Women’s subjectivity in the mirror of non-classical stage dance of 20th and 21st centuries

Abstract

The article considers how the concept of woman’s subjectivity brought into focus in feminist critics of the 20th century was evoked in non-classical dance of the 20th and 21st centuries. The authors’ goal is to prove that artistic experiences of modern dance, followed by contemporary dance, became the productive form of woman’s writing, the most fruitful “location” where woman’s subjectivity was manifested, from the feminist theorists’ point of view. The authors saw their principal task as examining the history of the interest that outstanding choreographers of the 20th century developed in seeking woman’s subjectivity “buried” in the body. The methodological frameworks integrated historical and typological, philosophical, culturological, deconstructive, and gender analyses. The article distinguishes several major trends, they are: the Delsarte’s American studies of expressive body acting of the suffragist epoch (Loïe Fuller, Isadora Duncan, Mod Allan), German expressionist dance, American modern dance and the Russian rhythmic and plastic dance of the first half of the 20th century (Marie Wiegmann, Martha Graham); the European Dance Theatre movement of the 1970s, that was the period of the second wave of feminism (Pina Bausch). It is stated that at the close of the 20th century and the early 21st century the brightest examples of the discussed theme are the artistic works deconstructing the concept of “woman’s subjectivity”. The analysis of the world famous performance “Co(te)lette” made by Anna van den Broek, a Dutch choreographer, presents a clear illustration of this observation. Then, using the example of creative works by Marie Chouinard (Canada), Mats Ek (Sweden), Matthew Bourne (Great Britain), the authors show how the plastic discourse of contemporary dance is gradually transferred from the area of feminist rhetoric to the field studying various gender perversions. In conclusion, as the authors stance, the example of Ivo Dimchev performances demonstrates that in contemporary dance the theme of woman’s subjectivity blurs and the attention focuses on the man with “strange’ (queer) gender identity, with floating unstable uncertain feeling of belonging to being. Refs 19.