Screendance: A Proposal for the Construction of a Language Rooted in the Symbiosis Between Film and Dance

MASTER THESIS Film Studies 28 June 2019 Ana-Mariya Sotirova ID 12431664

SCREENDANCE: A PROPOSAL FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF A LANGUAGE

ROOTED IN THE SYMBIOSIS BETWEEN FILM AND DANCE

Supervisor: mw. dr. C.M. (Catherine) Lord Second Reader: dhr. dr. A.M. (Abe) Geil

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Symbiosis Between Film and Dance as an Indispensable Concept in

Screendance 4

Theoretical Frameworks: From Sense-making Through Intermediality and the Repeating Gesture as a Sign to Constructing the Language of Screendance 7

Methods and Corpus: Textual Analysis for Dissecting a Partnership and Five Works in Eight Decades 10

Chapter One Screendance and Medium: Theories on Intermediality and Narrative as Sense-making Strategies, an Introduction to a Field, and A Study in Partnership 14

Proposing a Point of Departure: Sense-making Through Symbiosis and the First Building Blocks of a Language 14

Intermediality: Relationship, Emergence, Separation and Connection 20

If Screendance Is a Field, It Is a Field of Contradictions 25

Linking Intermediality to Theories of Narrative to Case Studies 28

The Work of a Screendance Pioneer: Maya Deren and A Study in Choreography for Camera 32

Conclusion: Notes on Poetry and Sense-making Through Symbiosis 38

Chapter Two Screendance and Scholarly Field: Challenging the Limits of a Field Through the Transfer of Dance from Stage to Screen

40

Dance Theatre and Pina Bausch Through the Prism of Screendance 40

Repetition as a Means of Performing the Gesture: Practising a Language 47

Transferred to Film: Pina 50

Transferred to Film: Talk to Her 58

Conclusion: Repetitive Notes with Theoretical Transformations 62

Chapter Three Screendance and Practice: The Links Between an Evolving Language and an Evolving Practice 65

Locating Screendance within the Digital Hybrid Screen: The ‘Architecture’ of Video Platforms 65

Practical Experiments in Screendance: Menuett 67

Practical Experiments in Screendance: Mouse Trap 70

Conclusion: Notes on the Open Doors to Alternative Practices

Screendance and Art: A Conclusion 76

Introduction: The Symbiosis Between Film and Dance as an Indispensable

Concept in Screendance

A man leaps, his silhouette crosses the screen’s frame, he lands and remains in still contemplation within and of nature. The cut has transformed the leap from physically impossible to magically prolonged. The camera has captured the fragmented self throughout the leap and the whole self in the fulfilled landing. This is the end of Maya Deren’s film A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945) (see Fig. 1). It is also, arguably, a beginning for the possibilities ahead for artists and theorists intrigued by the outcomes of an experimental partnership between dance and film. As a very early work in the realm of the avant-garde, Deren’s was experimental in every way, utilising available knowledge and techniques from both dance choreography and cinema. Importantly, bringing them

together.

This thesis will attempt to do the same and commit itself to engage the critical interaction between film and dance by intertwining and merging them towards a concept of symbiosis that Screendance is or will be founded upon. Amy Greenfield, also a dancer and filmmaker, comments that with the ending leap in A Study in Choreography for the Camera, “free of the laws of gravity” (23), a “sense of completion and calm” (25) is felt within and beyond the screen. My aim is to pursue the same inspiring experimentation that Maya Deren engaged in with the making of her piece and reach with my final sentences new conclusions with at least a particle of what Greenfield has explored in relation to A Study in

Choreography for the Camera: “a transcendent sense that a single human has come through

and the continuity of movement. [It] end[s] with the single human in harmony with self and world.” (25) Here, this human would be the reader and the journey – the text below.

Fig. 1 A Study in Choreography for Camera, screenshot

The purpose and passion of the work ahead is to investigate points of mutual

influence, interaction and merger between film and dance. This union has found an identity as a source of fascination for both academics and practitioners recognisable in the sphere of

Screendance. In this thesis, dance, film and Screendance are referred to as art forms,

mediums, scholarly fields, practices. In fact, the statement every chapter returns to is that

Screendance can and should be identified as all four of the above the same way film and

dance hold such statuses. So, to readjust: the purpose and passion of the work ahead is to investigate points of mutual influence, interaction and merger between film and dance in order to argue for the autonomous status of Screendance as an art form, a medium, a scholarly field, and a practice.

Producing more practical work and theoretical discourse establishes terminologies and encourages the positioning of Screendance alongside other art forms and mediums. David Rosenberg, a Screendance scholar who has himself proposed a theory of it, parts of which are discussed later on, examines how introducing clear terms to make sense of a work

as a part of a field “elevates the work of art by inserting it into an ongoing dialog with other

work.” (12) And such dialogue could lead to more and in-depth discoveries. With the introduction of notions such as scholarly field and academic theory, art form and artistic expression, medium and transmission of information, it is inevitable, even urgent, to include the notion of language in the discussion, too. Indeed, as a continuation of the fundamental aim to distinguish Screendance as autonomous, I wish also to suggest that merging film and dance enables the process of production of a particular language through an intermedial aesthetic.

The terms intermedial, interdisciplinary and hybrid will be used frequently when examining Screendance and gradually unpacked throughout the thesis leading to

comprehensive conclusions. An attempt will be made to write about Screendance exclusively as the symbiosis between film and dance: as a medium based on synergy, without the cinematic overpowering the analysis and becoming a dominant; or vice-versa, the film form being considered simply an extension to a created dance. Symbiosis,

therefore, should be looked at as a vital concept that opposes categorical thinking and is intimately related to synergy. However, it is unavoidable to name only one or the other art form at certain points. It is necessary to first see that Screendance is the merger of precisely film and dance:these mediums being hybrids themselves results in the emerging of a novel one which, too, borrows methodologies and technologies from other branches of art and knowledge. Here comes the somewhat complex question of autonomy for how can

Screendance be autonomous if it is merely pre-existing mediums combined. Through

evaluating what is known, theorised, accomplished so far and outlining clear characteristics of Screendance and its language while at the same time allowing opinions and projects that are rather ambiguous to be a part of the debate. This will create brighter boundaries and facilitate recognition without preventing the articulation of new points of view on the matter. In fact, as my project progresses, it becomes not only the outlining of elements of the language of Screendance. Instead, I will straightforwardly propose a way of making sense of, viewing, practising, writing about Screendance. In other words, the language of

Screendance or, rather, the first steps in its construction.

Theoretical Frameworks: From Sense-making Through Intermediality and the Repeating Gesture as a Sign to Constructing the Language of Screendance

This thesis relies on many layers of existing discourse ranging from canonical texts to specific writing on dance and film to the narrowest theories, which name Screendance as precisely their core interest. It starts with outlining the overlapping characteristics found in both the filmmaker’s and dance artist’s creative means. I argue that this overlapping contributes to understanding two important things: that Screendance is always a symbiosis and how to make sense of it and write about it as such. Here, the work of Judy Mitoma helps with the clear identifications of these similarities. Furthermore, Maaike Bleeker’s

Transmission in Motion: The Technologizing of Dance (2017) is a source which supports the

introduction of ideas regarding sense-making through technology. Here comes the reminder that Screendance is always at least to some extent technological (because cinema is), but also that the practice and the technologies are in processes of continuous evolving.

Assimilating the inevitability of the latter is key when discussing Screendance. This also brings in questions of mediation through technology, through the human body, through the synchronisation of the two. Four authors are trustfully consulted here. Eric Méchoulan and Angela Carr explain that intermediality is not one medium and then another, but the relation between them. Rémy Besson identifies four possible intermedial situations: “co-presence […], transfers […], emergence […], and experience within a given milieu”. (151) I focus on the perspective of emergence as Screendance is evidently, even with its name, the collision between two clear-cut pre-existing mediums, but in need of, as Besson reminds, “individuation from another medium.” (145) Finally, since the main subject of this thesis is referred to as intermedial, but also hybrid, Yvonne Spielmann’s discourse provides valuable insights.

The discussion then moves to Screendance as a scholarly field, which in itself could contribute to its more secure status as an art form and a better construction of its

autonomous language. These are some of the propositions of David Rosenberg. He suggests that Screendance “finds itself without the critical mass of a serious and well-articulated discourse that would raise the level of understanding and production to that of the other arts, such as film or the plastic arts.” (12) He also uses a term that Richard James Allen and Karen Pearlman propose as a definition: ‘stories by the body.’ (13) This becomes central to my arguments and I argue that it can be the first building block of the language of

Screendance. Wyn Pottratz is another scholar preoccupied with the cracks in the field and

believes that “the richer the discourse, the more an art takes its form.” (182) Efforts made so far towards the establishment of Screendance as a field are included exhaustively as well, as this work itself would like to somewhat contribute to this establishment. One other source that is essential here is The International Journal of Screendance. It is focused

entirely on the field, it is where Rosenberg, Pottratz, Harmony Bench and Sarah Keller publish their works, so crucial for my own project. Besides writings on the scholarly dimensions of Screendance, it also includes in-depth analyses of specific pieces. Keller’s publication on the partnership between dancer and camera in Maya Deren’s A Study in

Choreography for Camera informs the textual analysis in Chapter One, while Sylvie

Vitaglione’s original work on material supports my arguments in the final chapter of the thesis, where I attempt to outline already clearer constituents of the language of

Screendance.

I will be looking at at the significance of the repeating gesture as a dance movement captured by the film apparatus and its ability to be a carrier of meaning because it is also a sign. Peter Wollen’s reflections on semiotics in the cinema are referred to in relation to dance theatre and Pina Bausch’s choreographies rooted in gesture and how they transform when transferred from one medium to another. This and other useful theories travel in-between chapters to create a web of ideas in order to support the complexity of

Screendance while at the same time facilitate sense-making of it. For example, the works on

narrative by Rick Altman, Mieke Bal and David Bordwell, which become points of departure and return and are followed and relied upon throughout the whole process of

argumentation. And the argumentation itself always goes back to the beginning: the mutual influence, interaction and merger between film and dance, the language of Screendance.

Methods and Corpus: Textual Analysis for Dissecting a Partnership and Five Works in Eight Decades

Each of my three chapters begins with an argument that represents one distinct prism through which Screendance can be explored. At the same time, each such argument intends to return to the essential research statement: that Screendance is an autonomous art form, medium, scholarly field and practice, and, thus, is capable of manifesting the characteristics of a particular language (which is yet to be constructed). The argument is always supported by existing academic theory, be it foundational and canonical, as with Bal and Altman, or niche, as with The International Journal of Screendance. As already stated, throughout the chapters some theories are revisited, and new ones introduced so that the thesis is in an ongoing process of simultaneous critical enrichment and solid confirmation of what it aims to prove. Methodologically, the theory involved is in every chapter followed by textual analysis of sequences from chosen case studies. The close reading is always related to the theory and it connects it to a concrete research object. It functions like a detailed dissection of a relationship: between the form and content of the image and how these come to be.

The selection of case studies is justified by a number of factors. Most importantly, the specific projects should contribute to an intelligible reflection in favour of the thesis statement. Logically, the projects are either considered exemplary of Screendance (A Study

in Choreography for Camera, Menuett (Jukka Rajala-Granstubb, 2011), Mouse Trap (Eloy

Barragán, 2014)) or able to question the limits in defining what Screendance is (Pina (Wim Wenders, 2011) and Talk to Her (Pedro Almodóvar, 2002)). In all case studies, one

component that remains present and vital is the exploration of the body in movement as it is captured by the camera. Thus, the latter can be seen as the core of the language of

Screendance, from where all other elements that communicate meaning can emerge.

Finally, the case studies are, to an extent, chosen because of my personal attachment to and fascination with them. And this is rooted in what they are: experimental, thought-provoking, primarily focused on the visual as opposed to the verbal; and in what they are not:

extensively discussed in academia before, immediately linked to studies of genre, narrative, perception. In short, the methodology consists of: 1) interpreting theory always in relation to Screendance and 2) illustrating how a Screendance project communicates ideas through the concrete means of detailed analysis of the form of the text. These are the building blocks of each chapter which constitute the corpus of the thesis.

Chapter One looks at strategies that could prove potentially helpful in

comprehending Screendance and then debating over it. It introduces the concepts of intermediality and hybridity. It also acknowledges problems and cracks within the scholarly field. At the same time, it is the place where suitable terminology can be found and used to explain how the language of Screendance could potentially function. The first chapter then turns to narrative theories in order to justify the selection of case studies and to also refine their scope. It is important, for instance, to explore the notion of eventfulness within the research objects. According to Mieke Bal, “An event is the transition from one state to another state.” (5) In that sense, the case studies have (kinds of) narratives as changes of states do occur. However, it is worth asking what are these changes: internal or external, linked more strongly to the physical or to the emotional or to an inseparable bond between the two. Here, Bordwell’s notion of ‘art-cinema narration’ can be useful as it favours

ambiguity over a logic of connected actions. A final point regarding narrative that, for instance, the first case study – A Study in Choreography for Camera by Maya Deren, can be linked to is Rick Altman’s concept of ‘following’ a character. The short film is then analysed

in relation to these narrative theories and intermediality. The work of Deren is discussed as a predecessor of Screendance and her own theory of partnership between the cinematic and the choreographic is included as pioneering and founding of a new medium.

Chapter Two focuses on dance theatre and the iconic role within it of choreographer Pina Bausch. Here, the gesture within Bausch’s projects is explored as a sign. Peter Wollen is the theorist whose work on semiotics and cinema aids to illustrate how the repetition of gestures can be associated with the ‘practice’ of a specific language where the human body is the mediator of expression on iconic, indexical and symbolic levels, to use semiotic terms. Ciane Fernandes is extensively consulted as one of the scholars deeply invested in Pina Bausch, and especially the aesthetics of repetition. The case studies involved in the second chapter are the documentary Pina and the feature fiction film Talk to Her. These are clearly not Screendance projects, but sequences of them are discussed or questioned as such. These moments are Bausch’s dance theatre choreographies transferred to film. The analysis challenges the limits of the field of Screendance, whether it should be inclusive of projects that are concerned with dance but remain within the cinematic because there is a lack of clearly recognisable symbiosis between film and dance.

The final Chapter Three turns to locating Screendance in specific projects conceived as such (Menuett and Mouse Trap), where and how they exist within digital screens and virtual online spaces. Or, in other words, what are some of the platforms for sharing, feedback, criticism, debate, making sense of and learning about Screendance. Moreover, after examining it as a medium and as a field, in the final chapter, it is also studied as a practice. There is a closer look at the processes of creation, the roles of the people involved, who are artist, dancers, choreographers, filmmakers, all at once. I unpack the significance of the notion of choreography and its qualities of intention. Like in the previous two chapters,

in this one, too, textual analysis provides exciting insights into the partnership between film and dance found in the chosen research objects. It could be said that they are rather

different and some contrasts are inspected in relation to, once again, theoretical discourse, but this time coming from the specialised source The International Journal of Screendance. Towards the conclusion, the thesis will somewhat contradict itself, or, rather, presents itself with another challenge. If until then it attempts to construct a language and make sense of an art form, in the end, it will offer radical alternative angles in the understanding of

Screendance in order to complicate it once more. Only with the purpose to make a full circle

Chapter One

Screendance and Medium: Theories on Intermediality and Narrative as

Sense-making Strategies, an Introduction to a Field, and A Study in

Partnership

Circumlocution on the too real wheel Finds twice reflection Once upon the screen And once upon the transient, evacuated minds possessing pews.

from Cinema, a poem by Maya Deren, 1937 (Rhodes, 48)

Proposing a Point of Departure: Sense-making Through Symbiosis and the First Building Blocks of a Language

It is quite evident that film and dance exist as independent art forms, mediums, fields of study and practices. Each has a long and rich history (Rethinking Dance History: A Reader (Alexandra Carter, 2004), History of Dance (Gayle Kassing, 2017), Film History: Theory and

Practice (Robert C. Allen, Douglas Gomery, 1985)), can be associated with a palette of

cultures (Cinemas of the World: Film and Society from 1895 to the Present (James Chapman, 2003)), and deserves in-depth explorations. Such generalisations (which are rather abstract, but quickly recognisable as established truths) are not useful in the construction of a critical argument, but I begin as I did only to ensure that this thesis is not interested in the separate existences and origins of film and dance. Instead, it interrogates only their coexistence, copresence, relationship, merger. This is what is to be understood with every use of the

term Screendance in this work. It is not to say that, for example, a Screendance project could never be called a film. Nor does it mean that Screendance is a kind of mathematically

perfect equality between film and dance. To create a terminology in any field is to create a certain order, which then encourages sense-making and learning, but rules are not set in stone and in the case of Screendance the coexistence of film and dance has qualities of ongoing interactive fluidity. To begin to make sense of it requires some points of departure. They can vary from watching and analysing a Screendance piece to physically practising the creation of one, and more in-between. But for the purposes of the current research, what is needed is the introduction of theoretical concepts. This departure should eventually pave the way to a declaration full of certainty and optimism: that Screendance is a symbiosis that, despite lacking the longevity in the histories and cultures of film and dance, is distinctive enough to have an autonomy of its own. As already stated in the Introduction, symbiosis here is a concept that is needed to facilitate sense-making, but also itself, as a concept applied to Screendance, in a process of development.

The fluidity within the coexistence of film and dance mentioned above can be understood as an overlapping of some important common aspects the two mediums share. Judy Mitoma outlines similarities between the filmmaker’s and dance artist’s skills:

“sensitivity to visual form, motion, space, time, and light, as well as a passion to

communicate.” (xxxi) This passion to communicate, if detected, is how all three, film, dance and Screendance, become recognised as mediums. Or, in other words, mediators between the minds of the creators and those of the recipients: ways to express emotions,

interiorities, meanings, to critique and make statements. The fact that Screendance is the merger of two established mediums automatically relates its dominant purpose to

overlapping of the creative aspects which makes visible and audible the desired

communication and expression. Mitoma points to sensitivity to space and time, two key elements of film and dance. It is intriguing how they transform in Screendance. For example, the cinematic technology captures a space and may alter it in numerous ways: framing can manipulate size, camera angles can distort the image, montage can produce illogical or confusing relations between two or more spaces (as is the case with Maya Deren’s A Study

in Choreography for Camera). On the other hand, time also changes: within film, dance

sequences lose their ephemeral existence in a specific moment and become reproducible. This is the metamorphosis taking place between dance and Screendance through film.

But dance also modifies film so that the final result can be a Screendance work and not a movie. It is essential to note here that not every dance shown and seen on a screen is consequently a Screendance project. The problem of defining such boundaries will be examined in Chapter Two. In Screendance, dance has the main role rather than simply a function, such as to entertain, progress or distract from the narrative development, or be a reflection of a character’s emotional world. Dance in Screendance is a whole dimension, be it predominantly poetic or symbolic or both or another kind, but a dimension infused with that of the cinematic. The cinematic dimension alone can also be poetic (the poetic as understood by Maya Deren, or what she also calls “’vertical’ development” where there is “a logic of a central emotion or idea” as opposed to the “’horizontal’” where “the logic is a logic of actions” (in Sitney, 178)). The cinematic can be poetic in the sense that images might have powerful visual substance which lacks a clearly-defined eventfulness, but,

nevertheless, contains within its form and provokes beyond itself an emotion. The difference between the purely cinematic poetic dimension and the poetic dimension of

Screendance (wherein dance has been involved) can be found in one crucial element: the

human body captured in choreographed movement.

To sum up some points made so far: dance travels the way to Screendance through the vehicle of film, most importantly camera and editing, which influence the processes of both creation and perception of the dance. Film travels the way to Screendance through the vehicle of dance, most importantly its role as visual focal point within the work, which I have called a whole dimension and will refer to as ‘poetic’ as the case studies of this thesis can be identified as such. I would argue that precisely the human body in choreographed motion captured by the camera is the necessary component which brings together into a symbiosis shooting and dancing whilst it is simultaneously enabled by this symbiosis. It also provides the potential for a poetic or symbolic dimension which could facilitate differentiations between a Screendance piece and any filmed choreography. The partnership between the camera and the moving human body is the centre of most of Maya Deren’s works. As it is analysed in the final part of this chapter, Talley Beatty in A Study in Choreography for

Camera performs impossibly prolonged turns and leaps, but what is physically impossible is

made possible and visible through the cinematic apparatus. Thus, the partnership between the actions of the dancer and the filmmaker convert rational making into sense-making through the lens of the poetic. Therefore, the chosen case study can be an

exemplary illustration of what is meant here by poetic, symbiosis, and Screendance. Beatty slowly lifts and brings down his left leg (see Fig. 2), but the movement appears somewhat magical or strange or uncanny because of the camera angle and the framing: low so the ground is rather invisible, making him appear as if surrounded by tree branches. They have no beginnings and endings. Scale is manipulated, so his body seems as tall as the trees and at the same time stronger, not as thin. The camera is now resting in contemplation, awaiting

the partnered movement with the dancer. But this, too, is a Screendance maker’s choice. Within such work, there can be moments of stillness for the camera, which does not suddenly deem it not Screendance. Within this choice of still capturing of choreographed movement the partnership is not lost, only paused, only in preparation for the camera’s eye to look away or the editor’s scissors to transform the dance with a compelling cut. This is one way to begin making sense of Screendance and the continuation is later below.

Fig. 2 A Study in Choreography for Camera, screenshot

If making sense of the content of the image and how this content comes to be is a first step, but also a necessary ongoing process, in constructing the distinct language of

Screendance, then a second step is putting the sense-making into words, transforming

thought into concrete theory, attempting to identify the foundation of the language. The filmed dancing body can be this foundation, the first building block in the construction, a point of departure. While the characteristics Mitoma indicates: sensitivity to time and

space, passion to communicate, are shared by film, dance, and Screendance, by themselves they are insufficient to form the particularities of this language. If thought of, however, in relation to the body in motion, they could also become a way to read Screendance. But this is still incomplete, and an additional adjustment is in place. The aim is to explore the filmed dancing body (the first building block), perhaps within space or time, in the process of communication, in relation to specific lighting, or interacting with a chosen mise-en-scène

(these are example optional components), and, simultaneously, how it appears on the screen: how it is framed, how the camera captures it, what montage does to it. It could be easily concluded that there are two sides to Screendance: the inside-image-body-dance and the outside-creation-technology-cinema, but this would be another separation. Here, an essential point made in the Introduction must be utilised as a reminder to return to: although this thesis tries to make exact unambiguous statements in order to propose a language, sense-making remains continuous. Comprehending the image’s content and learning about how it is materialised are always ongoing intertwined processes, where a new angle might at any point be discovered and investigated. Moreover, this is only natural since one element is currently evolving quite quickly: the technological constituent of the medium. According to Maaike Bleeker, technologies evolving and “being incorporated in practices of creating, sharing, and making sense of dance draws attention to the ways in which [...] modes of perceiving, sense making, and thinking are intertwined with

technology.” (xviii,xix) There needs to be an awareness of developing technologies (types of cameras, screens, editing software) and from there of the transforming and unstable ways of creating, presenting, perceiving. To learn to recognise and analyse Screendance could prove a challenge, not only because of an absence of concrete definitions but also because

of its current existence in a digital age, where concepts are flexible and require the same flexible discussions.

Below, this chapter investigates the useful approach to Screendance through intermediality theories from Méchoulan, Carr, Besson and Spielmann. Each approach is different, but each supports such a notion of flexible debate and, thus, contributes to sense-making. Further, some theorisations of Screendance itself proposed so far within the

scholarly field are considered, as well as how suitable is the suggestion ‘stories by the body’ (Allen and Pearlman) as the upgraded first building block in the construction of

Screendance’s language. I argue that this terminology productively facilitates sense-making

but is not sufficient to confirm the potential autonomy of that language. The chapter then shifts to inspecting narrative to determine what kinds of projects will be examined regarding modes of narration and genre. This is essential in creating a scope and direction. Herein, I also relate the scope to the case studies, which then opens the door to the textual analysis of a concrete one: A Study in Choreography for Camera. Within it intertwine new critical angles, from the world of avant-garde filmmaking – by Stan Brakhage, to name one, with the vital and from now on ever-present concepts of intermediality and narrative presented below.

Intermediality: Relationship, Emergence, Separation and Connection

The prism of intermediality can provide an intriguing way to look at Screendance. It immediately assures that the medium is impure and should not be considered from the singular angles of only dance or only cinema, both of which are arguably also intermedial. It is important that intermediality is always about more than one medium, and not only this,

but more than one medium in an ongoing relationship, instead of in separation and

isolation. Categorical thinking would necessarily disable intermediality. In the words of Eric Méchoulan and Angela Carr, “the prefix ‘inter’ seeks to highlight an unperceived or

obscured relationship, or even more, to support the idea that the relationship is by principle

primary: where traditional thinking generally views objects first as isolated and only then

put into relation, contemporary thinking insists on the fact that objects are first and foremost nodes of relations.” (5) Intermediality is helpful in understanding Screendance as precisely this: a node, an intersection where various branches of knowledge and practice can merge meaningfully. To take the example from earlier, Talley Beatty’s slow graceful movement of his leg can be read as an illustration of flawless control which contrasts human will to nature’s co-present stillness and unpredictability: but this is an interpretation of the metaphorical content of the image. The camera’s static, observing position results in a long shot, because it is the most accurate way to frame the entirety of the chosen movement: but this is an analysis of how the visual is achieved technologically. Maya Deren keeps the camera still and places it low to transform the range of motion into a dance moment that confuses and questions perception. Now this is a potential intermedial Screendance reflection because it comments on a relationship which accomplishes communication.

Rémy Besson also takes a look at the intricate nature of intermediality. While Méchoulan and Carr focus on the obligatory relationship between mediums, Besson

identifies four characteristics linked to intermediality: “co-presence within a singular cultural production, as well as transfers from one form to another, the emergence of a new medium, or lived experience within a given milieu.” (151; emphasis added) These can all be present within the same intermedial form or case study. Regarding Screendance, it can be said that it is the co-presence of dance and film, but also of other mediums – performance and music,

for instance. There is also the transfer: for example, of knowledge of the gesture from dance theatre to the field of Screendance or of an understanding of lighting specifically for the camera, which nonetheless complements the required look of the body in motion. Milieu is essential to Screendance and can even be further developed to constitute a significant component of its language as space has meaningful aesthetic, cultural, political dimensions. Emergence, however, I would argue, is the characteristic of intermediality most applicable to the evolution of Screendance as both a theoretical field and a practice. Besson notes how important is that “the institutionalization of a medium is most often interpreted as its individuation from another medium (Bolter and Grusin).” (145) Looking at the case of cinema, it is an emergence from much older mediums and art forms: “photography, chronophotography, light projection, and magic lantern shows, amongst others.” (145) But some realisations must happen: that cinema is not photography; that cinema does not have a single origin; that when it is made, cinema draws techniques from other practices. The same should be applicable to Screendance.

Besson, once again, can reaffirm for the reader that, “the notion of intermediality, then, is particularly useful in that it maintains, for as long as possible, the taking into account of a certain degree of heterogeneity among the elements that make up a medium still caught in a process of becoming.” (145) One curious idea would be that only intermedial art forms can evolve and never disrupt the process of becoming. Older forms such as

painting or sculpture, so extensively studied and so stable in their statuses as arts, perhaps are static. Of course, they have rich, long and meaningful histories and cultures, but this is the only way they can be read. If they change through a relationship with a new kind of art or medium, they are no longer themselves, having entered novel ways of creation and transfer of knowledge. This is the case of dance, too: long history, highly recognisable and,

thus, individual as a separate field. Or, it is not, as novel developments in music affect it fundamentally. Not cinema either as there are too many pre-existing components present and the compulsory technological instruments, which, as already stated, are in a current dynamic evolution. Screendance, too, emerges as a new medium, distinct from film and dance. This distinction can be found in the activities of creation, reception, and sense-making of it, once they are considered activities based on a synergetic viewpoint.

Intermediality, then, is the interaction between two or more mediums. But equally important are each medium and that very interaction, the nature of the relation between them. Intermediality is also characterised by the emergence of new elements out of other earlier ones. One more author introduces understandings of intermediality. Yvonne Spielmann argues that it occurs in visual arts between the analogue and the digital as “digital image processing causes a shift in the notion of the whole image.” What is more, “this shift is especially visible where the merging of media such as painting, cinema, television, and video results in a mixed image, or more precisely, an intermedia form.” (133) Despite not being concerned with the analogue and digital formats, this thesis is interested in providing a richer understanding of Screendance, and intermediality is a notion which contributes to this aim. Spielmann writes of merging and when she names specific media, she facilitates the imagining of what intermediality can be. Like Méchoulan and Carr, she stresses the importance of the merge, and, like Besson, the focus is on process, a ‘shift’, instead of on static ways of thinking. But pointing to actual forms and disciplines should be done with Screendance, as well. As already mentioned, it emerges from film and dance which are themselves intermedial. So, when analysing a Screendance work, it could be intelligible to outline the elements (music, choreography, lighting, montage), but then, and it is compulsory, to see how they interact and transform. This is now a more complete

methodology towards sense-making of Screendance. Spielmann sums it up: “intermediality is a feature of composite and incoherence; it separates and connects within the same form of the image.” (135) Besides intermedial and interdisciplinary, one more term can be applied to Screendance: hybrid.

It is quite similar as it is also linked to instability and transformation. Perhaps, one way in which it differs is the inclusion of notions of ‘cultures’: “Hybridity has become a term commonly used in cultural studies to describe conditions in contact zones where different cultures connect, merge, intersect and eventually transform.” (106) Mediums, branches of knowledge and cultural codes all intertwine, which also leads to simultaneous separation and connection. This is explored in more depth in Chapter Two in relation to the gesture which within itself holds the capability of isolation and conjunct. And Chapter Three returns to a concern with digital hybridity regarding the effects of various modes of representation. These will be discussions that will at the same time see Screendance as an intermedial form and as a scholarly field, whose boundaries should be challenged in order to become clearer. In fact, it is important how one informs the other: an understanding of intermediality can be intimately linked to enriching theoretical discourse. This, consequently, would provide further sense-making. If, so far, I have somewhat cyclically established some similarities between the mediums of dance and film and their fluid overlapping which produces the symbiotic intermedial Screendance, it is now time to observe around what terms its academic existence is built. How the scholarly field defines itself and explains its goals. It might be reasonable to start at the very beginning: with the name which is also separating two individual mediums while inevitably joining two ideas together. It is the way the dance enters the screen and how the screen communicates the dance beyond itself.

If Screendance Is a Field, It Is a Field of Contradictions

The term Screendance is problematic because it does not only divide and bring together two pre-existing words with multiple layers to potentially dissect. As it turns out, it is not the sole name to describe what it wishes to describe, which could immediately cause

disorientation. Franck Boulégue and Marisa C. Hayes in their Art in Motion first prepare readers for a variety of terms that follow “to describe the art of screendance, including

video dance, cinedance, dance for camera, dance film, etc. While numerous English language

scholars prefer the term Screendance, many other languages do not have a convenient equivalent.” (xiii) And Erin Brannigan in the preface of her book Dancefilm: Choreography

and the Moving Image (2011), justifies her use of dancefilm as inclusive of a variety of

genres such as “the musical and experimental shorts” (vii) and as “a term that recognizes a continuity between the earliest screen practices and the most current.” (viii) I would like to continue with the term Screendance. Although Brannigan’s reasoning is coherent and there is a certain continuity between characteristics in the case studies to be analysed in this thesis, I would like to exclude the musical, for instance, and concentrate on rather

experimental and art-narration (in the sense of Bordwell) works, as will be defined shortly. Furthermore, precise efforts have been made to establish Screendance as the recognisable term to signal an academic field with specific theorisations, especially by David Rosenberg and other contributors to The International Journal of Screendance – a virtual realm that provides a core base not only for new compelling breakthroughs but also for debate. Finally, it is the place where a key discussion takes place: about the links between a stable scholarly field and a status of a practice as an independent art form.

According to David Rosenberg, there is a necessity for constructing particular parameters with the exact purpose of identifying these links: “Creating frames of reference and prisms through which a work of art is viewed, elevates the work of art by inserting it into an ongoing dialog with other work and also, perhaps more importantly, encourages the kind of metaphor, allusion and referencing that is the lifeblood of art in general.” (12) The scholar writes of elevation rather than foundation, but I would argue that even the confusion regarding terminology mentioned above is a reason to first make Screendance less ambiguous by clearly defining it. However, this is a challenging task as it could cause limiting the field to an extremely niche sphere. Rosenberg also examines a definition by James Allen and Karen Pearlman: ‘stories by the body’ which “implies that the corporeal body is present in the work and that the body is the instrument of inscription [...]. The body telling stories through the medium of film or video is, at its best, compelling and altogether distinct from the experience of concert dance. Now, this also implies a sense of narrative within the dance film.” (13) The idea of the captured choreographed body in motion comes back here and it seems that it can be one of the more significant characteristics of the art of

Screendance and the first building block of its language. Combined with the concept of

narrative, but narrative not as a chain of coherent actions, but rather as an expression rooted in the emotional and sensory perception of a more abstract fluidity of movements that, like a story, have beginnings, middles, and ends, but such prone to more diverse connotations. Or, what I have already called a poetic dimension. In short, the thread not to be lost then when making sense of Screendance could be the body. However, always choreographed and moving. Always in relation to the film apparatus which is the crucial supplier of intermedial aesthetic. And always in relation to a ‘narrative’.

Another commitment to the theorisation of Screendance is the (Hu)Manifesto. In 2006 a group of artists and academics draft the (Hu)Manifesto: Possibilities for Screendance to serve as “a framework for articulating meaning.” (Pottratz, 183) One of the points of this document is that with this art form “a larger truth may unfold: [...] one in which sequential images in the context of dance on screen resonate with accompanying frames of reference to manifest a larger understanding of the world.” (183) This is inconclusive and abstract and, yet, somewhat ambitious. So, perhaps, Screendance and its nature as the symbiosis of choreographed movement of the human body and the creative tools of cinema has the capacity to be thought-provoking, philosophical and even truthful. One other goal of the

(Hu)Manifesto is engagement with “rigorous critique” (183), which, I would argue, is

accomplished by the aforementioned International Journal of Screendance – created in the following year, 2007. Some of the initial information to be acquired from this journal is yet another wording of what Screendance is, but one that contributes to the process of sense-making of the confused field. According to the journal, Screendance is hybrid and

interdisciplinary. It can move through audio-visual, aesthetic, political, philosophical,

historical and other dimensions. Unlike cinema, it has determined objects and subjects – the human body in choreographed motion. Like cinema, it utilises the possibilities of camera and editing. Unlike cinema, it utilises the same possibilities always in relation to dance. Now that I have repeatedly stressed this relation, but only with the purpose of highlighting its value for the process of sense-making, it is necessary to move onto an investigation of narrative theories. Firstly, they would explain the notion of ‘stories by the body’ and inform statements made above regarding the distinguished traits of the art form, the field, the language. And secondly, they would be applied to the concrete research objects which will illustrate theoretical concepts through textual analysis.

Linking Intermediality to Theories of Narrative to Case Studies

When choosing precise case studies, one factor emerged as consistent in all – the

prevalence of ambiguity and open interpretation over following a logic of ‘cause-and-effect’. On the one hand, this approach could refine the scope of the research question. Numerous sequences, parts of the repository of cinema, can be considered moments of Screendance or read through such prism. However, such moments appear very frequently. The classical Hollywood musical, for example, already extensively explored (Rick Altman’s now iconic

Film/Genre (1999)), combines discussions of dance with discussions of music, sound,

representation, characters’ interior worlds or contextual analysis (star identity, production issues). By choosing to concentrate on experimental film, I believe I will be able to study projects, where dance is central to the film and vice-versa – film’s creative tools, too, essential to the metamorphosis of dance once within the screen. On the other hand, within the case studies I have selected, I find points of mutual influence and inspiration, as well as, quite selfishly, a personal emotional attachment. But more importantly, the case studies are suitable for the purpose of this research. The first one of these is Maya Deren’s A Study in

Choreography for Camera – a cinematic experiment by a filmmaker who was also a theorist,

thus fitting the question of is there a way to distinguish an art form through the ongoing construction of a theory of the chosen art. According to David Rosenberg, yes, but the answer is highly subjective as art can be perceived through many different platforms – institutional, educational, activist, but also on intimate and personal levels completely unrelated to any academic discourses. The latter, however, is one way through which art can be communicated in a rich, intellectual, coherent way. This communication involves identifying specific conventions of the art form, or, in other words, its language. As an

interdisciplinary practice, the language of Screendance will undeniably overlap with the languages of other art forms – dance, film, music – but through and beyond such intersections, new terms could emerge, only applicable to this hybrid medium. Such as ‘stories by the body’, but to interrogate what is a story is to interrogate what is narrative. And then see what it is in the context of experimental cinema.

Mieke Bal establishes helpful definitions:

A narrative text is a text in which an agent or subject conveys to an addressee […] a story in a medium, such as language, imagery, sound [...]. A story is the content of that text and produces a particular manifestation, inflection, and “colouring” of a fabula. A fabula is a series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by actors. [...] An event is the transition from one state to another state. Actors are agents that perform actions. (5)

A narrative, then, is not simply cause-and-effect happenings and actions. It has multiple elements and layers. There is a necessary medium, which means communication and a language which both the storyteller and the addressee understand. The more nuanced the language, the more complex the communication. If more than one medium is involved, the relationship emerging from this intertwining can provide such nuance and complexity. Narrative, according to Bal, can consist of events, transitions from a state to a state, and that is active narration. But within a text can be included “passages that concern something other than events, such as an opinion [...], perhaps a description of a face or of a location. It is thus possible to consider what is said as narrative, descriptive, or argumentative.” (8) If a text is non-verbal (as are the research objects or sequences from them in this work), it can also be narrative, descriptive, or argumentative. If applied to Screendance and the notion

‘stories by the body’, it could be said that the texts do have narrative and descriptive

qualities. The former is what the choreographed human body externalises as movement and as it progresses how the image changes, assuming a transformation of the form of the image itself can be considered an event, a transition from one state to another, from a still body in a forest to a rotating dancer in a museum hall, for instance. Here, the story the body tells resists immediate coherent interpretation and it becomes difficult to pinpoint it as an

event. But if it is perceived as a transition from one physical and mental state to another,

then it can be said to have a narrative quality. Or, such sequences may be deemed descriptive, as they encourage contemplation and imagination, sometimes on sensory levels. When referring to the case studies of this thesis later on as ‘experimental’ it should be understood as that which makes identification with what is seen ambiguous, but also that which has narrative and descriptive aspects.

Another theory on narrative might clarify these aspects in Screendance. Rick Altman proposes the notion of ‘following’ a character. According to the author, the essence of narrative is not in actions or events alone. They are certainly important as they are the undergoing of change and “this change is measured by a sequence of attributions which apply to the thing at different times. Narrative is a way of experiencing a group of sentences or pictures (or gestures or dance movements) which together attribute a beginning, middle, and end to something’ ([Edward Branigan, echoing Aristotle] 1992:4).” (6) But beyond this, Altman writes that “not until the narrator begins to follow a particular character will the text be recognizable as narrative.” (15,16) This ‘following’ is useful in a text which is dynamic with numerous actions taking place one after the other, but also in Screendance, where the dancer’s body has a key role. The dancing figure is the ‘character’ to be followed. And how else to accomplish this following unless with camera and editing, which if related to

Altman’s statement means these creative cinematic tools are the narrators. To Bal, the narrator is equivalent to the ‘agent’ who conveys the story. Therefore, in Screendance the body is the story and narrative while the camera (which is the one film element always present) is the mediator. On the other hand, for Bal this agent is within the narrative and the mediator is either imagery or sound or something else. In Screendance the body and the camera should be in symbiotic following and partnership, which itself is the narrative, or the story consisting of most often non-verbally conveyed events and descriptions; and the mediator of meaning as the physical and material body and apparatus; and the medium which is the same as the mediator because it is the bridge of communication between creators and recipients, but it is the broader and more abstract entities: dance and film. Being rather blurry and hard to grasp when applied to Screendance, the term narrative is in need of one further theorisation, which will also explain why I will refer to most case studies as ‘experimental’.

I use experimental cinema, here, as an umbrella term when discussing the chosen projects even though not all of them have been formally fixed as such. One way to write about experimental cinema is in relation to a mode of narration elucidated by David Bordwell as art-cinema narration which “taking its cue from literary modernism, questions such a definition of the real [cause and effect]: the world’s laws may not be knowable, personal psychology may be indeterminate.” (206) All case studies inspected in this thesis, but Screendance works predominantly, as well, are concerned with, as already stated, ‘stories by the body’, which are unlike conventionally structured narratives. They open questions and resist concrete answers. Their specialty is the unknowable and indeterminate, to repeat Bordwell’s theory. Realising that a piece may in the end remain inexplicable

disallows reasonable comprehension comes as a relief and opens the doors to analysis which itself aims not to reach conclusions, but to simply offer more information. Instead of a spectre of studies in the social, political, economic aspects of a work, valuable and useful in themselves, the reading of Screendance projects and their art-film narrational mode, encourages delving into potentially illuminating readings through the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, and in relation to other art forms. Attempting to approximate this, the final part of this chapter is a textual analysis of a short film by Maya Deren which was conceived before any theorisations of Screendance had begun, but, nonetheless, has been recognised as a pioneering work which can belong to the field and practice. It has been a source of knowledge and inspiration for future artists within both experimental filmmaking and Screendance.

The Work of a Screendance Pioneer: Maya Deren and A Study in Choreography for Camera

Maya Deren was an avant-garde artist who worked in the US in the 1940s. She made a number of short films and within their creation was a filmmaker, actor, dancer,

choreographer, and sometimes cinematographer. Dance had always been an essential part of her life and this motivated her to incorporate it into her cinematic works. Eventually, instead of incorporation of one medium into another, it became a synergy. It can be said that Deren believed in Screendance before it was an established term and a better-known practice. She famously declared that “There is a potential filmic dance form, in which the choreography and movements would be designed, precisely, for the mobility and other attributes of the camera, but this, too, requires an independence from theatrical dance conceptions.” (in McPherson, 29) This statement has a pioneering nature and has become a

core point in writings about Maya Deren’s artistry. Perhaps, in the moment she spoke those words, they didn’t have the same significance and resonance that they have acquired over the decades and do possess now. It is possible that Deren was confident in this partnership between film and dance, but because of her creative process and results couldn’t quite define it more sharply. She was, however, making the first steps into defining what

Screendance could become. The avant-garde projects she engaged with had a strange

energy and a magical quality, or perhaps what Ute Holl calls ‘uncanny’ in relation to dance and film: “Although the cinematic operations are simple technical permutations, the dance that the cinematic trick creates on the screen possesses emotional value: it appears to be uncanny – though still full of grace.” (166) Maya Deren, as well, theorised on experimental cinema and on her own works.

She would consistently talk of a link between dance, film and poetry. Comparing her works to the art form of poetry, with which she also experimented, she could better

elaborate on her Screendance projects. For instance, Deren claimed: “A poem, to my mind, creates visible or auditory forms for something that is invisible, which is the feeling, or the emotion, or the metaphysical content of the movement.” (in Sitney, 174) She was interested in making films that, like poetry, have an internal logic based on perception and emotion, but that could materialise by means of colourful imagination into visual works of art. Dance could contribute to such an aspiration. Maya Deren further complicates the reading of her film texts by introducing the concept of the ‘horizontal’ development – “a logic of actions” and a ‘vertical development’ – “a logic of a central emotion or idea that attracts to itself even disparate images which contain that central core, which they have in common.” (178) This contrast is somewhat similar to David Bordwell’s notions of classical film narration and art-film narration (his are, of course, much more massive quantitively). So, poetry, a vertical

development where images contain a logic of an emotion, and a strive for a new filmic form where film and dance move together, appropriately characterise one of Deren’s shortest works: A Study in Choreography for Camera.

In the International Journal of Screendance, Sarah Keller notes that besides poetry’s ambivalent and abstract ‘logic’, its quality of rhythm is another relation to dance and experimental cinema that Deren was eager to explore. According to Keller, she “derived from these models and expressed in vertiginous spatial and ideational mobility within and between the frames of her films.” (55) This rhythm was conceived by Deren by working, seemingly, with the intentional mindset that dance, the movements of the body and the camera, the decisions made in the editing process, are always intertwined, are one, or as Keller sums it up – “an equal partnership between the dancer and the camera: a pas de

deux.” (56) And this is most applicable to A Study in Choreography for Camera. Pas de deux

comes from classical ballet and is a duet wherein two dancers perform steps together. Evidently, it requires high level of awareness between the two partners, so the precise and harmonious synchronisation can be performed. It is only suitable, then, that Keller would refer to Deren’s piece as such. Stan Brakhage, another avant-garde artist, and a close friend to Deren, describes some aspects of the making of the short film. He writes that she reached “filmic discoveries […] by accident.” (98). Maya Deren didn’t have encyclopedic knowledge of the functions of the cinematic apparatus. After all, she was an experimental filmmaker. A

Study in Choreography for Camera is literally an experiment – a path of learning for Deren,

this time as a director behind the camera, unlike in the more famous Meshes of the

Afternoon (1943); an exercise in shooting and editing: “When she pans across the trees in

magical.” (Brakhage, 98); and, finally, a new understanding of the promise of a novel language, defined by the unison of dance and film.

A Study in Choreography for Camera (from now on referred to as A Study) is less than

three minutes long and stars Talley Beatty – a dancer Maya knew – as he moves through various exterior and interior spaces. The film opens with the aforementioned pan to the left. The camera captures the stillness of nature, the elegance and height of forest trees. And suddenly, a movement – a human body. The camera continues its pan, the same man appears two more times, gently moving his arm up in front of the calmness of nature. He is both in harmony with nature and as a slow disruption of its eternal presence. It is as if he inhabits the forest three times. The movement of the camera and the seamless montage create the illusion of the three Talley Beatty-s impossibly appearing in the space, or as Amy Greenfield has written, “the camera passes him like an invisible traveler, and ‘finds’ him again and again.” (21) Finally, he is seen for the fourth time, this time in a close-up shot. His head begins to move down in the frame, the film cuts to a long shot, in which he continues the movement down. His body is positioned in-between tree branches – as if his silhouette is somehow larger than the trees, but also surrounded by them. He slowly lifts his left leg upwards, followed by his left arm, creating two parallel lines. Then the film cuts to his left foot moving down and touching the floor, now within a new, interior space. This creates another spatial disjunction and a sense of the illogical and poetic. It also promises

possibilities in Screendance to be developed by future artists, such as the engagement with both interior and exterior places, editing of movement and framing the body – either the whole human form or singular fragments. In one of the following moments in A Study, Beatty’s upper body is visible in a slow movement as he somewhat folds his shoulders forward and finishes the fluid movement with his arm and hand. The muscles become

detailed, close, but the camera doesn’t dwell on them, it is more interested in movement. In the next scene, it tilts up from the dancer’s feet performing ballet steps. As it does, his whole body becomes a part of the frame. This is because of the movement of the camera upwards, broadening its view from the floor to the depth of the hall. This is in unison with the man’s continuous dancing steps that distance him from the camera’s eye. This

synchronised partnership creates a flow which is then repeated back the same way until the feet on the floor return in the frame.

Talley Beatty appears in front of a still Buddha sculpture and his shoulders and head are in the frame. He begins to rotate his body while turning his head last, his eyes fixed at a point in space somewhere beyond the camera’s eye (see Fig. 3). It is a common technique in ballet rotations called spotting. It can be linked to control – of speed, balance, and the correct execution of the movement itself. Maya Deren experimented with speed here – the camera remains still, observing the pirouette of Beatty, gradually quickening. It is as if the fixed point in space that his eyes return to and the camera’s eye need to be concrete in order to assert this sense of controlled and precise movement. Of course, this is only a

Screendance artist’s trick and once more Amy Greenfield can help make sense of it:

We think he controls his own speed, very slow, then continually faster and faster. Actually, he was spinning at a constant speed. Deren was smoothly hand-cranking the camera motor from 64 to 8 frames per second. Thus, the camera created the illusion that Beatty speeds up. If Beatty himself really had changed his speed, his face wouldn’t stay (as it does) in a constant, exact relationship to both statue and film frame. Through precise cinematic manipulation of dance motion, we see controlled visual composition within the frame while experiencing a dynamic of motion. (23)

As already mentioned, Deren learned through experimentation particular capabilities of the film camera and applied them directly in relation to dance motion. Here she went back to the early lessons in cinema regarding frames per second and human perception of moving images. And she ended up providing early lessons in Screendance: any existing technical capacities of the body and the apparatus can be explored to reach curious novelties in the symbiosis between dance and film. And they are how a field can always evolve because they surprise and open the doors to more possibilities.

Fig. 3 A Study in Choreography for Camera, screenshot

In the final portion of A Study, the dancer is back in the natural world, among the already familiar trees. Through a number of jump cuts, which again fragment parts of his body, he leaps across the screen. Here, his body appears as a rather flattened silhouette and the background is the sky. This setting creates the visual illusion of a flight. Beatty lands, again somewhat impossibly and inexplicably, surrounded by plants. The camera captures this landing and the final peaceful movement – the dancer places his hands on his knees as

he is squatting down. He has turned his back to the viewer and faces an open space, a horizon, as if in contemplation. The film fades to black.

Conclusion: Notes on Poetry and Sense-making Through Symbiosis

A twenty-year-old Maya Deren wrote a poem, the ending stanza of which is at the beginning of this chapter. Her interest in doubling is recognisable in it and then also in the iconic

avant-garde film Meshes of the Afternoon that she made with her husband at the time

Alexander Hammid. “Twice reflection / Once upon the screen” belonging to the poetic and ‘vertical’ can be interpreted in a number of ways and one rather obvious is that Deren found a special passion in film viewing and then making. The double is ever-present in her works and, perhaps, the partnership between dancer and camera in A Study is also the mirroring of two art forms that have too much in common and the glass which separates the two

reflections is fragile, easily broken, allowing a fluid interaction between the two sides. Maybe this metaphor can also facilitate the understanding of intermedial symbiosis. Maya Deren insisted on her theorisations of poetry within film as ‘vertical’ development with focus on an emotion or idea where there is an intense progress from feeling to feeling rather than from the ‘horizontal’ action to action. As it can already be concluded, the poetry within film is visual, non-verbal. Poetry within Screendance is found in the choreographed dancing body captured by the camera. The same sentence can be written in reverse: The filmed body in motion is the poetic dimension of Screendance. And it is what differentiates it from simply a film which includes dance. Maya Deren insisted on her own understanding and with the same courage, I would like to continue with the proposal of the building blocks of the language of Screendance.

It has been established in this chapter that since it has the ability to communicate, it can be considered a medium. Moreover, Screendance has been examined as a scholarly field but one that is young and confused because of lack of definitions or such that are too

abstract or perplexing (like the (Hu)Manifesto’s “the possibility that […] a larger truth may unfold” (183)). Despite this problem, however, the first building blocks have been clarified and more will be added with the mission to provide sense-making. The next chapter will challenge this sense-making possibly causing more bafflement, but as it is always

continuous, this will only be done in order to then come back to deeper comprehension. The following Chapter Two will identify the gesture as one of the movements the body performs. It will examine how helpful is to look at it through the lens of semiology, or, as a sign. And then a specific way of performing the gesture – repeating it multiple times – and how this can be considered a transition from one state to another. All these abstract ideas will find substance when applied to two concrete case studies – Pina and Talk to Her – and with the support of concrete theories. New ones will be introduced, such as Peter Wollen’s work on semiology in the cinema, and earlier ones will be returned to. For

example, Mieke Bal’s theorisation of narrative events as state transitions juxtaposed to the transformative quality of the repetition of gestures in pieces choreographed by Pina Bausch. This will necessarily also bring back intermediality as the gesture will be explored first as part of dance theatre, and then as cinematic, or what I will refer to as a Screendance

‘moment’ within a feature film. This definition will be part of the chapter’s goal to challenge terminologies and sense-making of such within the academic field. Finally, after dissecting the layers of the gesture, it will be obligatory to link it to the film apparatus and see how the relationship changes both the dancing body and the technological dimension of the