of clothes representing figures of authority; a police-
man, a judge and a teacher, placed around him. The piece ends with
Jonzi D being stripped to his Union Jack underpants by the Africans he
meets and then going through a ritualistic, transformatory healing or
cleansing rite of passage with a traditional African female ‘witch doctor’
figure. This is partly symbolized by her dressing him in white trousers
and top, but also by his angry exclamations about Britain which he gets
out of his system, and by four other performers dressed in black lifting
and moving Jonzi D through the air in a slow motion dream-like
sequence. The piece closes with him repeating ‘many manifestations of
meaning’ over and over until his final line: ‘this brown frame has found
his name’, indicating the completion of his rite of passage and the
beginnings of a new subjectivity, that is open rather than fixed – he
doesn’t state his ‘name’. Aeroplane Man includes improvisatory ele-
ments, each version is different, although the basic structure of Jonzi
D’s journey remains the same.
The infectious style of this semi-improvized African format, valuing
sponteneity and audience interactions typical of a community of shared
values, is like Aeroplane Man’s ending, appropriately open rather than
fixed. Jonzi D has a photograph of Rennie Harris, the African American
hip hop dancer/choreographer, who also employs Africanist improviza-
tion, on one of his programmes. The statement of African American
dance theorist Brenda Dixon Gottschild that Harris’s ‘intention is to
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 117

allow dance to be the connective tissue for bridging and embracing the
seemingly contending opposites: black–white, male–female, self–Other’
(1996: 159) could also apply to Jonzi D. Harris’s ‘qualities of openness
and giving’ which point towards ‘a potentially multicultural world
in which difference is celebrated’ (ibid) seem to be an inspiration, and
Harris’s statement that ‘I’ve decided to start a healing process that will
enable me to face my deepest fears . . . by healing myself I’m healing
my oppressors’ (1994: 17) seems particularly pertinent to Jonzi D’s
Aeroplane Man.

The constructed nature of identity

At the centre of Aeroplane Man there is a frustrated search for lost origins
that might inform identity, and in Ellis Island immigrants’ identities and
differences are foregrounded. As I indicated in the Introduction both
sameness and difference lie at the heart of subjectivity, both these works
demonstrate this fundamental instability and the complex constructed
nature of identity, as a key constituent of subjectivity.

Identity constructed through difference

Jonzi D’s search for his roots is a search for his identity, for who he is.
He discovers a significant element of his identity in each place that he
visits because of his difference, because he is not like the people he meets.
A sense of self is defined in relation to an ‘other’ who is different. Jonzi
D is made aware of his difference because he comes from Britain. For
example, in Grenada he is called ‘English boy’. Place is a significant
factor here, ‘notions of identity and alterity, of “us” and “them”, are
closely linked to the sense of place . . . to . . . notions of “here” and
“there”’(Schick, 1999: 23).
Ellis Island graphically shows how identity is constructed with refer-
ence to the body as a marker of difference. At one point a hand draws
a circle with a marker pen around the nose of one of the immigrants.
This bodily feature has been highlighted as a sign of difference. When
the hand then writes ‘J’ in a circle next to this woman’s face, presum-
ably standing for ‘Jew’, the sign of difference has been interpreted as a
marker of ‘race’. By presenting the labelling as ‘racial’ alongside other
practices of the immigration centre, the film shows that it is not inno-
cent. It is part of the mechanisms of power at work. The film situates
this as part of a larger picture which shows that ‘the “difference” of the
post-colonial subject by which s/he can be “othered” is felt most directly
. . . in the way in which . . . superficial differences of the body . . . are
118 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

read as indelible signs of the “natural” inferiority of their possessors’

(Ashcroft et al., 1995: 321). By this act, the body in Ellis Island be-
comes ‘the inescapable, visible sign of . . . oppression and denigration’
(ibid).
In Ellis Island groups of ‘us’ and ‘them’ are constructed through rela-
tionships to place. The immigration centre defines people’s identity as
either immigrants, or immigration officers. Difference is created by how
the two groups are filmed, how they are dressed and what they do. One
group is predominantly active and ‘does things’ to the others who are
predominantly passive. The latter group is often seen posing for
photographs. One group is more smartly dressed than the others, some-
times in uniform. This group exercises power over the others by its
actions. The immigration officers are constructed as subjects, as ‘I’s, and
the immigrants, as objects, ‘not-I’s or ‘others’, by these acts. By med-
ically examining them, surveying, interviewing and teaching them, the
officials are ‘othering’ the immigrants, giving them identity as ‘others’
through difference.

Fragmentary identity without origins

Each place Jonzi D visits in search of his roots in Aeroplane Man repre-
sents a fragment of his multi-faceted history and genealogy. No one
place provides him with a sense of origin. There is no such thing as a
single pure identity deriving from one source. Jonzi D is not accepted
as having origins in Grenada, Jamaica, America or Africa, because he is
English. For example, in America, in the words of his rap he is called
an ‘English nigger’ which illustrates his fragmentary identity, and he is
told to ‘Get the fuck outa here.’ Through his travels Jonzi D and his
audience come to realize that, as Gilroy argues, ‘no straight or un-
broken line of descent . . . can establish plausible genealogical relations
between current forms . . . and . . . fixed, identifiable . . . origins’ and
that ‘the forbidding density of the processes of conquest, accommoda-
tion, mediation and interpenetration that . . . define colonial cultures
. . . demands that we re-conceptualise the whole problematic of origins’
(1995: 15). The density of these processes of mediation and accommo-
dation gets in the way of and ultimately prevents Jonzi D’s identifica-
tion with the people and places he encounters on his travels.
One hint Ellis Island provides of the immigrants’ possible origins is a
citing of plates of food. Single shots of a plate of beans, of potatoes and
of spaghetti are interspersed between shots of people posed as if for
photographs. The singling out of these foods associated stereotypically
with Mexico, Ireland and Italy fixes them as signs. Stereotypes work
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 119

to fix – all Mexicans eat beans, all Irish eat potatoes. This kind of
fixity is as unstable as the notion of origins. Eating beans does not
mean being Mexican and ‘being Mexican’ is not a simple unified
concept. Identity is a social construction which is fragmentary, com-
plex, multifaceted and changeable. It is made up of many factors includ-
ing nationality, ‘race’, class, gender and so on. Each person’s identity is
constituted through an interaction of these factors. Juxtaposing fixed
images of plates of food with fixed images of people suggests
that this is how the immigration authorities saw the immigrants. The
portrayal of plates of food as oversimplistic markers reveals them as
contingent constructions, and suggests that similar oversimplistic
markers were used to construct the immigrants’ identities, based on
notions of fixed origins which, by juxtaposition with the food, are
revealed as contingent.
The fragmentary and multiple characteristics of identity are repeat-
edly emphasized in Ellis Island. History and genealogy are referenced
through archaeology. A wall is shown marked at different levels
with dates ‘1890’, ‘1920’, ‘1954’ and ‘1985’ like an archaeological exca-
vation. Juxtaposed with parallel views of the past and present immi-
gration centre, accretions of time, geologically apparent in layers
of earth, but also in people’s lives and histories, are revealed. The
film is suggesting that an individual’s consciousness and unconscious
identity, like the earth, are layered, forming multiple, fragmented
subjects. By including archaeological metaphors alongside the tableaux
of immigrants a kind of ‘counter history’ is revealed. This, as Grosz
has argued, is ‘uneven’ and ‘scattered’, made up ‘of interruptions,
irruptions, outbreaks and containments’ characteristic of subordinated
social groups (1990: 78). The non-linear form of Ellis Island structured
as a collage of images, mirrors the non-linear fragmented histories of
the people it depicts. The Ellis Island immigrants are diasporic. They
have undertaken between them multiple journeys and dispersed from
different places or ‘homes’. Diaspora is concerned with historical dis-
placement and often ‘home’ is ‘a place of no return’ (Brah, 1996: 192),
as is evident in the discussion of notions of ‘home’ in Chapter 6. On
Ellis Island between 1892 and 1927 approximately 3000 rejected immi-
grants ‘committed suicide . . . rather than face deportation to their
country of origin’ (Ellis Island Publicity Flier, 1981). For them, home was
a place of no return. In this context discourses of fixed origins and
simple, unified identities deriving from a ‘home’ to which it is possible
to return, are meaningless, the concept of diaspora critiques them (Brah,
1996: 197).
120 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

Identity as process
‘Since identity is process, what we have is a field of discourses, matrices
of meanings, narratives of self and others, and configurations of
memories . . . Every enunciation of identity . . . in this field of identifi-
cations represents a reconstruction’ (ibid: 247). Aeroplane Man and Ellis
Island contain enunciations of identity that can be seen as reconstruc-
tions. Each time Jonzi D visits a foreign land in search of his roots, he
engages with ‘fields of discourses, matrices of meanings, narratives of
self and others and configurations of memories’. He is going to those
places because of what he ‘knows’ about them, because of what he has
been told (stories about Grenada by his parents), because of what he
has read (about Africa), because of what the media has shown him of
America. He raps hopefully: ‘Jet me to America land, on TV and music
video we see enough black man, seems like they’ve got a plan’. What
Aeroplane Man reveals is that the discourses, memories and narratives
Jonzi D takes with him are part of complex ever changing configura-
tions and matrices of meanings that constitute a field of identifications.
Each of Jonzi D’s encounters with different people and places is an
enunciation of his identity that also proves to be a reconstruction
through displacement. In each place Jonzi D’s versatile body, energized
by Caribbean, American hip hop or African musical sounds, slips easily
into the vernacular dance style. His performance explores possible iden-
tities informed by the cultural histories of the places he visits. His
encounters change and displace him. On another level Jonzi D’s rap is
a narrative which ‘plays a central role in the constitution and preser-
vation of identity. It is a carrier of meaning, the channel through which
[Jonzi D] . . . tells himself and others the tale of his place in the world’
(Schick, 1999: 21). It is an example of identity as an effect of narrative
or discourse.
In Ellis Island identity in the making is accentuated by being revealed
as a process of ‘becoming rather than being’. In one scene a uniformed
official asks an immigrant his name. No dialogue is heard, the official’s
lips mouth the word ‘Name?’ which appears on the screen. The back
of the immigrant’s head is seen moving, presumably he is saying his
name. ‘Ellessen Rahmsauer’ appears on the screen, followed by a series
of misspellings of the name until it becomes ‘Elie Ram’. The absurdity
of what is occurring is emphasized by the final two names that appear,
‘Eli Sheep’ and ‘Eli Lamb’. Sheep are notoriously docile animals that
‘follow’ and they have a reputation for going ‘astray’. These associations
could be seen to apply to the Ellis Island immigrants. Their passivity
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 121

renders them docile and their homeless status makes them appear
‘lost’. The application of Foucault’s theories of subjectification explored
later shows how the disciplinary technologies revealed in Ellis Island
produce ‘docile bodies’. ‘Ellessen Rahmsauer’ has gone through several
transformations to become ‘Eli Lamb’. Becoming rather than being
is evident in this incident where time and history are fast forwarded
revealing genealogy as process. By escalating the process and includ-
ing the ludicrous changes from ‘Ram’ to ‘Sheep’ to ‘Lamb’ the film
underlines the lack of respect of the officials for the immigrants
accentuating the power differential between them. This deconstruction
makes the recording of immigrants’ names seem like some bizarre
word association game. The naming that occurs shows identity as a pro-
cess of becoming in an authoritarian context which attempts to fix it.
Another example from Ellis Island illustrates how identity is con-
structed and the power operations that work to fix it. When the
word SERB is written next to a man’s face, this labelling classifies him.
Classification is a process of fixing, involving selection and ranking,
championed in the name of science. ‘[The] hegemonic project [of
science] confidently stalked the world identifying . . . and classifying
fauna, flora and peoples; asserting its “scientific neutrality” while
marking hierarchies of “race”, class, and gender’ (Brah, 1996: 221). The
key word here is hierarchies; classification of this kind shows the opera-
tions of power at work that underlie racism. By showing the labelling
of an immigrant as SERB alongside other inscriptive processes, the film
reveals the contribution of Ellis Island’s immigration project to the
broader hegemonic project, and exposes the racist identity forming
inherent in it.
Aeroplane Man demonstrates that identity is not simply a fluid ever
changing process. There are actual groundings in terms of the effects of
identity that have to be faced. The opening mime scene in the extended
version is evidence of this. The slow ritualistic placing of piles of neatly
folded clothes by a white male pacing out a triangle in the semi-
darkness around a presumably sleeping Jonzi D, under the Union Jack
duvet, is an eerie beginning. In the half light spectators can gradually
perceive the piles of clothes as a policeman’s uniform, a judge’s robes
and wig, and a mortarboard and gown – all signs of authority figures
that perhaps recur in Jonzi D’s dreams. They and the British flag, the
ultimate sign of the nation state, surround and cover/smother the body
underneath. They situate and ground Jonzi D’s black British identity.
In the 1997 video record of Aeroplane Man Jonzi D begins his rap
enacting a racist incident, playing the racist himself. Standing with his
122 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

hands on his hips and a puffed up chest, he shouts aggressively in a

strong cockney accent ‘Oi, come over ‘ere, take all our jobs, all our
‘ouses, all our women. Fuck off back to your own country or I’ll serve
you up mate’, ending with a terrifying Nazi salute which remains frozen
in his body for several seconds. The performance graphically shows one
of the effects of Jonzi D’s black British identity. In this sense Aeroplane
Man is a performance that, as Gilroy argues, ‘can be used to create a
model whereby identity can be understood neither as a fixed essence
nor as a vague and utterly contingent construction to be reinvented by
. . . will and whim . . . Black identity . . . is lived as a coherent (if not
always stable) experiential sense of self’ (1993: 102). The performance
of the racist incident and the signs of authority which surround and
cover Jonzi D demonstrate that black identity is not a ‘contingent con-
struction’ but that it is lived as an ‘experiential sense of self’. In
Aeroplane Man, between enacting the characters encountered on his
travels, Jonzi D comments on them as himself. Going back and forth
between the characters and himself he shows that his British identity is
partial, fragmented and fluid ‘but not without some sort of grounding
in individual sociohistorical circumstances’ (Gilbert, 1995: 344–5).
When Jonzi D performs as himself the audience is reminded of the
sociohistorical circumstances which prompted his journey in the first
place. His encounters with people and cultures exhibiting remnants of
different histories on his travels also show that identity making
processes can be painful, leaving scars, because these identities have
‘been enforced by the enduring memories of coerced crossing experi-
ences like slavery and migration’ (Gilroy, 1996: 20).

Identity, place and displacement

The roles of place and displacement in the construction of identities
which have been shown as central in Aeroplane Man, are also evident in
Ellis Island. The spaces of Ellis Island are foregrounded in the film indi-
cating their importance. The work’s title identifies its subject matter as
the immigration centre which is part of American history and has a
‘special place in the national psyche’, as an article in World Architecture,
describing its recent restoration as a museum, stated (Vickers, 1991: 62).
The title sequence of the film shows Ellis Island, off Manhattan, ironi-
cally not far from the Statue of Liberty. As the World Architecture article
states: ‘if the design of the Statue of Liberty was intended to set
the spirits soaring, then the architecture of Ellis Island was meant to
project a more circumspect blend of civic welcome, federal gravitas and
simple logistical practicality’ (ibid: 63). Throughout the film several slow
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 123

panning shots of the decaying buildings hint at the former grandeur of

the centre and its role. Its scale is evident in shots of high walls and
windows, vaulted ceilings, large barn-like spaces, pillars and long corri-
dors. A commentary informs a contemporary tour group that there were
33 buildings on the island covering 599 575 square feet. This was clearly
a vast enterprise. The imposing size of the centre was a sign of its insti-
tutional authority and an indication of the extent of its function; the
commentary states that at its peak it processed over 11 000 immigrants
in one day.
The film shows the abandoned spaces inside the building with piles
of desks, filing cabinets, a wheelchair and some crutches. Together with
nineteenth-century white tiling these objects construct the space as a
particular institutional place – a clinic or sanatorium. The film adds to
this when the contemporary visitors are seen at one point wearing sur-
geons’ masks, as if to protect them from contamination. The centre’s
position on an island constitutes it as a place of isolation and contain-
ment from which it is difficult to escape. Foucault identifies the role of
isolation in systems of power, indicating its facilitation of intensifica-
tion and consolidation.
Monk and Panzen’s filming in the Ellis Island detention centre,
including shots of contemporary visitors touring the site, underlines the
importance of the site itself as a remnant of its past that still resonates
with the present. The ways in which the film lingers on details such as
the architecture, floors and walls continually emphasize the significance
of these places in the construction of the identities of those who passed
through them. This treatment of space no doubt arises from Monk’s
claim that when she visited the island she ‘sensed the spirits of people
still in those rooms’ (in Ellis Island publicity, 1981).

Technologies of power – subjectification,

normalization and examination

By exploring the treatment of identity, difference and power in Aero-

plane Man and Ellis Island some of the ways in which people are
subjected have come to light. Foucault, whose objective ‘has been to
create a history of the different modes by which . . . human beings are
made subjects’ (1982: 208), has developed a schema of three modes
of objectification of the subject: ‘dividing practices’, ‘scientific clas-
sification’ and ‘subjectification’ or specifically ‘the way a human being
turns him, or herself into a subject’ (ibid). All three are apparent in
Ellis Island. The film’s construction and deconstruction of these
124 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

modes of subjectification is explored in the light of Foucault’s

theories of disciplinary technologies of power, such as normalization
and examination.
Foucault’s theories derive from his detailed analyses of the operations
of power in particular historical contexts and periods. They explain
how subjects are constructed and construct themselves while revealing
how the mechanisms of power at work in these processes operate. ‘Sub-
jectification’ paradoxically ‘denotes both the becoming of the subject
and the process of subjection’ (Butler, 1997: 83). The becoming of the
subject through processes of iteration and repetition allows for resis-
tance. ‘Foucault formulates resistance as an effect of the very power
that it is set to oppose’ (ibid: 98). In other words the disciplinary
apparatus that produces subjects ‘brings . . . the conditions for subvert-
ing that apparatus’ (ibid: 100). Ellis Island demonstrates the relevance
of these theories in a contemporary context. Seen in conjunction
with a work like Aeroplane Man it illustrates that Foucault’s theories can
reveal the workings of power that construct ‘racial’ and national
differences and the ways in which they pervade and are perpetuated
through networks of legislation and governance, but also allow for
resistance. Much of Foucault’s work concerns the workings of power on
individual bodies, which is why his theories, which have been fre-
quently applied to other areas of cultural practice, are particularly
pertinent for dance.

Subjectification
‘There are two meanings of the word subject,’ Foucault writes, ‘subject
to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own iden-
tity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form
of power which subjugates and makes subject to’ (1982: 212). The
opening of Aeroplane Man works by allusion to suggest Jonzi D’s status
as a British subject and how this status relates for him to figures and
institutions of authority and control such as the state, the law and edu-
cation. It suggests ways in which he is subject to someone else by
control and dependence illustrating Foucault’s first meaning of subjec-
tification. Throughout most of the rest of Aeroplane Man spectators
witnesses Jonzi D exploring his identity and subjectivity which are con-
structed through travels prompted by his conscience or self-knowledge,
illustrating Foucault’s second meaning of subjectification. In Ellis Island
Foucault’s first mode of subjectification is only too apparent as the
immigrants are subjected to various technologies of power such as meas-
urement, classification and medical examination by the authorities.
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 125

When they are named and registered they become legal subjects. There
is also evidence of the immigrants colluding in some of these processes,
for example when one of the immigrants measures himself. This is an
instance of Foucault’s second meaning of subjectification involving self-
discipline and self-subjectification.
Foucault terms the workings of power ‘disciplinary technologies’ and
as the American postmodern geographer Edward Soja indicates, these
‘operate through the social control of space, time and otherness to
produce a certain kind of “normalization”’(1996: 161). The aim of dis-
ciplinary technologies, according to Foucault, is to forge a ‘docile body
that may be subjected, used, transformed and improved’ (1977: 198),
and space plays a role in this because ‘discipline proceeds from an orga-
nization of individuals in space, and it requires a specific enclosure
of space’ (Rabinow, 1984: 17). The immigrants in Ellis Island are seen
as enclosed and contained in that space facilitating their organization
and subjectification. One of the roles space plays in the subjectification
process in Ellis Island is evident in the filming and performance
which evokes Foucault’s notion of panopticism. Foucault cites the
British philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s (1748–1832) Panopticon; a
circular viewing tower within prisons to ensure permanent surveillance
of the prisoners whose cells surrounded it. Surveillance of this kind
is suggested in Ellis Island when the camera slowly pans round a space
in the abandoned building. Later a series of pans of another decaying
room occur with a group of about 12 performers in contemporary black
tops and trousers and dark glasses, repeatedly running across the space
as a group in and out of the camera’s field of vision. Some immigrants
are also in the space but they appear unaware of the running group,
who look as if they are trying to stay out of the range of the camera but
fail to do so. The camera behaves like a preset surveillance camera as it
pans back and forth stopping at regular intervals. The group dressed in
black both emphasize and resist the surveillance by their bizarre per-
formance, showing how the immigrants also resist the camera’s nor-
malizing gaze, as it is impossible to see what either group are doing
when they are out of shot. In terms of the subjection processes at work,
both groups evade them, by either repeatedly dodging in and out of
view of the camera or by often being out of range. In this sense they
are performing a ‘repetition which does not consolidate . . . the subject,
but which proliferates effects which undermine the force of normaliza-
tion’ (Butler, 1997: 93).
Various other spatial organizations of immigrants are presented in
the enclosed space of Ellis Island. Some of these ‘organizations’ seem
126 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

authentic, such as when immigrants are seen waiting at a quayside.

Others are clearly constructed. For example, two parallel lines of five
men, all dressed in black, some with hats on with arms crossed on their
chests, placed centrally in the shot, are seen lying side by side on the
ground. Other organizations fall in between these two categories, for
example, when individuals are seen sitting on benches. By presenting
organizations of people in space as a continuum in this way the film
blurs the boundaries between what appears to be ‘natural’ and what is
clearly not. This suggests on the one hand that these spatial organiza-
tions are constructed, providing evidence of imperceptible instruments
of power at work, but on the other, that the blurred boundaries resist
uniform subjectification, and instead allow for an appreciation of the
positive values of difference.

Normalization
Normalization is a term Foucault uses to describe a process of measur-
ing up to standards, of conforming to recognized codes or norms. It
includes ‘all those modes of acculturation which work by setting up
standards or “norms” against which individuals continually measure,
judge, “discipline” and “correct” their behaviour and presentation of
self’ (Bordo, 1993: 199). Measuring is presented as a theme throughout
Ellis Island by the inclusion of archaeological black and white striped
measuring sticks of different sizes (Plate 7). These first appeared in Recent
Ruins, where ‘generations of archeologists are presented . . . all . . . com-
pulsively measuring’ (West, 1980: 50). In Ellis Island initially the meas-
uring rods are seen placed alongside or underneath objects, such as a
wheelchair and a kidney dish, as if they are there to indicate size. Next
they are seen in still shots of people posing for photographs. In each a
stick is held against them by an arm in a white sleeved coat, as if meas-
uring. One young man has a large stick thrown to him, which he catches
and holds at his side looking up at it, measuring himself against it. These
sticks operate as visual indicators of assessment. Foucault claims: ‘the
success of disciplinary power derives . . . from the use of simple instru-
ments: hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement’ (1977: 170).
The immigrants are being measured or measuring themselves against
the sticks, providing evidence of both of Foucault’s kinds of subjectifi-
cation. Juxtaposing images of people and sticks with images of objects
and sticks suggests comparison. The measurement of the people objec-
tifies them. This and the variable sizes of the sticks – some are a few
inches long, others several feet long – deconstructs and exposes the
operations of power at work.
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 127

This measuring theme is also rehearsed when shots of peoples’ faces

have measurements put on them; a line is drawn along a woman’s
forehead, above it ‘125 mm’ is written. Parallels with archaeology are
evident, where shards of bone or skulls are measured to determine their
age. In the light of Foucault’s theories, it seems that more can be read
into this. The ways in which dimensions of the woman’s forehead are
being calculated and noted are suggestive of some sort of ethnic or
‘racial’ assessment and classification based on theories of evolution or
eugenics. Foucault claimed that ‘it was on the basis of the . . . rational-
ity of social Darwinism that racism was formulated’ (in Rabinow, 1984:
249). The woman is individualized and singled out as different from the
others by this treatment, in the same way as the circle drawn round the
nose of another woman and the letter J written next to it single her out
as Jewish. The postcolonialist Homi Bhabha, discussing normalization
in the context of colonialism, proposes, ‘the natives are . . . “individu-
alised” through the racist testimony of “science”’ (1990: 76). The meas-
uring, classifying and labelling depicted so graphically in Ellis Island are
vivid portrayals of ‘racial’ individualization. Foucault argues, ‘Discipline
. . . “trains” . . . bodies . . . into . . . individual elements . . . separate cells
. . . genetic identities. . . . Discipline “makes” individuals . . . as objects
and instruments of its exercise’ (1977: 170). The measuring incidents in
Ellis Island are examples of Foucault’s disciplinary technologies of power
at work. The arms clothed in white coats that hold up measuring sticks
to the immigrants and the hands that inscribe numbers and letters
across people’s faces belong to ‘orthopaedists of individuality’ in
Foucault’s terms (ibid: 294). They are part of a normalization process
which involves an ‘appeal to statistical measures and judgements about
what is normal and what is not in a given population’ (Rabinow, 1984:
21). A long list of statistics about Ellis Island – the results of measuring
– is included later in the film in the contemporary commentary accom-
panying a guided tour.

Examination
Examinations of various kinds in Ellis Island provide further evidence of
Foucault’s subjectification and normalization processes at work. Accord-
ing to Foucault, ‘the success of disciplinary power derives . . . from . . . a
procedure that is specific to it – the examination’ (1977: 170). The section
on ‘The Examination’ in Foucault’s Discipline and Punish begins,

the examination combines the techniques of an observing hierarchy

and those of a normalizing judgement. It is a normalizing gaze, a sur-
128 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

veillance that makes it possible to qualify, to classify, and to punish.

It establishes over individuals a visibility through which one differ-
entiates them and judges them . . . the examination is highly ritual-
ized. In it are combined the ceremony of power and the form of
experiment . . . it manifests the subjection of those who are perceived
as objects and the objectification of those who are subjected.
(ibid: 184–5)

A scene in Ellis Island depicts a medical examination. In a room

divided by curtained screens and containing rows of washstands, trol-
leys, a wheelchair and tables with bowls and clinical instruments,
a man stripped to the waist and a woman clothed, stand and wait.
Two white coated men with bowler hats, presumably doctors, enter
together, and walk to face the waiting man and woman; their costume
and unison entrance ritualizes this act, as does the entrance of a
man and woman in contemporary black dress, who go and stand
beside the waiting immigrants. They seem to act as witnesses and
reflections or shadows as they watch and imitate the moves of their
immigrant partners who appear unaware of them. The immigrant
man is turned round by the doctor and made to bend forward while his
back is tapped and prodded. The immigrant woman’s head is tipped
back by the other doctor who examines her eyes pulling up the lids
until a bulging eyeball almost comes out of its socket. A uniformed
figure passes through, surveying this spectacle of subjection. The
repetition of the immigrants’ manipulated movements simultaneously
by their contemporary partners undermines and resists the examina-
tion that is occurring. This mimicry is supplementary; it happens
without the doctors’ manipulation. It is a contemporary trace of what
happened retained from the past. It can be compared to the running of
the similarly dressed group of performers in the ‘panopticism scene’
described above, in the sense that it is subversive because it is excessive.
Both incidents trouble any suggestion that Ellis Island is a straight-
forward historical reconstruction, they are part of Monk’s deconstruc-
tive approach.
In another scene in Ellis Island a woman sits at a table trying to
complete a puzzle, arranging black and white squares, a kind of ‘intelli-
gence test’. A uniformed official stands over her watching. After re-
arranging the squares and forming a pattern, the woman looks up to the
official for approval. Here, as Foucault claims: ‘the body is . . . directly
involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 129

upon it, they invest it, mark it, train it . . . force it to carry out
tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (ibid: 25). The ‘body’ is
judged according to how it performs, whether it measures up to
certain standards. On the basis of her performance, the woman is
accepted or rejected, she either passes or fails this examination. As
Lingis suggests in an article discussing Foucault’s theories, ‘norms are
produced by the comparison surveillance makes possible between the
levels, abilities, and performances of different individuals’ (in Welton,
1999: 292). The film leaves the result of this test open, there is no indi-
cation whether the woman is successful or not. She does not arrange the
squares to form the most ‘obvious’ pattern, but another pattern. The
immigrant has travelled from symbol systems of her own indigenous or
peasant culture into the symbol systems of modern, scientific discourse
whose ‘logic’ she cannot fathom. It seems that Monk is being playful
here. The woman is being imaginative, exhibiting a form of intelligence
that the test cannot measure. In this sense the woman is resisting
normalization.
The operations of administration, documentation and organization
depicted in Ellis Island are further examples of Foucault’s disciplinary
technologies of power; for example, the official who asks an immigrant’s
name, writes in and rubber stamps a ledger. Immigrants in the film
are seen with numbers pinned to their clothing. Much of Ellis Island
consists of ‘snapshot images’, tableaux of immigrants posing for
photographs and shots of faces with measurements and labels like SERB
and ‘J’ for Jew written across them. All of these administrative processes
‘subjugate’ the immigrants ‘by turning them into objects of knowledge’
(ibid: 28). They become ‘cases’ for documentation, statistics for dossiers.
As Foucault argues: ‘the examination, surrounded by all its
documentary techniques, makes each individual a “case”, a case which
. . . constitutes an object for a branch of knowledge and a hold for a
branch of power’ (ibid: 191).
By depicting examination and documentation processes Ellis Island
exposes ‘a policy of coercions that act upon the body . . . a machinery
of power that explores it, breaks it down, and rearranges it’ (ibid: 138).
Bodies are explored by ‘doctors’, broken down into parts when
examined or labelled, and rearranged for numerous photographs in
Ellis Island. These disciplines produce subjected and practised bodies,
‘docile bodies’ in Foucault’s terms. The marks of these disciplinary
practices of subjectification are still apparent as, in another context,
Aeroplane Man indicates. Jonzi D’s visible sign of difference from
130 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

white English people – his skin colour – results in a whole gamut of

associations, connotations and labels, which operate to make him
feel displaced in the place where he was born. These have in part been
perpetuated by and are the legacy of administrative practices of
detention centres like Ellis Island.

The role of language in operations of power

In Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man language is inscribed with power and
contributes to the displacement experience. The use of language to label
in Ellis Island, and the translation and transformation that occurs in the
recording of names, demonstrate language’s ‘power to name, identify,
classify, domesticate and contain’ which ‘simultaneously doubles as the
power to obliterate, silence and negate’ (Chambers in Chambers and
Curti, 1996: 48–9). When only the back of an immigrant’s head is seen
as he gives his name, and when his name is changed radically, he is
effectively being ‘obliterated’ and ‘negated’. The lack of a ‘natural
soundtrack’ accompanying the immigrants’ scenes both situates the
film temporally alongside silent movies, and ‘silences’ the immigrants
– they are given no voice. This is underlined by the contrast with the
‘contemporary scenes’, which have ‘normal’ sound, and with a language
lesson, where only the teacher speaks.
This language lesson in Ellis Island shows that the ‘“official” norma-
tive language of colonial administration’ is also the language of ‘instruc-
tion’ (Bhabha, 1990: 73). The immigrants mouth after a teacher words
such as ‘vacuum cleaner’, ‘Empire State Building’, and ‘microwave’. The
teacher’s words are heard on the soundtrack but the immigrants’ are
not, they are silenced. Discussing the role of language in colonialism,
Tarasti suggests, ‘very often the subordinated voices can speak – have
their voices heard – only after they have adopted the langue of the
dominant culture’ (1999: 75). This language lesson is another example
of Foucault’s disciplinary technologies of power deployed to subjectify
the immigrants. This class of immigrants sitting behind desks obedi-
ently repeating words, is an example of Foucault’s ‘docile bodies’ being
‘transformed’ and ‘improved’. By including the Empire State Building,
not just a national monument, but at one time the tallest building in
the world, the ultimate sign of American phallic power, Ellis Island sug-
gests that this is not only a language lesson. It is also a presentation of
the dominant power’s culture and achievement, designed to impress,
subdue and, in the process, oppress. By including words such as
‘microwave’, which did not exist when Ellis Island was operative, the
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 131

film is time travelling, or flattening history, showing connections

between past and present, and playfully poking fun at what is going on,
deconstructing the constructed nature of this performance.
The power of language to displace is also evident in Aeroplane Man
when Jonzi D is told in no uncertain terms to ‘Fuck off back to
your own country’ and to ‘fuck off outa here’. The language and form
of the performance poetry of rap provide a platform for the uncom-
promising honest expression of, as Jonzi D himself puts it, ‘how I see
the world’ (1997). Rap is part of a long tradition of black performance
which has often been overtly political. As Gilroy points out: ‘the inter-
face between black cultural practice and black political aspirations has
been a curious and wonderfully durable . . . phenomenon’ (1995: 12).
The form of rap which cleverly plays with words and rhymes in a very
vivid manner is ‘all about the power and use of the word’ (Gottschild,
1996: 134). Whereas dominant language subjectifies, as is evident in
Ellis Island, the poetry of rap undermines and subverts the dominant
language, as does cockney rhyming slang, which Jonzi D also incorpo-
rates in his performance. As the Russian literary theorist Mikhail
Bakhtin, whose ideas are discussed in relation to dance in Chapter 9,
has indicated, all language is ambivalent but officialdom often tries to
close it down. Rap and other forms of resistance seek to restore the
ambivalences and keep language alive and open.
The rhythm of rap is also a key element in Aeroplane Man. Rap com-
bines ‘rhythm and text with the ideology of power’ (ibid: 137). The force
of the rhythm combined with the uncompromising use of language can
be very powerful. Rhythm drives home the point of the poetry, it mobi-
lizes an audience. Rhythm is ‘a component [in rap] that can inspire
fear in a Europeanist culture that knew enough about the power of
African rhythm to prohibit drumming by enslaved Africans’ (ibid). That
power is evident when Jonzi D performs. I witnessed a predominantly
young, black audience cheering, yelping, hollering and joining in when
he performed. As one reviewer has stated, ‘boundaries between per-
formers and spectators are constantly dissolved in Jonzi’s work as he
speaks directly to them, expecting responses (which he gets)’(Leask,
1998: 47).
Another infectious characteristic of rap language and performance,
which Aeroplane Man demonstrates, is the use of comedy. Jonzi D’s
impersonation of characters from the Nazi racist to laid back Caribbean
and American streetwise dudes is cleverly and carefully observed and
humorously performed. He is a talented mimic whose portrayals of char-
acter are often hilarious. There is a comic moment in the extended
132 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

version of Aeroplane Man when he tries to teach the ‘foreign language’

of cockney rhyming slang to a couple of ‘New York chicks’. This inci-
dent humorously demonstrates the subversive force of mimicry while
also celebrating difference. Jonzi D’s performance is evidence that ‘hip-
hoppers . . . are both “gangstas” and clowns’ and that ‘the hip-hopper
is the latterday incarnation of the trickster, that dangerous inscrutable
enigmatic quotient in African religions’ (Gottschild, 1996: 137, 138). If
‘the question for the post-colonial artist is how to speak in a language
which belongs to the colonizers and yet represent the viewpoint of the
colonized’ (Betterton, 1996: 168), Jonzi D’s answer, evident in Aeroplane
Man, is to use the performance poetry of rap.

Spatial containment, borders and territorialization

Important parallels can be identified between the containment and

control of the immigrants on Ellis Island and Jonzi D’s experience of
displacement in Britain in the nineties. Referring to Britain, Bhabha
describes the ‘entertainment and encouragement of cultural diversity’
as a form of control and ‘containment’. He argues, ‘a transparent norm
is constituted . . . by the host society or dominant culture, which says
. . . “these cultures are fine, but we must be able to locate them within
our own grid”. This is . . . a creation of cultural diversity and a contain-
ment of cultural difference’[his emphasis] (1991: 208). Ellis Island shows
that the immigrants’ containment involved marking them as different
and othering them. The processes of measurement, classification and
examination they underwent could be seen to be locating them within
a ‘grid’. The opening moments of the extended version of Aeroplane Man
show Jonzi D also placed or located within a ‘grid’. His cultural differ-
ence renders him in a particular relation to the nation state and its
institutions of authority, represented in the performance as a form of
containment by the duvet covering him and the three piles of clothes
placed in a triangle around him. Spatial containment or segregation is
shown to be fundamental to experiences of displacement in both works.
Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man show that ‘segregation reproduces itself:
spaces of otherness become not only repositories of “others” but . . . one
of the primary indicators/producers of alterity’ (Schick, 1999: 44). The
opening scene of Aeroplane Man suggests that the racist practices that
are portrayed as part of the administrative infrastructure in Ellis Island
have become further institutionalized within the nineties British state
apparatus. As Soja argues: ‘hegemonic power . . . produces difference
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 133

as a . . . strategy to create and maintain modes of social and spatial

division that are advantageous to its continued empowerment and
authority’ (1996: 87).
Spatial division and segregation are created and maintained by
borders. Ellis Island reveals some of the investment put into the main-
tenance of borders by an immigration control centre. Yet borders are
social constructions. They are ‘arbitrary dividing lines that are simulta-
neously social, cultural and psychic’, they create ‘territories to be
patrolled against those whom they construct as outsiders, aliens, the
Others . . . places where claims to ownership – claims to “mine”, “yours”
and “theirs” – are staked out, contested, defended and fought over’
(Brah, 1996: 198). In Jonzi D’s rap, territorial issues of what is “mine”
and “yours” are raised at the outset by the British Nazi racist who
accuses Jonzi D of ‘coming over ‘ere, taking all our ‘ouses, all our jobs
and all our women’.
Territorial issues are further raised on Jonzi D’s travels. Each time he
crosses a border into another country he is perceived as an outsider and
told to return to England. For Jonzi D, as Aeroplane Man shows, both in
Britain and elsewhere, borders create what the postcolonialist Edward
Said has termed ‘the perilous territory of not-belonging’ (1990: 359). In
the Aeroplane Man video interview Jonzi D talks about displacement as
‘that feeling of not being welcome, of not being comfortable of not
belonging’ (1997). Said consistently argues for ‘a world in which tradi-
tional boundaries of all kinds are to be questioned’ since they are ‘often
nonsensical’ and ‘oppressive’ (Kasbarian, 1996: 531).
While demonstrating different aspects of oppression associated with
national borders, Aeroplane Man and Ellis Island also challenge and ques-
tion boundaries in empowering ways. Neither Jonzi D nor the Ellis Island
immigrants ‘fit’ easily into a nation state. By not ‘fitting’ they show up
the rigidity of the institutional and cultural apparatuses that serve and
are perpetuated by the contained and bounded nation state. Jonzi D
and the immigrants can be seen to be both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ at the
same time. Jonzi D is both inside and outside England – he was born
and bred in England but he is not accepted. He is also both inside and
outside the places he visits – inside because he is black, he owns,
embraces and can perform aspects of their culture, and outside because
he is English. The immigrants are inside the American immigration
centre but they are treated as outsiders. They don’t ‘fit’ when they fail
to complete the intelligence test in the ‘normal’ way, their names don’t
fit, but they also exceed the conceptual boundaries when their
134 Dancing in the ‘In-Between Spaces’

contemporary black-clad ‘shadows’ repeat their movements and evade

the surveillance camera’s normalizing gaze. When a group of immi-
grants are seen waltzing with each other in their traditional nineteenth
century peasant dress, the dance doesn’t fit the costume – the sign is
split. When a group of immigrants poses for a photograph, for a
moment they are fixed and frozen, they look like a photograph, then
someone blinks and a woman brushes a speck of dust off a coat lapel.
They have exceeded conceptually the boundaries of the camera shot.
All these excesses or supplements are instances of resistance that both
challenge the normalizing gaze and the constructed boundaries. They
show that the borders or boundaries require these ‘others’ in order for
them to exist. The outsiders define the borders of what is inside. They
point up the arbitrary and constructed nature of borders and how they
can be challenged.

Conclusion

This chapter has shown how Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man examine
issues of identity, difference and power, and demonstrate their com-
plexity. The works reveal that identity is not a monolithic, static
concept, with identifiable, fixed origins, but that it is a process or mode
of differentiation that is changeable and bound up with systems of
power that operate spatially. Both Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man demon-
strate how particular in-between spaces and places play a part in the
construction of identity. The journeys of Jonzi D and the immigrants
through these liminal spaces show them crossing literal and conceptual
thresholds in their rites of passage. Existing both inside and outside
these in-between spaces, and at times exceeding them, effectively blurs
boundaries and challenges notions of a rigid, self contained subject with
a fixed identity. The blurring of boundaries is also evident in the way
both pieces, by employing several different media, demonstrate what
Monk terms ‘a mosaic way of perceiving’ (in Zurbrugg, 1993: 98). In
Aeroplane Man the in-between, unfixed nature of the improvized per-
formance format, resulting in no one performance being the same, also
troubles notions of fixity. Both Ellis Island and Aeroplane Man blur
boundaries to suggest fluid subjectivities and identities that celebrate
differences.
In both works ‘themes of identity have been explored . . . through the
relation of personal to historical memory, through journeys, both real
and metaphorical, and through the representation of self from the point
of view of those displaced from the “centre” by . . . race’ (Betterton,
 Crossing the (black) Atlantic 135

1996: 193). Jonzi D’s graphic portrayal of his experiences of displace-

ment demonstrates that the effects of the technologies of power that
subjected and individualized the immigrants as different in Ellis Island
are still felt today. Both works through their portrayal of displacement
arising from multiple historical and contemporary crossings of the
(black) Atlantic show how ‘here’ informs ‘there’, how ‘we’ inform ‘they’
and how ‘then’ informs ‘now’.
Part III
Inside/Outside Bodies and
Spaces
8
Fleshy Corporealities in Trisha
Brown’s If You Couldn’t See Me,
Lea Anderson’s Joan and Yolande
Snaith’s Blind Faith

Introduction

While the focus in the last three chapters has been on actual and
metaphorical indeterminate hybrid in-between spaces, the concern in
this and the next chapter shifts to bodies, specifically the actual and
conceptual boundaries of bodies where bodies meet space, and where
inside and outside are difficult to distinguish.
This chapter focuses on the choreography of the inside/outside
borderlines where bodily flesh, fluids and folds meet space in If You
Couldn’t See Me (Brown, 1994), the dance film, Joan (Anderson, 1994)
and Blind Faith (Snaith, 1998). The American choreographer Trisha
Brown’s solo choreography for her naked back in If You Couldn’t See Me
directs the audience’s attention to the flesh, folds, muscles and bone
structure of this relatively unfamiliar body part (Plate 8). Joan, also a
solo for the British choreographer, Lea Anderson, is inspired by Carl
Theodor Dreyer’s (1928) film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Both works focus
on Joan’s spirituality merging with her fleshy corporeality. The British
choreographer Yolande Snaith’s Blind Faith is inspired by the work of
Leonardo da Vinci, particularly The Last Supper (1498) and by Renais-
sance anatomical experiments evident in paintings such as Rembrandt’s
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp (1632) (Plate 9).
The materiality of corporeality is central in these dances. In If You
Couldn’t See Me spectators’ attention is drawn to the moving flesh, mus-
culature and skeletal structure of Brown’s back by her low backed
costume, by side-lighting, the plain darkness that surrounds her, and
the fluidity of her loose-limbed movement style. In Joan the material-
ity of corporeality is foregrounded through close-ups of ‘Joan’s’ face and
head, the use of the camera to get ‘inside’ her body, and through video

139
140 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

special effects. Bodily flesh, fluids and folds are emphasized in Blind
Faith through choreography based on contact improvization and
through the dancers’ portrayal of the investigation through manipula-
tion of the near naked matter of bodies. In all three works there is much
imagery of folding, and in Joan and Blind Faith, of fluid and fleshy matter
such as water, wine, blood, tears, saliva and bodily innards. All pieces
also make extensive use of light to highlight fleshy surfaces and to evoke
mystical, sometimes trance-like moments or transformatory bodily
experiences.
If You Couldn’t See Me is a movement based piece with no obvious ref-
erences to anything outside of itself. The focus is Brown’s choreographic
exploration of the performance potential of her back. The visual theatre
style of Joan and Blind Faith is very different. There are references to
painting, sculpture and film – both Anderson and Snaith had a visual
art training1 – and the pieces are historicist and include religious refer-
ences to body/soul relations and the mortality of the body. However,
whether through imagery that is movement based or in a visual theatre
style, all three dances explore anti-dualistic ideas that focus on female
subjectivity.
The dualism of the French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650),
sees the mind and body as separate entities where the body materially
occupies space and is a container for the conscious mind. From
this philosophical perspective, outlined in the Introduction and
examined in Chapter 10, perception is organized around a series of
binary oppositions such as mind/body and self/world, where the first of
the pair is associated with the masculine and valued over the second
which is associated with the feminine. By putting the body at the
heart of their explorations, the dances are reinstating it and its associ-
ations with the feminine as central to subjectivity. In the dances central
female figures in different ways infuse the works with particular kinds
of embodied energy. I argue that there are resonances between this
energy and that theorized by the French post-structuralist Gilles
Deleuze as inherent in the fold, and that the focuses on flesh I identify
in the works can be informed by the French based Bulgarian feminist
Julia Kristeva’s theories of abjection associated with the feminine. These
theories are explored, together with the American theorist Susan Bordo’s
feminist account of Cartesian philosophy, to aid analysis of the dances.
They all allow a focus on the body and subjectivity from an anti-
Cartesian perspective, although the epistemologies of Deleuze and Kris-
teva have very different bases. Deleuze critiques psychoanalysis whereas
Kristeva draws explicitly on it, but they are both interested in new,
 Fleshy Corporealities 141

non-fixed identities open to otherness, making their work pertinent to

this analysis.
After an introduction to the theories of Deleuze, Bordo and Kristeva
and to each of the dances, the chapter focuses on the ‘flesh’, ‘fluids’ and
‘folds’ in the dances. The theories are explored in these contexts to point
to ways in which the dances can suggest possibilities of rethought
embodied subjectivities associated with the feminine.

The theories of Deleuze, Bordo and Kristeva

Gilles Deleuze’s theories of ‘the fold’ are derived from his radical
conception of the Baroque read through an interpretation of the
seventeenth and eighteenth-century philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz. Deleuze draws on Leibniz because he ‘was the first thinker to
“free” the fold, by taking it to infinity’ and on the Baroque because
it ‘was the first period in which folding went on infinitely’ (Deleuze,
1995: 159). The Baroque style in art, which straddled the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries – evident in painting, sculpture and architec-
ture particularly in Italy – was developed to act on the emotions of the
spectator, conveying, for example, the agonies and ecstasies of the
saints. It did this through creating an illusion of movement through
light and colour effects on folds of cloth, figures and flesh, to express
profound and passionately felt religious emotions. Deleuze claims,
‘without the Baroque and without Leibniz, folds wouldn’t have
developed the autonomy that subsequently allowed them to create so
many new paths’ (ibid). Key characteristics of folds that Deleuze
explores and that suggest ‘new paths’ are the energy and force inherent
in folding that ‘spills over’ infinitely resulting in movement bound up
in the form of folds.
Deleuze’s theories of the fold work on many levels. I am exploring
Deleuzian folds which are conceptual alongside dances where many of
the folds are actual and evident in the dancing bodies. Deleuze,
however, derives his ideas from matter citing the body as one possible
source (1993: 34). He explores Leibniz’s ideas of perception in part
through the body and its relation to the world emphasizing sensuality
over sole dependence on the visual. This contributes to the critique of
Cartesian body/mind separation which is fundamental to Deleuze’s
position. The sensual characteristics of folds derived from the Baroque,
which challenge the separations inherent in Cartesian dualism, focus
on multiplicity, excess, connectivity, particularly that of bodies and
souls, and a wave-like force, energy or movement. Productivity and
142 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

multiplicity of folds are evident when Deleuze writes of ‘a proliferation

of principles’ where ‘play is executed through excess and not lack’ (ibid:
67–8). These all resonate with the foregrounding of flesh, fluids and
folds in the dances as do the fluidity of matter and the elasticity of
bodies which are fundamental notions of Leibniz’s philosophy. Another
key characteristic of the Baroque explored in The Fold, which is also
evident in the dances, is mystical experience. Deleuze writes of folds
conveying ‘the intensity of a spiritual force exerted on the body’ (ibid:
122). In Joan and Blind Faith trance-like, ecstatic bodily states occur
which are also excessive and seem to be associated with the mystical,
‘what Deleuze . . . might call an event . . . the virtual sensation of a
somatic moment of totalization and dispersion’ (Conley in Deleuze,
1993: xii). The emphasis on the somatic is key. It is characteristically
corporeal, a bodily experience, a ‘mystical adventure’ that ‘convinces
because no language can be said to represent what it means’ (ibid: xii).
This is why it is pertinent to explore the theory alongside dance.
Susan Bordo, like Deleuze, explores anti-Cartesianism. Parallels with
his position are evident in her citing of Leibniz, her attention to multi-
plicity, and her recognition of the importance of the unity of subject and
object in the pre-Cartesian medieval world, which can be likened to
Deleuze’s ideas of body/soul connectivity. However Bordo emphasizes
the gendered nature of these ideas. She shows how historically Descartes’
philosophy resulted in a ‘masculinization of thought’ involving a ‘flight
from the feminine’ (1987: 9). This meant a ‘separation from the organic
female universe’ (ibid: 5) through a ‘transcendence of the body’ (ibid:
8). Bordo shows that the body’s role within knowledge in medieval and
Renaissance philosophy was overridden by seventeenth-century scien-
tific and intellectual revolutions. The connections she makes between a
Cartesian masculinization of thought and transcendence of the body aid
an understanding of the ways in which a reinstatement of corporeality
in the dances challenges Cartesian ideas and points to notions of
subjectivity associated with the feminine. The loss of the medieval and
Renaissance sense of ‘being one with the world’ (ibid: 106) and of any
connectivity between subject and object is replaced by Descartes’ phi-
losophy of dualisms such as soul/body, self/other and subject/object.
These binary oppositions privilege the concept of a rational, self-
contained, unified subject that is considered ideal and associated with a
traditionally white, male norm. Bordo claims that in Cartesian philoso-
phy associations of the world with the feminine were characterized as
evil and destructive and in need of suppression and control in order to
ensure the objectivity of science. This desire to control matter as the
 Fleshy Corporealities 143

object of science is evident in the genre of seventeenth-century anatomy

lesson paintings referred to in Blind Faith.
These ideas of control over matter also resonate with Julia Kristeva’s
theories of abjection which concern the expulsion of those material
aspects of corporeality considered to be unclean and improper such as
food, bodily fluids and waste. Kristeva claims that the binary coding
of the human subject in terms of subject/object, inside/outside and
self/other depends on expulsion of this abject, unclean and improper
matter. In other words if the body is seen as a container, as it is in Carte-
sian theory, messy substances which threaten to overflow the body and
break its boundaries disrupt the order and control the container signi-
fies. This sense of order and control is fundamental to the Cartesian
notion of a rational, unified subject associated with the masculine, and
it is dependent on the expulsion of the abject. The revelation of the
abject in the flesh and fluids of If You Couldn’t See Me, Joan and Blind
Faith where it is foregrounded rather than hidden, points to the impos-
sibility of complete expulsion and therefore of complete control and the
consequent ambiguity of the construction of the subject in Kristevan
terms. For as Kristeva argues, ‘abjection is . . . ambiguity. Because, while
releasing a hold, it does not radically cut off the subject from what
threatens it’ (1982: 9). Kristeva places the abject on the side of the femi-
nine (ibid: 71), which is why her theories prove useful when analyzing
these dances that are exploring notions of female subjectivity. Kristeva
also posits connections between religious discourse, the arts and the
abject that seem particularly pertinent to analyses of Joan and Blind
Faith, because of their subject matter.
Deleuze’s ideas of folds foreground connectivities which implicitly
challenge Cartesian dualisms. Bordo identifies connectivities between
body and soul, subject and object and self and world as part of the
medieval and Renaissance views of the world rooted in the body and
associated with the feminine. A return to seeing the world in terms of
connectivities in this way points to a new kind of embodied subjectiv-
ity associated with the feminine. This notion of embodied subjectivity
can be likened to Kristeva’s ambiguous subject in process bound up with
her theories of the abject. In these theories she identifies the roles that
material aspects of corporeality such as bodily fluids and waste, often
associated with the feminine, play when they excessively overflow and
disrupt the order and control of the traditional Cartesian subject asso-
ciated with the masculine. There are connections here with the over-
flow and excess evident in Deleuze’s infinite foldings. So although the
theories of Deleuze, Bordo and Kristeva are distinct, each bringing a
144 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

slightly different perspective to bear on If You Couldn’t See Me, Joan and
Blind Faith, the ways in which they overlap and inform each other, when
explored alongside the dances, challenge traditional notions of subjec-
tivity and suggest new possibilities.

The dances

If You Couldn’t See Me is a ten-minute solo choreographed and per-

formed by Trisha Brown to music composed by Robert Rauschenberg,
who also designed her costume; a white, low-backed dress (Plate 8).
Central to the piece is Brown’s back which is turned to the audience
throughout. Although the performance includes throw-away swings
and lunges of the limbs, and curves, tilts and suspensions of the torso
in Brown’s typical loose-limbed style, attention is focused on the
moving surface of her bare back. It is side-lit, such that the differently
angled fleshy surfaces of her musculature and bone structure stand out
against the backdrop of plain dark curtains. At times her back seems
otherworldly taking on a life all of its own; a host of different images
are evoked. This focus on the back challenges the dominant single view-
point that privileges the body’s front in performance and everyday life.
It disrupts expectations and the logic of visualization, which normally
objectifies the female, dancing body (see Chapter 10). The body and its
relationship with space are seen differently. Brown’s choreography for
herself, a woman approaching sixty when the piece was first performed,
through its focus on this wall of flesh and muscle, suggests new ways
of thinking embodied subjectivity while making statements about age,
gender and identity.
Since making the solo, Brown has taught it to two male dancers, Bill
T. Jones and Mikhail Baryshnikov, who have each performed it along-
side her as a duet entitled You can see us (1995), the men facing the audi-
ence and Brown facing away.2 This allows the audience to see on male
bodies facing forward what would normally be hidden, while the female
body remains turned away defying normal objectification. Brown had
been reading about the use of women’s bodies in the media when
making the piece, and she was only too aware of the ambiguity of
putting a woman’s body on stage. By limiting the exposure of the female
body in If You Couldn’t See Me she felt she had taken ownership of the
image (Feliciano, 1996: 11).
Joan, is a six-minute dance film made for Channel Four television,
first broadcast on 19 August 1994, and directed by Margaret Williams.
Lea Anderson introduces it as ‘physically internal choreography’. It
 Fleshy Corporealities 145

employs various imaging techniques to foreground and penetrate the

body’s flesh. Joan’s body is entered by the eye of the camera/spectator,
ripped open and set alight without any actual damage being done,
alluding to its permeability and her mystical nature. Anderson, who
performs alone as Joan, resembles the iconic image of this saint
with her short boyish haircut and costume of chainmail armour under
a black leather tunic. The myth of Joan and the peculiarly spiritual
nature of her corporeality is explored. Joan is the centre of attention
throughout, almost always in the middle of the frame and mostly filmed
in close-up.
Joan opens with close-up shots of ‘Joan’s’ ear immediately suggesting
connections between her corporeality and her spirituality. Joan heard
voices; her ear is her link to her God. Throughout, the film returns to
close-ups of Joan’s head, face and ear, the latter often framed by her
hand, further emphasizing its importance. The film critic Pauline Kael
suggests that in Dreyer’s film enlargements of Joan resulting from close-
ups are ‘shockingly fleshly’ (1970: 329). Joan is similarly ‘shockingly
fleshly’. ‘Joan’s’ body is dissected by the camera as it enters her ear,
revealing bloody, membranous inner caverns, and ‘Joan’ rips open her
leather tunic exposing a digital image of her pulsating interior (Plate
10). These shocking revelations of ‘Joan’s’ bloody flesh can be seen as
examples of Kristeva’s abject ‘modes of corporeality’, but in Joan the
materiality of her body is foregrounded rather than expelled. Joan’s rela-
tionship with her God/spirit is further emphasized through intense
lighting effects; her head is brightly lit from above and behind, sug-
gesting her mystical status. Imagery of corporeality and of spirituality
alternate and overlap throughout the film. Joan is portrayed as being in
her body but also intensely spiritual through closeness to her god.
Blind Faith is a 58-minute dance initially created for the stage for
four men (Paul Clayden, Jovair Longo, Rick Nodine and Russell Trigg)
and a woman (Snaith)3 with a video record of one of its performances.
Drawing on imagery from The Last Supper, a rectangular banqueting
table, designed by Barnaby Stone, is a central prop around and on which
the performance occurs. The dance opens with Trigg’s limp, Christ-like
body, wearing only black trunks, draped over the table like a corpse. The
other dancers process around the table, ceremoniously place containers
of water, a napkin and bread on the table, wash and dry Trigg’s foot and
place the bread on his body, which the three men then lengthily
examine and manipulate. To Graeme Miller’s accompaniment of repeti-
tive chanting, Snaith performs a dynamic solo where she appears to be
summoning up mysterious powers, she rolls on the floor and rises up
146 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

onto her knees, her arms outstretched heavenwards. The ‘corpse’ ‘comes
to life’ and dances its own macabre solo with postures reminiscent of
the Renaissance anatomist Andreas Vesalius’s famous drawings (Plate
11). Dances suggesting compulsive and perhaps transformational states
are performed, where all the dancers walk around the table progressively
increasing speed, imitate Snaith jumping on the spot repeatedly, and
finally gaze as if transfixed into lights shining up through the table.
Ecstatic and trance-like dances follow, one culminating in Clayden
having a kind of fit, where he spits on the table. A series of tableaux of
near naked bodies are created on the table (Plate 12) emphasizing the
visual theatre style of the piece, also enhanced by special lighting effects
including a panel of lights over the table as in an operating theatre, and
the use of blue and gold washes which transform the appearance of the
flesh of the near naked bodies from cold to warm, dead to live. These
effects, when combined with tableau-like poses of groupings of bodies
are reminiscent of imagery from Renaissance and Baroque, often reli-
gious, paintings. The dance ends with tableaux from The Last Supper,
characterized by Baroque-like, flowing and flame-like postures and ges-
tures of the ‘disciples’ culminating in a reconstruction of the painting
with Snaith in Christ’s position.
Blind Faith centres round investigations of corporeality. The whole
dance seems to focus on bodies and their materiality. It does this in the
context of particular historical, philosophical and religious ideas evident
in strong visual tableau references to Renaissance and Baroque art. Cor-
poreality is foregrounded through a focus on anatomy at the outset in
visual references to anatomy lesson paintings, and reiterated through
references to Vesalius’s and Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings
which emphasize the flesh and musculature of the body. There is a sense
in which the dance moves from ‘flesh made word’, evident in anatomi-
cal references, to ‘word made flesh’, apparent in The Last Supper
tableaux.

Flesh

Flesh is immediately foregrounded in If You Couldn’t See Me since Trisha

Brown’s naked back is at the centre of her performance. This relatively
large expanse of flesh is rivetting precisely because audiences are not
used to having this part of the body as the main focus of a dance. The
fluctuation of the back’s flesh, muscles and bones – ‘the enigmatic lan-
guage of the faceless body’ (Sulcas, 1995b: 38) – becomes a dance on its
own framed by movements of limbs and head. Steve Paxton, who has
 Fleshy Corporealities 147

worked with Brown and known her over a thirty five year period since
they performed together in the Judson Dance Theater (see Chapter 3),
wrote at some length about If You Couldn’t See Me in a letter to Brown
published in Contact Quarterly (1995). Given his informed perspective,
Paxton’s letter is treated as a special source of particularly insightful
information about the dance.
Paxton suggests that focusing on the flesh of Brown’s back gives the
body transformative potential, in the sense that a range of different
images can be read into it. He describes Brown as ‘a woman with a whole
scene on her back’ (1995: 94). He writes,

the . . . revelation of your spinus erectae, scapulae and delicate pearls

of spinal processes in the lumbar . . . sent a gasp through the audi-
ence. You cannot know . . . what the sculpture of your back can
accomplish . . . it became an abstraction shifting from an anatomical
event with muscles like a whippet to a large looming face to a mask
– something alien and frightening.
(ibid)

This description highlights the transformatory nature of the choreog-

raphy and ‘something alien and frightening’ suggests mystical, other-
worldly qualities. He continues, ‘our eyes see . . . the moonscape of your
back, the chiaroscuro, which as you raise your arms, fascinates us, bring-
ing us closer and rendering you enormous’ (ibid). The importance of
light emphasizing the texture of the back’s flesh and folds is apparent.
Deleuze mentions this in relation to Baroque folds stating: ‘the fold of
matter or texture has to be related to . . . light, chiaroscuro, the way the
fold catches illumination’ (1993: 47).
Brown continually transforms, disassembles and reassembles herself
throughout. Paxton recognizes this when he writes of ‘the figure-ground
flipping . . . as the dance progresses’ (1995: 94) and when he concludes
his statement about Brown’s back being ‘something alien and frighten-
ing’ with ‘although [it is] weirdly comic as the rest of the body recon-
nects and we see again a back’ (ibid). The ways in which the back comes
in and out of focus, appearing to change from one thing to another,
underline its qualities of elasticity, flexibility and instability. Discussing
the pliability of folded forms, Deleuze suggests, ‘there’s nothing more
unsettling than the continual movement of something that seems fixed.
In Leibniz’s words: a dance of particles folding back on themselves’
(1995: 157).
The transformations inherent in this fleshly choreography can effect
a blurring of the inside/outside boundaries of the body. The muscles and
148 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

bones of Brown’s back, normally thought of as inside the body, are

revealed. As one critic wrote, If You Couldn’t See Me ‘exposes Brown’s artic-
ulated muscles . . . movements ripple out into her limbs from deep inside
her torso’ (Felciano, 1996: 11). Connections are made between inside
and outside, between deep inside the torso and the apparently external
movements of limbs. This perception of the body and its movements
challenges traditional notions of the body as a container of flesh and
muscles, a controlled, Cartesian body, clearly articulating its borders, like
that of a classical ballerina. Brown’s fluid, loose, almost messy, move-
ment style articulates connections rather than containment.
The particular relationship Brown’s dancing has with space is fore-
grounded in If You Couldn’t See Me because the dance is a solo, the first
Brown has made in twenty years. Since there is no one else to dance
with, it is as if ‘space . . . becomes this other body, accompanying . . .
Brown’s dance’ and ‘Brown’s choreography expands the notion of a
choreographed body into the body of space’ (Lepecki, 1997: 19). This
animation of the body/space interface blurs the inside/outside bound-
aries of the body and of space allowing for the possibility of a new fluid,
unstable, embodied subjectivity. Paxton also recognizes the special rela-
tionship Brown’s dancing body has with space as she appears to trans-
form and reconstruct the space around her while dancing. He claims
that because of the focus on Brown’s back, the upstage space is
enlivened and ‘the black curtain is not just an expanse of dark back-
ground to contrast with your lit figure and push you towards us. . . .
Your orientation declares it a dark vista . . . it acquires a dimensionless
depth’ (1995: 94). He continues, ‘this illusory upstage spatial pliability
– from positive dancing figure on black to negative dancing figure in
front of potentized unguessable empty space is deeply satisfying, mythic
and wholly theatrical’ (ibid). The alternating positive/negative images
of Brown’s dancing body further underline its flexibility and its poten-
tial for exceeding its boundaries and refusing to remain contained or
fixed. Paxton’s use of the term ‘mythic’ to describe this experience links
If You Couldn’t See Me to Joan and Blind Faith in which mythic qualities
are also apparent.
Joan opens with ‘JOAN’ in white letters flashing onto the centre of a
black screen in rapid succession in time to Drostan Madden’s heartbeat-
like sound score. Immediately corporeal mortality is signified in this
flashing title image. Three close-up shots of ‘Joan’s’ head and ear follow,
each interspersed with a plain black screen, also timed with the heart-
beat soundtrack, like the pulsing signals of life on an electrocardiograph.
This appearance and disappearance of first the word ‘JOAN’ (flesh made
word) and then ‘Joan’s’ head (word made flesh) also suggest the mysti-
 Fleshy Corporealities 149

cal ambiguity of Joan’s mortal status. Now you see her, now you don’t.
The camera focuses on ‘Joan’s’ ear again, getting closer and closer, as in
Dreyer’s film where ‘giant close-ups’ revealed ‘startingly individual con-
tours, features and skin’ (Kael, 1970: 329). The image changes to inside
a long curving paper tunnel, followed by shots that resemble an ear’s
interior, with red and white cavernous spaces traversed by pulsating
fleshy membranes. This internal journey through the ear’s caverns has
affinities with anatomical drawings of folded flesh such as those of
Vesalius, and with Deleuze’s description of matter, as offering ‘an infi-
nitely porous, spongy, or cavernous texture . . . caverns endlessly con-
tained in other caverns . . . pierced with irregular passages, surrounded
. . . by . . . fluid’ (1993: 5). A shot of a road tunnel follows and,
when light is seen at the end of it, a close-up of ‘Joan’s’ eye, with tears
rolling down her cheek, replaces it. ‘Joan’s’ body has been invaded
through her ear, her link with her creator. Views of the inside of her ear
and head have been constructed by film. The road tunnel seems to
suggest an internal journey to her soul, her spiritual quest. When the
camera appears to enter her head, distinctions between body and soul
become unclear. This invasion seems to illustrate Deleuze’s claim that
‘souls are everywhere in matter’ (ibid: 11). This is also evident when
‘Joan’s’ head is filmed alternately in positive tones (a dark image on a
white ground) and in negative tones (a luminous white image translus-
cent like an X-ray against a golden ground, reminiscent of the mystical
imagery of haloed saints). These plays with the image of her head,
including an X-ray shot, blur inside/outside boundaries and the
body/soul dualism suggesting the closeness of ‘Joan’ with her god. There
are parallels here with Paxton’s description of If You Couldn’t See Me
moving ‘from positive dancing figure on black to negative dancing
figure in front of . . . empty space’ which he saw as ‘mythic and wholly
theatrical’ (1995: 94).
When ‘Joan’ rips apart the front of her leather jerkin to reveal a com-
puterized rendition of an abject fleshy pulsating interior (Plate 10), any
expectations of objectification associated with disrobing are denied. The
subject/object binary is disrupted, opening up possibilities for ‘Joan’
having a new identity, where inside and outside spaces of the body
coexist in one image. This illustrates the ambiguity of the abject which
is ‘the space between subject and object’ (Gross, 1990: 94) that is ‘unde-
cidably inside and outside the body’ (ibid: 90). Deleuze identifies the
connectivity of inside and outside spaces as a trait in the Baroque, where
he argues: ‘the infinite fold . . . moves between matter and soul . . . the
outside and the inside’ (1993: 35). The connotations of this hybrid fab-
rication of ‘Joan’, through deeply religious experiences of immortality,
150 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

seem particularly apt given Joan of Arc’s mystic status. Simultaneously,

however, the image of ‘Joan’s’ pulsating interior, exposed and therefore
also exterior, can be read as demystifying ‘St Joan’, showing that she
consists of flesh and blood just like other mortals. This illustrates abjec-
tion as ‘the expression of both a division (between the subject and its
body) and a merging (of self and Other)’ (Gross, 1990: 92). The image
encapsulates the fluidity of identity showing it is possible to be more
than one thing simultaneously. This is also apparent in the transfor-
matory choreography of If You Couldn’t See Me. Deleuze suggests in
The Fold that body and soul are both one and the same while also being
different, that sameness and difference can occur simultaneously in
one entity. He argues, ‘everything is always the same thing . . . and . . .
everything differs’ (1993: 58).
This fluctuating coexistence of sameness and difference is also evident
in Blind Faith. In its opening moments the flesh of Russell Trigg’s body,
laid out as if for dissection, suggesting resonances with Rembrandt’s The
Anatomy Lesson of Dr Tulp is foregrounded in various ways. The foot
washing, performed over a bright white light shining up through the
glass table top, focuses attention on Trigg’s luminous flesh. The materi-
ality of his corporeality is also alluded to when bread is placed on his
torso and the water in the glass bowl magically turns red when Snaith
drops powder into it. The juxtaposition of Trigg’s Christ-like body
with the bread and water turned into wine, has associations with the
Eucharist of the last supper, an image to which Blind Faith returns at
the end of the dance. When Trigg’s body is lifted, folded and rolled over
by the three male dancers and then ‘dances’, resembling in its postures
and gestures Vesalius’s anatomical drawings (Plate 11), it provides
another reference to Rembrandt’s multi-layered painting. Rembrandt
had studied Vesalius’s drawings and he possessed limbs anatomized
by Vesalius (Sawday, 1995). The ‘corpse’ in Blind Faith, like that in
Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson, has become, in part, a mindless object of
science. The flesh has become word, emphasized in the painting by the
anatomy textbook open at the corpse’s feet, at which some of the sur-
geons are gazing. This is a ‘textualization’ of the body (Barker, 1995: 72),
a Cartesian body separated from its mind or soul, because of the ‘con-
junction between the Cartesian struggle of will and intellect, and
Rembrandt’s portrayal of the domination of intellect over the aberrant
will of the executed felon’ (Sawday, 1995: 153). In the dance also there
is a lack of a sense of being in this body, it appears heavy and lifeless,
lacking sensitivity as it flops between the three men manipulating it,
characterizing it as object and ‘flesh made word’.
 Fleshy Corporealities 151

However, the Anatomy Lesson presents another view of the body, also
developed in Blind Faith. The painting portrays a theatrical performance
acted out for a paying audience where the surgeons are also paid to
‘star’. This visual theatre harks back to ‘the Jacobean spectacle of
the . . . body in extremis . . . to the overt, celebratory bodiliness of the
dramatic and penal scaffold’ (ibid: 65) also evident in the French
post-structuralist Michel Foucault’s discussion of the seventeenth-
century ‘Spectacle of the Scaffold’, where he argues ‘the condemned
man published his crime and the justice that had been meted out to
him by bearing them physically on his body’ (1977: 43) The body
in the painting is that of a thief, hence the dissection of the arm –
the offending member. The visual theatre of the Anatomy Lesson is
evident in the body undoing itself, holding open the folds of flesh in a
highly Baroque way, derived from Vesalius’s drawings, which reveal the
unfurling layers of tissue and muscle down to the bone. The washing,
examination, manipulation and dancing of the ‘corpse’ in Blind Faith
are also visually theatrical. These theatrical bodies refer back to earlier
notions of the body at one with its soul as part of the medieval uni-
verse, when ‘subject and object are united through shared meanings,
rather than rendered ontologically separate’ (Bordo, 1987: 69).
Rembrandt’s painting and the dance seem to be representing both a
body at one with its soul and a Cartesian soulless body textualized as
an object of science. This is another instance of the Deleuzian notion
that sameness and difference can occur simultaneously in one entity;
that body and soul are both one and the same while also being differ-
ent. The connectivity of body and soul and the accommodation of
two opposing positions, are anti-Cartesian challenges to ‘masculinized
thought’ which insists that ‘each “sphere” remain distinct and undi-
luted by the other’ (ibid: 114).
Fleshy corporeality is further foregrounded in Blind Faith when the
dancers manipulate each other’s near naked bodies on the table. Every-
one is lifted, carried, turned around and over by their partners, in a more
mutually supportive manner than earlier. This multiple animation,
often using movement derived from contact improvization, emphasizes
the materiality of corporeality by repetition. Everybody becomes both
subject and object in this fluid folding of flesh on flesh, which results
in a continual blurring of boundaries, as dancers move back and forth
between active and passive roles, and pieta-like tableaux emerge and
dissolve (Plate 12). The flesh in these ensemble scenes from Blind Faith
is no longer inert matter subjected to the objectivity of science or matter
expelled that needs to be restrained and kept in order. The machina-
152 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

tions and closeness of these mutually supportive bodies seem rather to

be celebrating the fluidity and diversity of fleshy bodies, embodying a
different kind of subjectivity that could be associated with the feminine,
with ‘ “sympathy” . . . closeness, connectedness and empathy’ rather
than detachment and distance generally held to be masculine qualities
(ibid: 112).
A focus on the textural characteristics of flesh in all three dances has
strong affinities with Deleuze’s descriptions of the form and texture of
folds, which he terms ‘the theater of matter’. This is characterized by
the expressive features of matter created by light, depth, movement
and ‘the projection of something spiritual into matter’ (1993: 37). The
subtle rippling of muscles in Brown’s back in If You Couldn’t See Me cre-
ating concavities and convexities gives her back textural form. Move-
ment of one muscle or bone affects others, the back’s many different
parts all connect to form a whole, which is its form, its ‘theater of
matter’. Deleuze describes Baroque folds, stating: ‘texture does not
depend on the parts themselves but on strata that determine its “cohe-
sion” ’ (ibid: 37) and ‘the object . . . is inseparable from the different
layers that are dilating, like so many occasions for meanders and
detours’ (ibid: 37). ‘Meanders and detours’ suggest terrains and topog-
raphy that can be mapped.4 The topography of Brown’s back in If You
Couldn’t See Me has been described as ‘highlands’ (Paxton, 1995: 94) and
‘natural pathways’ (Perron, 1996: 751), and its choreography as ‘the
workings of the body as remapped by Brown’ (ibid). The close-ups of
‘Joan’s’ face and ear starkly lit, and filmed in positive and negative, and
the under-table lighting, combined with blue and gold washes of light
on the near naked bodies in Blind Faith, also draw attention to the mate-
riality of the flesh. The marble-like qualities of veined flesh are high-
lighted and the muscles stand out. In Joan a series of shots of tree
branches lit and silhouetted against a black sky, and of the texture of
internal amoeba-like and veined matter magnified under a microscope,
are interspersed with ‘Joan’s’ upturned head gazing into a blinding light,
and with her kneeling folded body. Deleuze compares folds to ‘veins in
marble’ (1993: 4) and he writes of ‘an organic body’ conferring ‘an inte-
rior on matter’ which is individual like the ‘leaves of a tree’ never alike
‘because of their veins or folds’ (ibid: 8). This focus on the textural qual-
ities of the flesh in the dances further underlines the reinstatement
of corporeality denied by the Cartesian ‘masculinization of thought’,
allowing for the possibility of new subjectivities more associated with
the feminine.
 Fleshy Corporealities 153

Fluids

Fluids, fluidity and patterns of flow are evident in all three works. Trisha
Brown’s movement style is often characterized as ‘fluid’. Fluidity or flow
is her hallmark. One critic has identified an ‘incessant wave-like and
spiral flow’ as ‘Brown’s signature’ (Ginot, 1997: 22), reminiscent of the
wave-like characteristics of Deleuze’s folds. Another writes that If You
Couldn’t See Me consists of ‘fluid, limpid phrases’ (Sulcas, 1995b: 38). It
is a prime example of Brown’s fluid style, with its sways and undula-
tions of the torso, and swings, bends, lunges and rotations of limbs.
Brown’s body flows through positions and waves ripple through her
pelvis. The choreography defies containment as parts of her body rarely
seem to be in place or control. She seems to exceed and overflow bound-
aries, opening up possibilities for a new kind of fluid subjectivity. Since
Brown never shows her face, an air of mystery surrounds her identity.
There are parallels with Blind Faith’s mysterious characters and the fluc-
tuating identities of the mythical ‘Joan’.
In Joan and Blind Faith internal bodily fluids are expelled in perfor-
mance: ‘Joan’s’ tears, and Clayden’s saliva in Blind Faith. These fluids
draw attention to the body’s boundaries’ permeability and the difficulty
of distinguishing between inside and outside (Grosz, 1994b). Being
neither inside nor outside, fluids are in between, and attest to the body’s
inability to contain itself. The expulsion of bodily fluids, which Kristeva
terms abject, ‘demonstrates the impossibility of clear-cut borders, lines
of demarcation, divisions between the clean and the unclean, the proper
and the improper, order and disorder’ (Gross, 1990: 89). The abject ‘dis-
turbs identity, system, order’ (Kristeva, 1982: 4). The subject’s reactions
to abjection ‘represent a body in revolt’ (Gross, 1990: 89). The social
imposition of boundaries that limits and orders identity is derived from
Cartesian philosophy, and its disruption, according to Bordo, can be
linked to ideas associated with the feminine and with less fixed identi-
ties. This is what is happening in the dances, the abject is articulated in
bodily fluids and ‘dead bodies’ – for Kristeva, ‘the corpse is the utmost
of abjection’ (1982: 4). By articulating rather than expelling the abject,
the dances open up new possibilities for subjectivity.
Other fluids feature in Blind Faith; the water used to wash Trigg’s foot,
later coloured red, and glasses of ‘red wine’ consumed by the dancers
in the The Last Supper tableaux. When Christ instructs his disciples to
consume bread and wine representing his body and blood, the word (of
God/Christ) has been ‘made flesh’. The tableaux of The Last Supper in
154 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

Blind Faith, provide references to the Passion where the word was made
flesh. In Renaissance ideology ‘the body of the world and that of the
text are frequently identified with each other’ (Barker, 1995: 21). They
are considered at one ‘in the figure of the Passion, where the word and
the body are . . . identified in an act of punishment and signification
from which all other meanings flow’ (ibid). This return to the word
becoming flesh in Blind Faith further emphasizes corporeality and the
permeability of bodily boundaries. The blurring of subject and object,
self and other and mortality and immortality are symbolized in the
Eucharist. In Dreyer’s film, Joan is told that if she signs the confession
her reward will be the body and blood of Christ and she is shown the
Eucharist. The Eucharist’s power resides in its association with Christ’s
Passion and ultimate immortality symbolizing the ambiguity of subjec-
tivity – the possibility of life and death, God and man, subject and
object, inside and outside existing simultaneously in one entity (see
Kristeva, 1982: 118–20). Deleuze in his first book on cinema says of
Dreyer’s film that Joan’s trial ‘is itself Passion’ which ‘enters into a
virtual conjunction with that of Christ’ (1992: 108).
Kristeva’s theories of abjection draw on these aspects of religious dis-
course. She indicates in her analysis of Holbein’s The Body of the Dead
Christ in the Tomb (1521) that ‘because Christianity set that rupture [the
splitting of the subject] at the very heart of the absolute subject – Christ;
because it represented it as a Passion . . . it brought to consciousness the
essential dramas that are internal to the becoming of each and every
subject’ (Kristeva, 1989: 132). At the centre of Kristeva’s theories is the
notion of an unstable subject in process that is the antithesis of a Carte-
sian fixed subject. Kristeva sees ‘holiness’ as a domain where there is ‘an
excessive uncontrolled jouissance of . . . transgressive ecstasy’ (Grosz,
1989: 52).5 She claims: ‘the mystic’s familiarity with abjection is a fount
of infinite jouissance’ (Kristeva, 1982: 127) and that ‘we cannot escape
the dramatic convulsions of religious crises’ (ibid: 209). The transgres-
sive ecstasy and dramatic convulsions evident in Joan and Blind Faith,
in a Kristevan sense, could be said to be foregrounding the subject in
process, thus departing from ideas of a fixed, unified, Cartesian subject.
For Kristeva, ‘abjection’ is caused by ‘what does not respect borders,
positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous’ (ibid: 4). This is con-
nected with the feminine because, for Kristeva, the sacred or religious
text is the ‘revelation’ of the feminine chora (Grosz, 1989: 84).6 Religion
displaces the abject associated with the feminine (Kristeva, 1982: 127).
It makes space for the abject, allowing it to exist through transgressive
ecstasy. There is an ‘unrepresented residue . . . that refuses to conform
 Fleshy Corporealities 155

. . . to masculine . . . phallic order’ which is ‘occasionally touched upon

by discourses of the sacred and . . . experienced as religious ecstasy . . .
bliss . . . surrender of a most corporeal kind’ (Grosz, 1989: 84). The links
between abjection and religious ecstasy involving ‘surrender of a most
corporeal kind’ evident in Kristeva’s theories are also evident in the
dances. Commenting on Kristeva’s statements about religious ecstasy,
Grosz argues ‘it is no surprise that saints’ [she cites St Joan ] ‘could . . .
be defined as hysterics’ (ibid). The expressions of religious ecstasy in
Joan and Blind Faith, read through Kristeva’s theories, can be seen to be
bound up with the abject, and to be making way for new conceptions
of an ambiguous subject in process, that draws on aspects of the
feminine and departs from the rational, unified subject of Cartesian
dualism.

Folds

Deleuze’s theories of folds, developed from Leibniz’s philosophy and

read through ideas about the Baroque, refer to thought, philosophy and
ideas, while also being evident in, or applicable to, a wide range of
matter. Thus Deleuze writes of ‘ideas’ being ‘folded in the soul’ ‘just as
things themselves are inextricably wrapped up in nature’ (Deleuze, 1993:
49). The examples he gives of folds in nature include ‘the body . . .
waters, earth’ and ‘fabrics, living tissues, the brain’ (ibid: 34), hence the
relevance for the dances, where folded bodies are choreographed.
Connections between matter and thought in Deleuze’s philosophy
are also apparent in Brown’s choreographic approach. ‘Thinking about
movement is, for . . . Brown . . . a sensually-charged alternation between
moving thoughts and thoughtful movements’ (Ginot, 1997: 20). Like
Deleuze, her ideas seem to continually move between matter and
thought; the connections between the two and the way the composi-
tion and behaviour of one informs that of the other. Brown plans her
work in cycles, one of which she has termed ‘unstable molecular struc-
ture’. ‘ “Unstable” in that Brown constantly puts . . . movement to the
proof. . . . “Molecular” reminds . . . that . . . metamorphoses arise from a
physical thought process that incessantly makes demands’ (ibid).
Deleuze uses ‘molecular’ and ‘molar’ to describe the composition of
bodies and matter, where molecular suggests an oozing, laval, non-
linear and unstable composition and behaviour similar to Brown’s
choreography. Deleuze and Guattari, describing music, assert, ‘the mole-
cular has the capacity to make the elementary communicate with the
cosmic . . . because it effects a dissolution of form’ (1988: 308–9). There
156 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

is a sense in which Brown’s folding choreography for her back also

effects a ‘dissolution of form’ that makes the ‘elementary communicate
with the cosmic’. Paxton mentions shifting ‘from the specificity of . . .
visual solids to more oceanic senses’ (1995: 94) and certainly when
watching the ripples, stretches and undulations of Brown’s back con-
tinuously, the patterns that emanate tend to waver between the visual
and the visionary. The fold is characterized by connectivity both within
and between folds. ‘The fold always refers to other folds’ and ‘the organ-
ism is defined by its ability to fold its own parts . . . one within another
. . . like Russian dolls’ (Deleuze, 1993: 8). The connectivity that folds
imply challenges notions of containment and unity traditionally asso-
ciated with the masculine Cartesian subject. Deleuze indicates that this
is the value of folds, stating: ‘included in the category of things folded
are . . . philosophies that resolve Cartesian distinctions of mind and
body through . . . foldings . . . that lead the eye to confuse different
orders of space and surface’ (Conley in Deleuze, 1993: xii). Different
orders of space and surface are confused in all three dances where the
fluidity of folds, implying movement, energy and multiplicity, is
evident.
This kind of fluidity of a continually folding body is perhaps most
evident in If You Couldn’t See Me. Brown has been described in this solo
as folding ‘into the ground like an accordion’ (Felciano, 1996: 11) and
Wendy Perron, an ex-dancer of Brown’s, writes of the dance, ‘we see her
finding new seams to fold on’ (1996: 51). Deleuze describes the fluid
characteristics of the Baroque as ‘spongy, cavernous shapes . . . put in
motion by . . . turbulence, which ends . . . in the manner of . . . a wave;
matter seems to spill over into space’ (1993: 4). Brown’s dancing is often
described as wave-like, as in ‘the imperceptible wave forms, the inver-
sions and vertiginous convolutions of Brown’s movement . . . [result in]
a truly unstable structure’ (Ginot, 1997: 20). In Joan and Blind Faith the
matter of dancers’ bodies ‘spills over into space’ via spilt bodily fluids
and in Blind Faith in the ensemble choreography based on contact
improvization.
The Deleuzian principle, derived from the fold, that sameness and dif-
ference can occur simultaneously in one entity is illustrated in Brown’s
work. Banes has said that her dances present ‘the human body as both
subject and object of research’ (1980: 84). This ability to embrace same-
ness and difference simultaneously is demonstrated in Brown’s exten-
sion of her solo If You Couldn’t See Me into a duet for herself and a male
partner. There is sameness (two dancers perform the same choreogra-
phy simultaneously) and difference (facing different directions, one
 Fleshy Corporealities 157

female, one male, and when Jones performs, one black body, one white
body). The Deleuzian principle is underlined. Two dancers facing dif-
ferent directions demonstrate that things look different from different
perspectives. Brown has said of the decision to make the duet with Jones
‘it’s important to embrace opposites’ (1996) and she has talked about
counterpoint in her work in terms of establishing the ‘Other’ (in
Boxberger, 1997: 25). She seems to be well aware of the potential of rela-
tionships with ‘otherness’ or ‘opposites’ to affect ideas about identity.
She and Jones have been described in their duet as ‘unstable molecules’
(Wesemann, 1995: 46), a reference perhaps to Brown’s unstable molecu-
lar structures, but also possibly to the instability of identity (see
Chapter 7).
The Deleuzian principle that sameness and difference can occur
simultaneously is also apparent in the three dances because they are
simultaneously visual and non-visual. The visual theatre style of the
works enhanced by lighting, tableaux and foregrounding flesh is appar-
ent, however, paradoxically the focus on corporeality, particularly
its materiality, points to a bodily perception that is also distinctly non-
visual (see Chapter 10). Flesh, fluids and folds are visceral, as the tex-
tural features of flesh indicate. The importance of corporeal perception
as a way of knowing is implicated in the title Blind Faith which suggests
a dependence on senses other than the visual. Bordo links the devel-
opment of perspective, a visual appreciation of the world from a fixed
point, which contributes to a notion of ‘geometrical seeing’ (1987: 67),
with the development of Cartesian philosophy. Both can be seen to be
part of the ‘masculinization of thought’ she identifies, because both rely
on a separation of subject and the world – a sense of distance and
detachment (see Chapter 10). Snaith’s title for her dance and the
emphasis throughout on bodily senses other than the visual, are evi-
dence of a search for a different kind of subjectivity no longer deter-
mined by Cartesian philosophy.
Brown turning her back to spectators is another example that disrupts
the logic of visualization. There is a long tradition in her work of chal-
lenging spectators’ perception, disrupting objectification, by having
dancers on rooftops, walking down walls and floating on rafts, for
example (see Chapter 3). Brown subverts ‘the optical logic and location
of spectatorship’ (Lepecki, 1997: 16). By turning her back to the audi-
ence in If You Couldn’t See Me, Paxton claims, she ‘refutes . . . frontal con-
vention’ (1995: 94). He continues: ‘facing up relieves you of facing
us . . . you aren’t blinking uncomfortably in the light of our avid eye.
You . . . cannot know or concern yourself with how you may look to
158 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

us . . . we are not watchers. . . . You are not our focus.’ (ibid) Objectifi-
cation of Brown’s female dancing body becomes difficult, if not im-
possible. According to one critic: ‘the work is . . . devoid of . . . that
eroticism . . . associated with women putting themselves in front of the
public’ (Felciano, 1996: 11). The importance of the non-visual, is also
apparent in Joan, through ‘Joan’ closing or covering her eyes, and as in
If You Couldn’t See Me, ‘Joan’ turns away from her audience, so that only
the back or top of her head is seen. These departures from the logic of
visualization in the three dances are all evidence of a flight from the
Cartesian masculinization of thought and moves towards a more
embodied, feminine kind of subjectivity.
Ideas of multiplicity, openness and excess in the Baroque and folds
are evident in the dances where excessive and multiple dancing bodies
open up possibilities of new subjectivities. Deleuze’s multiplicity impor-
tantly acts on borders and boundaries, he writes of: ‘the Baroque . . .
dividing divergences into as many worlds as possible . . . by making . . .
many possible borders between worlds’ (1993: 81). Openness, excess
and multiplicity when explored alongside borders suggest a merging of
inside and outside which is evident in the dances. Deleuze argues, ‘the
outside and the inside . . . are . . . not two worlds’ (ibid: 31) and refer-
ring to modern art, ‘Stockhausen’s musical habitat or Dubuffet’s plastic
habitat do not allow the differences of inside and outside . . . to survive’
(ibid: 137).
Brown’s layered choreography has affinities with Deleuze’s notions of
multiplicity and layering implied in folds. By opening up the choreo-
graphic structure of her solo in the duet, You can see us, Brown is expos-
ing how it works. She has done this before, for example, in Opal Loop
(1980) two identical duets are performed simultaneously; one with the
couple together, and the other with them split apart. Brown’s strategies
of accumulation that layer choreographic material in the manner A, AB,
ABC, and so on, are well-known (in for example Accumulation, 1972,
and Split Solo, 1974). Describing her work, the dance critic Rita Feliciano
writes, ‘sometimes . . . there is so much going on within a single body
that it seems impossible to take it all in’ (1996: 7). ‘Little folds . . .
unravel in every direction, folds in folds, over folds, following folds’
(Deleuze, 1993: 86), and ‘physical mechanisms . . . work by . . . commu-
nication and propagation of movement, “like ripples that a stone creates
when it is thrown into water” ’ (ibid: 97). Deleuze’s statements resonate
with Brown’s choreography. Deleuze writes of the force and energy of
folds, stating, ‘movement . . . cannot be stopped’ (ibid: 12), ‘the fold
. . . moves . . . between essences and existences. It . . . billows between
 Fleshy Corporealities 159

. . . body and soul’ (ibid: 120). Links between body and soul are con-
tinually suggested in Joan and Blind Faith. When ‘Joan’ looks upwards
towards light, and is diffused with light, her body becomes light, evoking
a connectivity between body and soul. This imagery is inspired by
Dreyer’s film, which Carney suggests ‘link[s] bodies and spirits and
urge[s] their unity’ (1989: 255). Deleuze also writes of the spirituality
in Dreyer’s film stating, ‘Dreyer produces the triumph of a . . . spiritual
perspective’ (1992: 107).
The energy of folds to which Deleuze refers when writing of body/soul
relations is also apparent in the continuous folding of bodies and
‘corpses’ in Blind Faith, particularly with its references to Baroque and
Renaissance paintings and sculptures. These references are given pro-
minence through the device of tableaux, where bodies assemble in
enfolded masses and dissolve only to fold themselves into other
tableaux (Plate 12). The concept of tableau, based on the belief that a
single instant within a narrative was all that could be portrayed within
painting, was dominant in art theory from the mid-sixteenth to the
mid-eighteenth century. The tableau enhances and singles out every-
thing in its field. ‘Everything that it admits . . . is promoted into essence,
into light, into view . . . the tableau is intellectual, it has something
to say . . . it knows how this must be done’ (Barthes, 1977: 70). The
tableaux in Blind Faith show bodies draped over each other like folds
of cloth, limbs intertwining, shoulders, arms, heads cascading down
from above. They resemble characteristically Baroque works such as
Tintoretto’s Paradise (1588), where piles of bodies and limbs coalesce
in an infinitely intricate pattern animated by light falling on folds of
flesh. In tableau ‘an ideal meaning’ (ibid: 74) is ‘communicated at a
glance’ (Burgin, 1986: 88), embodying ‘understanding . . . wisdom and
substance’ (ibid: 90) conveyed through the body and gesture. The art
theorist Victor Burgin suggests that corporeality is often elevated to a
position of mystical significance in tableaux, which have been com-
pared with hieroglyphs which ‘stand outside discourse’ (ibid) and
involve ‘a meaning which will not be pinned down by words’ (ibid).
The tableaux in Blind Faith involve distinctly kinesthetic meanings,
enhanced by the movement of the dancers from one tableau to the next,
which transcend words. The ‘word’ becomes ‘flesh’ further foreground-
ing corporeality within the dance.
The mystical dimensions of the Baroque that permeate Deleuze’s
writing on folds have resonances with mystical elements in the dances.
‘The age of the “Baroque Gothic” witnessed the birth of the mystical
experience . . . characterized . . . by an individual’s account of his or her
160 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

voyage to and from an ineffably universal event, which set the body in
a trance’ (Conley in Deleuze, 1993: xii). Joan and Blind Faith portray
spiritual quests which ‘set the body in a trance’. ‘Joan’s’ relationship
with her god is a spiritual journey culminating in her wandering
through woods, with flames at her wrists and her tunic hem, looking
around, as if searching, and then closing her eyes, appearing mystical
and trance-like as she transcends the flames, unhurt. In Blind Faith
Snaith acts as a catalyst investing the others with energy, light and life,
exploding the notion of a modern, thinking, bodyless subject by
evoking ecstatic, trance-like mystical performances. Blind Faith seems to
encapsulate a spiritual journey. Its Programme note states: ‘the work is
structured in three distinct phases, beginning with “darkness and delu-
sion”, moving through “death and transformation” and opening out
into “light and levitation” ’ (1998).
The excessive trance-like dancing, which evokes the Baroque, has
links with abjection in Kristeva’s theories. She also makes references to
the Baroque, stating, ‘all art is a kind of counter-reformation an accepted
Baroqueness’ (Kristeva, 1987: 253). For her, both art and religion have
excessive Baroque-like qualities in the form of ‘transgressive eruptions’
that enable them to challenge the symbolic (Grosz, 1989: 53). Kristeva
also associates a ‘new baroquism’ with an ‘ambiguisation of identities’
or ‘the fact that people don’t have fixed identities’ (Kristeva, 1984: 23).
The non-fixity of identity which I argue is evident in the dances through
the foregrounding of corporeality, was also a concern of Dreyer, whose
characters have been described as liberating themselves from ‘fixity,
coherence and stability’ in their roles as ‘figures . . . in continuous move-
ment and redefinition’ (Carney, 1989: 96).
Mysticism and spirituality have also been associated with Brown’s
solo where she has been described as dancing with ‘an almost
spiritual intention’ (Wesemann, 1995: 46). Paxton explores these quali-
ties in more depth when he writes, ‘you are . . . a medium mediating
between us and . . . some unknowable or unthinkable vision’ (1995: 94).
Deleuze, writing of folds in painting, claims, ‘in every instance folds
of clothing acquire an autonomy and a fullness. . . . They convey the
intensity of a spiritual force exerted on the body . . . to turn it inside out
and to mold its inner surfaces’ (1993: 122). This force turning bodies
inside out is apparent in the dances. The folds of cloth and flesh in the
intertwined postures and gestures of the disciples in The Last Supper are
animated in Blind Faith. The ‘disciples’ appear to be enfolded together
through the power of the Holy Spirit entering into them at that
moment.
 Fleshy Corporealities 161

Conclusion

Reading If You Couldn’t See Me, Joan and Blind Faith in the light of the
theories of Deleuze, Bordo and Kristeva, has demonstrated the ways in
which imagery in the dances can be seen to have connotations con-
cerning the fluidity of subjectivity. The materiality of bodies, evident in
flesh, fluids and folds, emphasized through references to painting, sculp-
ture and film, and through the powerful mode of tableau, has fore-
grounded the blurred inside/outside spaces of bodies resonant with new
possibilities for subjectivity. In these in-between spaces bodies are no
longer seen as containers with separate insides and outsides, bodies and
souls, but as fluid transformative entities disrupting hierarchical binaries
bound up with masculine ideas of a Cartesian subject. Flesh, fluids and
folds of bodies have been seen to constitute, shift and transgress bodily
borderlines. By focusing on bodily flesh, folding bodies in close contact,
excessive ecstatic bodies, fluid movement, abject bodily fluids and
corpses, the dances emphasize body/space interfaces, where negotiations
take place concerning the redefinition of identity. As the British feminist
philosophical theorist Christine Battersby observes: ‘Identity as under-
stood in the history of Western philosophy since Plato has been con-
structed on a model that privileges . . . self-contained unity and solids’
‘what is missing from our culture is an alternative tradition of think-
ing identity . . . based on fluidity and flow’ (1993: 34). Exploring the
inside/outside spaces of the dances through a Deleuzian reading of the
Baroque, in conjunction with Bordo’s gendering of Cartesian philosophy,
and Kristeva’s theories of abjection, has revealed ways of thinking iden-
tity based on fluidity and flow. The dances reinstate the materiality of
corporeality and its connectivity with spirituality, associated with a more
embodied and fluid feminine notion of subjectivity.
In the next chapter bodies and their excesses remain the focus, but
the emphasis shifts from the sacred body out of control to excessive
‘grotesque’ bodies associated with the carnivalesque, and the ways in
which they subversively trouble fixed notions of subjectivity associated
with a contained body.
9
‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions in
Mark Morris’ Dogtown,
Liz Aggiss’ Grotesque Dancer and
Emilyn Claid’s Across Your Heart

Introduction

Whereas the previous chapter focused on the mystical qualities of folded

and fluid flesh, this one considers the grotesque potential of transgres-
sive bodies in Dogtown (Morris, 1983), Grotesque Dancer (Aggiss and
Cowie, 1987, revived 1998) and Across Your Heart (Claid, 1997). These
dances, although quite different from each other, share carnivalesque
grotesque qualities. On one level they seem either funny or disturbing,
or perhaps both, but I argue that they go further than this. Using the
Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque, I
show that these works, by transgressing and exceeding the traditional
inside/outside boundaries of the body, can be subversive and suggest
ways of rethinking subjectivity.
Bakhtin developed his theories mainly through his analysis of
Rabelais’ (1494–1553) writing, evident in Rabelais and His World (sub-
mitted as a thesis in 1940, first published in 1965, and translated into
English in 1968). Bakhtin explores the ways in which the spirit of
carnival activities based in the folk tradition of popular culture, both
literally and conceptually can be transposed into art, and the relations
between art and the surrounding popular cultural forms. He sees the
annual Lenten carnival as a historical phenomenon in early modern
Europe and as a mode of critique of officialdom. Key features of the
carnivalesque that he explores include the grotesque body, laughter,
marketplace speech, banquet imagery and the lower bodily stratum.
From carnival Bakhtin derives the notion of ‘grotesque realism’ to
describe humanity’s shared experience of a basic material body that is
open to the world. Bakhtin’s work was in part a prescriptive and utopian
model of socialist collectivity. His theories of language and literature,

162
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 163

which can be applied to other arts, stress the multiple meanings in texts,
the instability of the sign as referent and intertextual relations between
texts, all of which anticipate post-structuralist developments.
The focus of Bakhtin’s theories of the carnivalesque on the body and
performance make them particularly valuable for dance. Bakhtin com-
ments that in Rabelais’ work ‘images of the human body’ play ‘a pre-
dominant role’ and that ‘similar traits’ found in ‘other representatives
of Renaissance literature in Boccacio, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, were
interpreted as a “rehabilitation of the flesh” characteristic of the Renais-
sance’ (Bakhtin, 1984:18). Ideas associated with this same Renaissance
‘rehabilitation of the flesh’ are explored in the previous chapter. Bakhtin
derives this bodily imagery from ‘that peculiar aesthetic concept . . .
characteristic of this folk culture . . . grotesque realism’ (ibid). Bakhtin
argues that ‘all . . . forms of grotesque realism degrade, bring down to
earth, turn their subject into flesh’ (ibid: 20). Degradation and debase-
ment of higher forms are inherently subversive. Carnivalesque perfor-
mances and grotesque bodies degrade officialdom, turning themselves
and it inside out and upside down. Their unruliness threatens the order,
stability, hierarchy and control of a world of binary oppositions.1 The
body’s role is central because the transgressions of boundaries that
Bakhtin identifies ‘are effected through . . . the body’ (Stallybrass and
White, 1997: 301). According to Bakhtin, the ambivalent space of car-
nival creates a topsy turvy world of parody and play where traditional
boundaries between performers and audiences are eroded. The inter-
mingling of performers and spectators in carnival provides ‘interaction’,
‘interchange’ and ‘interorientation’ with the world. Although these
dances exist within the logic of the spectacle of theatrical performance
and not in a carnival context, Bakhtin’s category of the carnivalesque
bridges the extension of carnival categories for use as more general
social critique. In this sense, despite Bakhtin’s theories predating post-
modernism, they are pertinent for these readings of postmodern dance
since, their emphasis on the materiality of the body and its intero-
rientation with the world place them alongside other anti-
dualistic theories and point to possibilities for a rethought embodied
subjectivity. Through an analysis of the grotesque body, they show how
subjectivity can be fluid, ambiguous, multiple and marginal rather than
fixed, and through a focus on bodily imagery and carnivalesque per-
formance, they can point to underlying subversive elements in dance
that might otherwise go unnoticed.
The utopian nature of Bakhtin’s theories and his claims for the radical
and political powers of carnival have prompted criticism. The extent to
164 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

which the carnivalesque can be a force for change, given that it is a

licensed and permissable outlet for feelings authorized by ‘official
culture’ to occur on certain named feast days, has been questioned
(Eagleton, 1981). Another criticism is that ‘a history of actual carnival
reveals that the marginalized – Jews, women, homosexuals – could
become the victims of ritual punishment’ (Morris, 1994: 22). However,
as cultural theorists Peter Stallybrass and Allon White point out, if
the carnivalesque is recognized as ‘an instance of a wider phenomenon
of transgression’ it is possible to ‘move beyond Bakhtin’s . . . folkloric
approach to a political anthropology of binary extremism in class society’
(emphasis in original) (1997: 301). They argue that this goes ‘beyond
the . . . debate over whether carnivals are politically progressive or con-
servative’ revealing ‘that the underlying structural features of carnival
operate far beyond the strict confines of popular festivity and are intrin-
sic to the dialectics of social classification as such’ (ibid). In other words
the carnivalesque and the grotesque have extended beyond historical
categories to become epistemological terms.

The dances

Grotesque Dancer is a 30-minute solo created by the British artists, Liz

Aggiss and Billy Cowie, performed by Aggiss. It is loosely based on the
avant-garde dances of the twenties and thirties’ German cabaret dancer,
Valeska Gert, whose distorted movements portraying low-life city char-
acters such as prostitutes, were frequently described as ‘grotesque’. The
music for Grotesque Dancer, composed and performed by Cowie, is a
series of songs and instrumental numbers with texts by Goethe, Mor-
genstern and Dehmal arranged for voice, piano and saxaphone. For the
1987 version, the music was on tape, but for the revival it was performed
live on stage. The music style is expressionistic with the vocal part
veering from lyrical melody, through speech to sprechgesang.2 Grotesque
Dancer consists of a series of cabaret numbers or vignettes – five dances
or mimes, and five or six songs depending on the version. Aggiss per-
forms in a single spotlight on a small stage and she sings into a micro-
phone on a stand. Her performance is extremely intense (Plate 13). It
includes bouncing up and down rhythmically to a German folksong,
stretching as if training for sport, inching across the stage robotically in
a pastiche of a marionette, singing passionately into the microphone
while gesticulating to the audience and twisting into angular, angst-
ridden postures. The stark follow spot, her make-up – bright red lipstick
and heavily made-up eyes – and her costumes – black satin knicker-
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 165

bockers and white top with white knee-length socks and black flat shoes
for the first half, and long, black, satin, evening gown and stiletto heels
for the second half – emphasize the theatricality of the piece. Various
theatrical shocks are provided by Aggiss’ mood, character and costume
changes; one minute she appears young and eager, the next coy and
teasing, the next haggardly and harsh. The piece’s excessive contorted
movements, its parodic style, transgression of gender boundaries and
plays with performer/audience relationships suggest associations with
the grotesque and the carnivalesque.
Gender and animal/human boundaries are played with in American
Mark Morris’ Dogtown (1983), an 11-minute dance for two men and
five women from the Mark Morris Dance Company, to five songs by
Yoko Ono, including the eponymous ‘Dogtown’. The seven performers,
wearing different coloured bras and panties or trunks over lycra shorts,
execute sequences of repetitive movement often in unison in a ‘doggy’
style, on all fours, frequently in lines. The performers simulate urina-
tion and copulation foregrounding inside/outside body interfaces. The
focus on base behaviour of the lower bodily stratum is a characteristic
of Bakhtin’s grotesque body evident in the excesses of Dogtown. The set
consists of piles of full plastic bags evoking urban rubbish. The cho-
reography ridicules human, urban sexual behaviour, poking fun at the
habits and rituals of supposedly sophisticated inhabitants of modern
towns and cities. There are associations with Bakhtin’s descriptions of
the bestial behaviour at early European carnivals and fairs and of the
frank and free atmosphere of the medieval marketplace.
Across Your Heart, created by the British choreographer, Emilyn
Claid, is a 70-minute work performed by CandoCo, some of whose
dancers have disabilities. To commissioned music by Stuart Jones, it was
created for four women (Helen Baggett, Celeste Dandeker, Charlotte
Derbyshire and Sue Smith) and three men (Jon French, Kwesi Johnson
and Kuldip Singh-Barmi); two of the performers, Dandeker and French,
are in wheelchairs. Theories of grotesque bodies and the carnivalesque
can be particularly pertinent when considering the ways in which
bodies with disabilities are sometimes viewed and treated. Their inclu-
sion in dance, where bodies are typically and traditionally constructed
as classical, bounded and sleek and this is the norm, as Albright (1997)
suggests, can often be disruptive and subversive in a grotesque and car-
nivalesque manner. Across Your Heart, episodic in structure, includes
scenes derived from sexual, religious and other fantasies with bawdy,
overtly sexual dancing, singing, a wheelchair parade (Plate 14) and a
South American carnival. The piece employs parody and humour which
166 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

is sometimes degrading and perverse. It begins and ends with Kuldip

Singh-Barmi as a distorted, Calibanesque figure in a clinging, long dress
(just visible in the top right corner of Plate 14) performing angular,
twitchy, hunched, grotesque movements and Helen Baggett as a female
Christ-like figure in a white loin cloth initially standing on a platform
facing away from the audience. Gothic horror movies were one source
and they are evidence of a postmodern blurring of high and low culture
in the work.3
In this chapter, challenges to the binaries associated with gender,
sexuality and ability in the dances are examined in the light of Bakhtin’s
characterization of the grotesque body as open and permeable and the
carnivalesque as ambivalent. Excesses are then investigated in the per-
formance styles of Grotesque Dancer and Dogtown and in suggestions of
leaky bodies in Dogtown and Across Your Heart. Links with the French-
based Bulgarian feminist Julia Kristeva’s theories of abjection, explored
in Chapter 8, are identified. An examination of the ways in which car-
nivalesque parody in the dances can degrade official discourse follows,
exploring Bakhtin’s theories concerning the role of humour and the
regenerative power of laughter. Finally, grotesque and carnivalesque
interactivity with the world perceived in focuses on the lower body, the
downward thrust of movement towards the earth and a propensity for
floorbound movement in the dances is explored, and linked with
Bakhtin’s suggestions of the ‘down to earth’ elements of folk traditions
and popular culture. Throughout I identify the ways in which Bakhtin’s
theories reveal the dances’ subversive potential, associated with invert-
ing hierarchies and their connectivity with the world suggestive of
renewal.

Grotesque challenges to boundaries

The openness of the grotesque body and the permeability of its bounda-
ries are seen by Bakhtin as bringing the body of the people closer to
the world. This is graphically illustrated in Bakhtin’s analysis of the story
of Gargantua’s birth in Rabelais’ novel which occurs at a ‘merry banquet’
during the ‘feast of cattle slaughter’ before Lent (Bakhtin, 1984: 220).
Gargamelle, who gives birth, has consumed an excess of tripe
(intestines) from fattened cows at the feast, despite warnings from her
husband that ‘there are no intestines without dung’ (ibid: 223). As a
result, her right intestine falls out which is of an ‘unsavoury odor’ and
it is initially mistaken by midwives for the birth. Bakhtin suggests,
‘Gargamelle’s labor and the falling out of the . . . intestine link the
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 167

devoured tripe with those who devour them. The links between animal
flesh and the consuming human flesh are dimmed, very nearly erased.
One dense bodily atmosphere is created’ (ibid: 221–2). Bakhtin argues
that the carnivalesque atmosphere permeating the episode ‘ties into one
grotesque knot the slaughter, the dismemberment and disemboweling,
bodily life, abundance, fat, the banquet, merry improprieties and finally
childbirth’ (ibid: 222). Gargantua is born through his mother’s ear,
which as Bakhtin comments, ‘is a typical carnivalesque turnover’ ‘the
child does not go down but up’(ibid: 226). Employing this imagery in
part for social commentary, Bakhtin concludes that ‘we see looming
beyond Gargamelle’s womb the . . . womb of the earth and the ever-
regenerated body of the people’ (ibid). Thus grotesque bodily imagery
with permeable boundaries brings the ‘body of the people’ closer to a
regenerating earth.
Bakhtin claimed that fifteenth- and sixteenth-century literature of the
kind that Rabelais and others produced, pointed to a world where hier-
archies are diminished and inverted; Gargantua’s birth through the ear
is a physical example and a parody of the religious doctrine of virgin
birth. He saw the blurring of the grotesque body’s boundaries, evident
in the example of Gargamelle’s consumption of tripe and the intestines’
expulsion blurring binary oppositions such as self/other that are part of
the construction of a unified, rational subject, separate from the world,
also discussed in Chapter 8. Bakhtin argues, ‘the grotesque ignores the
impenetrable surface that closes and limits the body as a separate and
completed phenomenon. The grotesque image displays . . . the outward
and inward features . . . merged into one’ (ibid: 318). This is because the
gut as the lining of the intestines, where food passes having entered
through the mouth to exit through the anus, is both inside the body
but also a continuation of the outside. In this sense Bakhtin suggests
that ‘grotesque imagery constructs what we might call a double body’
(ibid).
This concept of a ‘double body’ can inform a reading of Liz Aggiss’
performance in Grotesque Dancer. In her black satin knickerbockers, a
chest flattening white top and boyish haircut, her performance of repet-
itive physical jerks – knee bends, stretches and push-ups – executed
strenuously, emphasizing the musculature in her arms and legs, is decid-
edly masculine. When she later dons her black satin evening gown and
gold stiletto heeled shoes her appearance is transformed from mascu-
line to feminine. Her dance is interspersed with singing at a micro-
phone, in the style of male and female cabaret singers. Throughout
Grotesque Dancer her ‘double body’ transgresses the gender binary, her
168 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

performance plays between seductive femininity and aggressive mas-

culinity. One reviewer described her as ‘part Liza Minelli and part foot-
ball player’ (Constanti, 1987: 26). She also looks androgynous, her
maleness and femaleness blur, in the grotesque style of her performance.
After five numbers, when donning the satin dress, she shockingly rips
off a wig to reveal a shaved head (Plate 13). The combination of her
baldness with harsh make-up and long black satin gown is uncanny and
startling, at least in part because of its androgyny. For an audience not
knowing whether a performer is male or female can be unsettling as
indicated in relation to Out on the Windy Beach in Chapter 4.
Aggiss’ double body also flouts the binary between strength and vul-
nerability. In the physical exercises and stunts of her performance Aggiss
demonstrates her strength. One routine has her hopping on one leg
for several minutes while contorting herself stretching. We spectators
marvel at her ability to keep her balance while bouncing up and down
in time to the insistent rhythm of the music. Aggiss’ powerful singing
at the microphone projecting directly to her audience, extended by
amplification such that her voice is everywhere, is further evidence of
her command. Yet alongside these confident displays of dominance
there are touching moments of vulnerability. Towards the end of the
piece she is reduced to crawling across the floor, satin gown in mouth,
and finally, looking disillusioned with the façade of performing, she
drops her gown to the floor, steps out of one shoe and limps off stage.
Aggiss has stated in interview that in order to achieve the combination
of strength and vulnerability required in performance she had to find
two sides in her character and alternate between them (in Briginshaw,
1988: 11). Her grotesque performance and this insight into the resources
required for it, point to a double body of the kind Bakhtin describes,
that transgresses boundaries and binaries in its openness.
Aggiss’ relationship with her audience in performance contains an
ambivalence that resonates with Bakhtin’s descriptions of the blending
of self with the world in carnival. The intermingling of performers
and audience typical of carnival is evident in cabaret/night club per-
formances. Grotesque Dancer was commissioned by the Zap Club in
Brighton, a small venue situated in a cellar-like space, for which Aggiss
and Cowie created the piece. In interview Cowie characterizes the
cabaret-like performance of Grotesque Dancer as ‘the idea of not being
so much up on a pedestal but actually being in touch with the audi-
ence in a club’. Aggiss adds, ‘we could see how it would work in that
kind of smokey, small place, inviting the audience to be right on top of
it, inviting them to practically participate’ (ibid: 9). Aggiss’ performance
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 169

includes much direct eye contact with the audience, particularly when
she is singing, and when she is dancing and displaying her strength
in various physical feats, she raises her eyebrows as if to say ‘look what
I can do!’. The twinkle in her eye suggests she is making fun of her
own performance self-reflexively. This gives Grotesque Dancer a worldly
quality. In Bakhtin’s terms ‘the confines between . . . the body and the
world are overcome: there is an interchange and an interorientation’
(1984: 317). Aggiss is sharing her performance with her audience
knowingly, she is ‘one with the crowd . . . not . . . its opponent . . . [s]he
laughs with it’ (ibid: 167). The ambivalent merging of self and world,
self and other, performer and audience is a blurring of binaries that dis-
rupts the power relationships inherent in oppositions of this kind. As
Bakhtin points out, ‘Rabelais continually used the traditional folklore
method of contrast, the “inside out”, the “positive negation”. He made
the top and the bottom change places [and] intentionally mixed the
hierarchical levels’ (ibid: 403). Aggiss achieves similar objectives in
Grotesque Dancer. By mixing gender values and norms in her grotesque
performance she achieves an ambivalent androgyny, making ‘the top
and the bottom change places’. Her mixture of strength with vulner-
ability is a kind of ‘positive negation’. Her performance challenges
boundaries and binaries, going beyond hierarchical norms and values
associated with a closed, unified subjectivity, suggesting instead a more
multiple, open subject connoted by her ‘double body’.
Carnivalesque’s ability to turn things upside down and inside out
by blurring boundaries and disrupting binaries is evident in Mark Morris’
Dogtown where the boundaries of gender and sexuality are transgressed.
The piece opens with three couples facing front, with partners one
behind the other, the rear dancers’ arms are clasped around the chests
of their partners. Rhythmically miming Ono’s lyrics: ‘let me take my
scarf off, no, no, no, don’t help me’ the dancers in front jerkily pull back
their partners’ arms in an attempt to free themselves, but they are
quickly grasped again. Those behind overpower those in front. Different
actions are repeated to different verses of the song. To the words of the
next verse ‘let me take my blouse off’, the hands of the rear dancers grab
the breasts of the dancers in front who pick them off finger by finger in
a grotesque manner, yanking them away before being gripped again. The
partnerships are differently gendered. Two are male/female; one with the
woman in front, the other reversed, and one consists of two women.
The performance is almost unpleasantly sexual. Given the actions and
words of the song, it appears as if the rear performer is attempting to
forcefully strip their partner against their will. Expectations that the
170 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

male is dominant in a sexual relationship and that sexual liaisons are

predominantly heterosexual are challenged by this performance.
Bakhtin comments that in ‘typical carnival. Everything . . . is inverted in
relation to the outside world’ (ibid: 383). By transgressing the norms of
gender and sexuality in a carnivalesque manner Morris is challenging
his audience to think beyond the limits of conventional expectations of
gendered and sexual behaviour.
Inversions that challenge binaries of sexuality and ability in a
grotesque and carnivalesque manner are evident in Across Your Heart. In
one scene three women, wearing black and decorated in silver chains,
like a gang of s/m lesbians, strut their stuff in a confident streetwise
manner. Approaching a statuesque woman in a long white dress, who
has just been seen bride-like on the arm of a man, they taunt her, fin-
gering the fabric of her dress. They flaunt themselves in front of her
clenching their fists, squatting and sauntering past her, running their
hands through their hair. This bodily ‘mockery and abuse’ is ‘grotesque’
in Bakhtin’s terms (ibid: 319). Their poses appear deliberately performed
to create an effect. These stereotypical caricatures of s/m lesbians
become increasingly threatening as they execute a dynamic unison
routine of kicks and pivoting turns. Their performance and costumes
assert the difference between them and the ‘innocent bride’. The trio
rock ‘the bride’ from side to side and grotesquely mimic her puppet-like
floppy arm movements. They then remove her dress revealing a black-
clad body encased in a steel frame which enables this paralyzed woman
to stand.
The tension of difference is replaced with a sisterly solidarity of same-
ness as the metallic support and black garb eroticize the former bride’s
body in a queer way, similar to the chains on the others’ bodies. Now
when the threesome tip her from side to side, lift her and lower her,
there is a gay abandon that was not there before. She smiles with them
while embracing them in turn and laughs her enjoyment; she has joined
the club. According to Bakhtin, ‘terror is conquered by laughter’, and
the carnivalesque by bringing the world closer ‘freed man from fear’,
turning the world into ‘a sequence of gay transformations and
renewals’(ibid: 394). This scene in Across Your Heart presents ‘gay trans-
formations and renewals’ in a carnivalesque manner.4
The exposure of the disabled grotesque body supported by a metal
frame also refers intertextually to the Mexican artist, Frida Kahlo, who
repeatedly painted self-portraits revealing her grotesque and freakish
body, held together by a metal spinal insertion (see, for example,
The Broken Column 1944). Claid has played with the meaning of
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 171

‘grotesque’ by representing the norm in the form of the bride-like, Kahlo

look-alike, feminine figure. Juxtaposed initially with the three chain-
clad women in black, she positions them as deviating from the white
and pure norm she represents. They appear grotesque, but because of
her stilted, limited movement, and the intertextual references to the
Mexican Kahlo, in a way so is she, and certainly when she is disrobed
and revealed as a ‘freak’, who can only stand in a metal support, she
joins them. In joining them she has crossed the binary and demon-
strated the fluidity of notions of beauty and ugliness and of the carni-
valesque power of the grotesque. Like Grotesque Dancer and Dogtown,
Across Your Heart has blurred binaries; those of sexuality and ability. The
performance is disruptive and unsettling, it points to the instability
of the signifiers of sexuality and ability. The monstrous bodies of the
‘lesbians’ and the ‘bride’, through their juxtaposition and choreogra-
phy, exceed their boundaries, challenging notions of fixed identities
that exist either side of a binary. They have opened up possibilities for
a new communal relationship within a larger queer ‘body of the people’
in Bakhtin’s sense.

Excessive overflows

‘Exaggeration, hyperbolism, excessiveness are generally considered fun-

damental attributes of the grotesque style’ (Bakhtin, 1984: 303). The
openness and permeability of the grotesque body often result in exces-
sive overflows such as the expulsion of bodily fluids. Bakhtin claims: ‘the
grotesque is interested only in that which . . . seeks to go out beyond the
body’s confines’ (ibid: 316). Kristeva’s theories of abjection, discussed in
the previous chapter, also concern expulsion of material elements of cor-
poreality considered improper and unclean, such as bodily fluids and
waste. The similarities are not surprising. Kristeva was one of the first to
introduce Bakhtin’s work to France. For her, his work importantly devel-
oped a dynamic model of literary texts, which he saw as open to con-
testation and unresolved, or as ‘carnivalesque riots’ (Hill in Fletcher and
Benjamin, 1990: 143). Kristeva adopted this emphasis and developed
it within a psychoanalytic framework for her concept of the subject
in process. Affinities with the open, unfinished nature of Bakhtin’s
grotesque body are evident. The abject, like the grotesque body and
aspects of the carnivalesque, threatens to overflow and disrupt the order,
containment and control of the rational, unified, closed subject.
Overflow of bodily fluids is hinted at in Dogtown when the dancers
mimic dogs urinating and copulating, less obviously they wear
172 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

surgeons’ thin rubber gloves. Given their minimal costumes, the addi-
tion of rubber gloves seems bizarre. They could relate to protection from
the ‘urban rubbish’ surrounding the dancers. However, given all the
simulated sexual activity in the dance, and the time of its creation –1983
– when AIDS had just come to public attention as a subject of concern
in the West, and was regarded predominantly as a sexually transmitted
disease of the gay community, they could also be a reference to one of
the most visible reactions to the disease; wearing rubber gloves to
protect against contact with infected body fluids. Morris is openly gay
and has referred to AIDS in interview indicating that his life expectancy
could be considerably limited (Acocella, 1993: 115). The rubber gloves
are a sign of control of the abject. Having copulating doggy creatures
wear them however, dispenses with any serious notion of control, it is
a bizarre carnivalesque joke. It mocks their normal use and is perhaps
a wry comment on official culture’s reactions to AIDS. Bakhtin, refering
to sexually transmitted diseases, writes ‘gout and syphilis are “gay dis-
eases”, the result of overindulgence in food, drink, and sexual inter-
course. They are essentially connected with the material bodily lower
stratum . . . [and] widespread in grotesque realism’ (1984: 161).5 The
baseness and nearness to the earth of the ‘lower bodily stratum’, a much
cited feature of the grotesque and carnivalesque body, for Bakhtin is an
indication of its positive interconnectivity with the world (see final
section of this chapter).
This interconnectivity with the world is evident in the atmosphere of
the medieval marketplace, associated with the carnivalesque and the
grotesque, some features of which are apparent in Dogtown. The dancers
spend much of their time crawling on all fours like dogs among bags of
rubbish, which they add to by simulating urination. The lyrics of Ono’s
Dogtown which accompany the performance include cries of ‘pease por-
ridge hot, pease porridge cold, some stays in the pot nine years old’.
This nursery rhyme is ‘the rhythmic beat of the vendor’ that Bakhtin
identifies as ‘steeped in the atmosphere of the market’ (ibid: 170) and
‘advertising’ food. Carnival excess is often expressed in feasting. Bakhtin
argues: ‘the banquet images – food, drink, swallowing’ ‘aspire to abun-
dance’ ‘they rise, grow, swell . . . until they reach exaggerated dimen-
sions’ (ibid: 278). Pease pudding is a messy viscous substance that could
be likened to loose excrement, it also encourages flatulence. Bakhtin
claims that ‘the images of faeces and urine are ambivalent, as are all
the images of the material bodily lower stratum; they debase, destroy,
regenerate and renew simultaneously’ (ibid: 151). Kristeva’s concept of
the abject, which includes such substances, is similarly ambivalent
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 173

because it exists both inside and outside the body blurring its bounda-
ries. Dogtown’s deliberate foregrounding of the base life of contempo-
rary city dwellers steeped in imagery of waste in general and bodily
waste and fluids in particular, challenges portrayals of the human
subject as controlled, fixed and stable. It also suggests that the per-
formers in Dogtown have sunk to the depths of the city – the sewers –
which Stallybrass and White have argued are ‘low and grotesque’, they
are the city’s ‘lower bodily stratum’(1986: 143, 145). By opening up the
body’s boundaries Dogtown challenges restrictive binaries, and asso-
ciations with the lower bodily stratum portrayed, in Bakhtin’s terms,
ambivalently connote regeneration and rebirth suggesting possibilities
of renewal and change.
At the end of Across Your Heart, Helen Baggett, dressed as a Christ-like
figure is seen hanging upside down over Celeste Dandeker who sits at
the head of a banquet with four of the other dancers. Singh-Barmi, cos-
tumed in his Calibanesque garb, holds a wine glass under the hanging
body as if to catch blood. The glass is filled with a red liquid which he
drinks and then passes to Dandeker who also drinks as the lights fade
signalling the end of the dance. This act has associations with the blood-
thirsty vampire and horror movies which inspired Across Your Heart.
Consumption of the blood of the body of the Christ-like figure also has
connotations with the Eucharist, but this body is female and hanging
upside down in a doubly blasphemous, carnivalesque fashion. Bakhtin
cites ‘oaths and profanities’ as key elements of marketplace and carni-
valesque speech which ‘were mostly concerned with sacred themes’ for
example, ‘ “the blood of Christ” ’ (1984: 188). Bakhtin saw these pro-
fanities, as ‘the unofficial elements of speech . . . as a breach of the estab-
lished norms of verbal address; they refuse to conform to conventions
. . . etiquette, civility, respectability. These elements of freedom . . .
create a special collectivity, a group of people initiated in familiar inter-
course, who are frank and free in expressing themselves’ (ibid: 187–8).
For Bakhtin these carnivalesque utterances were positive challenges to
the language of officialdom, freeing it up and in the process creating
a social ‘body of people’ with the potential for challenging the limita-
tions of symbolic discourse which operates through binary oppositions.
Across Your Heart’s shocking ending challenges the fixity of gender by
having a female Christ, while foregrounding the abject in a doubly
grotesque manner by having her co-performers drink her blood.
For Kristeva, as outlined in the last chapter, when the abject is re-
vealed rather than hidden, the binary coding of the human subject
in terms of inside/outside and self/other is challenged pointing to the
174 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

ambiguity of the subject, to an open or unfinished subject, which has

parallels with Bakhtin’s grotesque body. This unfinished subject in
process, because of its openness, has the facility for connection with
others and with the world in a liberatory and renewing manner, accord-
ing to Bakhtin. Across Your Heart’s powerful, ambivalent ending by
challenging binaries that separate and value male over female and
sacred over profane, provocatively suggests the potential for rethinking
subjectivity in this way.
Other excessive overflows are evident in the performance styles of
Grotesque Dancer and Dogtown, where the dancers perform often in an
almost robot-like fashion, driven by the incessant beat of the accom-
panying music. Bakhtin writes of the ‘mighty torrent’ of the grotesque
body flowing through Rabelais’ ‘entire novel’ (ibid: 323). The commit-
ment and relentless, repetitive, almost mechanical movements in these
dances also appear as an unstoppable ‘torrent’, an excessive outpouring
of bodily energy, almost like freakish acts at the fair. Aggiss’ virtuoso
feat of balance and stamina in her ‘hopping dance’ has already been
mentioned. In Dogtown one phrase of movements with the dancers
lined up, lying side by side, consists of alternate dancers rolling one way
while the others ‘jump’ themselves stretched out on hands and feet over
the dancer next to them who is rolling underneath them. Immediately
they land they take their partner’s place lying down supine to be jumped
over. This miraculous feat of continuous strenuous activity is performed
repeatedly. The performers in Grotesque Dancer and Dogtown seem to
exceed their bodies in this grotesque repetition. As one reviewer asserts:
‘what is more grotesque than the movement itself is Aggiss’ incapacity
to stop it’ (Constanti, 1987: 26).
Just as the rubber gloves in Dogtown control the ‘abject’, wheel-
chairs can be seen to control and contain the ‘unfinished’, ‘incomplete’
‘grotesque’ bodies of the dancers with disabilities. When bodies with
disabilities leave the containment of their wheelchairs in a sense they
are going beyond themselves in an excessive outpouring or overflow.
As Bakhtin argues ‘the grotesque image . . . retains . . . that which leads
beyond the body’s limited space’ (1984: 317–18). In Across Your Heart
Dandeker is seen out of her wheelchair twice; in her metal frame during
the Kahlo scene described earlier, and when she is seated regally on a
large sumptuous bed-like structure and attended by three of the men.
Jon French is tipped out of his chair by Singh-Barmi and Kwesi Johnson,
who, after taunting him, wrestle with him on the ground and then
wheel the chair off leaving him apparently ‘helpless’. Charlotte Der-
byshire appears with the wheelchair and tries to help French back into
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 175

it, but she is told by French in no uncertain terms to leave him alone
initially. She can be seen as representative of official culture, in Bakhtin’s
terms, trying to maintain order and control. French’s rebuff makes it
clear that although he is dependent, he will not be controlled. After
the parade when all the dancers except Singh-Barmi are in wheelchairs
(Plate 14), several move in, out of and between the chairs upsetting any
sense of uniformity. The messiness of these bodies that exceed their
wheelchairs goes against the traditional aesthetic of controlled, sleek,
effortless, ‘classical’ bodies silently executing ‘beautiful’ moves in more
conventional theatrical dance. It highlights the contrast between what
Bakhtin terms ‘the new bodily canon’ – the ‘finished, completed, strictly
limited body. That which protrudes, bulges, sprouts or branches off . . .
is eliminated, hidden or moderated. All orifices of the body are closed’
(ibid: 320) – and the grotesque. Bodies that do not fit the Western norm
by being overweight or having disabilities can be seen as ‘unfinished’,
‘protruding’ and ‘grotesque’ in Bakhtin’s terms. But Bakhtin’s reappro-
priation of the grotesque interprets it as becoming and regenerative
rather than lacking. Across Your Heart’s excessive overflows, in terms of
bodies with disabilities that exceed ‘normal’ boundaries can be seen as
grotesque in Bakhtin’s terms and hence regenerative. By exceeding the
limitations of the norm, evident in closed, contained, silent, able bodies,
they suggest new ways of perceiving disability specifically and physi-
cality generally.

Carnivalesque parody

Much of the renewable force that Bakhtin claims comes from the
grotesque and carnival is, he suggests, generated by the power and
energy of laughter. Humour is the lifeblood of carnival and the medieval
marketplace. Its power comes from its ability to turn things upside down
and to mock, evident in parodic acts and plays with language. Key con-
tributions come from puns which open language up to the possibility
of double meaning and the performances of clowns who mimic.
Through language and performance, gaps can be opened in the sym-
bolic, otherwise closed, official discourse of the day. These plays and
parodies can allow and encourage critiques of the oppressive regime of
the time. In this sense they reveal positive possibilities for renewal and
change in Bakhtin’s terms. Bakhtin describes medieval laughter as ‘the
social consciousness of all the people’ experienced in the marketplaces
and carnival crowds when ‘man’ ‘comes into contact with other bodies
of varying age and social caste’ as ‘a member of a continually growing
176 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

and renewed people’ (ibid: 92). He claims that laughter presents ‘victory
. . . over supernatural awe, over the sacred, over death; it also means the
defeat of power, of earthly kings, of the earthly upper classes, of all that
oppresses and restricts’ (ibid).
Dogtown is a parody of human urban behaviour and sexual promis-
cuity. The automaton-like movements of the performers in straight
lines, following one another on all fours, makes them look as if they
are programmed. Their close-fitting, colourful, brief, lycra costumes,
possibly refer to similar attire worn to aerobics classes and fitness ses-
sions at city gyms, but the dancers’ bodies do not match the lythe,
sleek ideal associated with such activities and their performance is
mockingly comic and grotesque. Their very funny simulated doggy
behaviour includes ‘urinating’ and ‘copulating’ in time to the musical
beat. Guillermo Resto and Tina Fehlandt alternately rear back and up
on their ‘hind legs’ lifting their rubber gloved hands in the air, one
above the other, paw-like, and mime growling. Yet because of the look
and costuming of the performers, the double meanings of the piece are
only too apparent. It is a playful, carnivalesque, fun-poking dance,
reflecting the mood of Ono’s ironic songs. Through parody it decon-
structs and challenges the norm of the glossy veneer of one version of
contemporary city life.
Grotesque Dancer is also a parody, mimicking and mocking the genre
of female performance where women are on display for the spectators’
pleasure. One reviewer writes, ‘as Aggiss bats her legs in a parody of
high kicks . . . a shocking contrast between aesthetic beauty and un-
glamourised physicality is exposed’ (Farman, 1987: 20). Valeska Gert,
the inspiration for Aggiss’ performance, created her deliberately
grotesque shows for Dadaist venues where she mocked typical Berlin
cabaret acts displaying women as sexual objects (see Jelavich, 1993). As
well as ‘grotesque’, her performances have been described as ‘comic’ and
‘savage clowning’, including ‘satirical imitations of existing dance
styles’ (De Keersmaeker, 1981: 60). These elements of satire and parody
are also evident in Aggiss’ performance, which shifts between different
theatrical modes from singing to dancing to posing in the spotlight,
foregrounding the frame of performance. This is a performance about
performance. One reviewer writes, ‘Grotesque Dancer is heavily stylised
. . . conjuring up images of . . . clowns’ (Farman, 1987: 20). Bakhtin sees
the medieval clown as a key figure of carnivals and fairs who, through
travesty and parody, is able to turn things inside out and upside down.
Aggiss’ performance, through exaggerating typical postures and gestures
of cabaret, mocks its contortions and feats, deconstructing it. This is the
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 177

kind of performance that, as the American queer theorist Judith Butler

argues, is ‘theatrical to the extent that it mimes and renders hyperbolic the
discursive convention that it also reverses’ (her emphasis)(1993: 232).
When Aggiss limps off at the end, leaving her dress and one shoe
behind, she breaks the performance frame revealing the underlying
effort, usually hidden. The ridiculous and bizarre lengths women are
expected to go to as entertainers are exposed in Grotesque Dancer. This
grotesque display challenges the norms and expectations of female per-
formance. Aggiss stated in interview, ‘Grotesque Dancer threw up quite a
lot of contentious issues because it didn’t fit into the normal pattern of
dance . . . it created a lot of real antagonism . . . it . . . opened up quite a
lot of things for people which is great. I mean change is due – all the
time really’ (in Briginshaw, 1988: 11). The ways in which the piece is
contentious, opening up issues and bringing about change, parallel the
ways in which Bakhtin claims carnivalesque parody works to challenge
power and bring about change.
Across Your Heart in its plays with some of the darker aspects of the
human psyche inspired by sexual fantasies, horror movies, religion and
death has resonances with the parody of the church and the power of
ecclesiastical dogma that Bakhtin outlines. The blood drinking scene,
involving a female, Christ-like figure, has already been mentioned. In
another scene four dancers are gathered round a ‘dead body’ laid out
on a plinth, placing flowers on it. The sombre mood gradually changes
as one of the dancers begins to giggle and laughter infects the other
three. They begin to play with the body as if it were a life-size male doll.
They sit him up, open his eyes, move his mouth and arm getting him
to prod one of them with his finger. One of them tests the body’s reflexes
and a knee shoots up. All four dancers laugh hysterically. They stand
the body up, one of the women dances with it and sits it down on
another’s lap, she parts its legs with hers. This macabre mockery of the
supposedly serious subject of death generates something similar to the
‘remarkable symphony of laughter’ Bakhtin writes of in Rabelais’ work
(1984: 163). Laughter is a constant theme in Bakhtin’s writing, particu-
larly its power to overcome fears such as the fear of death. He states,
‘folk culture strove to defeat through laughter this extreme projection
of gloomy seriousness and to transform it into a gay carnival monster’
(ibid: 395).
The eruption of laughter around the dead body in Across Your Heart
is in keeping with other carnivalesque elements in the piece. At one
point a carnival float emerges to the sounds of gay Latin American
music. French sits on the float in his wheelchair wearing large feathered
178 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

wings, the other performers all in carnival masks wheel the float
forward, they dance around it lewdly gyrating their pelvises and feeling
their crotches. They lick each other’s fingers, kiss and bite each other,
lie across French’s lap, handle breasts and bums and simulate buggery.
This carnivalesque performance, in its focus on bodily orifices and on
base sexually and orally gratifying activity, includes many grotesque ele-
ments that Bakhtin identifies. In another scene the company stage a
wheelchair parade with all seven dancers in wheelchairs creating syn-
chronized designs (Plate 14). A reviewer writes, it is a parody of ‘wheel-
chair formation dancing’ (Howard, 1998: 315). Throughout Across Your
Heart irreverent and unruly behaviour, of the kind Bakhtin describes as
grotesque, dominates. Discussing the role of the image of the Bakhtin-
ian grotesque body in the work of sixties’ artists in Greenwich Village,
the dance theorist Sally Banes argues, ‘it is . . . by means of the image of
this grotesque body of misrule that unofficial culture has poked holes
in the decorum and hegemony of official culture’ (1993: 192). By includ-
ing the raw physicality of the grotesque body in carnivalesque scenes
in Across Your Heart including dancers with disabilities, Claid has
exploded the expectations and norms that often delimit and contain
bodies with disabilities. In this sense the ‘misrule’ of the ‘unofficial
culture’ of Across Your Heart has ‘poked holes in the decorum and hege-
mony of official culture’.

Grotesque and carnivalesque interactivity with the world

For Bakhtin one of the positive features of the carnivalesque is the close-
ness to the earth often suggested in its imagery. He values this because
of its regenerative traits – the earth is a source of renewal and of rebirth
– and because of associations with interconnectivity with the mass of
the people. For Bakhtin, the lower bodily stratum also symbolizes regen-
erative power since it is where birth takes place and its lowness renders
it near to the earth. Regenerative traits of the grotesque and carniva-
lesque are identified by Bakhtin in frequent references to the ‘lower
bodily stratum’, in the downward thrust and low baseness of much
grotesque movement and in the propensity for grotesque bodies to link
with other bodies.
All three dances include much downwardly directed movement of the
sort Bakhtin describes frequently as ‘downward thrusting’. He claims:

The mighty thrust downward into the bowels of the earth . . . is

directed towards the underworld . . . This downward movement is
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 179

. . . inherent in all forms of popular–festive merriment and grotesque

realism. Down, inside out . . . upside down, such is the direction of
. . . these movements . . . all that is sacred and exalted is rethought
on the level of the material bodily stratum . . . the accent . . . is on the
descent . . . downward movements . . . are . . . understood anew and
merged in one . . . movement directed into the depths of the earth,
the depths of the body.
(1984: 371).

In Grotesque Dancer Aggiss plunges her fists down between her open
knees as if into the depths of her body. A central duet in Dogtown be-
gins with Tina Fehlandt’s arched torso descending dramatically to the
ground. The fight that results in Across Your Heart, when French is tip-
ped out of his wheelchair by Singh-Barmi and Johnson, occurs on the
ground as the three men wrestle and roll over each other, evoking the
‘downward movements’ of the medieval ‘fights, beatings and blows’,
that Bakhtin cites (ibid: 370). When Dandeker is out of her wheelchair
in her metal walking frame, she is only able to make movements that
go down heavily to the earth. All these examples invert the elevation
of classical dance with its emphasis on lightness, uplift and flight asso-
ciated with idealism, in favour of the materialism of the earth. Although
much modern dance is also contrasted with classical dance because of
its earthbound movements and use of gravity, the context and mean-
ings associated with the downward movements of modern dance I
would argue are very different. They are bound up with a modernist
search for and expression of a single ‘self’, ‘meaning’ ‘truth’ or ‘origin’
that postmodern works no longer recognize.
Emphasis on the lower bodily stratum and movement near the
ground is evident in Dogtown where dancers frequently ‘mount’ each
other, sniff each other’s behinds and gesture to their own behinds.
Much of the time the performers are on the floor. They crawl on all
fours, roll over each other, lie curled up on the ground and lie down
with their legs open. They also throw themselves and others to the
ground. There is a vivid moment when one of the women carrying a
man wrapped round her waist flings him to the floor, this is repeated
three times. This emphasizes the earthbound ‘low life’ of Dogtown while
also transgressing ‘normal’ gender boundaries. Morris has said of his
company ‘my guys are articulate and my gals are brutish. And they’re
both both. They can all do everything’ (In Acocella, 1993: 91).
The exaggeratedly grotesque performance style of Grotesque Dancer
often emphasizes the lower part of the body. Aggiss is frequently on the
180 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

ground lying or sitting with her legs open, at times she appears to tie
herself in knots, her legs appear over her head as she rolls over her shoul-
ders. In a physical exercise routine she bends over with her back to the
audience, her knees bend and her behind rapidly bounces up and down
in time to the music. While doing this she looks through her legs and
first one hand is passed through and grabs the opposite calf, then the
other follows. Next she clasps her thighs in a similar fashion, lastly she
places her hands on opposite cheeks of her bottom. This contorted
posture is both gross and freakish. Bakhtin quoting from Schneegans’
History of Grotesque Satire (1894) describes an incident cited from the
Italian commedia dell’arte where Harlequin butts a stutterer in the
abdomen to assist him to get a word out. Schneegans likens this to child-
birth. Bakhtin claims,

a highly spiritual act is degraded and uncrowned by . . . transfer to

the material bodily level of childbirth . . . thanks to degradation the
word is renewed . . . reborn . . . we . . . see the . . . bodily hierarchy
turned upside down; the lower stratum replaces the upper stratum.
The word . . . localized in the mouth and . . . head (thought) . . . is
transferred to the abdomen and . . . pushed out . . . Here . . . we have
the logic of opposites, the contact of the upper and the lower level.
(1984: 309)

This, Bakhtin sees as a paradigm example of the way in which the

grotesque can invert. The body since the Renaissance has been con-
structed as a vertical hierarchy, the lower parts of the abdomen and
genital area are associated with baseness, and the head, with higher,
more valued ideals linked with the mind. This hierarchical and polite
bodily self-presentation is codified in ballet (see Chapter 10). Bringing
the head down to, and in Aggiss’ performance, below, the level of the
genitals and behind, challenges these assumptions based on the
body/mind binary, and visually turns them upside down.
In Across your Heart there are also moments when heads come close
to genital areas but in a much more overtly sexual manner. While
Baggett, in a glittering sequined bikini, sings into a microphone, two
other women perform pelvic gyrations directly in front of the faces of
two men in her ‘audience’, the women begin to pull down their trousers
for the men revealing glittery underpants beneath. This erotic perfor-
mance in the dingy half-light suggests a seamy night club cabaret act.
It provides another instance of Bakhtin’s grotesque ‘logic of opposites,
the contact of the upper and the lower level’ (ibid).
 ‘Carnivalesque’ Subversions 181

When the dancers are seen on and around the carnival float in Across
Your Heart a certain interactivity with the world in Bakhtin’s terms is
evident. They appear as a moving tableau kissing and clasping each
other, often lewdly. They move up, down and over each other’s bodies,
wheelchairs, and the float, in monstrous couplings. At times, inside and
outside body surfaces merge to form one ‘body of the people’. Bakhtin
writes: ‘the pressing throng, the physical contact of bodies, acquires a
certain meaning. The individual feels that he is an indissoluble part of
the collectivity, a member of the people’s mass body . . . people become
aware of their sensual, material bodily unity and community’ (ibid:
255). In this scene from Across Your Heart differences of gender and
ability dissolve into the mass of this becoming body of the people.

Conclusion

Exploring Bakhtin’s theories alongside these three dances has fore-

grounded their subversive and oppositional elements. The acceptable
witty side of carnival is immediately evident in the dances but this has
a tendency to obscure the darker, messier, elements that can challenge
authority and shock. Applying Bakhtin’s theories has enabled readings
of the dances that not only reveal these shocking elements but also
provide a way of understanding their significance. Aggiss’ sudden reve-
lation of her bald pate, hands grasping breasts in Dogtown and blood
drinking in Across Your Heart have each in different ways been seen to
be subversive, regenerative and suggestive of new meanings. Binary
oppositions involving gender, sexuality, ability and religion have been
challenged. The power of parody to pervert and invert, and the regen-
erative qual-ities of humour and laughter, have been demonstrated.
Although the dances remain within a theatre art context and space, the
links with popular and folk culture of not only carnival but also cabaret,
horror movies and nursery rhymes in the dances, together with the
excessive use of the lower body and downward movements, through a
Bakhtinian reading have been seen to invert values in a provocative and
subversive manner. The value of Bakhtin’s grotesque conception of the
body is that ‘it “degrades” the human form in a positive way . . . bring-
ing its subjects down to earth, it re-embodies what official culture had
disembodied or etherealized’ (Banes, 1993: 193).
This chapter has brought together American and British examples of
postmodern dances which, each in their own way, blur ‘high’ and ‘low’
or popular culture. A Bakhtinian reading aids an understanding of why
all three dances reject the aesthetic of grace embodied in classical ballet
182 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

and some modern dance. In a piece such as Dogtown for example, the
awkward, ungraceful movement style of this relatively early Morris
work is not immediately noticeable because of the precision and
rhythmical clarity of the performance. Applying Bakhtin’s notions
of the grotesque body and carnivalesque excess has revealed more sub-
versive elements allowing alternative readings. By transgressing the
inside/outside boundaries of bodies both physically and conceptually
in a wide range of often shocking and provocative ways, the three
dances have demonstrated a subversive re-embodiment in their
grotesque and carnivalesque features. Notions of a fixed, stable, com-
plete subject that is not open to change have been problematized. In
their place the dances have suggested ideas of an unfinished and becom-
ing subject in process, that is open and ambivalent with permeable
boundaries, allowing for excessive overflows with the potential for
renewal, and for forgetting the self in favour of submerging and merging
with the ‘body of the people’.
In the final chapter the focuses of each of the three parts of the
book, namely constructions of space and subjectivity, in particular
site specific places, negotiations in actual and conceptual in-between
spaces and the folds and excessive flows of inside/outside body/space
borderlines, are shown to overlap in the readings of dances that
engage with and construct architectural space. The chapter explores
how these dances challenge the logic of visualization, bound up with
the single viewpoint of perspective of the rational unified subject and,
through different ways of experiencing space, suggest other possible
subjectivities.
10
Architectural Spaces in the
Choreography of William
Forsythe and De Keersmaeker’s
Rosas Danst Rosas

Introduction

Throughout this book body/space interfaces in dances have been

examined and discussed focusing on the particular locations of site
specific works, on actual and metaphorical in-between spaces and on
inside/outside bodily borders in order to rethink identity and subjec-
tivity. This chapter brings these ideas together by examining dances
which play with inside/outside architectural spaces in a deconstructive
manner. I am using ‘architectural space’ here to mean spaces that are
structured actually or conceptually according to ideas associated with
building design. William Forsythe’s choreography creates architectural
spaces, and the filmed version of Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker’s Rosas
Danst Rosas (1983, film version 1997), is set in and interacts with the
architectural spaces of an empty school building (Plate 15). In Forsythe’s
Enemy in the Figure (1989) the stage space is divided by a wavy wooden
screen and various lighting effects into architectural spaces, like rooms,
which the dancers move between (Plate 16). In this sense the dancers
are seen inside and outside different spaces. In Rosas Danst Rosas dancers
are filmed inside and outside the school building and its rooms where
the dance is set. They are filmed from within, from without and through
glass windows and doors rendering the space of the building at times
difficult to fathom.
Both dances are about deconstructing space, about defamiliarizing
space such that it is experienced differently. Deconstruction is con-
cerned, through dislocation and defamiliarization, to expose the gaps
and to reveal the free play of meanings inherent in texts, in this in-
stance the spatial texts of dance. It opens up and reveals the limits of
things such that they cannot be put back together in the same way. It

183
184 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

is unsettling. This is what happens to the space of the dances. It is

deconstructed because the choreography and performance disrupt the
‘logic of visualization’ or the way in which space is traditionally seen
and experienced. This experience of space is bound up with what it
means to be a subject and with constructions of subjectivity. There are
parallels in dance and architecture which reveal the pervasive ways in
which ideas about experiencing space and the visualization of space
shape thought and affect subjectivity. Dance and architecture as spatial
texts structure ways of seeing the world. Dances and architecture can
be seen to organize space. Predominantly they do this through a logic
of visualization bound up with notions of perspective, associated with
a masculine way of viewing the world derived from Cartesianism, which
was discussed in some detail in Chapter 8 (see also Bordo, 1987). Seeing
things from a particular perspective or viewpoint locates the viewer,
affecting their sense of subjectivity. As I outlined in the Introduction,
in this view a self or subject is constructed separate from the world and
seen as rational and unified. As well as being gendered, these ideas,
derived from a logic of visualization, are also ‘racialized’ and valued
because of their associations with moral rightness.
Dances and architecture can disrupt this logic of visualization by blur-
ring separations between the insides and outsides of bodies, buildings
and space, and thus creating and working in in-between spaces. This is
doubly evident in those dances set in and around buildings. Forsythe’s
choreography in general and De Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas in
particular disrupt the logic of visualization by the ways in which they
engage with architectural space. Forsythe and De Keersmaeker approach
the experience of space and subjectivity in very different ways, but on
a certain theoretical level they are both concerned with blurring these
separations which affect the construction of subjectivity. They both
refuse to present subjectivity in terms of straightforward representation
and being. As a result, what they are doing spatially in their choreog-
raphy does not make sense if viewed in a conventional way. Certain
post-structuralist and deconstruction theories aid an understanding of
the significance of their refusal to present representation and being in
a conventional manner.
Representation is created through the logic of visualization. It is
dependent on a particular way of seeing the world where what is created
in terms of an art or dance work is believed to re-present some sort of
metaphysical ‘meaning’ or ‘truth’, which can be discovered and shared
by an audience. By disrupting the logic of visualization both Forsythe
and De Keersmaeker refuse to engage with this notion of representation.
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 185

Classical ballet and modern dance in the ways they present the dancer
and represent ‘meaning’ both address and position viewers as rational
unified subjects. Classical ballet does this through its vocabulary and
aesthetic which creates total, harmonious, balanced beings. Parallels
can be seen in Ancient Greek Vitruvian architecture which is based
on a classical, mathematical system of proportions believed to be the
same as the ideal human form. The architect, Daniel Libeskind, who
is often linked with Forsythe because they have worked together and
share a similar approach to space, deconstructs this kind of classical
architecture, just as Forsythe deconstructs classical ballet, refusing to
look at bodies and space in a classical way. In this chapter insights
from Libeskind’s architectural practice are used to illuminate some of
Forsythe’s deconstructive strategies in dance. In modern dance the
dancers appear as beings who are rational, unified subjects because the
body is seen to express inner ‘meanings’ or emotions, in a way that it
‘never lies’. In this sense the body is seen as transparent. De Keers-
maeker’s dancers resist this kind of transparency because of the ways in
which they merge with the architecture and with each other in Rosas
Danst Rosas. They do not appear as separate beings struggling to express
their individuality.
Both Forsythe and De Keersmaeker, in the ways in which their dances
engage with architectural space, are concerned with geometry, but their
handling of geometry is very different. Where Forsythe is undoing the
geometry of classical ballet, De Keersmaeker chooses to use geometry.
Forsythe deconstructs classical geometric proportions, which relate to
space and the human form, in order to find new ways of experiencing
space beyond the linear and the visual, which open up possibilities for
a different kind of unfixed subjectivity. De Keersmaeker seems to be
doing the opposite, although the end result is similar. By accepting
and creating geometrical grids in her choreography excessively, she
denies her dancers an individual subjectivity. They become part of space
through the repetitive geometrical patterns they perform, which deny
them a sense of individuality. Both choreographers in their different
engagements with architectural space and geometry disrupt the logic of
visualization and point to new possibilities for subjectivity.
In this chapter I explore how perspective and the logic of visualiza-
tion are bound up with particular constructions of the subject, and
through examining these choreographers’ works, show how dance,
partly through certain parallels with architecture, can challenge and
disrupt this logic and suggest alternative possibilities for subjectivity.
After a brief introduction to the choreographers and dances, the ways
186 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

in which the dances disrupt the traditional single viewpoint of per-

spective and challenge notions of a separated self, are examined. Next
links between space and subjectivity are introduced. They are used
to explore the role of the visual in the construction of bounded and
gendered subjects and ways in which the dances challenge and disrupt
this construction process are outlined. The dominance of the visual in
traditional experiences of space and the ways in which the visual is
bound up with reason, construction of a rational subject, and particu-
lar ideologies and values, are then outlined. Finally the ways in which
the dances trouble these notions, by disrupting the visual and finding
other non-linear, discontinuous ways of experiencing space are explored
and discussed.

The choreographers and dances

William Forsythe, the American choreographer who directed

Ballet Frankfurt from 1984 to 2004, and the Forsythe Company since
then, is noted for the treatment of space in his choreography. He
emphasizes a non-linear approach to space and choreography inspired
by fractals and chaos theory. Mark Goulthorpe, an architect who has
worked with Forsythe, has suggested that his work proliferates the ‘rhi-
zomatic experimentation’ of the French post-structuralists Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari (1988) who also draw on chaos theory, and
that Forsythe creates ‘ballets of disorientation and trauma’ (1998). I
focus on Forsythe’s 30-minute Enemy in the Figure (1989) with scenery,
lights and costume designed by Forsythe, and refer to the dance video
Solo (1995) directed by Thomas Lovell – a six-and-a-half-minute solo for
Forsythe. Both have music by Thom Willems.
Enemy in the Figure, performed on its own, and as the central part
of Limb’s Theorem (1990), is distinctive for its lighting; a large lamp on
wheels moved around by the dancers, and its set; a wavy wooden screen
dividing the stage space diagonally from upstage right to downstage left
and a length of thick rope on the floor, which is moved and undulated
by dancers. The performance space is constructed and deconstructed
throughout by the dividing screen and the moveable lamp (Plate 16).
The piece opens with one dancer on her back in the upstage right corner
by the length of rope illuminated by the lamp, the rest of the stage is
in darkness. She is attended by another dancer crouching at her side
moving her limbs. They seem to be experimenting with what limbs can
do, stretching them, possibly warming up for a dance class. The lamp
is wheeled downstage facing the back wall gradually illuminating more
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 187

and more space. Other dancers become visible; overall there are six
female and five male dancers. Throughout the dance, the lamp, which
appears to be the only source of light, is moved about ten times, some-
times in darkness. Each time it illuminates a different part of the space,
sometimes just showing a solo or duet or at others various groupings.
Highly technically trained balletic bodies performing both non-balletic
and balletic vocabulary such as attitudes, pirouettes and arabesques, but
in an off-balance, off-centre, distorted and fractured manner, charac-
terize these dances. Willems’ electronic score of shattering metallic
sounds often provides a regular beat which dancers pick up and drop
seemingly at random. When they pick it up they occasionally slip into
jazz and street dance forms such as breaking and body popping, which
are frequently mixed with ballet vocabulary. Dancers walk purposefully
across the space to begin their solo or duet, or to go and lean up against
the wall and watch for a while. Every so often performers are seen
running fast round the periphery of the stage emerging from behind
the screen only to disappear again. ‘Lots of things happen at once, so
the eye is drawn hither and thither’ (Gilbert, 1998: 13). ‘The dancers’
space (and the audience’s perspective) is continually modified’ (Sulcas
1991a: 32). A sense of chaos and discontinuity is evident.
Often the lamp illuminates one part of the stage and light spills over
into other parts where dancers in semi-darkness, or shadows of activity
can be glimpsed. What can be seen clearly and what is only in half-
light, shadow, or behind the screen is in a continual state of flux. Seeing
and not seeing, appearance and disappearance, are threads running
through the piece, resulting in ‘no . . . fixed spectatorial vantage points’
(Brandstetter, 1998: 50). The dancers’ black and white costumes en-
hance the sense of appearance/disappearance. The audience has to
look actively to fathom what is going on where at any one point. The
dance critic Rosalyn Sulcas says of Limb’s Theorem, ‘it is . . . [an] investi-
gation and elaboration of the relationships between dance and its per-
ception . . . light is deployed as a means of exploding and contracting
the space, and of disturbing the spectator’s visual certainties’ (1991b:
37). Forsythe comments, ‘It forces you to re-examine those things [that
you take for granted, which perhaps you’ve stopped seeing] and say
“. . .what are these things?” ‘(in Driver et al., 1990b: 93). Forsythe is chal-
lenging spectators to depart from dependence on a single perspectival
viewpoint that fixes and distances. He has stated, ‘let us move into the
text’ (in Brandstetter, 1998: 52) and criticizing proscenium theatres,
‘it would be better if audience and dancers could touch each other’
(in Odenthal, 1994: 33).
188 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, the Belgian choreographer, who has

directed her company Rosas since 1983, is based at La Monnaie,
Belgium’s national opera house, from where she also directs PARTS (Per-
forming Arts Research and Training Studio), where training is conducted
by ex-dancers of the choreography of William Forsythe, among others.
She has stressed the significance of spatial composition and strategic
uses of space in her work, stating ‘space, volume, structure and trajec-
tories are very important to my work, both choreographically and
dramatically’ (in Hughes, 1991: 17).
De Keersmaeker’s Rosas Danst Rosas was originally choreographed
for the stage in 1983 for four female dancers including De Keersmaeker,
with music commissioned from Thierry de Mey and Peter Vermeersch.
In 1997 de Mey made a 57-minute film version set in the RITO school
in Leuven, designed by Belgian architect Henry van de Velde
(1863–1957), beginning with four female dancers and ending with 18.
The film opens with a shot of one dancer seen from above through the
gridded, rain-splattered panes of a glass conservatory roof in the evening
half-light. As the camera moves it is sometimes difficult to make her
out. This sets the scene for what is to follow. The dancers merge with
the architecture as they are frequently glimpsed through glass windows,
doors and walls of the building and their grey school uniform-like skirts
at times merge with the school’s grey walls. The dancers, in precise
geometrical formations, repeat highly punctuated, unison stepping,
spinning, twisting and bending-over phrases with much energy and
panache. The drill-like style of the performance seems relentless as the
dancers’ sighs and intakes of breath are heard and, like their move-
ments, keep precise time with the percussive accompaniment. One long
sequence is performed sitting on chairs where the dancers cross and
uncross their legs, place their arms crossed over their knees and fling
their heads forwards and backwards, their hair flying. Interspersed
within these almost robotic patterns of repetitive movement are more
everyday gestures, such as running hands through hair and pulling tee-
shirts on and off the shoulder. Their obsessive repetition makes them
seem neurotic as they are absorbed into the tight structure. The young
women do not appear aware that they are being filmed; only occasion-
ally do they look at the camera or each other. Relations between the
architecture and the choreography are emphasized through linear
repetition in both. Panning and moving cameras and quick edits further
highlight relations between the two. The spatial characteristics of the
distinctive location are foregrounded in the filming, when the dancers
recede into the distance and play in different spaces of the school,
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 189

between themselves, and themselves and the building, the camera, and
their virtual spectators. Seeing the performers through windows and
doorways from inside and outside blurs these boundaries, such that the
space becomes fragmented and discontinuous; it is seen from many
viewpoints rather than one.

Disrupting the single viewpoint of perspective

Arguments concerning the reductive, limiting and masculine nature of

ideas about perspective and visualization have been rehearsed elsewhere
in this book, in the Introduction and in Chapter 8. The idea of per-
spective, which emerged during the Renaissance but was developed
from Ancient Greek Euclidean geometry, implies a single viewpoint
in space from which and to which all points converge. As the feminist
theorist Susan Bordo argues, ‘the “point of view” of the perspective
painting . . . spatially freezes perception, isolating one “moment” from
what is normally experienced as part of a visual continuum’ (1987: 64).
Most dances and much architecture order space by isolating particular
moments in this way. The world becomes a ‘series of framed images
. . . each one a particular “perspective” ‘(ibid: 65). Architecture and
dance also order space when they act as ‘architectural and cultural
“cues” that teach us to “read” the world’ as if it consists of fixed images
seen from a single viewpoint, or ‘Euclideanly’ (ibid: 66). Quoting the
cultural theorist Patrick Heelan, Bordo gives examples of these ‘cues’ as
‘simple engineered forms of fixed markers, like buildings, equally spaced
lamp posts and roads of constant width’ (1987: 251). Space is not framed
in this way in the work of Forsythe and De Keersmaeker. They both
disrupt the single viewpoint of perspective by presenting dance as a
spatial experience, as a visual continuum, which militates against the
production of ‘cues’ or markers in the way Bordo describes.
Enemy in the Figure provides no cues as to how to read the space. Solos,
duets and group dances do not clearly start and finish, they just appear
and disappear; there are no single viewpoints, no images are framed
and fixed. One clear perspective is replaced by many possible focuses of
attention, rendering the work polycentric. When the moveable lamp is
turned round and round the shadows it throws up multiply everything
in view (Plate 16). The architect Steven Spier writing of Forsythe’s work
in the Journal of Architecture, says that it ‘assumes many points and . . .
axes’ (1998: 138) and the dances ‘tend to have multiple centers of inter-
est . . . things happening extreme right or left, in front of the worst seats,
and obscuring vision’ (ibid: 140–1). He claims a Forsythe performance
190 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

‘cannot be a simple whole with a clear center’ (ibid: 140). Polycentric-

ity, disorientation and a lack of frontality, are apparent in Enemy in the
Figure, exacerbated by the angles of the set and the light which carve
up the space. In other words, as the social theorist Paul Virilio has said
about contemporary experiences of space, ‘the substantial, homogenous
space derived from classical Greek geometry gives way to an accidental,
heterogeneous space in which sections and fractions become essential’
(1991: 25). Polycentricity is evident in both the choreography and the
performance of individual bodies. Forsythe uses disorienting strategies
with dancers, having them work as if the front of the room has become
the floor or a diagonal, or as if the floor is tilted (Driver et al., 1990b:
92), so that they experience space differently. In Enemy in the Figure a
woman appears to tie her body in knots as she travels low to the ground,
limbs twisting and turning over and under each other, reaching out in
all directions. With her torso twisted one way, her head looking another
way, and legs stretched wide, her male partner, who can hardly be seen
in the semi-dark with his black skin and dark suit, lifts her. She remains
stiff like a sheet of contorted metal, until he lets her slide down his shins
to the ground and she unfurls and is away. This fractured, sometimes
jerky, sometimes fluid, discontinuous experience of space is typical of
the piece.
Daniel Libeskind, the deconstructivist architect best known for
designing Berlin’s Jewish Museum, says of Forsythe’s treatment of space:
‘there are . . . particular diagonals which differentiate his view of space
from the orthogonal spaces . . . so often the scenography of contempo-
rary dance’ (Libeskind, 1999b). Orthogonal spaces, made up of straight
lines and right angles, are examples of the ‘cues’ for reading and order-
ing space in a perspectival sense. In Forsythe’s work lines are exploded
and broken. They no longer operate as cues in the sense Bordo describes.
At one point in Enemy in the Figure about ten dancers, all facing differ-
ent directions, perform jerky, robotic movements, some freeze for a
moment in disjointed positions, others are spinning, others have limbs
flailing in different directions, some are jumping at odd angles, others
leap or run across the space. Any sense of pattern, line, order or coher-
ence is exploded. There is no single perspective and no clues as to how
to view this chaotic ever-changing mass of performers. As the dance
theorists Patricia Baudoin and Heidi Gilpin identify, ‘both Forsythe and
Libeskind move toward . . . an opening of the . . . assumptions of their
respective disciplines. In Libeskind’s hands, linearity is lost when the
architectural model is exploded: “The rational orderly grid actually turns
out to be made up of a series of decentered spaces” ’ (1989: 20).
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 191

Where Forsythe decentres and fragments space, disorienting specta-

tors and performers alike, De Keersmaeker reinforces the linearity
and grid-like patterning of perspectival space. Where Forsythe draws
on chaos theory, fractals and rhizomatic experimentation to explode
and disorient movement, De Keersmaeker employs traditional math-
ematical forms from Euclidean geometry. Her dancers’ performance
of repeated linear patterns in unison in time to a persistent musical
beat is reiterated by the filming of the interactions between De
Keersmaeker’s choreography and Van der Velde’s architecture. Lines
of pillars, window and door frames, tiled floors and walls, mirror the
lines of dancers and chairs used in the choreography, but the dance
fails to be as geometric as at first sight it appears. The linearity of the
grid-like patterns is stretched to the hyperbolic limit and beyond when
the dancers repeatedly run their hands through their hair and adjust
their clothing. Marianne Van Kerkhoven, the company’s dramaturg,
identified the main theme of Rosas Danst Rosas as the contrast and
blending of . . . ‘two voices’ – ‘the mathematical and the everyday’
(1984: 103). De Keersmaeker says that underlying the work is ‘the explo-
ration of two seemingly opposite data’ (1983). She continues ‘these
elements, which are not to be separated, are absorbed in a rigorous
structure. It is exactly this strictness which shows to full advantage the
individual elements’ (ibid). These ‘individual elements’ are themselves
caught in grids. The precise repetition of these everyday movements
has the effect of cloning, it troubles the notion of an individual discrete
subject created by the single viewpoint of perspective and the logic of
visualization.
The filming of Rosas Danst Rosas, which includes panning, cuts and
fast edits, is often disorientating; it interferes with the logic of a single
viewpoint which fixes and frames bodies, buildings and space. Cameras
move around and through the building filming the dancers between
pillars, through glass windows and doorways to spaces beyond. The
building and the choreography are perceived on a visual continuum,
rather than as a series of fixed images. A sense of distance is created by
seeing through spaces, providing multiple viewpoints rather than one
that fixes on a single vanishing point. It becomes impossible to map
the spaces of the building. When grids of window and door frames are
looked through, they and the choreography interfere with and merge
with each other, disrupting any sense of perspective. De Keersmaeker
reiterates and emphasizes the geometry through the mathematical
repetitive grid-like patterns of her choreography. By playing with these
grids unfaithfully and stretching their regularity to hyperbolic limits she
192 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

distracts and disrupts the single viewpoint of perspective and confronts

issues of subjectivity.
De Keersmaeker introduces distinctly gendered feminine gestures
involving performers touching themselves and occasionally exchanging
intimate glances. This familiarity minimizes the distance between them.
The precise rhythmic repetition of these gestures, the ‘strictness’ in De
Keersmaeker’s terms, absorbs these ‘movements and positions borrowed
from daily life’ (ibid) into the rigorous geometric structure of the cho-
reography, which is in turn absorbed into the spaces of the building.
The dancers merge with each other and with the architecture; they
become part of the space. They do not appear separate from each other
or from the building, they deny spectators a single viewpoint of per-
spective because their merging with space upsets the logic of visualiza-
tion which sees subjects represented as separate, individual beings.

Challenging notions of a separated self

Bordo calls the act of seeing from a single viewpoint or perspective

‘geometrical seeing’, which she argues is dependent on a separation of
self from world, subject from object, and in the context of dance, I
would add, of spectator from performer/performance. A sense of ‘locat-
edness’ in space/time emerges. Bordo argues: ‘the development of the
human sense of locatedness can be viewed as a process . . . from which
the human being emerges as a . . . separate entity, no longer continuous
with a universe which has . . . become decisively “other” to it’ (1987:
70). This separation of self from world is bound up with Cartesian
epistemology, briefly summarized in Chapter 8, which constructs the
self as a detached, unified subject. Bordo claims: ‘this cold, indifferent
universe, and the newly separate self “simply located” within it, form
the experiential context for Cartesian epistemological anxiety’ which is
evident in Descartes’ writings as ‘a sense of profound distance between
self and world’ (ibid: 73).
Forsythe and De Keersmaeker minimize and eliminate this distance
in their work. Forsythe often includes mime, jazz, musical comedy, sport
and theatre in his choreography (Sulcas, 1991a). Hints of street dance
are evident in Enemy in the Figure. De Keersmaeker’s use of non-
theatrical spaces, like the RITO school building, minimizes the distance
that normally exists between theatrical dance and everyday life. Her Just
Before (1997) has been performed in Manchester’s Nynex Arena, a
massive sports stadium, and sets for her pieces often transform regular
theatre space making it look non-theatrical. The frame of the stage space
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 193

in Enemy in the Figure is also broken when Forsythe reveals the theatre
walls caught in the beam of the moveable lamp.
Forsythe’s and De Keersmaeker’s dancers’ behaviour in performance
minimizes distance by breaking conventional theatrical frames. They
stand at the side and watch. De Keersmaeker’s dancers drink from
bottles of water and adjust their hair or clothing. In Enemy in the Figure
dancers often look as if they are rehearsing or warming up, at one point
one throws an item of clothing over the screen. In Rosas Danst Rosas
the dancers occasionally exchange looks and smile and look directly at
the audience. De Keersmaeker said: ‘this indicates a relationship . . . to
reality’ (in Sulcas, 1992: 16).
Van der Velde’s practices suggest he had similar views. He designed
building interiors, notably Haby’s barber shop in Berlin (1901) where
water, gas and electric pipes for wiring were exposed (Pevsner, 1960:
101). He criticized the British Arts and Crafts movement interior
designer William Morris and his successors for being ‘too . . . detached
from society’ and he claimed that ‘rebirth of the arts would emerge from
the . . . acceptance of machines and mass production’ (Benevolo, 1960:
273). When he directed the School of Applied Art at Weimar, (later the
Bauhaus), student products were sold providing ‘an unbroken connec-
tion with the professional world’ (Joedicke, 1961: 43).
Libeskind claimed that ‘what . . . Forsythe does with stage space has
to do with contemporary sensibility’ (1999b). A programme note
describes Enemy in the Figure as: ‘bodies struggling against an environ-
ment saturated in technology’ (1998) and one reviewer commented that
it made her think of ‘a world manipulated by the random glare of the
media – individuals suddenly exposed in the spotlight, while others
. . . flail in the shadows’ (Mackrell, 1998: 12). Forsythe’s use of dis-
orienting deconstructive devices, while interconnecting audience,
performers and environments, connotes individuals attuned to the
contradictions of their time. As Sulcas noted: ‘Forsythe’s achievement is
to have connected classical dance to the anxious present’ (1991a: 7).
In an article subtitled ‘Toward a Feminist Architecture’, Deborah
Fausch (1996) describes architectural projects which she claims as
‘feminist’ because of the direct bodily experience of physical, historical
and/or emotional content that they provide. This emphasis on direct
bodily experience she asserts challenges Cartesian dualism that sepa-
rates self from world, because it foregrounds the importance of
physical and sensual perception other than the visual, and of bodily
connectedness with the world. In architecture, this distinctive feature
is identified. In dance, bodily involvement is taken for granted and
194 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

rarely singled out for discussion. Yet a physical and sensual experience
of the world in an obvious sense brings closeness and proximity rather
than distance and separation. In the Rosas Danst Rosas film, the dancers’
physicality, immediately apparent through sounds of their breathing,
sighs, and feet scraping and sliding on the tiled floors, creates a proxi-
mity between them and their virtual spectators. Fausch also mentions
the contribution of architectural features that fail to distance because
they are human-sized. One of the noticeable characteristics of Van der
Velde’s school building is its human-sized proportions. The doorways
and window frames are not large and imposing in an institutional sense.
These features in Rosas Danst Rosas minimize distance by emphasizing
corporeality engaging directly with spectators’ bodily perception giving
them a different, closer experience of space.
Proprioception, which is described as ‘sensitivity to stimuli originat-
ing in end organ tissues (muscles, tendons, etc.)’ (Mattingly, 1999: 27)
and ‘the awareness of what one feels and sees one’s body doing’ (Sulcas,
1995a: 8), is a strategy Forsythe employs to engage with spatial and
bodily perception by drawing on senses other than the visual. He has
likened working in this way to blindness or sight impairment which
can intensify proprioception. Dependence on seeing is relinquished in
the conventional sense, disorientating the body. This is evident in
Forsythe’s Solo (1995) that he created and danced for the BBC2 series
Evidentia and which won the 1996 Grand Prix International Video
Danse first prize. Forsythe’s downward and inward gaze in Solo – he
sometimes has his eyes closed – suggests that he is drawing inspiration
from inner resources rather than from seeing his body in the sur-
rounding space. In this sense he is disoriented and dislocated, or more
positively, attuned bodily to the surrounding space in a relaxed yet
highly perceptive non-visual manner. There are continual shifts in
Forsythe’s centre of gravity so that he is often off-balance and falling.
His pelvis and hips frequently protrude, forward, behind or to the side,
he often goes onto relevé on one foot, only to overbalance and catch
himself somewhere else. He makes use of weight, the floor and gravity,
going down onto one knee and back up, then down onto his back, over
onto one hip, then the other and back up. Forsythe’s ever shifting
weight results in unpredictability and a lack of frontality, his body
appears to be continually destabilized. As one critic has stated Solo
‘explores release from a centrally controlled physicality showing how
letting go of something brings [the] unexpected . . . into play’ (Nugent,
1998: 27). An article about deconstruction on the Ballet Frankfurt
website suggests that a deconstructive reading ‘encounters and propa-
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 195

gates the surprise of otherness’ (Johnson, 2000). This surprise of other-

ness is evident in Forsythe’s dislocating and defamiliarizing perfor-
mance of Solo. It is both the effect and the means of deconstruction.
Forsythe’s dislocated performance disrupts the ‘human sense of locat-
edness’ which Bordo suggests usually generates a detached and unified
self separate from the world.
Choreographic strategies that challenge the notion of a separated
self have been identified in the work of Forsythe and De Keersmaeker.
Forsythe’s explosion of linearity through disorientation and decon-
struction has disrupted the logic of visualization, making it difficult
for spectators to remain detached. In order to fathom what is going on
they need to engage more directly and bodily with his work. His use of
proprioception has introduced an engagement with senses other than
the visual, resulting in a radically different encounter of the body
with space. De Keersmaeker’s reiteration of classical geometrical forms
through everyday gestures, viewed against a visual continuum of archi-
tecture, not fixed and framed as separate, contributes to the intimacy
established in the choreography which minimizes distances between
performers and audience. By blurring the boundaries of bodies, build-
ings and space, these choreographers challenge notions of a separated
self, and disrupt the single viewpoint of perspective.

The role of the visual in the construction of bounded

and gendered subjectivity

The role of the visual in Western culture is deeply pervasive. It plays a

dominant part in Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytic theories of the
construction of the subject where realization of the significance of
separation from the (m)other becomes apparent when the small child
sees the (m)other as apart and different. This separated self is con-
structed spatially and visually. According to the French psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan’s theory of the ‘mirror stage’, it is through seeing an
image in the mirror that a child experiences itself as a separate being
for the first time, what it sees in the mirror is ‘a thing with edges’
(Minsky, 1996: 144). The image is bounded. In this formative experi-
ence space is perceived as distance, as ‘we first discover a unified
identity from outside ourselves’ (ibid: 145).
This visual and spatial construction of subjects as bounded, with
edges, is challenged in choreography and architecture that blur the
inside/outside boundaries of bodies, buildings and space. The filming
of Rosas Danst Rosas in the RITO school building, where dancers are
196 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

viewed through glass windows, foregrounds the transparency of the

inside/outside borders of Van der Velde’s architecture. The choreogra-
phy also transgresses these boundaries, taking dancers from inside to
outside and vice versa. Libeskind continually plays with these con-
structions in his architecture. In the Jewish Museum in Berlin he has
created empty spaces and placed the moulds of concrete that have been
extracted from these voids outside the building. He is literally turning
the building inside out. In the museum catalogue he claims, ‘building
is simultaneously . . . external . . . and . . . internal’ (1999a: 34). In Enemy
in the Figure the wavy lines of the curved wooden screen, reflected in
the rope lying on the floor, or when it is undulated by dancers, depart
from the linearity of perspective. When the dancers move the rope, and
move around and from side to side of both rope and screen, any sense
of either of these props becoming a clear boundary or barrier is dis-
rupted. The moveable lamp further emphasizes this by lighting, at dif-
ferent times, both sides of the screen where dancing occurs. There is no
sense of front or back, inside or outside, all parts of the stage space can
be seen as inside and outside at the same time, confusing these bound-
aries and challenging the visual and spatial construction of subjects as
bounded entities.
In Lacanian psychoanalytic theory the experience of seeing oneself as
separate in the mirror also importantly constructs subjects as gendered.
When the child sees itself apart from the mother, as having or lacking
the phallus, the child becomes gendered. This brings with it a series of
implications. According to Lacan, if one has the phallus, with it comes
the power and privilege of becoming a human subject, an ‘I’, but if one
lacks the phallus, in Lacan’s terms, one is not able to enter fully into
subjectivity. Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray in their criticism of these
theories from a feminist perspective have challenged the dominance of
the visual. Kristeva wanted to ‘make more detailed the . . . stages pre-
ceding the mirror stage’ because she thought that the grasping of the
image by the child involved more than just seeing, drawing on the other
senses as well (1984: 22). Irigaray claimed that the visual constitution
of the ego in the mirror stage was a blind spot in Lacan’s theory that
resulted in visual experience being ‘inevitably caught in a dialectic of
domination in which women were always the victims’ ( Jay, 1993: 538).
Irigaray has stated ‘within this logic (. . . of Western thought), the pre-
dominance of the visual . . . is particularly foreign to female eroticism.
Woman takes pleasure more from touching than from looking, and her
entry into a dominant scopic economy signifies . . . her consignment to
passivity: she is to be the beautiful object of contemplation’ (1985b: 26).
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 197

Irigaray’s emphasis on the role of touching, rather than looking, in

female sexuality, providing an alternative to the dominance of the
visual, is explored in Chapter 5.
When the dancers in Rosas Danst Rosas touch themselves, running
hands through hair, or adjusting a tee-shirt, these actions draw atten-
tion to the performers’ gender and sexuality. These are distinctly femi-
nine gestures; slipping one or both shoulders of a tee-shirt off and back
on, throwing a head of long hair forward or backward, cupping a breast
with a hand. They are repeated rhythmically and absorbed into the
repetitive unison choreographic patterns. Since the dancers are all doing
the same, they vividly illustrate the American queer theorist Judith
Butler’s (1990) claim that gender is a performative act that is learned,
rather than constructed through seeing oneself as with or without the
phallus. In this sense they challenge the dominance and role of the
visual in the construction of gendered subjects. The occasional looks,
smiles and nods exchanged between performers, and performers and
camera, suggest that they are enjoying themselves and perhaps para-
doxically illustrate Irigaray’s claim that ‘woman takes more pleasure
from touching than from looking’ (1985b: 26). The dancers’ looks to
each other and to camera signifying enjoyment operate in different
ways. When looking at each other, it is as if they are saying: ‘“Are you
ready? Then here we go” ’ (Van Kerkhoven, 1984: 103), a sense of cama-
raderie is expressed. Occasionally looks between performers seem to be
more overtly sexual. De Keersmaeker and another dancer perform the
same phrase, one standing in the foreground, the other on a raised area
behind, they have their backs to each other. They each pull their tee-
shirt off a shoulder, pull it back on, turn and look at each other half
smiling. They then slip both shoulders of their tee-shirts off and on and
exchange glances again as if sharing a sign or code. When dancers look
to camera while slipping their tee-shirts off the shoulder or running
their hands through their hair, they seem coy or narcissistic, but because
they repeat the actions, they are clearly ‘performed’. Feminine codes are
being played with, resulting in a parody of the kind of femininity con-
structed by the visual, that Irigaray claims consigns woman to passivity
‘to be the beautiful object of contemplation’ (1985b: 26).
Forsythe also challenges gender stereotypes in his work. In Enemy in
the Figure two female dancers perform a duet in unison facing front and
kicking their legs doll-like in their automatism, their white socks make
them look like American cheer leaders. Like De Keersmaeker, Forsythe
seems to be deliberately parodying a female stereotype constructed
by the visual. He also employs a variety of different physiques in his
198 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

company. His female dancers are often very muscular, subverting

the ‘aesthetic of an androgynously thin, sexless female figure’ (Sulcas,
1991a: 33) challenging the scopic regime which consigns women as
objects of contemplation. Forsythe has male and female dancers swap-
ping roles and corps de ballets composed of both genders performing the
same steps underlining ‘the corps de ballet’s dehumanizing function of
endlessly replicating one image (usually that of the heroine)’ (ibid: 33).
This strategy challenges the dominance of the visual that constructs
female subjects as passive and to-be-looked-at.
Ideas about visualization and perspective in philosophy and the role
of the visual in the construction of gendered subjects in psychoanalytic
theory can be seen to be linked. These links between ocularcentrism and
phallocentrism demonstrate the ways in which ideas of perspective and
visualization which have privileged a particular way of seeing the world
and of experiencing space are bound up with the construction of gen-
dered subjects. When dances and buildings comply with the logic of
visualization and act as visual markers or cues which educate people to
look in certain ways, they are not just doing this, they are also shaping
ways of seeing the world and of constructing space and subjectivity as
gendered. De Keersmaeker’s and Forsythe’s choreography challenges
such constructions dependent on the dominance of the visual and a
particular way of experiencing space.

Vision and reason – the dominance and construction

of the eye/‘I’

Links between sight and reason are prevalent in Western thought. ‘The
mind has been strongly connected with the organ of the eye and the
sense of vision. Philosophers have employed vision as a metaphor for
thought, and light for the faculty of reason’ (Fausch, 1996: 40). ‘I see’ is
synonymous with ‘I understand’. The eighteenth-century Enlighten-
ment philosophy – the term ‘enlightenment’ suggests seeing better – is
bound up with rationality; the Enlightenment has been termed the ‘age
of reason’. Construction of a subject separated from the world, inherited
from the Enlightenment, is bound up with the dominance of reason and
ideas of representation. The French post-structuralist Jacques Derrida has
indicated that the dominance of reason underlies the interpretation of
‘beings as objects’ ‘positioned before a subject’ ‘as representation’, and
that the subject who says ‘I’, ensures his ‘mastery over the totality of
what is’ because representation, protected by reason, dominates (1983:
9–10). The subject thus constructed is not only separate from the world,
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 199

but certain of himself and his mastery over it and the objects in it. His
position is maintained and protected by the dominance of reason, which
ensures that this way of seeing the world and subjectivity is accepted.
Derrida describes a caricature of this subject, as ‘representational man’
‘with hard eyes permanently open to a nature that he is to dominate, to
rape if necessary, by fixing it’ (ibid: 10).
This connection of sight with reason results in the ‘logic of visualiza-
tion’. This logic arises from and is dependent on the principles of linear
perspective. These principles also underpin the classical ballet aesthetic.
Classical ballet through its perspectival vocabulary, constructs the body
as ideal, separate from the world and uncontaminated by it. Its perfect
proportions derive from the lines, angles and forms of Euclidean geom-
etry. This classical body is logically and linearly structured. The logic of
the combinations of steps and gestures in the ballet vocabulary, and the
rules that connect these, follow geometrical principles based on per-
spective and vision dependent on unbroken lines. Ballet forms a par-
ticular subject according to this logic of clear, visible, geometric
occupation of space, and that visual legibility has, following Derrida,
social and cultural significance.
Forsythe refuses to present the subject in this way. He deconstructs
the classical ballet aesthetic. He considers the unity of the classical ballet
body deceptive and illusory. His work is concerned with interrupting
‘the mechanics of classical ballet syntax’ and with dismantling ballet’s
assumed, logical structures (Baudoin and Gilpin, 1989: 23). Key to this
is his fragmentation of the unbroken lines of the aesthetic. His use of
proprioception results in a discontinuous experience of space, a sense
of disequilibrium and off-balance, or a shift from ballet’s vertical line,
evident in tilts of the torso and limbs. Forsythe interrogates the balletic
assumptions of balance, placement and verticality. In Solo his polycen-
tricity, not only of space but also of the body, results in departure from
the linear. He throws his arms behind him one at a time as if trying to
get rid of them, they distort his torso, momentarily thrusting his ribcage
out. As he tips, turns, twists and gyrates, sometimes jerkily and some-
times fluidly, his moves continually surprise, he looks like he is impro-
vizing. His body never seems coherent or in line, it looks disjointed.
Shifts in the centre of gravity result in ‘a multicentric agglomerate of
points distributed over the body’ (Brandstetter, 1998: 48). His dancers’
bodies have been described as ‘polymorphous figures’ (ibid: 47), and his
choreographic vocabulary as ‘a meandering flow of contortions, which
frays in all directions at once and spreads out amoeba-like . . . an oscil-
lating construction, fickle and fragile, full of unrest’ (Boxberger, 1994:
200 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

32). Gilpin, Forsythe’s dramaturg in the late eighties, has stated that he
‘dismembers the deceptive unity of movement . . . in classical ballet,
[and] explodes it . . . to offer new forms’ (1994: 51).
In Forsythe’s Solo there are no cues for reading the dance linearly, a
dance or ballet style is lacking, as is dance or musical phrasing. The
choreography is unpredictable, without reference points. Jump cuts and
changes of camera angles, together with occasional blackouts or sections
of slow motion, exacerbate the unpredictability. These features are
typical of Forsythe’s work: his Steptext (1984) starts before the house
lights go down and has sections in complete darkness. At the end of
Forsythe’s Solo his hands are held turned in to the body, a reversal of
the classical aesthetic. By challenging the principle of en dehors or turn-
out in ballet, Forsythe ‘plays with this concept of freedom to exploit
movement along a multiplicity of planes’ ( Jackson, 1999: 119). Breaks
with the linear logic of the form such as this suggest different ways of
experiencing space, which interfere with the logic of visualization that
constructs eye/‘I’ subjects.
De Keersmaeker says of linear logical structures: ‘I just think people
should stop making sense. If you want to grasp a linear, logical . . .
understanding of . . . events . . . on stage, then you get in trouble . . . I
like it when a performance makes you think of lots of things . . . I like
the edges. Where you tip over . . . I like . . . working at the limits’ (in
Hughes, 1991: 19). Tipping over the edges blurs boundaries of space and
subjects and opens up possibilities for experiencing space differently.
Linear logical structures result in closed, unidirectional ways of viewing
things, but for De Keersmaeker ‘closed systems aren’t really very credi-
ble any more’ (ibid: 19). She is more interested in openness, which by
working on ‘the edges’ ‘at the limits’, defies linear logic and the con-
struction of eye/‘I’ subjects. Spatial and conceptual openness, central in
deconstructive practices, are also key to Forsythe’s and Libeskind’s work,
as Baudoin and Gilpin claim, ‘what is paramount to . . . Libeskind and
Forsythe is, in Libeskind’s words, that “as language falls and falters the
open is opened” ’ (1989: 19).

The ideological nature of visualization

Ideas associated with experiencing space through the logic of visualiza-

tion are not only reductive, as Lefebvre (1991) has indicated, but also ide-
ological. Seeing, more than any other sense, is associated with
understanding, with enlightenment and with morality. Bordo points out
that perspective has been used as a ‘cognitive metaphor’ and that ‘from
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 201

its origins in the science of optics’ through its development in painting

‘connotations of “perspectivity” had been positive’ (1987: 123). She notes
that perspicere means to see clearly and that the Italian poet Alighieri
Dante (1265–1321) described perspective as ‘the “handmaid” of geome-
try: “lily-white, unspotted by error and most certain” ’ (in Baxandall cited
in Bordo, 1987: 123). The connotations of whiteness, goodness and cer-
tainty have ‘racial’ and moral implications. Derrida identifies the asso-
ciations of whiteness and light with visualization, the eye and Western
reason. He argues, ‘[in] the white mythology . . . of the West: the white
man takes his own mythology . . . for the universal form of . . . Reason’
(1982: 213). This expression of ‘racial’ domination also derives from priv-
ileging ‘the sun as the dominant locus of signification’ ( Jay, 1993: 509).
Derrida continues, ‘value, gold, the eye, the sun, etc. are carried along
. . . by the same tropic movement’ (1982: 218). He claims that the sun
becomes ‘interiorized’ in the Westerner who assumes ‘the essence of man,
“illuminated by the true light” ’ (ibid: 268). Bordo points out that Peter
Limoges ‘compares the direct lines of sight of the perspective painting to
the clear moral vision of the Godly person’ (1987: 123). ‘Rectitude’, the
word for righteousness, correctness or moral uprightness, and ‘rectify’,
which means to put right, come from the same source as ‘rectilinear’
which means something bounded or characterized by straight lines or
forming a straight line. These associations are also importantly gendered.
Rectitude is associated with the right side as distinct from the left, and as
Robert Hertz suggested in his classic 1909 text The Pre-eminence of the Right
Hand, ‘society and the universe have a whole side which is sacred, noble
and precious, and another which is profane and common; a male side,
strong and active and another, female, weak and passive; or . . . a right
side and a left side’ (in Needham, 1973: 10).
Forsythe’s use of proprioception, providing a different perception of
space, which for him is akin to the experience of sight impairment or
blindness, can be seen as an attempt to depart from this ideology of
vision bound up with reason, light and rightness associated with the
male. His employment of this and other strategies has led to his work
being described as an ‘architecture of disappearance’ by Gilpin, his late
eighties’ dramaturg. Forsythe makes bodies disappear or become in-
visible through his use of darkness countering the dominance of light
in the ideology of the visual. He also enacts the disappearance of
movement by exploring its instability and failure. Failure is key here,
Forsythe’s polycentricity is a failure to produce linear perspectival work
dependent on and creating single viewpoints. His explosion and frag-
mentation of the body and space result in failure to produce unity. His
202 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

exploration of bodily instability and disequilibrium result in a failure to

maintain the verticality, balance and symmetry of ballet. Gilpin sug-
gests that from these failures come new possibilities for movement,
because they describe movement not fixed by meaning, so they ‘can be
regarded as a positive enabling force of movement’ (1994: 50). An article
on deconstruction, on Ballett Frankfurt’s website in 2000, was entitled
‘Nothing fails like success’. It ends

it is only by forgetting what we know how to do, by setting aside the

thoughts that have most changed us, that those thoughts and that
knowledge can go on making accessible to us the surprise of an
otherness we can only encounter in the moment of suddenly
discovering we are ignorant of it.
( Johnson, 2000)

The failures in Forsythe’s performances involve the body forgetting how

to perform ballet and setting aside that vocabulary in order to make
space for the ‘surprise of otherness’, which is what Gilpin terms a
‘positive enabling force of movement’.
These failures create gaps or voids, in-between spaces, moments of
disappearance, but these are not negative spaces of absence, they are
positive spaces of becoming, in the Deleuzian sense as discussed in
Chapter 5. As Gilpin suggests, it is about ‘shifting the concept of failure
from that of a gap of static space to that of an imperative that causes
dynamism’ and she likens this to the ‘constantly shifting, goalless ex-
perience’ of becoming (1994: 51). These gaps or voids challenge the
dominance of the visual, since in one sense there is nothing there to
see. They also challenge the traditional concept or experience of space
as empty, because they open up possibilities for perceiving something
else that is not fixed but continually in the process of becoming.
Forsythe recognizes this when he asserts: ‘the whole point of improvi-
sation is to stage disappearance’ (in Gilpin, 1994: 52).
Libeskind’s architecture works similarly. The voids he has created in
the Jewish Museum in Berlin, on one level signify the gaps in Jewish
history, on another they mark the disappearance of Jews in the holo-
caust, but they also suggest positive spaces for present and future becom-
ings. Gilpin claims that Forsythe’s choreography similarly focuses on
gaps and discontinuities in history, seeing history in a Foucauldian
sense. She argues: ‘Forsythe focuses on moments of rupture and discon-
tinuity and participates in the sort of history that. . . . Foucault writes
about: “Discontinuity . . . has . . . become one of the basic elements of
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 203

historical analysis” ’ (ibid: 53). Revealing discontinuities paradoxically

involves seeing things in terms of a visual continuum rather than as a
series of fixed images. These discontinuities and disappearances give
spectators experiences of bodies, space and buildings that are not depen-
dent on the visual, and the ideological associations that accompany it.
They require spectators to perceive things differently through direct
bodily engagement. The voids in Libeskind’s Jewish museum have to be
negotiated because they obstruct a straight linear pathway through the
building. They create a zig zag across the museum which breaks the line
that divided east and west Berlin. By doing this they reveal discontinu-
ities in history and create further discontinuities that move people. As
Fausch says of similar architectural projects, which she terms ‘feminist’
because they require bodily engagement, ‘the action of the body must
be performed to complete the intellectual content . . . to get the message’
and ‘this places a higher value upon . . . experience that includes both
the body and the mind as opposed to developing one at the expense of
the other’ (1996: 49). The dominance of the visual, associated with the
mind and reason, and with light and rightness, is subverted and replaced
by a total body/mind perception of space.
Derrida claimed that associations of visualization with power and the
masculine imply violence when he described ‘representational man’ as
‘dominating’ or ‘raping’ nature with ‘hard eyes’(1983: 10). The cultural
theorist Martin Jay has stated, ‘the counterpoint to such violence . . .
cannot be another totalizing point of view which would be like a panop-
ticon, but rather fragments, which deny any view of the whole’. He
quotes from Derrida’s textual accompaniment to a portfolio of photo-
graphs by Marie-Françoise Plissart which includes the statement: ‘ “no
single panorama, but simply parts of bodies, torn-up or framed pieces
. . . sometimes out of focus, hence blurred” ’ ( Jay, 1993: 519). This could
easily be a description of Rosas Danst Rosas, Solo or Enemy in the Figure.
A ‘single panorama’ is prevented by the choreography, set, lighting and
costume, and in the case of Rosas Danst Rosas by the filming also; fre-
quently only parts of bodies are glimpsed. The performance of frag-
mented movement on multiple planes in all three works eliminates the
visibility of the lines of choreography and perspective that lead the eye
to see bodies, space and buildings as fixed and framed images. The
architect Mark Goulthorpe has indicated that the radical potential of
Forsythe’s choreography is evident in the way in which he ‘breaks up’
or diminishes ‘the ideology of privileging the eye’ (1998).
The moveable lamp in Enemy in the Figure, by continually shifting the
focus of attention around the stage, emphasizes the polycentricity of
204 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

Forsythe’s choreography and parodies the importance of the visual,

since it operates as a kind of eye/‘I’ surveying the space. As it turns there
are parallels with Foucault’s panopticon – the all-seeing viewpoint (see
Chapter 7) – but it continually undermines this, since it only sheds light
on one part of the stage at a time, leaving the rest unlit. This is partly
what Gilpin means when she describes Forsythe’s choreography as ‘an
architecture of disappearance’ (1994: 51). The choreography literally
disappears from view when it is not lit, or obscured by the set, but its
architecture also disappears when the logical structures of the ballet
vocabulary, the cues that assist in ordering space and bodies, that deter-
mine the way the dance is seen, are no longer apparent. Libeskind has
said that Forsythe’s work is ‘a deepening of an understanding of what
the space of the human body really is’ (1999b). Gilpin claims that in
Forsythe’s work ‘the absence of vision becomes the culmination of sight’
(1994: 53) suggesting that, because this absence disrupts the logic of
visualization, new ways of seeing or seeing differently result.

Conclusion

Forsythe and De Keersmaeker have engaged with architectural space

differently. Their opposing approaches to geometry – Forsythe’s de-
construction and De Keersmaeker’s employment of geometric grids –
have disrupted the single viewpoint of perspective and the logic of
visualization and its associated ideological implications. Their work has
suggested new ways of experiencing space and subjectivity, which
have been seen as linked through the role of the visual in the con-
struction of spaces and subjects. By recognizing and challenging the
links between ocularcentrism and phallocentrism, both choreogra-
phers in different ways have suggested possibilities for a subjectivity
that no longer has to be gendered and ‘racialized’, because of its vis-
ual and spatial construction as a separated ‘I’/eye, dependent on the
logic of visualization for its dominance. Forsythe’s deconstructed, frag-
mented and discontinuous bodies and spaces open up possibilities
for subjects becoming part of space rather than distanced, contained
and unified individuals. De Keersmaeker’s dancers, through merging
with the architectural spaces of the building and each other, suggest
becoming subjects in process, dancer subjects blurring with other
dancer subjects. These rethought embodied subjectivities have been
revealed through Forsythe’s employment of strategies of polycentricity,
proprioception, disappearance and failure and De Keersmaeker’s use of
excessive, precise repetition of a rigorous structure, also occasionally
 Architectural Spaces in the Choreography 205

resulting in disappearance. Both foreground direct bodily perception of

the world.
The ways in which mutual constructions of space and subjectivity,
dancing in in-between spaces and inside/outside bodies and spaces,
which have been explored throughout the book, affect subjectivity,
have been made apparent in this chapter. In Enemy in the Figure and
Rosas Danst Rosas various reciprocal constructions of space and subjec-
tivity are evident. The space in Enemy in the Figure is continually being
constructed and reconstructed in specific ways by the dancers, the set,
of rope and screen, and the changing lighting. The dancers’ fragmented,
discontinuous and sometimes explosive experiences of space, and their
positioning in relation to set and lighting, also construct them. These
mutual constructions open up possibilities for perceiving subjectivity
differently through its embodied relationship to space. In Rosas Danst
Rosas mutual constructions of bodies and spaces in some senses are even
more apparent as the geometric patterning of the choreography merges
with the geometry of the architecture, but also as the everyday gestures
in the choreography connect the dancers to each other. Different kinds
of becoming embodied subjects in process are evident in these in-
between spaces.
Particular interactions of dancing bodies and certain spaces have been
seen throughout the book to create in-between spaces. In Rosas Danst
Rosas when the dancers are seen filmed through glass windows and
walls, in-between spaces are created which it is difficult to map. In this
sense in-between spaces disrupt the logic of visualization, challenging
the audience’s perception and construction of unified spaces and sub-
jects. Spaces in Forsythe’s Enemy in the Figure are both inside and outside
and disappear and reappear because of the combination of set, light-
ing and choreography. These experiences of in-between spaces in
Forsythe’s and De Keersmaeker’s work suggest new kinds of subjectivity
in process. The in-between metaphor allows bodies, spaces and subjects
to be conceived and understood as fluid entities that exist in between.
The nature of this fluidity has been explored throughout the book
by focusing on body/space interfaces where boundaries are seen to
exist. The permeability of these physical boundaries has suggested
various blurrings, which challenge the conceptual boundaries evident
in binary oppositions and suggest different, interconnected ways of
seeing space and subjectivity. Forsythe has blurred the boundaries of
bodies and space by exploding linearity through disorientation and
deconstruction such that a direct sensual engagement with bodies and
space results. De Keersmaeker’s dancers, in a very different sense, have
206 Inside/Outside Bodies and Spaces

been seen to blur with each other and with the architecture of their
surroundings.
By examining a range of different postmodern dances through the
lenses of various post-structuralist theories, focusing on relationships
between dancing bodies and space, it has been possible to show how
the dances can challenge entrenched ways of viewing space and sub-
jectivity. Possibilities for rethinking subjectivity ‘against the grain’ have
become evident. Throughout, space has been seen to play a key role in
the construction of subjectivity. In this sense, the spatialization of sub-
jectivity has been a focus. Perhaps this focus might not have become
evident in quite the same way if dance had not been central. Examin-
ing dances, which inevitably involve interactions of actual bodies
and spaces, has made fathoming the conceptual complexities involved
in rethought notions of space and subjectivity, in some senses, more
immediate. The interconnectivity, which has been seen to characterize
spatialities of subjectivities, has, on another level, been key to this
enterprise. The reciprocal interconnectivity involved in thinking dance
through various theories, and thinking theories through various dances,
has hopefully facilitated a better understanding of the subject matter
of this book – the complex interrelations between dance, space and
subjectivity.
Appendix

Dance videos mentioned in the text – notes on availability

Aeroplane Man (1997) choreographed and performed by Jonzi D. Spring Re-
Loaded 3 video available from Laban library, Laban, Creekside, London SE8
3DZ. Tel: +44 (0)20 8691 8600 [email protected]. A 5 min. 2006 version also
available on My Space www.myspace.com/jonzid
Between/Outside (1999) filmed and choreographed by Lucille Power, performers:
Lucille Power and Sarah Spanton. Available from: Lucille Power, 14c Alving-
ton Crescent, Dalston, London E8 2NW.
Blind Faith (1998) choreographed by Yolande Snaith performed by Yolande
Snaith Theatredance. Spring Re-Loaded 4 video record available from
Laban library, Laban, Creekside, London SE8 3DZ. Tel: +44 (0)20 8691 8600
[email protected]
Cross-Channel (1991) choreographed by Lea Anderson, directed by Margaret
Williams, MJW production for Channel Four. Available from the BBC and MJW
Productions Ltd., 5 Warner House, 43–9 Warner Street, London EC1R 5ER. Tel:
0207 713 0400, Fax: 0207 713 0500.
Duets with Automobiles (1993) made by Terry Braun and Shobana Jeyasingh, per-
formers: Shobana Jeyasingh Dance Company. Commissioned by the Arts
Council Film Department and the BBC. Available from Concord Video and
Film Distributors, 201 Felixstowe Road, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP3 9BJ. Tel: 01473
726012. www.concordmedia.org.uk
Grotesque Dancer (1987) choreographed by Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie and per-
formed by Liz Aggiss. Video record available from Concord Video and Film Dis-
tributors, 201 Felixstowe Road, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP3 9BJ. Tel: 01473 726012.
www.concordmedia.org.uk
Homeward Bound (1997) choreographed and performed by Sarah Spanton. Video
record available from Sarah Spanton via www.axisweb.org/artist/sarahspanton
Joan (1994) choreographed by Lea Anderson, directed by Margaret Williams.
An MJW production for Channel Four. Available from the BBC and MJW
Productions Ltd., 5 Warner House, 43–9 Warner Street, London EC1R 5ER.
Tel: 0207 713 0400, Fax: 0207 713 0500.
Muurwerk (1987) choreographed and performed by Roxanne Huilmand and
directed by Wolfgang Kolb, produced by Éditions à Voir, Amsterdam. Distrib-
uted by argos, Werfstraat 13, 1000 Brussels, Belgium. Tel: 32 2 229 00 03. Fax:
32 2 223 73 31 – [email protected] – www.argosarts.org
Outside/In (1995) made by Margaret Williams and Victoria Marks for BBC2 Dance
for Camera series commissioned by the Arts Council Film Department and the
BBC. Available from Concord Video and Film Distributors, 201 Felixstowe
Road, Ipswich, Suffolk, IP3 9BJ. Tel: 01473 726012. www.concordmedia.org.uk
Reservaat (1988) made by Clara Van Gool, performers Martine Berghuijs and Pépé
Smit. Distributed by Cinenova Women’s Film & Video Distributor, 40 Rosebery
Ave., London EC1R 4RX. Email: [email protected] – www.cinenova.org.uk

207
208 Appendix

Rosas Danst Rosas (1997) film by Thierry de Mey, choreography Anne Teresa De
Keersmaeker, performers: Rosas Dance Company. Distributed by Total Film
Home Entertainment, Dick Lam, PO Box 37743. www.rosas.be
Virginia Minx at Play (1993) choreographed and performed by Emilyn Claid.
Available for viewing only from Laban library, Laban, Creekside, London SE8
3DZ. Tel: +44 (0)20 8691 8600 [email protected]
Notes

1 Introduction
1. With the exception of Carnets de Traversée, Quais Ouest, La Deroute and Land-
Jäger discussed in Chapter 2, I see all the dances discussed in this book as
‘postmodern’ in the sense that they recognize the postmodern ‘crisis in sub-
jectivity’ and present subjects as multiple, embodying differences, frag-
mented, fluid and open to change. The dances between them also exhibit
various other features deemed postmodern such as parody, intertextuality,
self-reflexivity, merging of ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture and so on.

2 Travel metaphors in dance

1. The power invested in travel discriminates in different ways, as well as gender,
‘race’, class, sexuality, nationality and other factors all also have a bearing,
but the focus here is on gender.
2. Lyotard (1984) for example, sees modernity as characterized by modes of
production and postmodernity by modes of information.
3. ‘Land-Jäger’ can also mean a German sausage, a foot soldier, and quite pos-
sibly a traditional dance. It seems likely that the title of the dance video is a
play on all of these meanings associated in different ways with dance and
masculinity.
4. This style of dancing, consists of recurrent patterns of often violent ‘in your
face’, confrontational gestures and actions, usually performed by young
athletic dancers, often clad in Dr Martens boots. It became known through
the work of Dutch and Belgian choreographers such as Wim Vandekeybus
and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker (see Chapter 10) in the mid-eighties.
5. I am not using ‘mapping’ in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari who state:
‘what distinguishes the map from the tracing is that it is entirely oriented
towards an experimentation in contact with the real. The map does not repro-
duce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious. . . .
The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions . . . [it] has to
do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged
“competence” ’ (1988: 12). My use of ‘mapping’, which surveys, controls and
colonizes, has affinities with their ‘tracing’.

3 Transforming city spaces and subjects

1. Other examples of recent dance texts that use cities as settings or inspirations
include Freefall (1988) chor.: Gabi Agis, The Lament of the Empress (1989) chor.:
Pina Bausch (see Chapter 1), Palermo, Palermo (1990) chor.: Pina Bausch, Cir-
cumnavigation (1992) chor.: Norbert and Nicole Corsino, Topic II and 49 bis
(1992) chor.: Sarah Denizot, Duets with Automobiles (1993) chor.: Shobana

209
210 Notes

Jeyasingh (see Chapter 6) and Dark Hours and Finer Moments (1994) chor.: Gabi
Agis. For discussion of Freefall, The Lament of the Empress, Circumnavigation,
Topic II, and Dark Hours and Finer Moments see Briginshaw (1997).
2. Street Dance was performed again in 1965 at Robert Rauschenberg’s studio and
the transcript of the accompanying tape was included in ‘Lucinda Childs: A
Portfolio’ in Artforum 11 February 1973 and reprinted in Banes, 1980: 146–7.
The transcript gives precise details of signs, lettering and contents of window
displays that the dancers referred to in their performance.
3. As McDonagh’s interpretation of Blueprint indicates (1990: 115).
4. Space traditionally tends to be feminized deriving from Plato’s notions of the
female chora. In Plato’s view space is conceptualized as ‘a bounded entity’ ‘a
sort of container’ associated with the female body particularly with that of
the mother (Best, 1995: 182). He argues ‘it [the receptacle/space] . . . is a kind
of . . . plastic material on which changing impressions are stamped by the
things which enter it making it appear different at different times . . . we may
use the metaphor of birth and compare the receptacle to the mother’ (quoted
in Best, 1995, p.184).

4 Coastal constructions
1. Gisbourne’s comment forms part of his discussion of the British visual artist
Marc Quinn’s mercury-like blown glass sculptures Morphologies (1996–98),
which have been described as mutations. There are certain parallels with the
mutating couples in Out on the Windy Beach.
2. Anderson also plays with mutations in her Yippeee!!! (2006) which we discuss
in some detail in Briginshaw and Burt (2009).

5 Desire spatialized differently

1. Clara Van Gool also directed the television version of the British physical
theatre company DV8’s Enter Achilles (1995) choreographed by Lloyd Newson.
2. Recent festival screenings of Reservaat include On the bend Film Festival
(Canada), June 1998; Outfest, Los Angeles, July 1998; Out on Screen, Vancou-
ver, August 1998; The London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, April/May 1999;
Inside Out, Toronto, May 1999; Making Scenes Film and Video Festival, Ottawa,
September 1999.
3. It is important to distinguish between Butler’s use of repetition seen as
‘unfaithful’ and Deleuze’s use of repetition which is slightly more positive
because he sees repetition as never the same, always producing difference,
rather than lack. However, because Butler has usefully developed the concept
of performativity of gender and sexuality, which Deleuze has not, in this sense
her work is pertinent for my purposes. For more discussion and exploration
of the values of unfaithful repetition of performative acts see our discussion
of Lea Anderson’s Yippeee!!! in Briginshaw and Burt (2009).

6 Hybridity and nomadic subjectivity

1. When discussing Duets with Automobiles, Jeyasingh stated she would no longer
use the word ‘icon’, that it was too closely connected with a particular tradi-
tional image of an Indian dancer. She has ‘moved on’ from that idea. She also
 Notes 211

said that if she were making Duets with Automobiles today she would change
the costume and make-up; removing the bhindis from the dancers’ foreheads.
The costume she would make less silky and in a less bright colour. She stated
that it would be enough for her that the dancers looked Indian through their
skin colour (Jeyasingh, 1997a).
2. In interview, Jeyasingh wanted to emphasize the important role played by
Braun, the director and filmmaker, in the creation of Duets with Automobiles,
which she considered was a true collaboration. She stated: ‘Terry gave me
the room to make . . . what I wanted, he also wanted the same thing’
(Jeyasingh, 1997a). The film was made totally in situ and in dialogue with
the camera and Jeyasingh was present in the editing room throughout. To
indicate this collaboration, Braun and Jeyasingh share the same frame in the
title credits.
3. Terry Braun is the filmmaker for both Step in Time Girls and Duets with
Automobiles and certain similarities in style are apparent.

7 Crossing the (black) Atlantic

1. For an examination of the powerful role of tableau in art and dance, see
Chapter 8.
2. Bob Rosen was producer, co-director and editor of the film.
3. ‘Breaking’ or ‘break dance’ are terms coined by the media around 1984 when
breaking became popular, but the performers themselves prefer to be called
B Boys. The ‘B’ refers to the break in the rhythm section of the music which
they respond to in the dance (Ogg and Upshal, 1999).

8 Fleshy corporealities
1. Lea Anderson trained at St Martins School of Art and Yolande Snaith at
Wimbledon School of Art.
2. The duet is variously titled You can see us and You can see me. There is some
video footage of rehearsals for this with Bill T. Jones.
3. Blind Faith had two casts due to Snaith’s pregnancy during the latter half of
1998. The first performance with the first cast was at the Nuffield Theatre,
Lancaster on 3 February 1998. After the first tour, the piece was rehearsed
with a second cast. Henrietta Hale took Snaith’s part and Ruth Spencer took
Clayden’s role, and a duet between Snaith and Clayden was transferred to
Hale and Russell Trigg. The rest of the cast remained the same and the dance
was substantially the same. The second cast gave its first performance in
Germany on 12 October 1998.
4. Here ‘mapping’ is used in the Deleuzian sense – see Chapter 2 note 5, and
not in the sense in which it is referred to in Chapter 2.
5. The term ‘jouissance’ has no equivalent in English, the nearest translation is
the bliss of sexual orgasm. Kristeva’s use of the term refers to a specifically
feminine form of excess (see Wright, 1992: 185–8).
6. Chora derives from Plato and is a general term for ‘place’, ‘site’ or ‘receptacle’,
associated with the maternal functions of femininity. For Kristeva, it is ‘the
site of undifferentiated bodily space’ for ‘the production of the . . . womb and
matter’ that mother and child share (Grosz in Wright, 1992: 195).
212 Notes

9 ‘Carnivalesque’ subversions
1. Except the binary opposition of carnival/normal social life on which these
oppositions depend.
2. Sprechgesang – a theatrical cabaret genre of spoken song often found in Kurt
Weill/Bertold Brecht musical theatre and music hall, for example.
3. Although there are examples of the blurring of high and low culture before
postmodernism, the context is different. Postmodern works deliberately blur
these categories in order to emphasize their refusal to operate traditional
moral–aesthetic valuations (Wheale, 1995: 35).
4. Bakhtin uses the word ‘gay’ throughout his text to refer to the joyfulness of
festivals and carnivals, and to the ‘fullness’, ‘mirth’ or ‘immorality’ of much
festival, marketplace and carnival behaviour. Bakhtin is not using ‘gay’ to
mean homosexual – that use has come about more recently, initially as a slang
term or euphemism, and then reclaimed as a positive descriptor. Bakhtin’s use
of ‘gay’ meaning fullness or overindulgence, often related to sexual promis-
cuity, is a telling reminder of the word’s origins. It also demonstrates the open-
ness of language that Bakhtin theorizes.
5. See note 4.
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Index

49 Bis (Denizot 1992), 209 of choreography, 204

ability, 3, 6, 7, 166, 170–1, 181 of disappearance, 201, 204
abject, the, 17, 145, 149, 153, 155, see also Libeskind, Daniel
161, 171, 172, 173, 174 Vitruvian, 185
abjection, 140, 143, 150, 153, 154–5, assemblage, 79, 86, 88, 90
160, 161, 166, 171 assemblages, 18, 78, 84, 91, 96
Accumulation (Brown 1972), 158
Across Your Heart (Claid 1997), 23, Baby Baby Baby (Anderson 1986), 71
162, 165–6, 170–1, 173–4, 174–5, Baggett, Helen, 165, 173, 180
177–8, 179 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 17–18, 23, 71, 131,
active/passive binary, 78, 92, 95 162–4, 165, 166–7, 168–9, 170,
Aeroplane Man ( Jonzi D 1997), 112– 171, 172–6, 177–9, 180–2, 212
13, 114, 115–17, 118, 120, 121–2, ballet, 10, 180, 202
123, 124, 129–30, 131–2, 133, aesthetic, 185
134–5, 207 Romantic, 38
Aggiss, Liz, 23, 162, 164–5, 167–9, style, 200
174, 176–7, 179–80, 181, 207 vocabulary, 185, 187, 199, 204
Agis, Gabi, 48, 209, 210 Ballet Frankfurt, 23, 186, 194, 202
Albright, Ann Cooper, 165 balletic bodies, 187
Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, The Banes, Sally, 45–6, 156, 178, 210
(1632), 139, 150, 151 Baroque, the, 141, 142, 149, 155,
Anderson, Lea, 22, 23, 34, 59–74, 156, 158, 161
139, 140, 144–5, 207, 211 folds, 18, 147, 151, 152
androgyny, 69, 82, 87, 93, 168, 169, paintings, 23, 146, 159
198 Barthes, Roland, 159
animal/human boundaries, 165 Baryshnikov, Mikhail, 144
animated space, 81, 96 Battersby, Christine, 161
between bodies of dancers, 94 Baudoin, Patricia, 190, 199, 200
animating the space between, 91 Bauhaus, the, 193
animation of the body/space Bausch, Pina, 8, 9, 12, 16, 18, 209
interface, 148 Beach Birds (Cunningham 1992), 68
anti-Cartesian beaches, 4, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64
challenges to masculinized becoming, 78, 80, 85, 88, 89, 91,
thought, 151 175
perspective, 140 animal, 86, 91, 95
anti-Cartesianism, 142 bodies, 18, 77
anti-dualistic body of the people, 181
ideas, 140 identity as a process of, 114, 120–1
theories, 163 imperceptible, 87, 95
architecture, 12–13, 22, 31, 97, 100, becomings, 79, 86, 87, 91, 202
101, 105, 106, 109, 122–3, 184, being, 78, 114, 120–1, 184
185, 188, 189, 191, 193–4, 195–6, Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832), 125
202–3, 205, 206 Berger, John, 39

223
224 Index

Berghuijs, Martine, 81, 208 connections between, 18, 79, 89,

Between/Outside (Power 1999), 78, 81, 90–1, 95
83, 85, 88–9, 90–1, 92, 93, 94, contained, 82, 161
95, 207 docile, 129, 121, 125, 130
Bhabha, Homi, 15, 17–18, 98, 99, double, 17–18, 167–9
100–1, 102, 104, 107, 108, 109– eroticized, 63–5, 73
10, 127, 132 fragmented, 201, 204
Bharata Natyam, 97, 98, 99, 102–3, grotesque, 163, 165, 170–2, 174–6,
104, 105, 107, 110, 111 178–9, 181–2
binaries/binary oppositions, 9, 10, 14, hybrid, 77
18, 20, 35, 78, 80, 89, 109, 140, in-between, 14–16, 20
142, 163, 173, 181, 212 inscription of, 127
blurred, 69, 73, 74, 78, 91, 92, lesbian, 77
94, 95, 97, 100, 110, 167, 169, limits of, 3, 6, 60
171 materiality of, 82, 139, 145, 146–7,
body/mind, 140, 141, 156, 180, 150, 151–2, 157, 161, 162, 163,
203 180, 181
challenges to, 166, 168, 170, 173, migrant, 77
205 permeability of, 145, 153, 154, 166,
colonizer/colonized, 100 167, 171, 182
East/West, 97, 100 transgressive, 162
presence/absence, active/passive, 92 without boundaries, 92
private/public, 44 bodies and souls, 141, 143, 149, 150,
subject/object, 66 161
binary bodily
coding, 143, 173 experience, direct, 193, 203, 205
extremism, 164 fluids, 17, 153, 156, 161, 172
see also dualisms orifices, 3, 178
thinking, 17, 18 space, 211
Black Atlantic, 15, 112, 135 Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb,
Blake, Steve, 35, 61 The (1521), 154
Blind Faith (Snaith 1998), 23, 139, body/soul
140, 142, 143, 144, 145–6, 148, connectivity, 140, 142
150–2, 153–4, 155, 156, 157, dualism, 149
159–61, 207, 211 body/space interfaces, 1, 2–4, 13, 19–
Blueprint (Monk 1967), 45–6, 210 20, 77, 80, 148, 161, 183, 205
bodies borders, 17, 100, 104, 113, 114, 132–
and architecture, 105, 109 4, 154, 158
and spaces, mutual construction of, as social constructions, 67, 113,
51, 57, 60, 106–8 133
as borderline concepts, 15 coastal, 22, 60, 66, 73
as source of folds, 141, 155 fluid, 45, 67–8, 101
becoming, 77, 181 of bodies, 21, 148, 153, 161
blurred, 15, 203 of bodies and space, 3–4, 23, 43,
boundaries of, 87, 139, 154, 173, 77, 139
182 see also boundaries
bounded, 9–11 Bordo, Susan, 9, 142–3, 151, 153,
Cartesian, 148, 151 157, 161, 184, 189–90, 192, 195,
classical, 165, 175, 199 200–1
 Index 225

boundaries, 15, 16, 36, 41, 65–8, 133, excess, 182

153, 158, 196, 205 parody, 175–8, 177
between performers and spectators, performance, 178
131 Cartesianism, 184
blurred, 3, 10, 15, 17, 19, 20, 22, Cartesian
44, 45, 46, 68, 69, 72, 74, 80, body, 150, 151
100, 104, 110, 126, 134, 151, dualism, 155, 193
169, 189, 205: of bodies, 2, 10, epistemology, 192
17, 21, 41, 51, 89, 91, 173; of masculinization of thought, 152,
bodies and architecture, 195, 158
206; of borders, 114; of East philosophy, 140, 141, 153, 157
West divide, 99; of insides and subject, 154, 161
outsides of bodies, 147–8, 149, theory, 10, 143
184, 195; of inside/outside chaos theory, 186, 191
spaces, 161, 195; of private/ Charlebois, Johanne, 32, 33, 207
public spaces, 94–5; of space Childs, Lucinda, 44–5, 47, 210
and subjects, 200; of subject Cholmondeleys, The, 61, 64
and object, 154; see also see also Anderson, Lea
merging chora, 154, 210, 211
challenges to, 166–71 Circumnavigation (Corsino, N and N
coastal, 60 1992), 209–10
fluid, 3, 16, 22 city spaces, 43–58, 105–11
of bodies, 3, 17, 20, 21, 41, 51, 79, Claid, Emilyn, 23, 81, 84, 92–4, 162,
92, 143, 175, 182 165, 178, 208
see also borders classical architecture, 185
spatial, 4, 19, 20, 57 classical ballet, 179, 181, 185, 200
Braidotti, Rosi, 16, 98–9, 103, 106, Claydon, Paul, 145, 146, 211
109, 110–11 colonialism, 37, 41, 127, 130
Braun, Terry, 43, 99, 207, 211 colonial power, 36
Broken Column, The (1944), 170 colonial oppression, 113
Brossard, Nicole, 87 colonization, 37, 101, 209
Brown, Trisha, 23, 44, 48, 56, 57, colonized and colonizers, 100, 132
139, 140, 144, 146–8, 152, 155–8, connectedness, 111, 152
160 connectivity, 95, 141, 143
Burgin, Victor, 159 of body and soul, 151, 159
Butler, Judith, 80–1, 89, 124, 125, of corporeality and spirituality, 161
177, 197, 210 of inside/outside spaces, 149
within and between folds, 156
CandoCo, 2, 23, 165 with the world, 166
Car (Anderson 1996), 61 Connor, Steven, 29, 36
Carnets de Traversée Quais Quest constructions
(Charlebois/Vasselin 1989), 32–3, mutual, of bodies and spaces, 4, 20,
35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 209 21, 22, 45, 51–4, 56, 57, 59, 60,
carnival, 168, 170, 176, 181, 212 64
excess, 172 of identity, 114
medieval, 17, 165 of nature, 41
carnivalesque, 71–2, 162–4, 165, 166, see also space, constructions of
167, 169–70, 172–3, 176–7 contact improvization, 50, 140, 156
ambivalence of, 166, 168 Contact Quarterly, 147
226 Index

containment, 123, 125, 130, 133, lesbian, 22, 77–80, 89, 95

148, 153, 156, 174 diaspora, 102, 108, 112
see also bodies, spaces, subjects diasporic artists, 98, 104
corporeality, 53, 139, 143, 145, 146, diasporic immigrants, 119
150, 152, 154–5, 157, 159, 160, diasporic movements of peoples,
171, 194 112
Corsino, Nicole and Norbert, 209 diasporic spaces, 15, 22, 112
Cowie, Billy, 164, 168, 207 difference, 6, 7, 15, 22–3, 78, 80, 92,
Cross Channel (Anderson/Williams 98, 101–2, 109, 113, 114, 115,
1991), 32, 34–5, 38, 40, 41, 42, 117–18, 123, 124, 126, 129, 132,
61, 62, 207 134, 150, 151, 156–7, 170, 195,
Cunningham, Merce, 44, 68 209, 210
cyborgs, 16, 60, 64, 66, 67, 69–72, 73, bodies as markers of, 177
74 celebration of, 23, 117, 134
construction of, 113
Dancing in the Streets of London and differentiation, 134
Paris Continued in Stockholm and disability, 23, 165, 170–1, 174–5,
Sometimes Madrid (Tharp 1969), 178
47 disciplinary technologies of power –
Dandeker, Celeste, 165, 173, 174, 179 see technologies of power, 113
Dante, Alighieri, 201 discontinuity, 186, 187, 189, 190,
Dark Hours and Finer Moments (Agis 199, 202–3, 204, 205
1994), 210 disembodiment, 181
Dartington College of Arts, 49 disorientation, 190, 191, 194–5, 205
De Keersmaeker, Anne Teresa, 23, 49, displacement, 16, 22, 29, 112, 113,
176, 183, 184, 188–9, 191–2, 193, 114, 120, 122, 132, 133, 135
195, 197, 198, 200, 204–5, 208, distance, 8, 9, 13, 22, 31, 40, 41, 45,
209 84, 152, 157, 187, 191, 192, 194,
De Mey, Thierry, 188, 208 195, 204
deconstruction, 121, 123, 126, 128, Dogtown (Morris 1983), 23, 162, 165,
131, 176, 183–4, 185, 186, 190, 166, 169, 171, 172–3, 174, 176,
194–5, 199–200, 204, 205 179, 181, 182
Deleuze, Gilles, 5, 18, 51, 77, 85, 87, Dreyer, Carl Theodor, 139, 145, 149,
89, 91, 140, 141–2, 143, 147, 154, 159, 160
149–50, 151, 152–3, 154, 155–61, dualism, 31, 66, 140, 141, 142, 143
186, 202, 210, 211 dualistic thinking, 9, 10, 19
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix, Duets with Automobiles
18, 78, 79, 84, 92, 96 ( Jeyasingh/Braun 1993), 22, 45,
Denizot, Sarah, 209 97–111, 207, 209–10, 211
Derbyshire, Charlotte, 165, 174 Dunn, Judith, 44
Deroute, La (Tafel/Jean 1990), 32, 33, DV, 8, 210
35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 57, 65, 207,
209 edges, 62, 65–6, 200
Derrida, Jacques, 198–9, 201, 203 of bodies, 3, 23, 60
Descartes, René, 9, 31, 140, 142, 192 of space, 3, 23, 60, 69
see also Cartesianism of women, 80
desire, 10, 13–14, 18, 19, 22, 33, 77– Ellis Island (Monk/Rosen 1981), 46,
96 112, 113, 114, 115, 117–19,
Freudian notion of, 78 120–1, 122–31, 132–5
 Index 227

Ellis Island immigration centre, 113, theory, 7, 39, 60, 69

115, 119, 130 feminization, 64, 65
immigrants, 120, 132 of space, 210
project, 121 fixed identities, 96, 134, 153, 171
spaces of, 122, 125 fixity, 119, 163, 173, 187, 191, 195,
embodiment, 8, 31, 40, 46, 72, 87, 199
161, 209 flaneur, 50, 57
embodied subjectivity, 42, 58, 73, flesh, 23, 63, 64, 80, 84, 85, 139–52,
141, 143, 144, 148, 158, 163, 154, 157, 159, 160, 161, 163
204, 205 Florence, Penny, 5, 79
Enemy in the Figure (Forsythe 1989), fluidity, 16, 22, 29, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46,
23, 183, 186, 189–90, 192, 193, 59, 60, 62, 67, 68, 70, 73, 78, 80,
196, 197, 203, 205 88, 89, 94, 95, 96, 98, 101, 121,
Enter Achilles (Newson 1995), 210 142, 148, 150, 151, 152, 153,
erotic, the, 22, 63, 70, 82, 84 156, 161, 163, 171, 190, 199,
eroticization, 59, 63–5, 68, 71, 73, 205, 209
170 Fold, The (Deleuze, 1993), 141, 142,
Euro-crash, 33, 49, 209 150, 156
examination, 115, 127–30, 132 folded body, 150, 152
examination, medical, 124, 128 foldings, 18, 20, 140, 143, 156, 159
excess, 134, 166, 181, 185, 204 folds, 18, 23, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147,
bodily, 20 149, 151, 152, 153, 155–60, 161,
of folds, 141, 142, 143, 158 182
spatial, 20 Forsythe, William, 23, 183–205
excessive, 142, 161 Foucault, Michel, 4, 5, 9, 20, 51, 82,
bodies, 17, 23, 148, 162 113, 114, 121, 123–30, 151, 202,
flows, 182 204
movements, 165 fractals, 186, 191
overflows, 143, 171–5, 182 Freefall (Agis/Bentley 1988), 48, 209,
excessiveness, 171 210
French, Jon, 165, 174–5, 177–8, 179
Fausch, Deborah, 193, 194, 203 Freud, Sigmund, 195
Featherstonehaughs, The, 61 Friedrich, Casper David, 38
see also Anderson, Lea Fulkerson, Mary, 49
Fehlandt, Tina, 176
feminine, 36, 54, 57, 65, 85, 167 gaze, the, 12, 31, 39–40, 65, 87
codes, 93, 197 geographer’s, 30–1, 35, 38–9, 41,
excess, 211 65
gestures, 192, 197 male/masculine, 12, 13–14, 31, 39,
feminine, the, 37, 41, 140, 141, 142, 41, 42, 65
143, 152, 153, 154–5 power of, 38–40
femininity, 37, 65, 197, 211 spectator’s, 14, 66
construction of, 36, 52, 65 tourist, 39
feminism, 60, 73, 196 gender, 21–2, 27, 28, 29–31, 35–40,
feminist, 77, 113, 140, 161, 166 43, 48, 52–3, 54, 64, 69–71, 74,
architecture, 193 77, 80–1, 142, 169–70, 173, 192,
project, 12, 104 197–8, 201
theorists, 16, 29, 30, 36, 40, 45, 48, geometry, 185, 191, 201, 204, 205
50, 65, 79, 98, 189, 203 Euclidean, 189, 191, 199
228 Index

geometric 207
formations,188 hybrid, 60, 62, 64, 102, 139, 149
grids, 185, 204 existence, 100
seeing, 157, 192 identities, 110
structure, 192 see also bodies, hybrid; spaces,
Gert, Valeska, 164, 176 hybrid
Gilpin, Heidi, 190, 199, 200, 201, hybridity, 15, 17–18, 20, 22, 69, 98,
202, 204 99, 101, 102, 106, 107, 109, 111
Gilroy, Paul, 15, 16, 112, 114, 118, see also spaces, of hybridity
122, 131 hybridization, 16
Gottschild, Brenda Dixon, 116
Gough, Orlando, 99, 107 identity, 3, 7, 15, 16, 22–3, 29, 87,
Goulthorpe, Mark, 186, 203 101, 104, 106, 112, 113, 114,
Gross, Elizabeth, 149, 150, 153 124, 134, 149, 157, 161
see also Grosz, Elizabeth ambiguisation of, 160
Grosz, Elizabeth, 5, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, as process, 120–2
18, 19, 20, 46, 51, 52, 53, 57, 77, construction of, 117–23
78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, enunciations of, 120
91, 92, 95, 119, 153, 154, 155, fixed, 10
160, 211 fluid, 111, 122, 141, 150, 153
grotesque, the, 17, 18, 23, 162, formation, 112, 113
164–5, 167, 170–1, 172, 173, 175, fragmentary, 118–9, 122
177, 178 lesbian, 77
body, 162–3, 165–6, 167, 170, transitory, 88
174–5, 176, 178, 181–2 If You Couldn’t See Me (Brown 1994),
movements, 166 23, 139, 140, 143, 144, 146, 148,
realism, 17, 163, 172, 179 149, 150, 152, 153, 156–8, 161
style, 168, 179 imaginary homeland, 98, 105–6
Grotesque Dancer (Aggiss 1987 revived Imaginary Homelands (Rushdie 1991),
1998), 23, 162, 164–5, 166, 167, 98
168, 169, 171, 174, 176, 177, imagined spaces, 107
179, 207 improvization, 116, 199, 202
Guattari, Felix, 77, 86, 89, 91, 155, in-between bodily fluids, 153
186 in-between spaces, 4, 14–17, 18, 22,
46, 60, 77, 87, 94–5, 97, 101,
Haraway, Donna, 16, 40–1, 42, 60, 102, 110, 111, 112, 113, 134,
64, 66, 67, 69–73, 74 161, 184, 202, 205
Harris, Rennie, 116–17 in-between, the, 154
Holbein, Hans, 154 in-betweenness, 113
Holliday, Billie, 16 inscription, bodily, 20, 51, 54, 57, 64,
home, 50, 52, 58, 98–9, 103, 104, 82, 98, 107, 127, 130
105–6, 107, 108, 110, 111, 119 inscriptive processes, 121
homely places, 105 inside/outside, 3, 9, 10, 17–20, 36,
Homeward Bound (Spanton 1997), 78, 44, 45–6, 50, 54, 89, 91, 92, 107,
81–2, 84–5, 86–7, 95, 207 110, 133, 134, 139, 143, 147–8,
hooks, bell, 113 149, 153, 154, 158, 161, 167,
horizon, 28, 38, 66 173, 181, 189
House, The, 115 bodies, 21, 23, 205
Huilmand, Roxanne, 43, 49, 51–4, 57, bodily borders, 183
 Index 229

inside/outside – continued Kael, Pauline, 145

body boundaries, 162 Kahlo, Frida, 170–1, 174
body interfaces, 165 Kaprow, Allan, 44
body/space borderlines, 182 Kent, Sarah, 36, 37
borders, 196 Kolb, Wolfgang, 43, 49, 53, 207
boundaries, 182 Kristeva, Julia, 17, 140–1, 143, 145,
merging, 95 153, 154–5, 160, 161, 166, 171–3,
spaces, 21, 23, 49 196, 211
intensities, 18, 79, 80, 81, 84, 90, 91,
96, 160 Lacan, Jacques, 11, 79, 195, 196
interconnectivity, 16, 18, 21, 22, 72, Lament of the Empress (Bausch 1989),
78, 84, 85, 89, 99, 100, 104, 110, 8, 9–10, 11–12, 13, 15, 16, 17,
111, 172, 178, 193, 205, 206 18, 19, 39, 45, 209, 210
interfaces, 19, 46, 81, 95, 104 Land Jäger (Schneider 1990), 32, 34,
between bodies, 18, 77, 83 35, 37, 41, 42, 209
between bodies and cities, 58 landscape, 33, 35, 37, 42, 62, 64–5
between bodies and coastal Last Supper, The (1498), 139, 145, 146,
environments, 73 153, 160
body/space, 78, 80 Lefebvre, Henri, 4, 5, 11–13, 20, 30–1,
inside/outside, 17–20, 165 43, 56, 59, 63, 71, 81, 200
Irigaray, Luce, 19, 39, 77, 78, 79, 80, Leibniz, Gottfried, Wilhelm, 141–2,
84, 85, 87, 89, 92, 93, 95, 196, 147, 155
197 Leonardo da Vinci, 139, 146
lesbian performance, 93
Jam (Tharp 1967), 48 see also bodies, desire
Jameson, Frederic, 5, 29 Libeskind, Daniel, 185, 190, 193, 196,
Jean, Roderigue, 33, 207 200, 202–3, 204
Jewish Museum, Berlin, 190, 196, see also Jewish Museum, Berlin
202–3 libidinal space, 23
see also Libeskind, Daniel Limb’s Theorem (Forsythe,1990), 186,
Jeyasingh, Shobana, 22, 97–111, 207, 187
209–10, 211 linearity
Joan (Anderson/Williams 1994), 23, explosion of, 190, 195, 205
139, 140, 142, 143, 144–5, 148–9, of the classical body, 199
152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 158, of logical structures, 200
159, 160, 161, 207 of perspective, 191, 196
Joan of Arc, 23, 150 Lingis, Alphonso, 129
Johnson, Kwesi, 165, 174, 179 linkages
Jones, Bill T., 144, 157, 211 between bodies, 79, 89, 91
Jones, Stuart, 165 in relation to lesbian desire, 95
Jonzi D, 22, 112, 114–7, 118, 120, Livet, Anne, 45
121–2, 129, 131–2, 133, 135, 207 locatedness in space/time, 192,
jouissance, 154, 211 195
Joyce, Heather, 82, 92, 93, 94 London Contemporary Dance School,
Judson Dance Theater, 44, 50, 147 115
Judson Memorial Church, 44 Longo, Jovair, 145
Judson Gallery, 45 Lorraine, Tamsin, 79, 87, 96
Just Before (De Keersmaeker 1997), Lovell, Thomas, 186
192 Lyotard, Jean-François, 209
230 Index

Lyrikal Fearta, 115 migrants, 38, 42

see also Jonzi D see also bodies, migrant
Miller, Graeme, 145
machinic mimicry, 128, 131–2, 170, 171, 175,
alliances, 79, 90 176
assemblages, 88–92, 95 mind see binary body/mind
connections, 80, 85–6 mirror stage, 195
enunciations, 92 Mlle Victorine en costume d’Espada,
Madden, Drostan, 148 (1862), 79
Making of Maps ( Jeyasingh 1992/3), Monnaie, La, 188
101, 108, 110 Monk, Meredith, 22, 44, 45–7, 50,
Man Walking Down the Side of the 112, 114–5, 123, 128, 129
Building (Brown 1969), 48 Monk by the Sea, The (1808–10), 38
Manet, Edouard, 79 Morphologies (1996–98), 210
maps and mapping, 5, 27, 29, 36–7, Morris, Mark, 23, 162, 165, 169–70,
40, 65, 68, 101, 152, 191, 205, 172, 179, 182
209, 211 Morris, William, 193
marginalization, 105, 164 multicentricity, 199
marginality, 113, 163 multiplicity, 18, 56, 70, 79–80, 88,
margins, 36, 113 91, 92, 141–2, 156, 158, 163,
Mark Morris Dance Company, 165 189
Marks, Victoria, 2, 207 Mulvey, Laura, 5, 12, 39, 65
masculine, the, 140, 143, 155, 167 Muurwerk (Huilmand/Kolb 1987), 43,
Cartesian subject, 156, 161 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51–4, 57,
codes, 93 106, 207
gaze, 65, 94
knowledge, 31 nationality, 119
mode of thinking, 36 nature, 37, 38, 40–1, 42, 64–5, 155
perspective, 39, 41, 42, 65, 189 negative space, 202
public spaces, 97 Newson, Lloyd, 210
qualities, 152 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 51
viewpoint, 38, 184 Nodine, Rick, 145
masculinity, 31, 37, 203, 209 nomadism, 27, 99, 104, 110
masculinization of thought, 142, 151, see also subjectivity, nomadic
152, 157
Massey, Doreen, 5, 29, 30, 35, 36 object positions, 93
materiality see bodies, corporeality, objectification, 39, 40, 41, 66, 94,
flesh 123, 126, 128, 144, 149, 157–
McDonagh, Don, 210 8
Medley (Tharp 1969), 48 objects
merging beings as, 198
of bodies and space, 3 body as object of science, 150–1
of/with bodies and architecture, constructed as, 118
191, 192 of desire, 93
of self and world, 169 of the masculine gaze, 39–40, 42
of spaces and subjects, 204 viewed as, 45
see also boundaries, blurred ocularcentrism, 198, 204
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 19 off-balance, 187, 194, 199
migration, 30, 32 Oldenburg, Claes, 44
 Index 231

One Two Three (Tharp 1967), 48 phallocentrism, 198, 204

Ono, Yoko, 165, 169, 172, 176 phallus, 196–7
Opal Loop (Brown 1980), 158 Picasso, Pablo, 12
openness, 200 place, 15, 28, 31, 35, 38, 42, 50, 51,
of the double body, 168 54, 55, 56, 57, 108, 113, 114,
of the grotesque body, 162, 166, 117–18, 120, 122–3, 211
171 Plato, 210, 211
of the subject, 173–4 plural sexuality, 79
origins of identity, 114, 117–19 polycentricity, 189–90, 199, 201, 203–
orthogonal space, 190 4
other, the, 28, 37, 38, 41, 78, 89, 117, polymorphous
157, 192 figures, 199
othering, 117–18, 132 perversity, 80, 86, 92–4
otherness, 125, 141, 157, 195, 202 subjectivity, 74
constructions of, 42 positive space, 202
others, 54, 73, 113, 118, 120, 132–4 post-colonial
Out on the Windy Beach (Anderson artist, 132
1998), 22, 59–74, 168, 210 criticism, 29
Outside/In (Marks/Williams 1995), 2– subject, 117
4, 17, 207 theories, 7, 16, 17, 98
theorists, 15, 112, 127, 133
Palermo Palermo (Bausch 1990), 209 postmodern
panopticism, 125, 128 theory, 5, 6, 7, 27, 29
panopticon, 125, 203, 204 postmodernism, 36, 163, 212
Panzen, Jerry, 115, 123 postmodernity, 71, 209
Paradise (1588), 159 poststructuralism, 14, 29, 184, 186,
Parker, Alice, 87 198
Parody, 63, 93, 163, 165, 166, 167, post-structuralist
175–8, 181, 197, 204, 209 theory, 5, 7, 8, 20
PARTS (Performing Arts Research and poststructuralists, 77, 140, 151
Training Studio), 188 Powell, Sandy, 62, 69
Paxton, Steve, 49–50, 146–7, 148, Power, Lucille, 81, 83, 88–90, 93, 94,
149, 152, 156, 157, 160 207
perception, 9, 45, 52, 56, 140, 141, presence/absence binary, 10, 78, 92,
148, 187, 189, 193–4, 201, 205 95
corporeal, 157 proprioception, 194–5, 199, 201, 204
embodied, 46, 48
of the audience, 47, 48 Quinn, Marc, 210
Perfect Moment (Anderson/Williams
1992), 62 Rabelais, 162–3, 166–7, 169, 174,
performativity, 15, 80–1, 89, 197, 210 177
periphery, 36 Rabelais and his World, 162
permeability see body, permeability of rap music, 22, 112, 114, 116, 118,
Perron, Wendy, 156 120, 121, 131, 132, 133
perspectival spaces, 191 Rauschenberg, Robert, 144, 210
perspective, 8, 10, 11–13, 14, 19, 31, Recent Ruins (Monk 1979), 115, 126
35, 48, 107, 157, 184, 185–6, rectilinear, 201
187, 189–190, 196, 198, 199, rectitude, 201
200–1, 203 re-embodiment, 181, 182
232 Index

reinscription, 53–4, 56, 57, 106, 109 Soja, Edward, 125, 132
Rembrandt, 139, 150, 151 Solo (Forsythe 1985), 186, 194–5,
see also ‘The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. 199–200, 203
Tulp’ space, 1–6, 8–11, 12–13, 28, 30–1,
Renaissance, The, 22, 23, 139, 143, 35–8, 45, 56, 101, 113, 125, 183,
146, 154, 159, 163, 180, 189, 198 184, 194, 205, 210
representation, 6, 7, 87, 102, 184 ambivalent, 15, 21, 163
Requel, The, (Jonzi, D 1997), 115 architectural, 23, 185, 204
Reservaat, (Van Gool 1988), 78, 81, as a bounded entity, 210
82, 83, 85–6, 88, 91, 94–5, 207, as constructed/construction of, 4,
210 12, 13, 16, 27, 35, 47, 50–1, 53,
resistance, 111, 113–14, 124, 126, 59, 64, 67, 68, 78, 107
129, 131, 134 decentered and fragmented, 191
Resto, Guillermo, 176 heterogeneous, 190
rhizomatic experimentation, 186, 191 homogeneous, 190
Roof Piece (Brown 1971), 48 liminal, 60, 113, 134
Rosas Dance Company, 49, 188, 208 limits of, 3, 60, 66, 67
Rosas Danst Rosas (De Keersmaeker nostalgic, 36–7
1983 film version 1997), 23, 45, of bodies, 81
183, 184, 191, 193, 194, 195, organization of, 184
197, 203, 205, 208 private/public, 94–5, 101
Rose, Gillian, 5, 27, 30–1, 35, 38, 65 private, 10, 15, 19, 46, 50, 52
Rosen, Bob, 115, 211 public, 10, 15, 19, 31, 46, 48, 50,
Roy, Sanjoy, 102 52, 61, 88, 95
Rushdie, Salman, 98 static, 202
transparent, 30, 31, 35–6, 39, 41,
Said, Edward, 133 42
sameness, 117, 150, 151, 156–7, 170 urban, 55–6
Savigliano, Marta, 82 spaces, 122
Schneider, Stefan, 34, 207 animated, 94
scopic regime, 198 between borders and boundaries,
self/other binary, 10–11, 13, 14, 22, 104
31, 78, 94, 95, 96, 117, 142, 143, between dancers, 3–4, 7, 82, 88–89,
150, 154, 167, 169, 173 95, 110
self-subjectification, 125 between dancers and architecture,
separation from the world, 157, 184, 109
192–5, 199 between parts of bodies, 82, 84
sexuality, 3, 7, 19, 23, 59, 77, 81, 93, blurred, 64
166, 169–71, 181, 209, 210 coastal, 59–76
Singh-Barmi, Kuldip, 165, 166, 173, hybrid, 14, 98, 101
174–5, 179 interior and exterior, 94
Smit, Pépé, 81, 208 of ambiguity, 14, 17, 20
Smith, Sue, 165 of becoming, 14, 202
Smithereens, The (Anderson 1999), 62 of consumption, 71
Snaith, Yolande, 23, 43, 49, 57, 139, outdoor, 6–7, 27, 34, 47, 59
140, 145–6, 150, 157, 160, 207, positive, 202
211 see also city spaces; urban spaces
Snapshots from the City (Oldenburg, Spanton, Sarah, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86,
1959), 44 87, 88, 90, 93, 207
 Index 233

spatial embodied, 20, 41, 42, 58, 74, 142,

composition, 188 143, 158, 161, 204
containment, 114, 132–4 female, 104, 106, 111, 140, 143
division, 133 female feminist, 99, 103
experience, 189, 195 feminine, 57, 158, 161
interfaces, 77 fluid, 6, 41, 62, 111, 134, 163
linkages, 91–22 multiple, 163, 169, 209
operation, 134 nomadic, 16, 98, 99, 102–4, 106,
organization, 126 108–9, 110, 111
texts, 184 non-fixity and instability of, 18
texts of dance, 183 subjects, 118, 123, 125
treatment, 113 contained, 113, 171, 204
spatialities of subjectivity, 206 Sulcas, Rosalyn, 187, 192, 193, 198
spatiality, 90–1 surface(s), 80, 83, 100, 105, 156, 160,
spatialization 181
of desire, 77–96 surveillance, 118, 125, 127–8, 129
of subjectivity, 206 camera, 125, 134
Spier, Steven, 189
Split Solo (Brown 1974), 158 tableaux, 115, 119, 129, 146, 151,
Step in Time Girls (Snaith/Braun 153, 157, 159, 161, 181, 211
1988), 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49–50, Tafel, Tedi, 33, 207
54–6, 57, 106 technologies of power, 9, 114, 121,
Steptext (Forsythe 1984), 200 123–30, 135
Street Dance (Childs 1964), 45, 47, territorialization, 114, 132–4
210 Tharp, Twyla, 44, 47, 48, 53
Street, The (Oldenburg 1959), 44 The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928),
Stride (Tharp 1965), 48 139
subject, the, 154, 184, 192, 196, 198 Thelma and Louise (1991), 29
ambiguity of, 17, 55, 173–4 Tintoretto, 159
ambivalent, 182 Topic II (Denizot 1992), 209–10
in process, 171, 174, 204 touch, 2, 19–20, 81, 83–5, 88, 90, 93,
open, 174 95, 102–3, 105, 109, 110
positions, 6, 93 touching, 77, 79, 80, 89, 92, 94, 96,
rational unifed, 9, 142, 143, 167, 192, 196–7
171, 184, 185, 186, 192 transformation, 18, 72, 77, 79, 80,
subject/object binary, 78, 87, 92, 85–7, 89, 91, 95, 130, 140, 146,
95, 96, 143, 149 147, 150, 161
visual and spatial construction of, transgression, 165, 169–70, 179, 182
196 of boundaries, 163, 168, 196
subjected bodies, 129 transmobility, 99, 104, 110
subjectification, 121, 124–6, 130, 131 transparency, 37, 40, 65
subjection, 6, 124, 128 Trigg, Russell, 145, 150, 211
subjectivity, 6–7, 11, 20, 27, 42, 117, two lips, 19, 78, 79–80, 85, 89, 95
140, 205, 206
ambiguity of, 154, 163, 173–4 urban, 35, 96
constructions of, 4, 6–7, 9, 11, 19– environment, 45, 46, 52, 56
20, 22, 23, 41, 43, 45, 56, 59, landscape, 107
64, 77, 124, 143, 184, 195–8, sensibility, 44, 47
206 spaces, 50–1, 55, 56
234 Index

urban – continued visualization, the logic of, 12, 14, 19,

surfaces, 48 23, 31, 144, 157–8, 182, 184–5,
urbanity, 23 191–2, 195, 198, 199, 200, 204,
205
van der Velde, Henry, 188, 191, 193, visualization, 10, 12, 37, 189, 198,
194, 196 200–4
Van Gool, Clara, 81, 208, 210 visualization of space, 184
Van Kerkhoven, Marianne, 191, 197
Vandekeybus, Wim, 209 Walking on the Wall (Brown 1971), 48
Vasselin, Harold, 32, 207 Willems, Thom, 186, 187
Vesalius, Andreas, 146, 149, 150–1 Williams, Margaret, 2, 34, 144, 207
Vessel (Monk 1971), 46–7 Wilson, Kepple and Betty’s Sand
Virginia Minx at Play (Claid 1993), 78, Dance, 63, 71–2
81–2, 84, 92, 95, 208 Wimbledon School of Art, 211
Virilio, Paul, 190 Wolff, Janet, 5, 27, 29, 37, 40, 50
visual continuum, 189, 191, 195, 203
visual, dominance of the, 196–7, 198, Yippeee!!! (Anderson 2006), 210
202 You Can See Us (Brown 1995), 158,
visual markers, 198 211