In class today, I couldn’t help but draw a comparison from the emergence of the grotesque as a genre to the development of modern dance as a style, both of which being a deviation from the tradition. For those of you who don’t know the history of modern dance, the simplified version is that basically it was created as a rebellion or rejection of the strict regiment of ballet. What made me think of modern dance as a parallel to the grotesque is the point that Ken made that the Old Testament is about purity and protecting people from the unclean, and then out came the grotesque genre and it was all that the Old Testament was trying to repress or ignore. Also, another point that Ken made which was that the content of the grotesque is lacking in classical aesthetic of beauty, it introduces a different kind of aesthetic, and that it is a deviation from the norm. This is the same for modern dance; it strays from the classical world of ballet. It was created intentionally to rebel against that classical tradition.
Dancers like Martha Graham, a must-know for all contemporary or modern dancers, were pioneers in the creation of modern dance. Graham even made created her own technique which is commonly used still today (I draw from it when I teach modern, myself, and so did my modern teachers). My assumption is that observers of the evolution of modern dance and those who witnessed the emergence of the grotesque as an art genre would have reacted in the same way: confused, shocked, and possibly uncomfortable. As a species, we are not necessarily immediately accepting of new things that deviate from the classical traditions we are accustomed to. A dancer or choreographer who studied classical ballet for decades probably looked at a modern dancer’s flexed foot and contorted angles and completely disapproved of it because it wasn’t en pointe and there were no arabesques or other lines that are attributed to classical ballet. And the same situation must have occurred for those observing the grotesque for the first time; the distortion and presence of “inside things” on the outside would have repulsed viewers upon immediate sight.
I have included two clips, one of classical ballet and one of Martha Graham’s modern dance technique to show just how much of a deviation occurred from the traditional classic of a ballet such as Swan Lake to what will be the always-progressing style of dance that is classified as modern. Enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY4Y1gTO9HE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieMO1Z0UhGQ
I really enjoy this comparison! Because our relationship with the world is altered from those formerly established during the years where classic art and thus classical ballet rose out of, this new form of dance is the only means of expression that subsequently make sense in our newly conceptualized world. Order and cohesion no longer correlate with nature and so classic art no longer pertains to this sense of organization. Not being overly familiar with the evolution of art during the years leading up to modernism, your example of dance further synthesized these concepts in my mind.
The metamorphosis of the body is truly the carnival grotesque. As I watched the first video I noticed that at one point all the ballet dancers were linked together by there arms and moving their legs in harmony. This creeped me out to a new level, for brought flash backs of the human centipede. In a way, these dancers had transformed into a new living body with multiple body parts, which is very similar to some of the works of Dali.
I also want to mention that for some odd reason I immediately thought of Carson’s poem “Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions” because at one point Carson says, “Rocking themselves down,/ crazy slow, some ballet term for it-” which is exactly what these ballet dancers are preforming.
I never would have thought of ballet to be grotesque, but you made me see it in a whole new way. Excellent blog post!
This is a great comparison. With artistic concepts and the dancers physical talents and abilities, one can form the grotesque out of dance. This also made me think of theatre. Absurdism is a style of theatre that one can perceive as grotesque just like modern dance. And like modern dance, absurdism breaks the contemporary rules. It takes the standard, naturalistic conventions of plot, characterization, and thematic structure and ignore or distort them in order to convey the irrational nature of the absurd reality. It is interesting to think of these two art forms as grotesque not in the obvious way, but the artistic way of breaking the contemporary rules.