Liberation from Plot in Dance, Film, and Theater

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores how traditional constructs of plot in dance, film, and theater can be redrawn or eliminated to enlarge possibility, here in response to violence and repression in the surrounding world. Nijinsky, Sokurov, and the Ukrainian-Polish playwrights under discussion create works foregrounding the particularity of their art forms and denying plot the role of primary structuring element it enjoyed for centuries. This invigorates the medium and its receivers. In “Countering the Plot: Kairotic Force (Sila) in Nijinsky’s Literary Choreography (1919)” Nicole Svobodny describes how, in his Theory of Dance project, the dancer-choreographer confronts plot in its meanings of conspiracy and narrative with juxtapositions of movement and stillness and with “inner force.” For Nijinsky, resisting sequential temporality of plot becomes analogous to resisting personal disaster and world catastrophe. In “(Un)plotting Tyranny in Aleksandr Sokurov’s Faust (2011)” Diane Nemec Ignashev shows Sokurov relying on parametric narration – a stylistic system – rather than plot to structure the film. This shift of attention away from character action enables Sokurov to use Goethe’s Faust (Part I) to speak about European fascism. In “Plotless in Wartime: Currents of Polish-Ukrainian Theater in Poland, 2/24/2022” Monika Greenleaf uses Hamela’s film Rear View, the black comedy A Kitten Peed on My Banner, co-created and co-performed by Ukrainian and Polish actors, Krystyna Janda’s live/photo-collaged monodrama Notes from Exile and Agnieszka Przepiórska’s groundbreaking women’s “biotheater” to explore contemporary theatrical responses to war. Born of the insufficiency of traditional plots, these responses engage the immediacy of an experiential – rather than narrated – here-and-now.

Sub Unit

• Arts II: Music, Theater, Performance Studies

Chair

• Carol J. Any, Trinity College

Papers

• Countering the Plot: Kairotic Force (Sila) in Nijinsky's Literary Choreography (1919) - Nicole C. Svobodny, Washington U in Saint Louis

• (Un)plotting Tyranny in Aleksandr Sokurov's 'Faust' - Diane M. Nemec Ignashev, Carleton College

• Plotless in Wartime: Currents of Polish-Ukrainian Theater in Poland, February 24, 2022-Present - Monika Greenleaf, Stanford U

Discussant

• Olga Peters Hasty, Princeton U