Finding
While some might dispute the validity of these claims, or at least contend that they explain only part of the story, Chazin-Bennahum deserves considerable credit as one of the first dance scholars to articulate these kinds of relationships between dance and society.
Paper
Victory Dances: The Life of Fred Berk , by Ingber Judith Brin. Tel Aviv: Israel Dance Library, 1985. Distributed by Emmett Publishing, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 116 pp. $18.95 paperbound.
Citations: 1
Full textAbstract
emotion. The author proposes, for example, that the abolition of royal restrictions on theatres concerning genres of performance allowed choreographers to experiment with the new vocabularies of pantomime, acrobatics, and folk dance. She also suggests that the ideology of political and social freedom that dominated the period extended to costume reforms that, in turn, enabled closer contact between partners and a more full-bodied exploration of space. Furthermore, the violent and impassioned dramas occurring in the streets gave audiences a taste for terrifying and passionate actions on stage as well as a preference for characters and plots drawn from the middle-class. Finally, woman as Revolutionary heroine, as liberty, and as a symbol of France itself, lent the image of the ballerina greater prestige in the years following the Revolution. While some might dispute the validity of these claims, or at least contend that they explain only part of the story, Chazin-Bennahum deserves considerable credit as one of the first dance scholars to articulate these kinds of relationships between dance and society. For, as much as we intuitively apprehend dance as an embodiment of cultural beliefs and values, it remains difficult for the dance scholar, as for most scholars focussing on the arts, to theorize art functioning as a cultural system. Dance in the Shadow of the Guillotine reflects the difficulty of this project in its chapter on livrets expressing Revolutionary spirit, where the author inventories the following kinds of relationships between dance and politics: street dances like the Carmagnole that were emblematic of Revolutionary fervor; ballets of the ancien regime as an instrument of monarchical power; the role of censorship before and during the Revolution; dancers' eyewitness accounts of fighting and unrest during the Revolution; dancers' attempts to reorganize administrative structures of the Opera just prior to the Revolution; dancers' working conditions and salaries under the various revolutionary governments; and even the role of dancers fighting as soldiers or entertaining soldiers in the wars abroad. Dance is presented here as a medium capable of expressing patriotic sentiment, as a propagandistic tool, as an institution with its own structures of power, and as a diversionary entertainment. And these different political functions for dance remain undifferentiated throughout the text. Still, by discussing so many connections between dance and political life, Chazin-Bennahum opens the way for further research and further theorizing about the political in dance and the politics of dance. In her conclusion the author claims:
Authors
S. Charnow, Judith Brin Ingber
Journal
Dance Research Journal