Dance as Plastic Language

• In Event: In Search for a Universal Language: Intermedial Communication Systems in Early Soviet Culture

Abstract

The focus of my presentation is on the Soviet perception and reception of “body culture” during the 1920s – from plastic dance to rhythmic gymnastics, from time and motion studies to nude performances, and from gymnastics to mass parades. I shall be giving particular attention to the Choreological Laboratory at the Russian Academy of Artistic Sciences (founded by Vasilii Kandinsky in Moscow in 1921) which investigated how movement could be transcribed in its numerous kinetic extensions -- gesture, mime, dance, gymnastics, emotional expression. I shall examine how the Laboratory made recourse to various instruments and methodologies, the purpose of which was to describe and promote an “Art of Movement" and which was to have culminated in a new language of dance.

Author

• Nicoletta Misler, U of Naples (Italy)