“Only the Dance is Sure”: Dance and Constructions of Gender in Modernist Poetry
1This essay focuses on some of the central innovations in early 20th century dance in relation to their influence on Anglo-American modernist poetry. Arguing that dance is an important source of inspiration that shapes the imagery in many works of T. S. Eliot, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, and W. B. Yeats, it is also tied to constructions of gender, which engage with modernist aesthetics and reflect the body politics of the late Victorian era. Striking is the complex use of dance as a metaphor which epitomizes the tension between abstractness – an androgynous ‘impersonality’ – and physicality, i.e. a sexualized femininity or masculinity. Noticeable is an ambivalent split between celebrating the body and de-humanizing it, between affirming its sensuality and an emerging spiritual ideal. Whereas this is most obvious in Eliot’s and Yeats’ poetry, Crane and Williams illustrate the search for an ‘authentic’ form of expression, a new freedom and realism which is also represented in a more dynamic, rhythmical language. Although the poets differ in their symbolic use of and attitude towards dance, they bear literary testimony to its power and portray it in joyful, celebratory, erotic, or more spiritual, agonized tones.
2The study of literature and dance is a slowly emerging interdisciplinary field. [1]Although the relationship between poetry and dance can be seen as a very old one, studies often tend to focus on 19th century European literature, especially French symbolism (e.g. Valéry, Mallarmé, Gautier). The 1970s and 1980s brought a temporary increase of interest in critical interdisciplinary readings which have recently broadened in scope and gained new momentum. An example is Cheryl A. Wilson’s <i>Literature and Dance in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Jane Austen to the New Woman</i> (2009). This study fills a scholarly gap, while also contributing to the fields of literary study, dance history, and gender studies. Yet, it is mainly concerned with investigating the interaction between the novel and social dance (e.g. waltz, quadrille), not with theatrical dance. A number of recent PhD theses also document the growing body of scholarship on literature and dance or music, see, for instance, Coulter (2004), Epstein (2008). As it presents a vast realm of inquiry, which could stretch across highly diverse styles, genres, temporalities and localities, the analysis is limited to the first two decades of the 20th century which can be seen as “the era when dancing started to play a new and more spectacular role in art and culture in general” (Nényei 27). Dance here refers to two distinct emerging traditions, the new European theatrical ballet and American modern dance, which were both the results of international, trans-Atlantic artistic collaborations. This excludes earlier and later developments of styles like folk dance, jazz, social dance, hip-hop, contemporary dance, or musical theatre. It also does not refer to the German modern dance (‘Ausdruckstanz’), a movement which only reached its height well after WW I and is thus less significant in its coinciding with literary modernism. Furthermore, the decision to concentrate on Eliot, Crane, Williams, and Yeats, arguably some of the central representatives of Anglo-American modernism, confines the study of the construction of gender to a specific male perspective. Yet the works of these poets allows a complex engagement with images of masculinity/ femininity and even hetero/homosexuality. Before taking a look at the imagery in some of their poems, the relation between dance and gender as well as between dance and poetry and its cultural, political and aesthetic implications at the time will be outlined.
3Dance, as an art form, is intrinsically physical and inseparable from visual representation – and thus also from the perpetuation or challenge of gender roles. Yet, considering the existing body of critical studies of the relation between sex and imagery in the visual arts, photography, or advertising, as well as the numerous books written on individual male and female dancers, the analysis of the cultural construction of gender in dance is neglected in comparison. As reasons for this, Judith Lynne Hanna, who draws attention to this phenomenon, names the persisting prudery in (American) society and the fact that dance continues to fight for its place as a ‘proper’ art form (xv). Particularly because dance is a hard to pin down, non-verbal form of expression, it remains, she argues, largely “out-of-awareness” (xvi). Nonetheless, it is hard to dispute that “dance, which requires the body for its realization, often attracts attention to the dancer her-/himself, but more often it calls attention to one of the two types of human bodies – male or female” (xiv). Generally, dance can be seen to exemplify the performative nature of gender in Judith Butler’s sense. It is inevitably tied to the crucial question of perception. For the trained gazes of contemporary audiences of theatrical dance, costumes, musical themes, and, above all, movement, remain historically evolved and politically conditioned markers of gender roles, which are, of course, often consciously transgressed.
4Whether or not one agrees with Hanna’s generalizing description of dance as a major vessel through which people learn what it means to be stereotypically female (“usually more passive, gentle”) or male (“more aggressive, bold, and energetic” (96)), it is interesting that she points out: “The contest and complementarity of the sexes, the power of women, and even aspects of androgyny are played out in performance. Men may pay homage to women even as they attempt to appropriate their powers” (ibid). The latter aspect is important to consider with regard to the works of the male poets under scrutiny here, in particular Yeats’. Moreover, it shows how dance can be a means of liberation and defy sexual norms. Stressing the trans-cultural dimension of dance as well as its intrinsic connection to sexuality (cf. also Ellis 1983), Hanna explains further:
Around the world [...] Dance is embedded in divine sanction for sex and erotic fantasy, in sex role typecasting in rites of passage, in gender metaphors for movement, and in sexual instruction through dance. Thus dance parodies and appeases the powerful and powerless in different realms of life and even suggests the reversal of roles. (xvii)
Considering the argument above, it might seem surprising that the study of dance and gender is marginalized in criticism, as dance is arguably the ‘purest’ expression of the body. Puritan hang-ups might play a role, but more crucially it comes down to the problem of ‘textual’ evidence. Performance reviews, photographs, and videos are only a weak substitute for the dynamics of live-performance; the split between the study and its object remains a very wide one in dance studies. Therefore, shifting the focus onto the representation of dance in another medium, poetry, allows an analysis of the construction of images in a more durable form.
5In general, the influence of the developments of early modern dance on the literary imagination is also underrepresented in academic criticism.[2]An important early essay is Frank Kermode’s “Poet and Dancer before Diaghilev” (1963). Excellent and detailed studies of the relationship between dance and modernist poetry, which deepened my own interest in the subject, are Terri A. Mester’s <i>Movement and Modernism: Yeats, Eliot, Lawrence, Williams, and Early Twentieth Century Dance</i> (1997); and Audrey T. Rodgers’ <i>The Universal Drum. Dance Imagery in the Poetry of Eliot, Crane, Roethke, and Williams</i> (1979). For adding a particular focus on gender to the discussion see Alexandra Kolb’s <i>Performing Femininity: Dance and Literature in German Modernism</i> (2009), although she is more concerned with the German scene, and Amy Koritz’s <i>Gendering Bodies/Performing Art: Dance and Literature in Early Twentieth-Century British Culture</i> (1995). For a broader context see, for instance, Louis Horst’s and Carroll Russell’s <i>Modern Dance Forms in Relation to the Other Modern Arts</i> (1961). Yet Terri A. Mester argues that
dance did contribute to the character of literary modernism, whether it was through ritualized communal dancing or attending theatrical performances. The latter included those of the Ballets Russes, which heralded as a new confluence of the arts […] as well as the art dances of Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, and Isadora Duncan, the precursors of a radically new language of movement form. (25)
The innovations in the dance referred to here, e.g. the unusual rhythms and angular movements in Vaslav Nijinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps, Duncan’s uninhibited femininity, or the spectacular stage machinery of Fuller’s solo dances, mesmerized the contemporary audience. The performances and performers of the time, as Frank Kermode claims, also captured a whole generation of poets, “[who] regularly fell in love with them” (4). Close thematic links and stylistic convergences between dance and poetry can be found in the return to archaic myths and primitive rituals, the image of the femme fatale or fragile, the interest in non-Western (e.g. Asian, Indian, Egyptian) art forms, as well as in the search for a new, symbolic language which, in analogy to the break with the formal restrictions of classical ballet, meant a turn away from the lyrical dictum of the 19th century. This coincides with a rebellion against Victorian morality and an affirmation of sensuality and the human body. Generally, many poets perceived dance as a “mirror for their own preoccupations” (Mester 3). In the new modern ballet of Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes[3]The Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev founded the <i>Ballets Russes </i>in 1909, and it was to become one of the most influential dance companies of the 20th century. Originally resident at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris, it had a spectacular opening season in 1910, making its London debut in 1911. The only tour of America took place from 1916-1917. In the two decades of its existence until Diaghilev’s death in 1929, the company performed works by choreographers like Michel Fokine, Leonide Massine, Vaslav Nijinsky, Bronislava Nijinska, and also by a young George Balanchine, who was latter to become the founder of what is nowadays the New York City Ballet. What marks the ground-breaking importance of the <i>Ballet Russes </i>is its collaboration of contemporary avant-garde artists; it brought an exceptional artistic synthesis arguably never repeated before and after. Apart from the dancers and choreographers named above, this included composers like Claude Debussy, Eric Satie, Igor Stravinsky, and artists and painters like Alexandre Benois, Jean Cocteau, Pablo Picasso, and León Bakst. In a way, the<i> Ballet Russes</i> realized the idea of Wagner’s ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ and saw the creation of a new, vital ballet theatre which reflected crucial changes in society and in the other art forms. The literature on the <i>Ballet Russes</i> is extensive; for a brief introduction see Walter Sorrel’s “The Diaghilev Era” (1980) or Richard Buckle’s study of <i>Nijinsky</i> (1987) which gives detailed background of the companies’ works and performances. Cf. also Havelock Ellis (1923) for a historical outline of the European strands of dance tradition and the revolutionizing power of Diaghilev and Fokine. Eliot found the realization of an artistic ideal, which combined tradition and experimental change, technical perfection and ascetic discipline. Meanwhile Crane and Williams saw in Modern Dance a more natural form of movement and the expression of an authentic, American experience. All in all, one can observe the emergence of a poetical-political aesthetics in which dance played a central role: “They saw that the substance of dance, its primitive wholeness, harked back to a simpler, less fragmented time than their own. Yet they also saw that the form of the dance, its impersonality, was modern” (Mester 156). Furthermore, the rhythmic representation of images offered a means of expressing the quest for a unity beyond intellectual logic. While the image of dance as “the most primitive, non-discursive art, […], an intuitive truth” (Kermode 4) manifests itself already during the era of Romanticism, in Modernism dance becomes the emblem of an ideal poetic image (Mester 20; Kermode 24). In addition, dance presented a means of escape, of getting “as far as possible from the intolerable reality of the world“ (Symons cited in Ellis 170). As a metaphor, dance is often employed to convey cosmic harmony, the balance between polarities such as order/chaos and reality/ideal. Appearing as a connection to the divine and as a mediating force between intellect/emotion, nature/art, and death/life, it reflects both cyclical change and a desire to return to (mythical) origins; thus, it unites the search for tradition and change, for continuity and rebellion, which preoccupied dancers and poets alike.